This is *really* all they got

NOTE: See clarification below.

Totally predictably, the fetus fetishists are responding to the deliberate torture and inevitable death of Savita Halappanavar, with bleats of 'Butbutbut, women die of abortions too and the media ignores it!!!!'

Viz, Mrozek and on Twitter, Bertha Wilson Motion, who tweeted today:

There was silence when this abortion-related death was reported bit.ly/SY3IVB #WarOnWomen #prolife #ReproRights #Right2Life #M312

— BerthaWilsonMotion (@BerthaWilsonMtn) November 15, 2012

Hilariously, the link leads to this (screen-capped for the click-resistant).

Two things.

1) Abortion in Canada is very safe, with a mortality rate of 1 per cent, oddly enough, the same as for appendectomies.

Funny, one doesn't see SHRIEEEEKING headlines about patients being butchered in BOTCHED (it is always 'botched') appendectomies, does one?

2) Scholarly papers are really rarely retracted.

Remember our pal, Perfesser of Home Economics and BAD Scientist for Hire, Priscilla Coleman?

She gets spanked for her fetus fetishizing BS so regularly that credible journals should run screaming from her submissions.

In July this year, RH Reality Check reported:

Earlier this year, an analysis by leading researchers completely discredited a key article used as "evidence" by the state of South Dakota and anti-choice supporters in their arguments to the 8th Circuit Federal Appeals Court supporting a law forcing doctors to tell women seeking to terminate a pregnancy that abortion is linked with higher risks of suicide and depression.

The researchers also called on the editors of the Journal of Psychiatric Research (JPR) in which the article was originally published in 2009 to retract the article, a step now under consideration by the editors, one of which cited the article's "serious deficiencies."
. . .
Sources indicate that the journal's editors, including Alan Schatzberg, editor-in-chief of JPR, are discussing a retraction of the Coleman paper, and RH Reality Check is awaiting a reply to an email to Dr. Schatzberg asking for clarity on the status of the retraction.

RH Reality Check promised to keep on it and I could find no further mention of it.

The point remains -- publications are really, really reluctant to say 'oopsie' and pull something they've supposedly vetted and had peer-reviewed.

It takes a colossal fuck-up or outright fraud on the level of Andrew Wakefield to get publishers to act.

One wonders what level of BS the retracted paper achieved. (ADDED LATER: See clarification below.)

Here's the conclusion of an abstract BWM also linked to on a study of one death from medical abortion.

The frequency of infection following medical abortion is low. The rapid and fatal course of this infection is similar to other obstetric and gynecologic cases reported in the literature. Although providers should remain vigilant to the possibility of infection following medical abortion, the overall proven safety of medical abortion remains the same.

Safe. Unlike taking oneself to an Irish hospital with a possible miscarriage.

Rash prediction: This tragic event, the recent signs of progress in Northern Ireland, plus the growing sulphurous stench around the Catlick Church in general will finally blast Ireland into the twentieth century. Won't be quick but it will happen.

CLARIFICATION:
I played a little fast and loose in the above post and got caught.

@BerthaWilsonMotion did post two links to what he clearly thought were two separate studies proving that women died from abortion too and that's totally equivalent to Sativa's egregious death-by-religion.

One study was retracted, so what?

@jjhippie @anj_90 one article retracted but woman is still dead #M312 @fernhilldammit

— BerthaWilsonMotion (@BerthaWilsonMtn) November 15, 2012

Thing is, both links went to the same study, the abstract of which is available, NOT retracted.

It is in fact where I got the 'conclusion' I quoted above. Its main author is an abortion provider named Ellen Wiebe.

In my snarking at the fetus fetishist, whose approach to science is totally typical of the species, I implied that there was something fishy about Dr Wiebe's work.

There is not. I don't know why the one site categorizes it as retracted as it is still available at the original journal.

I apologize for my mischaracterization.

I did feel a bit squeamish about it though, which is why I quoted from it.

Now to the getting caught part.

Was I caught by some diligent fetish fetishist, who in a grand departure from her or his fellows checked my links?

Nope. I was caught by a better, more responsible blogger than I. The indefatigable Sixth Estate kindly contacted me in private so as not to embarrass me. Nonetheless, I got a well-deserved spanking.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how blogging should be conducted.

Now I'm outing my bad behaviour and resulting spanking and publicly thanking Sixth Estate for his efforts to set me and the record straight.

And again, I apologize to Dr Wiebe and her team.

Pius Xtremists and Title IX

It's good to know stopping abortion is important enough that the Catholic schools of Ontario, subsidized as they are by taxpayer monies, allow boys and girls to mingle while on their mandatory outings to politically protest at the command of their authority figures.

Of course even forced political protest isn't as important as say, sports.  Real Catholics TM know sports are too important to leave to the reality of merit and good conduct.

This is going on as an accepted religious educational format in the heartland of  off-season training camp pro-baseball, Arizona.  Where it's increasingly ok for everyone above the age of 10 to carry concealed sidearms and Stand Their Ground.  If the sexes cross each other's path for the matters of defense against the premarital coitus, are the boys supposed to respect the girls and let them shoot first or should the girls defer to the boys as their superiors and let them shoot as many rounds as they want without interruption?

It's not about the babies 'saved' from abortion for the 'religious', it's about control of women and the psychological manipulation of men to ensure it.

h/t Butterflies and Wheels

Poland Just Got Interesting

Over the years, DJ! has kept an eye on priest-ridden, misogynist Poland. Mostly, we've been appalled, but this week there's some very interesting and hopeful news.

In Sunday's election, ten per cent of Polish voters went nuts and voted for the Palikot Movement.

There is a picture, drawn by Polish cartoonist Marek Raczkowski: a crowd of people demonstrating in the street, carrying aloft a big banner that simply reads "FUUUCK!''. This is exactly how many young, well-educated, open-minded people felt on their way to the polling booth last Sunday. And these Poles voted for Janusz Palikot, whose recently created Movement party ended up coming third, with 10% of votes. His success is without a doubt the most thrilling story to come out of these elections. So who is this man, and why did 10% of Polish voters back him?

Palikot's Movement is the first political party in our country that has not been afraid to open up a debate about such sensitive subjects as a secular state, civil unions for heterosexual and homosexual couples, in-vitro fertilisation reimbursed by national health insurance, or a modern drug policy.

Thanks to Palikot's Movement, we now have the first openly homosexual politician in our parliament, Robert Biedron, and the first transsexual woman, Anna Grodzka. It almost feels like the day when the first black president of the United States was elected. One of the first things Biedron said after hearing the election results was: "A few years ago neighbours from my town used to throw rocks at me when I went jogging, because I was gay. And now Poles have chosen me to be their deputy. This is unbelievable. Our country is changing!"

Palikot wants to decriminalize marijuana, liberalize Poland's idiotic abortion laws, institute civil partnerships, and get the fricking Catlick Church out of politics.

He's a bit of a character.

The eccentric Palikot first conquered our hearts when he was Civic Platform's deputy a couple of years ago: during a now infamous press conference, he waved a plastic vibrator and a toy pistol around in order to call attention to a cover-up about a young woman who had been raped at a police station. Another time, he brought the bleeding stump of a bull's head onto a popular TV show, as a "mafia gift". Palikot has imagination and courage, and has earned enough from his previous career so that him and his family do not depend on the deputy's salary.

In my opinion, there is one conclusion we can draw from Palikot's victory: 10% of Poland's voters are willing to wave their metaphorical pink vibrators at the political establishment. Their vote was Poland's equivalent of camping on Madrid's Puerta del Sol or occupying Wall Street. Next, they want to hear some serious political solutions.

I dunno about that last bit, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk's party was re-elected with only a plurality. He needs votes in parliament. Will he continue to go with the misogynist pro-Catlick gang he has been working with? Or ally himself with the dildo-wavers?

Stay tuned. Poland just got interesting.

Image source.

When the Christian Taliban loses Ireland

. . . you know it's in beeeeg trouble.

First, this:

Ireland's longstanding abortion legislation could change due to a ruling expected to be handed down by the European Court of Human Rights next week.

When two Irish women and one Lithuanian woman who were forced to travel to Britain for abortions they took the action against the Irish state five years ago.

Yay, EU!

But, but, but. . . (emphasis mine)

When Pope Benedict XVI departed from previous Church doctrine two weeks ago by saying condoms are acceptable in certain cases, Catholic-dominated Ireland was so distracted by news it might need an economic bailout that it barely noticed. There was a time, though, when a Vatican softening on the contraception veto would have made the top headline in Irish newspapers. A time when, in Ireland, things like condoms, pills and diaphragms were not just taboo, but outright illegal, according to a 1935 law forbidding the import and sale of contraceptives. In the 1970s, Irish feminists would challenge their government’s anti-birth control policies by staging protests like massive condom-buying expeditions to Northern Ireland, where contraception devices were legal. But this was still an Ireland where taking on the Catholic Church was socially daring and politically suicidal.

But the Ireland of today has the world’s largest percentage of married women under 49 using contraception, according to the United Nation’s 2010 Human Development Index. The UN figure of 89 per cent of women using birth control includes those who resort to so-called natural contraceptive methods, with which the Church has no moral qualms, but Irish studies looking exclusively at artificial contraception show use among 18- to 24-year-old girls is well over 90 per cent. It’s a startling change of social attitudes, some 30 years after the government lifted the birth-control ban in 1979, and one that illustrates how much the Church’s influence has waned in a country that was once a stronghold of Catholicism in Europe.

Among the Irish clergy, there is a sense “the battle has been lost” on birth control, said Garry O’Sullivan, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper. In a historic upset, contraceptives, it seems, have gone from being social taboos to no longer being a topic for Sunday sermons. “The bishops have stopped pushing the issue,” said O’Sullivan. “People have moved on.”

Sanity busting out all over.

Take that, Pope Maledict!

h/t for the abortion law link to Sister Sage

Catholic Church can be held accountable, says SCC.

A holdout compared to other provinces in giving sexual abuse victims the benefit of the doubt, Quebec courts will now have to think twice before throwing out cases where the alleged abuse happened many years ago.

In what experts are calling a “partial victory” for victims, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of Shirley Christensen, 37, a Quebec City resident who has been trying to sue the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec for the abuse she endured as a young girl at the hands of a priest.

The priest, Paul-Henri Lachance, pleaded guilty in 2009 to several charges of sexual assault against Christensen. Nearing 80 years old, Lachance was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

More here. And here. Also here. Here, too.

I personally know several women who were sexually abused by priests when they were girls. Those clerics are not gay, but they certainly are pedophiles.

Why would adult women want to sue the catholic church for harm and damage? For start, church authorities have demonstrated over and over again they are complicit in perpetuating clerical pedophilia when they cover up, lie and exculpate these sexual predators by blaming the girls for the priests' criminal actions.

My, my, my. . .

How the twisted bastards reveal themselves.

In a whiney lament in the Notional Pest titled Anti-abortion movement continues to be stuck in neutral, author 'Father' Tim Moyle tries to offer some hope for the future.

Fetus fetishists have put great faith (hee) in ultrasounds/sonograms, thinking that when women see what looks like a lima bean in a muddy pond, they'll get all squishy and shrieeek 'That's my lima bean!' Catlick charities raise money and waste it on ultrasound machines that serve no medical purpose in fake pregnancy clinics.

All this despite the association of fetal ultrasound with autism. And despite the fact that when the Netherlands began offering ultrasounds to every woman at 20 weeks, the number of late abortions doubled.

Nonetheless, Moyle blows the ultrasound whistle again, but look at the language:

Sonograms have pierced the veil of the uterus . . .

Yeesh. That's just creepy.

But revealing, yes?

Just when you thought they couldn't sink any lower ...

Blob Blogging Wingnut defends DoDo the Dumbth.

From the comments at Dr Dawg:

"She didn't say all Jews were money loving Jews. She said that one was. There are money-loving Jews in the world, like there are alcoholic Irish Catholics, whiny French Canadians, etc etc. She doesn't think ALL Jews are money-loving Jews. She's saying some Jews are sell-outs to their own people. That's hardly antisemitism. It sounds like she's very concerned about the fate of the Jews."

Actually, if one ventures onto Blogging ReformaTory (or as Balbulican aptly names them "stool samples with keyboards") terrain and reads DoDo's post, all is illuminated.

It's purportedly about greed - however neither Berlusconi nor Blair are labeled "a money-loving Catholic who has sold his soul".
And then of course, there's the shrieeeking, invective-laced rant about the Italian bimbos:

"Women really make the worst dhimmis possible."

That is the reverse of a profoundly entrenched stereotypical obsession/fear that nubile Aryan women will be recruited for Ay-rab harems or the white slave trade. The gynophobia on display is classic; if women are not being forced to convert to Islam, then they must be doing it for the munnee.

Does DoDo know anything about the Marranos, Sephardim women and men who converted to catholicism in order to survive while the Inquisition ran roughshod through Spain?

Likely not; her alleged concern for the fate of the Jews doesn't seem to encompass much - it's all shrieeek and mishegas.

Octo-Pop Gibson threatens "honour killing".

Given Mel's religious proclivities, facts emerging from his rancorous child-custody and legal battles with Oksana Grigorieva are neither shocking nor surprising. He's a violent gynophobe as well as as well as a sexist, anti-semitic and racist man.

It's being reported that his hate-fuelled rants were unleashed during fights with his ex, as their relationship unraveled.

"You're an embarrassment to me," Mel tells her at one point. "You look like a f***ing pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault."

Mel's profane outbursts are littered with references to Oksana being a "whore" and "c**t".

In another tirade, Mel tells Oksana: "How dare you act like such a bitch when I have been so f**king nice." He warns, "I am going to come and burn the f**king house down... but you will blow me first."

Grigorieva claims she made tapes of his outbursts after he uttered death threats and became physically abusive towards her.

I guess she refused to dress modestly in accordance with the precepts of Gibson's traditionalist catholic church - with her head covered and wearing only ankle-length skirts, never pants.

How likely would it be, were Gibson to kill Grigorieva - as legal documents have documented that he has threatened to do - her murder'd be headlined as an "honour killing"?

Ratzy vs. the Nuns, continued

Well, the loony Merkin congresscritters are finally voting on death panel healthcare reform legislation. As someone who regularly searches 'abortion' at Google News, I am sick to death (panels) of the thousands and thousands of headlines shrieeeeking about whether the bill would allow federal funding of abortion, about daily Catlick hissy fits, about whether this or that politician can accept the 'abortion language'.

As a measure of just how nuts this story is, dig this from Maureen Dowd:

The nuns have it right

WASHINGTON - Angry nuns have been calling Congressman Bart Stupak's office to complain about his dismissive comments on their bravura decision to make a literal Hail Mary pass, break with Catholic bishops and endorse the health care bill.

As a Catholic schoolboy, the Michigan Democrat had his share of nuns who rapped his knuckles when he misbehaved, like the time he crashed a kickball through the school window.

So, of course, he's having some acid flashbacks, but he told me, "They're not printable even in The New York Times."

Like that other troublemaking Bart (Simpson), Stupak, who wants to kill the health care bill because he thinks the language on abortion funding is not restrictive enough, should have to write on the blackboard a hundred times: "I will listen closely when the nuns tell me I am wrong. I will not be an obstinate lawmaker."

Stupak got in hot holy water when he told Fox News, "When I'm drafting right-to-life language, I don't call up nuns." He followed that with more scorn for sisters, telling Chris Matthews that the nuns were not influential because they rarely try to influence - which makes no sense - and because "they're not the recognized spokesperson for the Catholic Church." He listens to the bishops, he said, and anti-abortion groups.

We might have to bang Bart's head into a blackboard a few times before he realizes that in a moral tug-of-war between the sisters and the bishops, you have to go with the gals.

The nuns are giving the Democrats cover. As Bob Casey, an abortion opponent who helped negotiate the abortion language in the Senate bill, observed, quoting Scripture: "They care for 'the least, the last and the lost.' And they know health care."

On Friday, Tim Ryan, an anti-abortion Democrat from Ohio, took to the House floor to say he had been influenced by the nuns to vote for the bill.

"You say this is pro-abortion," he said to Republicans, and yet "you have 59,000 Catholic nuns from across the country endorsing this bill, 600 Catholic hospitals, 1,400 Catholic nursing homes endorsing this bill."

Go read the whole thing.

Here's how she ends it (link mine):

Because Benedict has addressed the sex scandal belatedly and sparsely, stonewalling on the skeleton in his German closet, he has lost authority to speak about the issue consuming his church. The only internal investigation he has undertaken with alacrity, for heaven's sake, is the one bullying American nuns.

You go, grrrls.

Here is Dowd's terrific piece on Ratzy's investigation of the nuns.

Too Young to Invade Italy

It seems the UK has a teensy problem with teen pregnancy, like, it's right behind the Excited States in knocked-up kids among developed countries. And Canucks shouldn't be too smug in this department. We're in the top six, five of which are the UK and its former colonies, US, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and, oddly, Hungary. (All -- except Hungary -- repressed Anglo cultures unable to talk birds and bees with our children?)

So, the Brits decided to tackle the problem by making sex ed mandatory in schools -- all schools, including the 'faith' schools.

Well, you know what happened next, right?

The Catlicks went berserk, demanding an opt-out.

But the government held firm . . .

Oh. Wait. There's an election coming up.

The bill was passed but with an amendment allowing misogynist Christoids faith schools to teach that birth control is wrong but still requiring them to teach it.

Commenter Mark Steel rants:

How can there be so many lunatics opposed to sex education? And apart from anything else, what makes them think a lesson about sex is going to make kids go out and immediately have sex? It's education about it, not an instruction to get it done before dinner break. Maybe they should demand an end to history lessons as well on the grounds that "I don't want my fourteen-year-old learning about Napoleon as he's too young to invade Italy."

It continues to astonish me that weaselly pols bend over and grab their ankles for this crap.

Cashing in on Stupak

So, what is at stake for the Christian Taliban in the attack on women's rights in the USian healthcare debate?

According to Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check, plenty.

What the Stupak-Pitts amendment does for the Catholic health care system is omit a competitive advantage secular and other religiously-affiliated hospitals without doctrinal restrictions can use to simultaneously market their services to both the expected influx of newly insured patients and the outpatient medical professionals who will treat them.

By restricting insurance coverage of women's reproductive health care, the competitive barriers faced by Catholic institutions will be eliminated — provided the amendment is not stripped out of the final bill that emerges from House-Senate health care reform conference committee. Which is why pro-choice advocates should expect nothing short of a full-frontal attack by the Vatican on conservative Senators.

Get a load of these numbers:

One in six patients are cared for in 624 Catholic hospitals scattered throughout the U.S. in 2006, according to the Catholic Health Association. The church also operates more than 800 post-acute care, senior living and skilled nursing centers across the nation. All told, $84.6 billion was spent on Catholic church-affiliated care.

But Catlick healthcare is restricted by misogyny faith in what services it can provide.

Add those restrictions and compound it with two simple facts: 73 percent of the now uninsured are of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people aged 15-44 is accidents.

In essence, the people most likely to benefit from the proposed public option and insurance exchange will undoubtedly be seeking the type of care Catholic hospitals refuse to provide as a matter of religious principle. And these prospective patients are young and will conceivably need care for many decades to come.

For the business arm of the Catholic church it's a theological and economic two-fer.

Sniffing panties/punishing sluts PLUS raking in the dough. I'd call it not just a two-fer but a religio-cash-gasm.

No Apologies Please, We're Catholic

One of my earliest blogposts at Birth Pangs was about a Polish woman named Alicja Tysiac. She was pregnant for the third time and severely myopic. She worried that continuing the pregnancy would deteriorate her vision further.

She consulted three ophthalmologists, who each concluded her eyesight would be further damaged if she carried the pregnancy to term. But they refused to issue a certificate for the pregnancy to be terminated on medical grounds, despite Tysiac’s requests. . . . After the delivery, her eyesight deteriorated considerably as a result of what was diagnosed as a retinal hemorrhage.

She took the state of Poland to the European Court of Human Rights and won. She has since become something of a heroine to reproductive rights activists there in their battle against Poland's draconian abortion law.

And for that, she's become a demon to Polish fetus fetishists. A vicious article in a catlick magazine characterized her as a murderer and abortion as Nazi crimes.

It seems that was a bit much, even in Poland. The magazine has been ordered by a court to pay her damages and apologize to her.

Judge Ewa Solecka ruled Wednesday that Catholics are free to express their moral disapproval of abortion — and even call it murder — but in a general way that stops short of vilifying an individual.

Solecka ordered the magazine, Gosc Niedzielny, which is published by the Katowice archdiocese, to pay Alicja Tysiac 30,000 zlotys (nearly $11,000) and issue her a written apology.

Solecka said the magazine's language was "particularly contemptuous" of Tysiac.

Natch, the magazine plans to appeal, because as we all know, if there's one thing catlicks hate even more than abortion, it's apologizing.

MORE: Go read Sabina at News of the Restless.

Before Mary Jo, there was Joe.

Even before Mary Jo Kopechne died, there was the patriarch Joseph Patrick Kennedy Senior.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to attend a Fourth of July neighbourhood party on the bank of the Delaware River. It was a day-long 'happening', replete with platters of delicious food, and bustling with many home-crafted amusements for the numerous children of working class families of mixed Irish, Polish, and German ancestry. Several generations jostled verbally and physically with good cheer and great kindness. I felt quite comfortable and welcome in this environment where Catholic and Democrat culture dominated.

Later that evening the discussion turned to politics; Reagan was in his second term of office. The owner of a local general store, a man in his sixties who had listened to commiserations about the failure of the Democrats to rally 'round and present a strong candidate like say, JFK or RFK to counter the Republicans said quietly: "Joe Kennedy had a lot to answer for. If anyone should have been shot, it was him." Oddly, this remark did not provoke any protest; clearly this man had uttered this opinion before and his neighbours either shared it or couldn't offer any strong arguments in opposition.

Information about the Kennedy clan trickled out after the deaths of Joe Sr in 1969, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald in 1995 and Rosemary in 2005. In particular, shameful details regarding the factors that led Joe to subject his daughter to lobotomization ultimately hold up to scrutiny the values this man held. A revealing quote from president Roosevelt, asked when Joe was rewarded with an appointment to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as the inaugural Chairman, why he had chosen such a crook. "Takes one to catch one," replied Roosevelt.

By all accounts, Joe was a devout and traditional Catholic; his actions demonstrated he was also a charming, smooth, amoral and ethically depraved financial operator and political opportunist. Did his irrational and omnipresent fear of Communism allow him to justify to himself why he encouraged his daughters to date the odious Joe McCarthy?

There have been a few opinion pieces that suggest circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne transformed Senator Edward Kennedy into a crusader for social justice who was admired and respected by many.

I believe that Joe Kennedy's children and to a certain extent, his grandchildren were damaged by the toxic heritage of testosterone-fuelled, high-risk-taking behaviours passed on and sanctioned by the patriarch. But I also think that in reaction to the inherent hypocrisy and the great harm done, most of his progeny consciously chose to redress and redeem Joe's terrible legacy, armed with a sense of duty and animated by an acute awareness of the sources of the family wealth they've enjoyed.

The brilliance, the generosity and the dedication of the Kennedy's individual and familial commitment was - and still is, as the work of Rory Kennedy demonstrates - constant and far-reaching. One has to wonder if Eunice Kennedy Shriver's high-profile involvement with the Special Olympics was a gentle way of reminding Joe that he was directly responsible for the permanent condition that afflicted Rosemary.

Heartless, Cruel, and Gone!

The Brazilian Catlick Archbishop who tried to prevent a raped 9-year-old pregnant with twins from having an abortion and then excommunicated her doctors and family has resigned.

Apparently, when archbishops get to the age of 75, they write resignation letters, which the Poop can reject or accept. The Poop accepted this one.

Here's LifeShite whinging:

For his ardent defense of the lives of unborn twins, Archbishop Cardoso has been vilified in the media since February of this year. The media pounced on the archbishop due to his action in the very hard case of a nine-year-old girl who was raped by her step-father and was carrying twins.

The priest involved and Archbishop Cardoso himself did everything in their power to work with the family and the child to assist them with their needs and also to save the lives of the twins she was carrying. An international abortion lobby group was pushing the family to have the girl abort, apparently seeing the case as a golden opportunity to press for legal abortion in the nation. As a last-ditch effort to save the lives of the unborn twins, after the girl was moved by pro-abortion activists to an unknown location, the archbishop announced that those involved in procuring the abortions would suffer an automatic excommunication.

The international anti-life media jumped on the announcement, portraying the archbishop as heartless and cruel. At first the archbishop was defended by his confreres in the episcopate locally and also by the Vatican's Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops Cardinal Battista Re.

However, the relentless media attacks and falsifications, coupled with public denunciations from political leaders including Brazil's health minister as well as its President, began to affect even his brother bishops.

Hee. 'Relentless media attacks'. The bloggy media too. JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie -- love that name! -- let loose a classic. We here at DJ! joined the relentless attacks.

This may be the first and last time I say this: Good on you, Ratzy.

Could the earthquake in Italy be a providential sign?

Though I'm really shocked and appalled that God the Father would cause all those people to die just to get Benedict XVI's attention and to let him know that the Catholic Church is MASSIVELY wrong by not supporting women who, by virtue of their familial role and responsibilities, are most likely to ensure continuity and perseverance of religious faith in Africa.

Most fundamentalist Christians view their God as cruel and vengeful but isn't there another way to let the Pope know that his position on condoms should be revised? Hopefully those members of the Catholic Church that God punished for blind allegiance to ecclesiastical ideology, as well as those who are collateral damage, will experience illumination, healing and divine consolation.

By the way, this post was inspired by the pithy response that the habitually verbose Blob Blogging Wingnut posted at her site on March 24:

Unreported in the MSM: children of abortion chain owner died in MT plane crash...just feet from Tomb of the Unborn Just has that ironic feel about it. But what the news sources fail to mention is... the [cemetery] contains... the Tomb of the Unborn... erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.What else is the mainstream news not telling you? The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation....It strikes me as a providential sign.Though I'm really sad the abortion chain owner lost his kids. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I genuinely hope he and his wife experience healing and divine consolation.

Now we wait for the shrieeeking to start, because when progressives try to make sense of rightwingnuttery and attempt to verify if there is any logic to their pontifications by applying them to similar events, fundamentalists become quite wrathful.

Removing women from the picture, deliberately.

Two fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish newspapers in Israel altered an official photograph of the new cabinet picture to remove the two female cabinet ministers.

Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver were grouped with the rest of the 30-member cabinet for their inaugural photo.

But Yated Neeman newspaper digitally changed the picture by replacing them with two men. The Shaa Tova newspaper blacked the women out.

Publishing pictures of women is viewed by many ultra-orthodox Jews as a violation of female modesty.

I heard about this on Radio-Canada this morning. Are fundamentalist zealots in the planet's three major religions conspiring and competing to see who can put on the most MASSIVE display of misogyny? The actions taken, which range from allowing men to rape their wives with impunity in Afghanistan to the Pope's deliberate obfuscation of scientific research, are a clear violation of women's basic human rights. Using photoshop to remove women from view seems benign, in comparison but such incidents demonstrate that religious clerics persist in using doctrine and ideology to punish women who dare to act like human beings.

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.

Religion never at fault; women's deaths are collateral damage.

Two young women were crushed to death in a crowded frenzy to enter Coqueiros Stadium in Luanda where the Pope was about to have a meeting with Angolan youths as Benedict XVI pontificated about the evils of systemic corruption, witchcraft and discrimination against women.

There's something about that in the Gospels, is there not?

... And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye, Matthew 7:1-5.

Absent a sense of irony, it seems the Pope floats in a bubble of sublime abstractions and religious ideology, isolated and protected from the harsh realities that Catholic Church followers confront every day.

... at a meeting with female Catholic groups ... He further emphasised “think about those lands where poverty abounds, zones devastated by war, in many tragic situations resulting or not from forced immigration, almost always women keep human dignity intact, they defend the family and uphold the cultural and religious values”.

Thus the top Catholic Church patriarch can patronize and deign to recognize women's contribution ... but upholds the ecclesiastical opinion that only male power reigns supreme in the clergy.

This imperious personal and Catholic Church position has deadly consequences for women in Africa.

The United Nations magazine, Africa Renewal, quotes an expert who participated in a UN survey of AIDS' impact on young African women. She described the conditions under which most young African women contract AIDS as follows:

"[They] are not in a position to abstain. They are not in a position to demand faithfulness of their partners. In many cases they are in fact faithful, but are being infected by unfaithful partners...A woman who is a victim of violence or the fear of violence is not going to negotiate anything, let alone fidelity or condom use ... Her main objective is to get through the day without being beaten up."

The Pope is correct in saying that AIDS cannot be eradicated by condom use alone. Clearly, when young women are raped or otherwise forced into sex against their will, the men abusing them will not commit to use condoms. But instead of offering these women useless verbiage, the Pope could have offered the vast resources of the Church to distribute anti-viral foam to young married women in AIDS-infested areas. Foam is the only form of AIDS prevention that young wives completely control and can use without their husbands' permission.

From here.

The photo-montage is from this blog.

This is how the Pope's declarations harm women and children.

This needs to be said: the Pope's declarations harm women and children. An African mother who is a practicing Catholic faces the following dilemna: If she requests that her husband use a condom when having conjugal relations, she is going against the Pope's edict, even if she is trying to protect herself and any potential child that she might carry to term from HIV infection. If her husband is a devout Catholic, he may refuse to use a condom.

If this woman decides to not allow sexual intercourse, her husband may beat her, sexually assault her or abandon her and their children. Her priest, if he obeys the Pope's edict, will consider that she sinned.

But if she becomes infected with HIV because she submitted to sex without protection, who will care and take responsibility for her children when she dies of AIDS? The Catholic Church?

Some countries were quick to take action, in response to the Pope's medieval ideology.

Spain said Wednesday it will send one million condoms to Africa to fight the spread of AIDS, one day after Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks that they aggravated efforts to battle the disease. "The objective is to advance the prevention of this epidemic, which affects 33 million people all over the world, two-thirds of them in Africa," the health ministry said in a statement. "Condoms have been demonstrated to be a necessary element in prevention policies and an efficient barrier against the virus, according to laboratory studies," it added.

Good for Spain, I hope that other Catholic countries follow its lead in demonstrating compassion for Africans as well as support for medical science.

It burned, drowned and decapitated women as witches, didn't it?

Last week fern hill blogged about the cruel inconsistencies in the Catholic Church, as its bishops pontificated over the life of a nine year-old Brazilian girl.

The Catholic Church has always been quick to pass judgement against women and girls, and yet been generously lenient with its pedophile clerics. More evidence of its centuries-old tradition of doctrinal misogyny came to the surface in Kent, England last month. From here:

The medieval remains of a teenage girl who may have been suspected of witchcraft are to be given a Christian burial and funeral. The skeleton, found by Faversham-based archaeologist Dr Paul Wilkinson, is thought to be from the 14th or 15th century.

It was found in unconsecrated ground under a holly tree, next to Hoo St Werburgh parish church, near Rochester. The remains would normally be left in archives for future archaeological reference, but the vicar of Hoo, the Rev Andy Harding, has asked for the body to be returned so she can be re-buried in the church grounds. ...

When they found the remains, the girl’s skull had been removed from the body and placed carefully beside it, meaning she may have either committed suicide or was suspected of being a witch or a criminal. He said: ..."She was buried facing east with her head very carefully placed beside her body." ... Pottery found in the area dates back to medieval times and so it is suspected the body, which is currently being held at the University of Kent, was from the same period.

It should be mentioned that this young woman's decapitation and burial took place when was Hoo St Werburgh parish was under the ecclesiastical rule of the Vatican. Yesterday her body was given the dignity of a Christian burial. From here:

Her body has now been reburied in the church's main graveyard. The girl was affectionately named Holly by church officials because her remains were found beside a holly tree used over many years to decorate the church at Christmas.

Speaking at Saturday's public funeral service, the Reverend Andy Harding, vicar of Hoo, said: "Whoever this young girl is, whatever she had done, innocent or guilty, she and everyone deserves a dignified and respectable funeral. "If she had faced a trial then her death was the human penalty and she has paid in full. If she took her own life then today's culture tells us that she deserves pity and understanding, not damnation and brutality." He added: "Holly had an horrific end and the treatment of her body was brutal."

Removing the young girl's head had been an "extra punishment meant to last an eternity". Mr Harding said that if she had come from the area, then she had now completed her journey and been given the proper burial denied to her several hundred years ago.

Hoo St Werburgh parish now belongs to the Church of England, which may explain why the clergy found it appropriate and Christian to bury her in consecrated ground.