Fetus Fetishists 0, Normal People 1 more

Despite strenuous SHRIEEEKING from the fetus fetishists, The Hill reports today that 'Senate gives Sebelius kid-gloves treatment'.

Health and Human Services secretary-designate Kathleen Sebelius had an easy morning in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, despite admitting to unpaid taxes and facing a campaign against her by anti-abortion-rights groups and other conservative activists.

Republicans on the panel, which has the authority to recommend her confirmation to the full Senate, challenged Sebelius, the Democratic governor of Kansas, on aspects of President Obama’s plan for comprehensive health reform but declined to make any attacks on her abortion-rights record or her revelations Tuesday that she recently paid more than $7,000 in back taxes.

Indeed, no senators raised the subject of abortion even though ranking Republican Chuck Grassley (Iowa) advised her to expect questions on the subject. In addition, Grassley alone mentioned her tax issues, during his opening statement, but no members of the panel followed up on the subject.(emphasis mine)

Hee. No senators. Like, not one. All that SHRIEEEKING and NOT ONE question?

Must be tough to be a zygote zealot in the Excited States these days.

SoCon Or Bust = Member of the Catholic Taliban

SoCon Or Bust's recent bout of brain diarrhea is a mess of hysterical, vituperative and deranged attacks on the Youth section of the internationally respected Development and Peace organization. Warning: sit back from your screen when you read it, you might retch.

According to SoCon, fundamentalist Islamist and Catholic men share the same agenda: return women to the control that religious political authority allows men to enjoy.

His remarks about the programs that Development and Peace support: For SoCon Or Bust, this is ...

The whole thing is one big hate-fest against men and the traditional family, not to mention the promotion of sexual license, “reproductive rights”, and abortion.

This is what gets him foaming at the mouth:

Women participate in their government The East Timor Women’s Network that works towards empowering women and promoting democracy: Hosted legal workshops which enabled the participants to lobby the national parliament to pass a pending law against domestic violence.

His obsession with death reveals much about the demons he keeps corked up in a bottle. He is completely uninhibited about displaying the neuroses and phobias that feed his religious zealotry. Since sex is the ultimate evil, allowing women to die by being infected with AIDS is a validation of the Vatican's doctrinal authority.

Whenever I read SoCon's vile, overwrought, agonizing screeds, it brings to mind the martyr Saint Sebastian in all his representations. He should post that icon on his website, and not Mary who was asked by God to consent to being Jesus' mother and who chose to do so.

Merci to unrepentantoldhippie who giggled at Blob Blogging Wingnut's shrieeeking at this. DAMMIT JANET! doesn't find SoCon quite as amusing.

Social deprivation, not genetics, accounts for children's deaths.

An international, groundbreaking new study led by Dr Janet Smylie of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health based at the Keenan Research Centre, St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto has released its findings. The infant mortality rate for native babies in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand is higher, as much as four times that of non-native newborns. It also identified spikes in occurences of SIDs, injury, suicide and accidental death among aboriginal kids in all four countries.

"Every infant who dies … I believe is a tragedy we should follow up on," Smylie said. She also spoke of stereotypical and at times racist treatment received by native people.

"I saw a lot of challenges when I was delivering babies here in Ottawa. Young aboriginal moms who had perfectly good networks of family support — sometimes they were being referred to have the social worker see them even though their family was strong. I remember [another] … patient who had called into the hospital in a little bit of a panic. She had some anxiety and a strong accent. The triage nurse called me and said: 'There's something wrong with your patient. I think she's retarded.'"

"Those are stories that are just a little too frequent."

The organizations and researchers who instigated, implemented, charted and compiled the results of the study hope that the information produced by this report will become the basis for stronger policies and programs to improve children's health in the aboriginal and indigenous communities.

Where are the feminists on the new 'pro-rape' law in Afghanistan?

Here.

I'm speechless.

LATER: OK, I've calmed down a bit. I wanted to add some links to previous posts about this bullshit 'we're there to save teh wiminz' meme. Here, here, and here.

LOL cuz U R bay-beez haz bay-beez!

"becuz the dad’s name on the birth certificate is going to be I live in a house with four guys. It could have been any one of them."

When I first saw this site, words failed me. What is the purpose of whythefuckdoyouhaveakid.com?

Was it created in a moment of spite, a vile opportunity for adolescents to post pix of their peers ? Do these teens loathe and mock other teens for reasons beyond the fact they are kids having kids? Are they using this website to settle a score?

Though it's certainly been demonstrated that the failure of abstinence-only programs in the US was spectacular, it would seem unlikely that advocates for comprehensive Sex-Ed would use this tactic to promote their own programs. Fear and hate-mongering is not known to be an approach they advocate.

There's something deeply nasty and contemptuous, misogynist, classist and racist about this website, in spite of the disclaimer that all photos were obtained from public image hosting. For example, the jeering caption under that photo at the top of the post - does this young woman deserve to be tagged this way? No, she doesn't.

When I started paying attention to the background - generic birth control pills and Durex condoms - something clicked. Of course. The advertising consultants who designed this website are hoping that it goes viral. Because misery, tragedy and mean-spirited laughs are powerful tools for attracting people and selling them your product.

This website is not the new LOL CATZ. It's just a despicable advertising gimmick.

News flash: shopaholism caused by hormonal insufficiency.

Yawn.

From the department of pointless research projects:

Women may be able to blame impulse buys and extravagant shopping on their time of the month, research suggests.

In the 10 days before their periods began women were more likely to go on a spending spree, a study found.

Psychologists believe shopping could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes.

First off - aren't those three sentences basically rephrasing and recycling the same basic information - women are more likely to shop impulsively before their menstrual period starts? That BBC pseudo-news item - illustrated with a photograph of one of the "Sex and the City" gals is found in the health - yes, health section.

The scientific word for shopaholism is oniomania.

Only in the past twenty years has specific and persistent inquiry into the disorder occurred. Although the study of compulsive buying is still in its infancy compared with some of its psychological siblings—alcoholism, eating disorders or drug abuse — there is more and more evidence that it poses a serious and worsening problem, one with significant emotional, social, occupational, and financial consequences. As many as 8.9 percent of the American population may be full-fledged compulsive buyers. (Ridgway, et al., 2008), and the problem is fast becoming a global one.

Oh - so all human beings, including men, are susceptible to this disorder? But some reproductive-age women are more vulnerable at certain times of their hormonal cycle. That would only account for a tiny percentage of impulse buys.

What is the likelihood that research will be conducted to account for the hormonal and biological reasons men make very expensive purchases? About the same time that sentences like these:

Most of the purchases made by the women were for adornment, including jewellery, make-up and high heels. Professor Pine said: "Other researchers have found there is an ornamental effect around the time of ovulation."

no longer appear in supposedly serious news outlets. Now give me that fair-trade dark chocolate bar and nobody gets hurt.

Moralizers' Two-Fer

Woo-hoo! Moralizers' delight! Smoking and pregnancy.

If you're a smoker and planning to get pregnant, there's good news and bad news.

First the good news: Australian researchers say women who stop smoking before 15 weeks of pregnancy cut their risk of giving birth prematurely and having small babies to the same level as non-smokers.

Now the bad: Women who don't quit by 15 weeks are three times as likely to give birth prematurely and twice as likely to have small babies, compared to women who stopped smoking.

Seems like a good research topic. Many pregnancies are not planned but welcome nonetheless. So, for smokers, this is some encouraging motivation to quit ASAP.

But have a look at some of the comments.

From RallyBoy:

I think it is a crime to smoke while pregnant and when you have kids. A person is knowingly endangering the life of a little baby and setting it up for a life-time of complications. This should be legal? When the health risk is FACT then a person should most definitely be held accountable. No different than driving without a seat belt or proper car seat for your child. It is a crime to hold a child captive in the womb while a person sits and pumps toxins into their body knowing bloody well what it is doing. If they don't know what it is doing then I'd say they don't have the mental capacity to have a child in the first place. I think the other points made in the comment above asking if we should dictate what a mother eats, etc. is just being silly. There is an obvious difference between those other points and smoking and drinking while pregnant. I'd like to think the poster is intelligent enough that I really don't need to sit here and list the major differences between smoking and drinking vs. exercise, eating and staying up late. Smoking and or drinking should be a crime while pregnant.

And Alley1800 agrees:

I completely agree!!! I think that smoking while pregnant or smoking around your kids at home or in the car should be considered a form of child abuse. Second hand smoke is just as toxic (if not more) as the smoke inhaled by the smoker. Women who smoke during pregnancy are just in denial or they just don't care enough about their child, and therefore should not be having a child in the first place!
I grew up in a smoke-filled household until I was about 13. It was just AWFUL. To this day I despise smokers and I actually have much less respect for them as people. I don't know how people can go around smelling like that 24/7. I know most of you smokers don't think that you smell because smoke is simply the air that you breathe and you are used to it, but just so you know, YOU REEK! And I know that it's none of my business what people are doing to their own health, but they are not only doing it to themselves, they are doing it to everyone around them. And just FYI for any smokers, when you smoke outside waiting for the bus or just outside a building at work, your smoke does NOT just disappear into the wind. It lingers around you and is very bothersome to the non-smokers around you.

Much more at the link.

Bonus: One of my favorite posts from Birth Pangs by Sleeping Sun who was pregnant at the time, 'Why Stop at Alcohol?'

Feminism - a force for social transformation

And finally we find some good news to read about feminism - as communicated in the 'mainstream media'.

During the course of a two-day seminar on the 'many faces of feminism in India', organised by the Centre for Women's Studies and Development which was held at Banaras Hindu University, Professor RK Mani Tripathi told the audience feminism was always conditioned by the place and the time it developed. Whether in Europe or America, the focus of feminist discourse varied according to the type of exploitation women experienced. Gradually as more reflexion developed, he said it became a critique and a struggle against the institutional structures of patriarchy.

In India, feminist discourse developed in 19th century as a result of initiative taken by Raja Ram Mohan Rai and other reformers for women's freedom and education, he said and added in Gandhian thinking, feminist discourse took a definite form. Gandhi considered non-violence as a feminine quality and accepted feminity not as a weakness but as a culture, he pointed out.

Had Professor Tripathi had access to the scholarly resources that Dale Spender did when she wrote "Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them", he would have also been able to share what she discovered about Gandhi and his connection to feminism. Spender makes a case for the influence of the suffragists' tactics - and their eventual success - upon Ghandi's choice to use passive resistance to draw attention to the many outbursts of British armed violence against the Indian people.

Canadian doctors respond to idiotic claim.

A number of scurrilous schlock news outlet and tabloids are slagging our medical services and repeating one US doctor's speculative claim that Canada's health care system failed Natasha Richardson.

Meanwhile Canadian physicians kept their calm and responded rationally to the ill-founded opinion piece.

The implication “is totally unjustified,” said Paul Saba, an emergency room doctor at Lachine Hospital and co-president of the Coalition of Physicians for Social Justice. He flatly rejected the notion that a lack of funding for overall public health care contributes to fatal head injuries like the one that claimed the life of Richardson ... Saba stressed he was not commenting specifically about Richardson, but “any patient’s refusal of treatment is crucial” to the outcome. ...

Paul Brunet, president of the Council for the protection of patients, said ... “And with all due to respect to the Americans, we don’t need any lessons from them about health care,” Brunet added. Canada doesn’t “have 50 million people without health care like they do.”