Turnabout: WE Have Conscience Issues Too

This is good.

An Edmonton teenager and her mother have successfully filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, alleging the Edmonton Public School District’s use of a Christian fundamentalist abstinence education program infringed upon their rights as non-Christians.

And it should start a trend.

@fernhilldammit @Auragasmic @01CindyLee @blueskies366 "...infringed upon their rights as non-Christians." WHY HAVEN'T MORE PEOPLE SAID THIS?

— MsBlack (@InternetPerson6) July 10, 2014

A similar objection to sex-ed taught by religious nutbars, who, by the way, run fake abortion clinics in the schools' neighbourhoods, was based on the lies and distortions typically offered in such courses.

Why bother with facts and science and tolerance? Let's just cut to the chase and use their tactics against them.

In other words, you have fucking conscience issues, nutbars? So do we.

Take your Christian Sharia crap and stuff it.

UPDATE: CBC interview at 7:00 mark here.

UPPITY-DATE: Victory! Edmonton School Board will look for other providers. Squeaky wheel wins!

UPPITY-DATE 3: Power and Politics panel (50:43 mark) destroys any semblance of justification for religion in publicly funded schools.

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.

*Mother* Russia and her Totalitarian Christian Patriarchy

From Putin and Kirill - the dogmatic duo that viciously punished Pussy Riot - more ideological crap.

Christians from Russia's Orthodox community are demanding that the country's Apple division remove the famous half-bitten apple logo from its products and replace it with a cross, because they find the apple image offensive to their beliefs.
In popular culture, an apple is often used to represent the fruit that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge when tempted by the devil, as found in Genesis 3 in the Bible – although the exact type of fruit is not mentioned in Scripture.
Still, conservative Christians in Russia have insisted that the logo should be removed and replaced with a cross, Xbitlabs.com reported from a translated article from Interfax news agency.
The Russian conservatives may get their way and force Apple to change its logo because of new laws being proposed in the country's parliament on blasphemy and insults targeting religious, spiritual, or national values. It is expected that President Vladimir Putin will back the laws, especially since the Russian Orthodox Church heavily supported him during his election campaign in 2012. Besides replacing the logo, conservatives may even stop Apple product sales in Russia if they manage to convict the company of committing anti-religious deeds.

From here.

In spite of Amnesty International's concerns for the safety of the Pussy Riot women condemned by Putin's puppet court, they have been sent to serve their sentences in two of the worst prisons in Russia. 

The stench of fundamentalist christian sharia is floating around the Kremlin.

Whether it is islamist misogyny or ultra-orthodox gynophobia, it always ends with violent and murderously vindinctive retaliation against women who won't do men's bidding.

Vatican Taliban FAIL

I'd say that a nominally Catholic country that legalizes abortion in the face of the shitstorm hurled by the Vatican Taliban is on its way to happier days.

Good news! Uruguay just joined the club.

Latin America is home to about half of the world's Roman Catholics and the Church is opposed to abortion under any circumstances. But Uruguay, a country of 3.2 million people, has a strong secular tradition.

Perhaps surprisingly, civil unions for LGBT folk are legal too.

The new regime is not perfect, of course.

Under the bill Congress passed, a woman can end her pregnancy during the first 12 weeks of gestation, but she must meet with a team of health professionals, who, by law, should discourage the abortion. The woman must then reflect on the decision for five days.

"This process is complicated and legally unjustified," the nonprofit Coordinating Group for Legal Abortion said in a statement. "This means there's no recognition of a woman's right to decide freely about her life and her maternity."

Here we learn something of the politics behind the move.

The developments however come under the government of a president who is a doctor by training, Jose Mujica, and a deputy health minister, Leonel Briozzo, who is an obstetrician.
. . .
Uruguay is now only the second South American country to legalize abortion, after English-speaking Guyana in 1995. Cuba, a Latin American nation in the Caribbean, did so in 1965 and procedures are also legal in Mexico City.

"The explanation is that Latin America is the last outpost of the Roman Catholic Church," Briozzo said.

There's a cool re-organizable chart showing Catholicism by country here.

By percentage of population, the top four Catholic countries are East Timor, Malta, Honduras, and Venezuela.

The raw numbers create a different list. Brazil, where 65% are Catholic, has 123.3 million adherents. Mexico is 83% Catholic with 95.5 million. Philippines is next at 81% and 75.5 million. Then the US at 24% and 74 million.

This news from Uruguay adds to the good news from Northern Ireland last week.

The cracks are appearing. Slowly but slowly.

For sheer religious misogyny -- outside the Islamic world, that is -- Philippines takes the communion cracker.

Abortion is illegal, of course, but the Church is adamant that Filipinos remain pig-ignorant on matters sexual.

Sensible people there have been trying for 14 fucking years to pass the Sexual and Reproductive Health Bill

The bill was first introduced some 14 years ago, but has been languishing in legal limbo since. It would extend sexual health education in school, make contraceptives more widely available and improve pre and post-natal care. The bill would not legalize abortion.

.
The local branch of Christian Sharia is having none of it. They've fraudulently labelled it an 'abortion bill' and insist that its passage will lead to promiscuity, infidelity, and MORE abortions.

And now election season is about to begin there and the bill will likely get sidelined again.

Ah well. Two steps forward and still playing Statues in Philippines.

Another "honour" killing ...

Here are the undisputed facts of this killing, on record as the trial unfolds.

A man killed his girlfriend by hitting her head with a hammer at least 11 times, then he took a knife and stabbed pages of religious text into her body.

Court heard last week part of the passage stabbed in her body read “that which is crooked cannot be made straight.” The crown alleges the accused intended to kill her when he began bludgeoning her with a hammer following an argument about marriage and abortion. The victim, who had missed her period twice, told the accused she no longer wanted to get married, couldn’t handle caring for another child and would get an abortion if pregnant. She asked him to move out of her apartment. 

The accused became angry, looked for a weapon, found a hammer, took it back into the bedroom, and he hit her over and over until she stopped screaming, the jury was told. The accused then fled to Montréal with another woman; the police arrested him upon his return two days later. 

The accused confessed that though he did kill her, he had not intended to murder her. 

I believe the reason that the usual islamophobes - Shaidle and her posse - aren't shriEEEking "honour" killing is that the religious text in question is the bible.  Does it seem familiar?

It should be.

In the memorable words of Mark Steyn, "Must be convenient to have a [religious] code that obliges all your pathologies."  

Fundamentalist christianists shriek about "honour" killing which they CONveniently limit to muslims while disregarding the long tradition of Catholic sophistry which has justified centuries of femicide at the hands of men.

Will the christian Sharia anti-Choice supporters of Bill C-484 as well as Motions 312 and 408 defend this anti-abortion killer?  Certainly.  In his bludgeoning frenzy, the only beating heart he stopped was that of Lucita Charles - there was no zygote, embryo or fetus.

Let The Fetus©™ fetishists' pretzel-twisty propaganda begin!

Photo of Lucita Charles and Mataeo from here.

Pray'n'Phone Update: You Can Skip the Praying Part

On the Pray'n'Phone Facebook page a high-school social studies teacher suggests that making M312 a 'Christian issue' is not a good strategy.

To which Miles, the genius behind PnP, replies (bold mine):

Aha now I know how you caught my spelling error. You're a teacher ;) Well, I never meant to marginalize those who don't follow the Lord. I appreciate the fact that there are unbelievers who want to protect unborn children. However we have to be extremely careful when we start to appeal to science as the absolute standard or truth. Let's not forget that the original criminal code defining unborn children was based on the science of its day. What makes us think we have all of our science perfected today? Look into it and you will find that there are many scientists today who deny the fact that the unborn are human beings. No, we have to appeal to an authority greater than our diary of observations (science). We appeal to the Creator of human beings. Now we're not going to start a debate here, the last thing we need is a division. I put the encouragement to pray in there because it is the most important thing we can do. If someone out there doesn’t want to pray, then I guess they can skip that step. God bless - Miles

Yo! Woody! You getting this? Contrary to your long-drawn out wank about updating the 'old' definition of human being in the Criminal Code with modern science, your latest (and I do mean 'late') supporter thinks science is unreliable.

And there, folks, is why M312 is going to be Dead on Arrival.