Fun with Fetus Fetishists

Me, I'm bored with SUZY CAPSLOCK. http://www.bigbluewave.ca/ And not just because of HER juvenile habit of redirecting any links to HER blog to fetal pr0n sites (hence, plain text url). Sure, SHE is occasionally hilarious, but mostly just boring, not to mention ponderously Catlick.

Now we haven't exactly ignored the 'new wave' of anti-choice/anti-feminist sites like Signal Hill, aka ProLife BC, and ProWoman ProLife, but I intend to pay more attention to them, starting a little while ago with PWPL's endorsement of the abusive, violent, father's rights guy Greg Fultz, aka The Billboard Guy.

These new wave efforts (mostly) eschew the old blame the sluts women, they-should-keep-their-legs-together, religious/legal approach. Instead, they adopt a treacly concern for women, maintaining that abortion 'harms' women.

PWPL is more interesting than Signal Hill/ProLife BC because it tries a lot harder to pretend that it is a real blog and not an astroturfed initiative by a fundy religious group.

It claims that its goal is not legal recriminalization of abortion but moral and logical suasion. Its motto is 'Canada without abortion. By choice.' (Note co-option of our language; there's a lot of that.)

From the site's The Story page:

…Pro-woman because we are pro-life…

The idea that abortion is a woman’s right was always just an opinion. There’s no basis in law, in logic or in our constitution. And there’s certainly no basis in early feminist thought.

The early feminist thought bit is true. Early feminists were, sensibly, more concerned with voting and property rights than reproductive rights. First things first, after all. Margaret Sanger was herself anti-abortion, a fact antichoicers omit when they are excoriating her for her (quite progressive at the time) views on eugenics.

More from The Story:

The idea for ProWomanProLife was developed by founding director Andrea Mrozek. “It’s not a woman’s right to have an abortion,” says Mrozek. “There’s no such thing as a right to an abortion, not for women, not for men. It doesn’t contribute to women’s rights and freedoms at all, because having an abortion is, put simply, not a right.”

That's a bit twisty, innit? Doesn't contribute to rights and freedoms because it's not a right? Well, if one considers bodily integrity and autonomy a right -- as sane people do -- then it bloody well is a right.

More:

* ProWomanProLife is a home for all women who believe that being pro-life is compatible with women’s rights and freedoms.

Trans: PWPL is for women with the ability to hold diametrically opposed opinions at the same time.

* ProWomanProLife celebrates women’s legitimate choices, freedoms and rights.

Trans: 'Legitimate' as our lords and masters decide.

* ProWomanProLife believes abortion is bad for women and that women will be integral in removing abortion from our cultural landscape.

Trans: For 'bad', see 'legitimate' above.
DJ!: Fine, remove it from 'cultural landscape', whatever that may be, as long as it is left in the medical landscape.

* ProWomanProLife desires to bring an end to abortion, not by coercion, but by choice.

Trans: See? We worked the magic word 'choice' in again.

* ProWomanProLife believes abortion is a human, social issue, not a religious or faith matter, whereby women and men of any faith or no faith at all can stand up in support of women’s rights and life, at the same time.

DJ!: That's just a great big porky pie. See below.

* ProWomanProLife understands the fetus is a new and unique human being from conception, separate from, though dependent on, the woman.
* ProWomanProLife believes that the fetus is deserving of protection.

Trans: We reserve the right to display gory fetal pr0n anytime we get backed into a corner.

Here's the porky: From The Women section:

Andrea [Mrozek] currently works at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada as Manager of Research and Communications.

That Institute is the wholly owned subsidiary of the evangelical, Xian Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family Canada is "committed to helping families thrive." Its mission is to "encourage and strengthen the Canadian family through education and resources based on Christian principles"; its purpose is to "love God and our neighbours by serving Canadian families and encouraging them to pursue a growing relationship with Jesus Christ"; and its guiding principles include the preeminence of evangelism, permanence of marriage, the value of children, the sanctity of human life, the relationship of church, family and government.

The other Women are painted as young, dynamic career women, who just care so darn much about (benighted) other women that they devote their spare time to propagandizing against promoting women's rights. Short of the right to bodily integrity and autonomy, natch.

Since they're all about respectful dialogue, yadayada, they are not so quick with the 'delete comment' button. I've posted comments, usually with pertinent links and usually ignored, over there. Viz, their Billboard Guy post. And Mrozek's belated and evasive response.

More recently, I chimed in on their latest attempt to appear relevant, in this case on the Saudi women's campaign to drive.

Commenting on true infringements of women’s rights is something PWPL likes to do.

'True' infringements like a ban on driving. In a Muslim country, note. Many more 'true infringements', in their view, seem to occur in Muslim places than Western places, but no matter about that.

Another new post over there (sorta) takes on the gender imbalance caused by sex-selective abortion in some parts of the world. Just to show you how serious they are, they quote Kathy Shaidle who SHRIEEEKS about how such an imbalance is imminent in Toronto because of all the -- you guessed it -- Muslim immigrants.

Anti-feminists/fetus fetishists love sex-selective abortion. They consider it the ultimate Gotcha! If feminists defend it, Gotcha! The evul feminazis are condoning killing 'unborn women' (no shit, that's how they refer to female embryos). If feminists don't condone it, Gotcha! Evul feminazis believe there should be some restrictions on abortion. If feminists don't address it, Gotcha! Haul out the 'where are the feminists?' refrain. (There is a new book about this generating some comment. I'm working on a response.)

So. An invitation from DJ! to like-minded readers: pop over there occasionally. Leave a (respectful) comment, with irritating links to facty-sciency stuff.

Let's show them some love.

Maybe a coupla iterations of the 'you know, you DON'T speak for me' refrain that anti-feminists love to throw at feminists wouldn't be outta line either.

(It's gonna be a loooong four years of The Harper Regime. I'm trying to find some fun where I can.)

Mrozek Speaks!

Last Friday, I blogged about the support by Andrea Mrozek of ProWoman ProLife for the vicious, lying, coercive, abusive, violent, and short-eyed Greg Fultz, he of billboard infamy.

Mrozek said he had 'gumption'. She did not do her homework. His apparent 'prolife' stance and typically 'prolife' in-your-face-bitch tactics were good enough for her.

I left some links at her place, which were stoutly ignored by her and her minions. A few other sane people chimed in and the discussion became truly bizarre, with one guy insisting that Gord doesn't make mistakes and that there is no such thing as a 'natural' miscarriage.

Still Mrozek lalalalala-ed, except for a short appearance in the comments here to tut-tut at ck for her complaint that she was banned from PWPL.

Today, Mrozek breaks her silence to tut-tut at everyone.

I deeply regret not noticing how thoroughly out of control comments on this post had gotten. I don’t support the individual who made the billboard. Women have natural miscarriages all the time, and it has nothing to do with abortion.
Comments closed. Everyone gets a time out, in my books, for being perfectly, totally and utterly ridiculous.
Andrea

No apology for shoddy blogging. Just blaming the commenters.

Gord doesn't make mistakes. And neither do fetus fetishists.

Oh, the compassion

You may have missed this story, but the fetus fetishists (see usual suspects) are aalllll over it.

In fact, a mutual hand-wringing session with Brian Lilley and Andrea Mrozek (she of ProWoman ProLife *gag*) on Fox News North, is prefaced with a clip from Bill 'Tiller is a baby-killer' O'Reilly. Some broad tells O'Reilly that the measly five-year penalty for infanticide means that 'in Canada, it is open-season on babies'. (Note, however, the penalty in the in the US is two years.)

Speaking over a banner that reads: 'Baby Killer set free: Lack of outrage is mind-boggling', Mzozek cites the judge's reasoning and adds that infanticide is 'anachronistic', that we no longer believe that women who have just given birth have mental disturbances. (We'll get back to this stupidity.) She also drags out Peter Singer, the radical animal liberationist and utilitarian philosopher who is oft-quoted for his justification for killing newborns.

Let's have a look at what the judge said (CBC link above):

The fact that Canada has no abortion laws reflects that "while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support," she writes.

The judge noted that infanticide laws and sentencing guidelines were not altered when the government made many changes to the Criminal Code in 2005, which she says shows that Canadians view the law as a "fair compromise of all the interests involved."

"Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant's death, especially at the hands of the infant's mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother."

So here's the story as told by Susan Martinuk:

Six years ago, a 19-year-old Wetaskiwin teenager named Katrina Effert secretly gave birth in her parents’ downstairs bathroom, then strangled her newborn son with her thong underwear and tossed his body over the fence into a neighbour’s yard.

You know — just an average evening for a hormonal, out-of-sorts teenager.

Yet what seems like a straightforward case of “girl murders baby” has since turned into anything but, and Effert has been wandering in and out of Alberta courtrooms for the past six years. She was twice found guilty of second-degree murder by jury trials (in 2006 and 2009), but each judgment was subsequently overturned by a provincial appeals court. In May of this year, the Alberta Court of Appeal overturned her 2009 murder conviction, ruling that the jury’s verdict was “unreasonable.” It then replaced the murder conviction with the lesser charge of infanticide.

Since 2005, Effert has served the equivalent of almost eight months in legal custody, encompassing time spent in a remand centre, prison and psychiatric hospital. While judges and juries obviously have very different opinions on Effert’s actions and what is an appropriate punishment for baby killing, a conviction for the improper disposal of a body did stick and she was sentenced to serve 90 days for that transgression.

Last Friday, Effert faced Justice Joanne Veit of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton for sentencing. Veit called it a “classic infanticide case” and sentenced her to a three-year suspended sentence with probation.

Martinuk cherry-picks polls on public opinion on abortion, including the SHRIEEEEK- worthy fact that a majority of Canadians don't know that there is no legal time limit on abortion.

From there, Martinuk goes here:

In fact, if Effert had gone to a willing doctor just before giving birth, she could have avoided her legal problems altogether. She could have had a late-term abortion under Canada’s non-existent abortion laws.

Which, as regular readers of DJ! know, is complete bullshit.

This young woman has been dragged through the court system for six fucking years, served eight months, and now has a conviction for infanticide.

What is infanticide?
This is an offence of lessened capacity that is limited to a female person who, not fully recovered from the disturbing effects on her of a birth of her child or subsequent lactation, by a wilful act or omission, causes the death of her newly-born child. The maximum penalty is five years imprisonment.

Here is a history of infanticide, including explanations, such as economic, sex-selection, customs and taboos, psychological and psychiatric reasons.

The psychiatric reasons are postpartum psychosis and severe postpartum depression.

Let's review: a 19-year-old woman living with parents gives birth in secret. Why in secret? Parents don't know, will throw her out? Strangles newborn, throws body over fence (she thinks she's getting away with this?), then lies. Tells investigators she's a virgin, then switches stories and says she gave newborn to its father.

Sounds like a cold-blooded baby-killer to you?

Sounds like a very distraught young woman to me.

Who finally had some compassion shown to her after six fucking years. The judge is female and while I haven't read the entire judgement, she did open the door to all this nonsense with the reference to abortion. She could have stopped with 'classic case of infanticide', as far as I'm concerned.

Well, water under the bridge now. The fetus fetishists are gleefully spinning this sad story as a symptom of our 'culture of death'.

For the record, here is the Canadian Medical Association's policy on abortion (PDF):

Induced abortion, as interpreted by the CMA, is the active termination of a pregnancy before fetal viability. In this context viability is the ability of the fetus to survive independently of the maternal environment. According to current medical knowledge viability is dependent on fetal weight, degree of development and length of gestation; extrauterine viability may be possible if the fetus weighs over 500 g or is past 20 weeks’ gestation, or both (Gestation begins at conception).

Listen up, Ms Martinuk and other fetus fetishists: A doctor 'willing' to perform an abortion right before birth would face serious sanctions and probably lose his or her licence. For that reason, late-term abortions do NOT occur in Canada unless for the direst of reasons.

Of course, it is too much to hope that the 'pro-lifers' would leave this young woman alone now. No way. They're all 'pro-woman' until there's a hapless woman involved they can demonize to further their cause.

Patsies for Life

Still monitoring the fetus fetishist reaction to Stevie Peevie's 'NO' to a new abortion law. And his political death threat 'strong recommendation' to other ReformaTories:

A senior government official also says that while the prime minister will not "whip" or demand Conservative MPs vote as he votes, it will be "very strongly recommended" that Conservatives vote to defeat the bill.

Over at ProWoman ProLife a blogger gets all riled up in a blogpost titled 'Well that's a bit much'.

In the comments, we get the Official TheoCon Party of Canada spin.

Veronique Bergeron on 22 May 2010 at 3:49 pm

He is letting the MPs vote as they wish. That’s what “will not ‘whip’ or demand Conservative MPs vote as he votes” means , right? Full disclosure (for those who have not read my bio lately), I am a Conservative staffer for a pro-life MP.

On the question of why pro-lifers generally support the Conservative government (see the last comment here http://www.prowomanprolife.org/2010/05/19/we-are-not-over-reacting/)*, it is true that Harper’s Conservatives are not all that pro-lifers wish they were. But the “no new abortion law” position does exclude the co-existence of pro-life and pro-abortion positions within the same party. What makes the Conservatives the best option for pro-lifers – or the least bad option – is the possibility for pro-life MPs (and by extension the large swath of pro-life Canadians) to have their voice heard and their position considered politically. But it doesn’t mean that they should always get their way. That’s what democracy is all about, isn’t it?

There is a difference between welcoming the pro-life position and passing new abortion laws. By reflecting the spectrum of abortion positions that exist within the Canadian population, the Conservative government is the best home for pro-lifers. Because the Bloc Quebecois or NDP caucuses unanimously condemn the pro-life position doesn’t mean that there are no pro-life voters in Bloc or NDP constituencies. It just means that their voices are not heard. Ignoring the existence of pro-life voices in their constituencies was the downfall of Ignatieff’s Liberals on the infamous “abortion motion.” The critical mass of pro-life MPs on the government side of the House makes it impossible to ignore the way Michael Ignatieff ignored his pro-life MPs. At the political level, pro-lifers shouldn’t expect a democratically elected government to reflect anything but the mushy-middle-of-the-road view shared by most Canadians. But they are within their rights to expect their voices to be heard. Harper’s Conservatives are the only ones listening.

Shorter Conservative Staffer: 'Silly fetus fetishists. Just because we've been stringing you along forever, you really expect us to endanger our chance at a majority? Keep sending money and voting for us, though, and we'll pat you on your pointy little heads occasionally.'

*That was moi asking if people thought Stevie Peevie was lying and if so are they OK with that. And if they don't think he's lying, are they really happy being patsies?

On Bandwagon Jumping

About this billboard, Andrea Mrozek at ProWoman ProLife (gag) wrote:

A man puts up a billboard following his girlfriend’s (EX-girlfriend’s) abortion:

The sign on Alamogordo’s main thoroughfare shows 35-year-old Greg Fultz holding the outline of an infant. The text reads, “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!”

Think about it. The man lost his child, a person he would have valued deeply, a person of great personal significance. Every abortion is about one person’s life, and that life is connected to aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers and friends.

On a bad day, if I were this man, I think I’d put up a billboard, too. And my other thought is God Bless America, for having people with gumption like this.

On the original sign, it was 'Created For: N.A.N.I.', a fictional organization whose initials stood for, he said, National Association of Needed Information. Funny thing though, the girlfriend's name is Nani Lawrence.

The original also had a reference to Right to Life New Mexico. (GEFNET is his own company.)

But they backed away from their initial sponsorship.

Being a little closer to the action, maybe RtLNM knew something about the guy.

Oh. Look. He's not just a vindictive shithead, he's a violent, abusive shithead.

Ms Lawrence, who has maintained a very low profile during the shitstorm, took him to court for harassment and violation of her privacy. Fultz countered with the racist and misogynist stand-by 'FREE SPEECH!!!'. That trial may progress, but in the interim, the judge ordered him to take the billboard down. Which, surprise, he has not done.

Now, his ex-wife, Jennifer, has weighed in. On Twitter, she is threatening to expose 'all of the police reports and dirty laundry from [their] marriage'.

Jennifer also claims that at the time they first got together, she was merely 16, while he was 23. Hmmm, one of the evil sides being painted of Greg has been that he has a tendency for young girls. Some even claim he stalked a 13-year-old girl on the family friendly gaming site Neopets.

By the way, Fultz himself says he doesn't know if Ms Lawrence had an abortion or a miscarriage as she claims.

Truth in advertising? Piff.

So, Andrea, are you still backing this lying, violent, misogynist, vindictive short-eyed creep?

Well, heck, I guess if you're 'pro-woman pro-life' ya gotta dance with the guy what brought ya.

ADDED: The creep has a hashtag now: GregFultzIsACreep.