Friday 22 July 2016

Fatally Flawed Survey on C225, "Cassie and Molly's Law"

It's a truism because it's true: You get what you pay for.

Cathay Wagantall, sponsor of the latest sneak attack on abortion rights, C225, glurgily nicknamed "Cassie and Molly's Law," bought six questions on a Nanos omnibus poll.

Here's her media release trumpeting the results.
According to the Nanos poll, a majority of Canadians are in favour of Cassie and Molly’s Law, with nearly 70% of respondents saying that they support a law that would make it a separate crime to harm or cause the death of a preborn child while harming a pregnant woman.
The release contains no links, no details, no methodology.

So I asked on Twitter and Nik Nanos supplied a link to the power point presentation of the survey (PDF).

Here are the excerpted highlights (numbers added).
1. Half of Canadians say causing harm to a pregnant woman should carry a more severe punishment

2. Canadians support charging those who harm unborn children with a separate crime - Seven in ten Canadians either support (47%) or somewhat support (22%) creating a law that would make it a separate crime to cause harm or the death of an unborn child....

3. Canadians more likely to support the legislation if it has no impact on current abortion laws

4. Majority of Canadians feel it is possible to create the new law and keep abortion legal

5. Canadians feel it is important that offenders be charged separately for harming a fetus

6. Half of Canadians support rights to abortion within a time limit

Number 1: More severe punishment. Dumb question. Offenders in Canada already face stiffer sentencing in cases like this through "aggravating factors" which judges are required to consider.

Number 2: Support for a separate criminal charge. Compare here with Ms Wagantall's media release. She is playing a little loose with the numbers. Her "nearly 70%" is actually made up of 47% who support plus 22% who somewhat support.

But that's nuancy, beyond the typical cognitive powers of fetus freaks.

Number 3: More likely to support law if no impact on abortion laws. Another dumb question. There are NO abortion laws in Canada.

Leaving that aside, while Ms Wagantall stomps her feet and shrieks insists that her bill was verrrry carefully written to exclude any impact on abortion rights, others disagree. See links to posts below for many examples, but here's a recent one, from Indiana.

Indiana, home to Governor Mike Pence, now Donald Trump's pick for Vice President of Homophobia and Misogyny, has a "personhood" law that criminalizes any harm to fetuses. So far, it has imprisoned at least one woman, Purvi Patel, for using abortion drugs bought online to end an unwanted pregnancy. Ms Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for "feticide." But her conviction was overturned today.

The Indiana Legislature did not intend for the state’s feticide statute to apply to pregnant women or illegal abortions, including the one a northern Indiana woman executed by taking drugs ordered from Hong Kong, the Court of Appeals held Friday.
The legislation was NOT intended to criminalize pregnant women, but it fucking well did, in the hands of overzealous cops and prosecutors.

And this is precisely why Ms Wagantall's bill is incredibly dangerous.

Number 4: Too stupid to comment on. What is the point of asking ordinary people what they "feel" about possible implications of a new law?

Number 5: Importance of such a law. Again, why ask this? If they support it, they support it.

But Number 6 is where the alarm bells really go off. "Half of Canadians support rights to abortion within a time limit."

From the PDF
Question: Which of the following most closely represents your personal view about the legal status of abortion?


This is so glaringly opposed to what all other recent polls report on Canadian attitudes to abortion that the whole survey should be kicked down a long flight of stairs.

In February this year, Global News commissioned an exclusive poll from Ipsos.
Canadian attitudes toward abortion appear to be shifting, according to a new Ipsos poll, as six in ten say abortion should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants.
"Whenever a woman decides she wants."

Whenever. No time limits.

Similarly, the National Post reported in 2012 that 60% of Canadians say that abortion should be legal "always". (Original emphasis.)

On Twitter last night @Demolition Woman, who is an opinion pollster, offered some thoughts on the survey's methodology.






So, what did Ms Wagantall, or her enthusiastic fetus freak colleagues like Dominionist Mike Schouten, pay for this piece of dreck?

Nanos charges $1000 per closed question -- these are all closed questions -- on a Canadian omnibus survey, so $6000.

Supporters of C225, or the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing Anti-Abortion Bill, got the results they wanted, at a price they found acceptable.

Too bad the survey itself doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny.


REMINDER: If you haven't already, please sign the e-petition opposing this backdoor attack on abortion rights. The petition needs 500 signatures to be presented to Parliament. It's got just over 350 now.

Previous DJ! posts on the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing bill:
Dead as a Door Nail

Exploiting Grief to Attack Abortion Rights

Vengeance Drives "Unborn Victims" Law

It's Baaaack: Unborn Victims Bill C484 Redux

Nope, This "Pre-born Victims Bill Won't Pass Either
Publié par fern hill à 3:34:00 pm 4 commentaires
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Thursday 7 July 2016

O CAPSS, Where Art Thou?

An umbrella group for fake clinics in Canada is Canadian (formerly Christian) Association of Pregnancy Support Services (CAPSS). It used to have its "core documents" online but pulled them sometime recently. Nonetheless, we at DJ! have obtained copies.

Here is its "Code of Counselling Ethics." Note numbers 6 and 12. They seem to conflict a bit, don't they? But number 12 is pretty straightforward.


"12. I will preserve the client's right to confidentially, and will not release any identifying information verbally or in writing without the client's signed permission (excepting the threat of suicide, homicide, suspected child abuse, or when required by law).

I tweeted that document last night and co-blogger deBeauxOs made this observation.



First Step Options, the Pembroke Ontario outfit that appears to have supplied information THREE TIMES to Faytene Grasseschi's latest scam, "No, Not This One" is a CAPSS member and, therefore, supposedly subscribes to its code of counselling. (Alerts number 5, 9, and 19 here.)

So, last night I had some questions for @CAPSS_RD.



















Astonishingly, CAPSS has not replied. Whyever not? Last year, CAPSS singled me and Joyce Arthur of Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada out for a prayer assault. You'd think they would take this opportunity to convert me with their rectitude.

Ah well, I live in hope.
Publié par fern hill à 8:02:00 am 2 commentaires
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Tuesday 5 July 2016

No, Not This One: But Three from Pembroke, Ontario?

In healthcare, patient confidentiality is taken pretty seriously. Here's Ontario's legislation.

Three Ontario hospital workers were prosecuted for snooping into Rob Ford's records. And a fetus fetishist was fired after she accessed hundreds of patient abortion files.

It comes as no surprise then that crisis pregnancy centres (CPCs), pretending as they do to be actual clinics, would also give strenuous lip service to confidentiality. (Also, of course, because of the stigma they themselves do so much to foster.)

Here are some examples.

For Aid to Women in Toronto, "Completely confidential assistance" is the first "service" listed.

At Crossroads Clinic in Brooks, Alberta, they get into CAPS to show us how serious they are.
We pride ourselves on being CONFIDENTIAL. Your family doesn't have to know. Neither does your doctor, the nurse staff, or the entire waiting room.
Not content with that, they devote a page to confidentiality.

I could show more, but they're all pretty much like that.

So, it's amusing that the No Not This One privacy invasion prayer campaign would rely, as they admit, on tips from CPCs.

Since writing about it this morning, I had a closer look at their alerts page. On it are listed women contemplating abortion, who need a prayer assault to dissuade them from asserting a basic human right.

There are 23 of them dating from last November last year to July 1. Two of them deal with the same case, so there are 22 separate situations. One comes from a named woman wanting some gordly assistance with a pregnancy not going so well. One comes from a pastor, another from a "grandmother."

Some don't give even vague locations, but places include Muskoka, Markham, Surrey, Los Angeles (?), and Vancouver.

But here's the weirdest damn thing -- three of them come from Pembroke, Ontario.

Now Pembroke is not a huge place. Its population in 2011 was 16,146. It has, as far as I can tell, one fake clinic, First Step Options Pregnancy Resource Centre.

Here's a picture of its recently elected Board of Directors that accompanied a local story about a fundraising initiative.




So, we're wondering. Which one of these people has got really flappy gums?

And we're wondering. Would any provincial governments take an interest in these creepy stalkers, under patient confidentiality legislation?


UPDATE: First Step Options is a member of Christian Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Centres (CAPSS). I found a copy of CAPSS's Code of Counselling. Look at number 12.


I'm tweeting @CAPSS_RD right now to ask if they approved the "No, Not This One" campaign that needs fake clinic members to violate client confidentiality.
Publié par fern hill à 3:31:00 pm 1 commentaires
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Fake Clinics Now Breaching Confidentiality to Nutbar Stalkers


We've all the seen the ads. Variants on the one above, used on the recent Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada report on the lies told by crisis pregnancy centres, aka fake clinics.

Our pal, Cliff at Rusty Idols spotted one in Calgary for the subsequent phase of the slut-shaming process, the "post-abortion trauma" counselling.


Fake clinics claim to offer "non-judgmental options" and "non-biased" information. (Which of course we know is really lies, manipulation, and shaming.) But guess what else they do?

They provide confidential client information to a new and creepy "mission" called "No, Not This One," run by a fave here at DJ! Faytene Grasseschi.

Here's a still from the video at their website, called The Justice Wall (reasons for name are not entirely clear).


As Faytene enthusiastically explains, they get "tips" from fake clinics (CPCs in the graphic) and individuals about women considering (perfectly legal and moral) abortion. They then "shoot" (her rather unfortunate choice of word) alerts out to "intercessors" (those kneeling stick figures) who then "rumble" (her word again) with prayer.

And mirabile dictu! These prayer targets turn on their heels and leave the clinics.

I suppose we should be grateful that they're sticking with old skule techniques. In the US, women actually inside clinics are now subject to fetus fetishist propaganda thanks to a technology called geo-fencing.
Women who have visited almost any abortion clinic in the United States have seen anti-choice protesters outside, wielding placards and chanting abuse. A Boston advertiser's technology, when deployed by anti-choice groups, allows those groups to send propaganda directly to a woman’s phone while she is in a clinic waiting room.

But look what Faytene is doing. Here's the alerts page with details about specific women who need prayer bombardment.

The alerts give a name, often in quotation marks or with the parenthetical remark "not her real name," so we are assured that confidentiality is being observed. But a location is often given too, and in one case the uncommon first name of the "grandma-to-be." For dedicated panty-sniffers, identities would not be terribly difficult to suss out.

Then there's this. A student was ratted out by her fucking teacher! The update reveals rather more than Faytene intends, I think.
We just received this update and request to keep praying:
The girl has not had the abortion yet. The pregnant girl's name starts with J, so now we sort of have a name. (We called her 'Tanya' in the first alert.)
Doesn't that kind of indicate they're really really like to have a name?

This is a HUGE ethical no-no. A teacher is revealing details of a student's situation to a bunch of nutbars, who then put it on a website?????

Intercessors sign up for specific times to pray, Gord apparently requiring constant nagging.

This Canadian scam is, as usual, an offshoot of a USian one of the same name. Its avowed purpose is to connect fake clinics prepared to disclose confidential information to the "house of prayer movement." (This site also has an inspirational story of Gord communicating with a wayward soul via Chinese fortune cookie. No, I'm not making this shit up.)

We need to do something about this, friends of privacy and decency. Just what, I dunno. I spent some time yesterday on one of the schedule pages. It lists preyers, oops, prayers' names and locations. I thought I could find Twitter accounts for some of the more uncommonly named ones and follow them.

Just follow them on Twitter, no interaction, just creeping behind them. You know, stalking the stalkers, see how they like it.

But no joy. I couldn't find any Twitter accounts.

However there's @Faytene herself to follow and the "mission" @NoNotThisOneCAN, both of which I'm now following.

Let's think about what to do about this.

In the meantime, Faytene wants us to know that the Justice Wall is not officially launched yet. They need $10,900 more, for which you will receive a tax receipt. Yes, friends of decency, WE are subsidizing this bullshit.


Publié par fern hill à 8:47:00 am 4 commentaires
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