Small Mercies: Fetus Freaks NOT Running in 2015

Boo-hoo-hoo. Today, on what is the last sitting day of the 42nd Canadian Parliament, about 50 MPs who have declared they are not running in the next election are making farewell speeches.

Some, no doubt, are good people who represented their constituents honourably and responsibly. Maybe even stuck up for Canadian values and fought, however vainly, against the wholesale havoc Herr Harper has been wreaking nationally and internationally.

About 30 -- and counting -- of them are, however, Conservatives.

The list from Wiki (at the moment):

Diane Ablonczy, Calgary—Nose Hill, Alberta
Mike Allen, Tobique—Mactaquac, New Brunswick
Rob Anders, Calgary West, Alberta
Leon Benoit, Vegreville—Wainwright, Alberta
Ray Boughen, Palliser, Saskatchewan
Garry Breitkreuz, Yorkton—Melville, Saskatchewan
Rod Bruinooge, Winnipeg South, Manitoba
Patricia Davidson, Sarnia—Lambton, Ontario
Barry Devolin, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, Ontario
Shelly Glover, Saint Boniface, Manitoba
Peter Goldring, Edmonton East, Alberta
Dick Harris, Cariboo—Prince George, British Columbia
Laurie Hawn, Edmonton Centre, Alberta
Russ Hiebert, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, British Columbia
Randy Kamp, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, British Columbia
Gerald Keddy, South Shore—St. Margaret's, Nova Scotia
Greg Kerr, West Nova, Nova Scotia
Ed Komarnicki, Souris—Moose Mountain, Saskatchewan
Peter MacKay, Central Nova, Nova Scotia
Colin Mayes, Okanagan—Shuswap, British Columbia
Rick Norlock, Northumberland—Quinte West, Ontario
Gordon O'Connor, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, Ontario
Christian Paradis, Mégantic—L'Érable, Quebec
LaVar Payne, Medicine Hat, Alberta
Joe Preston, Elgin—Middlesex—London, Ontario
James Rajotte, Edmonton—Leduc, Alberta
Gary Schellenberger, Perth—Wellington, Ontario
Joy Smith, Kildonan—St. Paul, Manitoba
Brian Storseth, Westlock—St. Paul, Alberta
Maurice Vellacott, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, Saskatchewan

I note that this list does not include fraudster and notorious weeper, Dean Del Mastro, already resigned in disgrace. Also missing is Patrick Brown, now leader of the permanently doomed Ontario Conservative Party.

Not one of them will be missed and the absence of all will be celebrated for various reasons.

Not least because just about every last one of them is at least a fellow-traveller fetus fetishist, if not a full-blown abortion- and woman-hating promoter of 1950s values.

Compare that list to anti-choice MPs here.

A few, like Benoit and Vellacott, are particularly odious in their misogyny.

Regular readers will recall that DJ! named its prestigious anti-feminist award after Maurice Vellacott for his long-standing mission to denigrate and demean women.

While we have no doubt that there are legions more zygote zealots frothing in the wannabe CON wings, for now at least, we're taking solace in the departure of so many loathsome dinosaurs.

Ya take yer jollies where ya can find them in HarperLand.

Lawless Abortion Still Safe

More as satisfying dénouement than as surprising development, here is the end of Maurice Vellacott's doomed last kick at the abortion can.

If you listen carefully, you may be able to hear a quiet collective sigh of relief emanating from Langevin Block this week, as the prime minister's House strategists go through the fine print of the next batch of private members' business set to hit the Commons floor over the next few weeks.

Despite constant rumours of continued, if muted, muttering from the government backbench, it doesn't look like any of the 5 Conservative MPs set to join the queue is particularly interested in setting the stage for a potential split within caucus.

Rather than champion one of the two abortion-related motions he added to the Order Paper just before the House rose in December, or even last week's eleventh-hour pitch to abolish a subcommittee currently charged with deciding which items of private members' business can be put to a House vote, retiring Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott has chosen to champion his comparatively non-contentious bid to rework the current divorce laws to focus on shared parenting instead of custody.

Maurice obviously got the message: Canadians are fine with the status quo on abortion and will not tolerate any panty-sniffing, gord-bothering attempt to mess with it.

As Kady mentions, Maurice is retiring. One more dinosaur gone from the national scene. Only about 100 left.

Dead women don't, and can't give life.

What a morbid thought, correct?

In Canada, 26 years ago today the Supreme Court decision R. v. Morgentaler  removed legal obstacles preventing women from accessing abortion - a medical procedure under the purview of professionals who administer the public health care system.

But in Texas where the rights of corporations, guns and fetus are promoted by Bible-thumpers who claim they represent the will of God the Father, the laws of the state can desecrate and violate the rights of ordinary living breathing people.

If there are profits to be made, weapons to be cherished and a zygote, embryo or fetus to be deployed as a weapon in the War On Women, you can bet that rightwing religious fundamentalist Republican legislators will be there to shrieeekingly defend those rights.

This happened.

Marlise, a 33-year old paramedic, got up the night of Nov. 26 to fix a bottle for her toddler son.

Her husband Erick, also a paramedic and a firefighter, woke up and realized she had not returned to bed.

He found Marlise collapsed on the floor, not breathing and with no pulse. It’s believed she suffered a blood clot to the lung that deprived her of oxygen for more than an hour.

Erick frantically performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and called an ambulance. Marlise was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth and connected to a ventilator to artificially simulate breathing.

It was too late. Marlise was gone. According to court filings, doctors knew this within two days, after tests registered a complete absence of brain function. This was not a “coma” or “vegetative state.” It is the legal and medical definition of dead.

Marlise Muñoz was an emergency medical technician, a paramedic familiar with end-of-life issues who had told her husband that she would not want to be kept "alive" by machines.

Her family hired a lawyer; a rational, sane judge heard their arguments and ordered the hospital to stop preserving the decaying body of their beloved in a technologically-assisted embalmed state.  Marlise had been declared medically and legally dead; in trying to protect the rights of the fetus as it believed Texas law instructed it to do, the hospital (or fetushists on staff) turned her into a "cadaverous incubator". More medical information here, from Dr Jen Gunter.

THIS is the nightmare that CPC MPs Vellacott and Woodworth would inflict upon Canadian women and their families.

Knight of Columbus Stephen Woodworth claims how "savage and inhumane it is to have a law on the Canadian books which falsely condemns as non-human people who are human" - quite a whopper of a word-salad obfuscation. Women have tried to instruct this obdurate Vatican Taliban foot-soldier on how women experience pregnancy — wanted or not — but he won't listen.  In his mind, he is a grandiloquent medieval cavalier, "saving" fetus everywhere and forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

"Savage and inhumane" is exactly the treatment that women would suffer if *fetus rights* forced hospitals to use women like meat incubators to placate anti-choice zealots' ideologically-dictated demands.  Would gestating women who smoke, who drink alcohol, who eat the "wrong" food, who are addicted to legal or illegal drugs and who have sex while pregnant, get strapped down and supervised to prevent actions that could imperil their fetus?

Not in my Canada.  

I applaud the recent commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal as well as those who are urging Health Canada to approve mifepristone as a physician-facilitated medical abortion. Also known as RU486, it is administered very early in the pregnancy instead of surgery. It induces a miscarriage, similar to spontaneous abortions that occur frequently during the first trimester.

In support of Canadian women's ongoing push-back against the reactionary individuals and groups who would deprive them of basic reproductive rights, I will continue writing and tweeting on these issues.

No Debate. Evah.

January is a busy month for abortion activists (pro and anti) on both sides of the US/Canada border.

January 22 marks the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in the US.

January 28 marks the 26th anniversary of Canada's Supreme Court Morgentaler ruling.

And January 27 this year will see the return of the House of Commons after the holiday break.

Retiring fetus fetishist MP and fave here at DJ! expects his last kick at the can -- two motions to "study" abortion -- will come up for debate fairly soon afterwards.

The motions are expected to fail spectacularly because even Pander Master Harper has figured out that Canadians are sick to fucking death of this so-called debate.

Here's a poll done last January for the Morgentaler anniversary.

It's pretty typical of its kind, demonstrating the usual ignorance of the (lack of) law and desire for varying degrees of regulation or not.

One thing is abundantly clear.

The one question in the poll that produced the most agreement was whether there was any point reopening the debate, with a solid majority, 59 per cent, saying No, compared to 30 per cent who want the discussion reopened and 11 per cent who are undecided.

Angus Reid also examined the issue based on voting preference and found that 55 per cent of Conservatives, 65 per cent of NDP backers and 66 per cent of Liberals do not want to reopen the debate.

Even a majority of Conservatives want our politicians to STFU and leave well enough alone.

We at DJ! propose a Tweet Fest/Blog Burst for January 28 and we're taking suggestions for themes and hashtags.

#NoAbortionDebate

#KeepCanadaLawless

I'm kinda partial to #FuckOffAndDieVellacott, but then that's just me.

Other suggestions?

Let's give Maurice a nice, heart-felt boot to knackers send-off.

No, Maurice, It Won't Happen Here

Canadians, especially Canadians who don't follow the Culture Wars® in the US, may be shocked by how endangered abortion rights are becoming down south.

In fact, the Guttmacher Institute reports that fetus fetishists had another banner year in 2013.

The New York Times reports:

“I think we are at a potential turning point-- either access to abortion will be dramatically restricted in the coming year or perhaps the pushback will begin,” said Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University.

The anti-abortion groups, for their part, feel emboldened by new tactics that they say have wide public appeal even as they push the edges of Supreme Court guidelines, including costly clinic regulations and bans on late abortions.

“I’m very encouraged,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “We’ve been gaining ground in recent years with laws that are a stronger challenge to Roe.”

“I think it is more difficult to get an abortion in the country today,” she said.

Here is Operation Scum's Troy Newman bragging over the success of using consumer complaints against abortion clinics. (bold mine)

“Cathy [Humbarger] is working a plan that we have used with great success, and is proving that abortion laws – even the most mundane – can be used to close abortion clinics. . .”

See? This is why we sane people will fight tooth and claw and whatever else it takes to prevent any abortion law's -- even the most mundane -- enactment here in Canada.

You hear that, Maurice?

Both motions are almost certainly doomed to fail. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been consistent on having no desire to reopen the abortion debates in Canada, and his party has shut down numerous efforts by pro-life caucus members to do so.

Vellacott expects the votes to take place within a couple of days of the House of Commons returning in January. This is the last chance Vellacott has to bring the matter forward. First elected in the riding of Saskatoon–Wanuskewin as a Reform MP in 1997, he announced in July he will not be seeking a seventh term in office.

Full text of motions here.

Vellacott's Last Gasp

In the other recent yawn story, Maurice Vellacott is taking his last kick at the abortion can.

He's moving two motions to 'study' the abortion issue. Full text of both here.

Both motions are almost certainly doomed to fail. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been consistent on having no desire to reopen the abortion debates in Canada, and his party has shut down numerous efforts by pro-life caucus members to do so.

Vellacott expects the votes to take place within a couple of days of the House of Commons returning in January. This is the last chance Vellacott has to bring the matter forward. First elected in the riding of Saskatoon–Wanuskewin as a Reform MP in 1997, he announced in July he will not be seeking a seventh term in office.

We should make some noise at our MPs, of course, but I think this guy is hyperventalating on the effects of Michael Chong's equally doomed motion to reclaim some democracy for MPs.

Though Chong's clear intent with this bill is to give more power to the MPs and reduce the power of the Prime Minister and other other party leaders, I believe that possible consequences of this bill are that certain MPs may gain the power to reopen the abortion debate with a view of criminalizing abortion. This should be a wake-up call to the Liberals, NDP, Conservatives and all Canadians who support a women's right to choose.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Good-bye, Maurice. Have a good time back in whatever century you emanated from.

Enough.

I know, I know. With so much else to get exercised (or exorcised) over in public matters these days, it's kinda silly to retread old ground.

BUT I AM TOTALLY FUCKING SICK OF THIS.

Today, stenographer L. Stone reports on Maurice Vellacott's musings on Dr Morgentaler's death.

He trots out all the old lies and she dutifully notes them.

The release goes on to list the “physical complications” of abortion: breast cancer, cervical lacerations and injury, uterine perforations, bleeding, hemorrhage, serious infection, pain, and incomplete abortion.

It discusses “placenta previa” – the improper implantation of the placenta, in future pregnancies. It lists the psychological harms linked to abortion including increased risks of major depression, anxiety disorder, suicidal behaviors and suicide, and substance abuse and dependence.

“The pregnant women who get assaulted by their boyfriends, lovers and husbands because they refuse to get an abortion are among the often silent victims of Morgentaler’s unrestricted abortion regime. These women have been harmed immeasurably by Morgentaler’s unrestricted abortion regime,” it reads.

“Victims of sexual assault who are dragged to abortion mills by their abusers or pimps when pregnant cannot count on abortion providers to report these cases of suspected sexual assault. Many of these victims of sexual assault are minors. These women have been harmed immeasurably by Morgentaler’s unrestricted abortion regime.”

She even notes that Vellacott provides a handy list of 'more than a dozen links to articles and anti-abortion websites', not one of which she consulted.

As I just pointed out to her on twitter, I -- and many, many others -- have made it our business to counter this crap whenever it appears. And it appears that there is an endless taste for it.

This has been going on long enough. I've been cataloguing the bullshit for six years.

Here's our work on Vellacott's crap in particular, and on BAD (bad, agenda-driven) Science in general.

Others have also worked this beat for years. Here's Dr. Dawg from 2008.

And here's Alison on Vellacott again from the year of grace 2006.

Others, including the American Psychological Association, Canadian and US Cancer Societies, British Psychiatric Society, and on and on and on, have weighed in authoritatively on all the bullshit.

Enough. Call the fetus fetishists out or don't report on them.

UPDATE: Our pal and sister blogger on this beat (as well as others) Alison sends an informative link. Joel Brind, one of the old sweats of the Abortion Causes Breast Cancer canard, was debunked 21 fucking years ago. So why are we still dealing with this? Why isn't the MSM grown up enough to check their own bloody sources?

Hmmm?

If you repeat a lie often enough ...

Why do zygote zealots and fetus fetishists lie and lie and lie and lie?

Self-righteous pricks like Con MPs Woodworth, Vellacott and Warawa claim they want to *open the debate*.  The sixth estate exposes their lies; these rightwing religious fundamentalists want to pass laws that criminalize abortion.

With the help of paid propagandists like Jonathan Kay, who can't be bothered to present accurate and correct facts in his odious piece of obfuscating glurge.

My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

It required a medical intervention to prevent an infection that could have killed me, which happened to Savita Halappanavar in similar circumstances, and to facilitate healing so I might become pregnant in the future, as was my desire.

Now imagine what that would be like if abortion were criminalized at 19 weeks? 

Documentation and evidence would have to be gathered - just like a rape kit - to prove that I hadn't "provoked" my own miscarriage, and then hauled myself to emergency while something bigger and more intense than four menstruations' worth of blood gushed forth. 

At the hospital, I (and my husband) would be subjected to an interrogation from the cop on duty, just to satisfy prurient, sanctimonious crotch-sniffers like Babs Kay, Woodworth, Vellacott, SUZANNE and Maggie Somerville - that it was "really and truly" a miscarriage. 

Health care professionals providing the necessary emergency dilation and curettage would have to complete numerous forms as proof that this health crisis wasn't a "homicide", and that none of us deserved to be jailed, as the fetus lobby would like to see happen.

As fern hill said, there is no LAW regulating abortion but there are medical protocols, procedures and RESTRICTIONS that our public health care system has established with regard to the termination of gestation.

Disgusting tactics that vilify and demonize women and their physicians only serve to provoke acts of violence from mentally unstable people who believe such lies.

Do Canadian doctors, or perhaps a surgical team providing a life-saving procedure to a pregnant woman need to become the target of an abortion vigilante before people like Jonathan Kay take responsibility for publishing LIES?

Illustration above from here.

Amateur Statistics and Pro Grandstanding

Fetus fetishist and amateur statistician Patricia Maloney has been fooling around with StatsCan's CANSIM tables since at least last October when she found, well, something.

She wasn't sure what exactly but it sounded exciting.

CANSIM tables are kind of fun if a bit intimidating to the uninitiated or hard-of-thinking. Here's the one she was playing with.

You can add and remove data and then add, subtract, and come to odd conclusions.

Like 491 aborted fetuses were born 'alive'.

(Doncha love the smell of paradoxes in the morning?)

After a couple of months of harassing public officials who I'm sure had better things to do than patiently explain things to obsessed concerned citizens, she came up with the solitary 'evidence' cited by MPs Vellacott, Benoit, and Lizon in their clarion call to the RCMP to investigate some abortions as homicides.

Where to begin?

The lunacy of taking this woman's hobby seriously?

The idiocy of asking the RCMP to 'investigate' aggregated national statistics from over a nine-year period?

The allegation that medical professionals are committing homicides?

Let's start with the last one because that is how
LifeShite is already spinning this nonsense.

The story quotes Big Nurse and Fried Fetus Aficionado Stanek on her oft-repeated and never proven allegations of lots of failed abortions resulting in live fetuses (in the US, I point out). Then this:

In another grisly case, abortionist Kermit Gosnell was arrested in 2011 after allegedly slitting the spinal chords of hundreds of newborn babies who were born alive in the process of an attempted abortion.

(That case is also from the US. Gosnell was charged with eight counts of murder: one a woman who died after/during an abortion and seven infants supposedly born alive. His trial is scheduled for March.)

SHRIEK! We have dozens of Gosnells infesting hospital operating rooms, slitting itty-bitty spinal cords in Canada !!!!1!

Miranda Nelson at the Straight nails this as 'non-scientific pearl-clutching'.

(For those interested, here's some info [via deBeauxOs] on the viability of extremely pre-term babies.)

In short, the facts are laughable and the allegation is absurd.

It is just another -- if outrageous -- move in the Conservatives' relentless drive to turn back the clock.

I don't know very much about two of the MPs in this but both Lizon and Benoit have Double-Plus-Good anti-choice ratings. Amusingly, Benoit now seems to be backing off, as noted by our sharp-eyed pal Sixth Estate.

On the other hand, Fetus Lobby® poster-boy and forthright misogynist, Maurice Vellacott is a perennial fave around DJ! We even named our Gynophobe Award for him.

Here is DJ!'s collection of Vellacott's Greatest Grandstands: his promotion of BAD (biased, agenda-driven) science, his foot-stomping hissy fits, his endless attempts to institute a personhood law. Etc.

I'll just highlight two of his most recent ploys.

He awarded Queen's Jubilee doodads to not one, but two convicted serial clinic harassers, one of whom was actually in jail at the time.

And lest we forget what an opportunistic lying liar Vellacott is, on International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, he attempted to wrest the spotlight onto himself by claiming that abortion was the most heinous form of fetus-bullying.

My advice to the RCMP? Consider the source. And also consider that Vellacott may well have you investigating fetus-bullying next.

ADDED: There's a small matter of jurisdiction as well.

@kady @mskapay Plus health care and criminal prosecutions are provincial responsibilities - not RCMP jurisdiction

— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens) February 1, 2013

ADDED: Globe editorial.

And the letter itself is troubling because it betrays a misunderstanding of the law, and of the dangers of politicians turning to the Mounties to investigate cases based on a personal political agenda.

Can you say 'police state'?

Only in Canada, You Say? Shame.

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has put up a petition asking the Governor General and PMSHithead to retract the Queen's Jubilee Medals from the Jubilee Jailbirds.

Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medals were awarded in October to two convicted criminals. Conservative Member of Parliament Maurice Vellacott selected Linda Gibbons and Mary Wagner to receive medals. Both women are anti-choice protesters who repeatedly and deliberately violate Ontario court injunctions that ban protesters from harassing women as they enter an abortion clinic.

Wagner has illegally invaded clinics, frightening patients and staff and obstructing clinic operations. Both women have been in and out of jail for years, showing no respect for the rule of law or the rights of others.

Sign the petition here.



Image source

h/t KayVee.

Jubilee Jailbirds

So, that 'vetting' of Queen's Jubilee nominees supposedly done by the Governor General turns out to be not very rigorous.

Rideau Hall can vet nominees only against the “core eligibility criteria” for the medal, a process that amounts to little more than checking for a pulse and a passport.

Jailbird status -- past or present -- does not factor in.

OK, then.

We join our pal Canadian Cynic in encouraging an Opposition MP to do this.

If the Opps want to tweak a nose or two, someone should award a Diamond Jubilee medal to Omar Khadr, and not reveal who did it.

— CC (@canadiancynic) October 23, 2012

Wouldn't that be fun?

FetusBully.com Is Here!

More at FetusBully.com.

DJ! is pleased to be listed under 'Fellow Bullies'. SUZIEALLCAPSLOCK has a link under 'Friends of the Fetus' with her usual juvenile redirect to fetal pro0n.

Debate These Liars?

Not only is Maurice Vellacott -- like all fetus fetishists -- an opportunistic creep, he is also a lying liar.

From his press release:

Scientific research is revealing an ever-younger age at which children in the womb feel pain. Dr. Steven Zielinski, an internal medicine physician from Oregon, is one of the leading researchers into fetal pain. He has testified that a child in the womb could feel pain at “eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier.” (“Pro-Lifers Welcome First Fetal Pain Abortion Ban Lawsuit,” LifeNews.com, Sept. 1, 2011)

Note tenses: present, present, past.

I'd never heard of the fellow despite having been on the Bad Science of Fetal Pain beat for quite a while.

So I googled 'Steven Zielinski fetal pain' and got this featuring a flock of fetus fetishist sites with nary a credible source in sight.

Next, Google Scholar.

On the first page, I see only three citations -- all from the mid 1980s.

And that 'has testified'? Look. 1986.

Next, google for 'Steven Zielinksi'. Lots of them. Only one I could find is a doctor from Oregon.

Dr. Steven Zielinski specializes in internal medicine and legal medicine in Umatilla, Oregon.

'Legal medicine'? New jargon for 'whoring for the Fetus Lobby'?

That look like a 'leading researcher into fetal pain' to you? Making important discoveries in the present tense? Or the present century?

Now, consult a real scientist. P.Z. Myers explains fetal brain development.

Past sins by MV on that sciency-facty stuff here.

Pity the poor Reverend Vellacott ...

Poor Maurice was blindsided by a MASSIVE fundamentalist christian furor against the SEX exhibit that exploded in dozens of phone and email messages (templates provided by churches, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, and possibly by the Heritage and Culture Minister himself).

And yet, his plan was simple: steal "borrow" the language of the anti-bullying campaign designed to protect GLBQT kids in schools and "re-purpose" it to suit his fetus lobby.

His thunder was stolen: Waaaah!

The Radical Handmaids did take note, however and posted this.

And JJ delivers le coup de grâce to the 'nads. This is the winning comment, surely.

More blog posts inspired by Maurice Vellacott, CON idjit.

Illustration source, here.

How Many Links to a Smoking Gun?

Maurice Vellacott had a little chat with The Hill Times and it wasn't about abortion.

But when Stevie Peevie gets a load of this, I think he'll open the Abortion Debate all by himself to distract the brainless big-mouth.

Further to Blame Game Move 5 (blame Elections Canada), Vellacott explains that EC sends voter lists to all parties, once early on in the campaign, and again three days before the election. Note: these lists do NOT contain the all-important telephone numbers.

Then what happens, Maurice?

Mr. Vellacott disclosed the Conservative Party’s central campaign matches the telephone numbers of identified voters, from a range of sources including electoral district information, with the Elections Canada voter lists.

“I don’t know how it works with everybody, but for the most part, because it’s such a massive job in such a short period of time, I would suspect that with most parties, I can’t speak for others, but I suspect it comes from the national party office, you know attempting to do that,” Mr. Vellacott said

“They’ve got all these 308 ridings across the country, but they do the match up for us. We don’t do it ourselves, in terms of the addition [of phone numbers]. I don’t know how it works for others, the new dump of stuff as it kind of progresses through the campaign and then trying to marry those numbers, that’s all done by our national office, at least within the Conservative Party.”

Liberals told The Hill Times on Tuesday their party does not maintain central control over campaign voting lists and voter identification numbers, and a senior NDP official, Brad Lavigne, recently told CBC’s The House that NDP electoral districts maintain their own voter lists.

Mr. Vellacott said he believes the Conservative Party manages the lists and matches voter identification telephone numbers centrally because it has the capacity and the expertise that the job requires.

Given Vellacott's intellectual capacity, perhaps this is just a kindness on CPC's part and done only for him.

We await further clarfication.

From the same article, an interesting tidbit:

Elections Canada confirmed to The Hill Times on Tuesday that for the first time in a federal election a representative of one of the recognized parties, the Conservative Party, had before the election requested that the initial voter list given to the parties at the beginning of the campaign include the location of polling sites. In response, Elections Canada provided the information to the Conservative Party and the other recognized parties.

Chief Electoral Marc Mayrand cautioned about the unusual request in a comprehensive report to Parliament last August.

Hence the warning from EC to parties NOT to give out polling station information.

“Because a polling site can be replaced by another at the last minute, and to ensure that electors always have access to the most accurate information regarding their location, Elections Canada indicated to political parties that the list supplied should only be used for internal purposes and that parties should not direct electors to polling sites,” the report said.

“Political parties were invited to refer electors to the Elections Canada website, their local Elections Canada office or their voter information card for locations, to prevent electors from being directed to incorrect polling sites. Some political parties did not comply with this request.”

It was the Contempt Party of Canada that requested the polling station locations, eh? For the first time, eh?

So, to recap. At least one Con says the telephone numbers were added by the national campaign and that the lists were centrally controlled. Said telephone numbers were used to misinform voters about the location of their polling stations -- locations requested by the Contempters.

Not much, I agree. But the links are there. We've gotta keep at it.

Bad Science, Part Umpty-Seven

Well, looky here. Not only has another of Priscilla Coleman's papers been shot to shit by real scientists, even the editor of the journal in which it appeared agrees.

A study purporting to show a causal link between abortion and subsequent mental health problems has fundamental analytical errors that render its conclusions invalid, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Guttmacher Institute. This conclusion has been confirmed by the editor of the journal in which the study appeared. Most egregiously, the study, by Priscilla Coleman and colleagues, did not distinguish between mental health outcomes that occurred before abortions and those that occurred afterward, but still claimed to show a causal link between abortion and mental disorders.

The study by Coleman and colleagues was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research in 2009. A letter to the editor by UCSF’s Julia Steinberg and Guttmacher’s Lawrence Finer in the March 2012 issue of the same journal details the study’s serious methodological errors. Significantly, the journal’s editor and the director of the data set used in the study conclude in an accompanying commentary that “the Steinberg-Finer critique has considerable merit,” that the Coleman paper utilized a “flawed” methodology and that “the Coleman et al. (2009) analysis does not support [the authors’] assertions.”

Sadly, lying liars like Maurice Vellacott who desperately want to recriminalize abortion will continue to rely on these hucksters for their 'science'.

And, no doubt, these are the people who will be invited to testify at Stephen Woodworth's Standing Committee on Government-So-Small-It-Fits-In-Women's-Uteruses Abortion.

Which is why sane people should just decline any such invitation.

Hail Mary! and pass the popcorn.

Oh looky.

Fetus lobbyist MP Brad Trost wants to be a martyr.

Many might wonder, as @kady did, doesn't that require somebody to be brutally tortured?

But then there are some fundamentalist religious zygote zealots whose fantasies are fuelled by a well-developed persecution complex.

Take SUZANNE for example. Please.

At any rate, it's always entertaining when the Contempt Party, following the spiteful orders of PMSHithead, makes road kill of one of their MPs.

And it couldn't happen to someone more deserving of .... uh, torment. Except the MASSIVELY gynophobic Maurice Vellacott, of course.

More DJ! posts about Trost, here.

British Journal of Psychiatry: ^NOT 'Prestigious'

While writing yesterday's blogpost on Vellacott's references section, I found that the current issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry revisits the Coleman (with four citations from Vellacott) controversy with letters to the editor, the editors' response, and author's reply.

They are not yet available online, but available to subscription holders and to a grand friend of DJ! with access to a university sub -- thanks again, godammitkitty.

Here's the abstract of her paper with previous critical letters to the editor.

The criticism focuses on three major shortcomings in her work which found (astoundingly):

Results: Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion.

Methodology

Logic

Bias

I won't address methodology, not being a statistician, but I'll quote one para in which I count 10 negatives:

This quantitative synthesis and meta-analysis did not follow the robust methodologies now generally accepted for systematic reviews.2 There is no detail of the search strategy including search terms; the strategy is not comprehensive (only two databases included); other strategies to search the literature, including citation tracking, hand searching and contacting authors and experts in the field to try to minimise publication bias, were not carried out; and there was no assessment or rating of the quality of included studies, so that only those of at least reasonable quality are included in the meta-analysis. This is particularly important here as many of the primary studies included in this review have significant methodological limitations, including non-prospective design, non-standardised measures of mental disorders, lack of adjustment for pre-existing mental illness, lack of adjustment for other key confounders (e.g. social deprivation), non-comparability of exposed and non-exposed groups, and selection bias. This is especially concerning, given that previous reviews raised serious methodological concerns about some of the included studies, and came to different conclusions when these were excluded from analyses.3–5 Furthermore, results from several of the included studies linking abortion to mental health problems have since been re-analysed by other researchers. These studies, using the same data, have less biased sample selection techniques and control for pre-pregnancy factors known to influence poor mental health outcomes (i.e. rape history) and have found no significant links between abortion and subsequent poor mental health.6,7

-- Louise M. Howard, Kylee Trevillion, and Trine Munk-Olsen

Kathryn M. Abel and Peter Brocklehurst single out her use of something called population atributable risk (PAR).

In Coleman’s synthesis, the PAR measure has been applied inappropriately and, we believe, reported misleadingly.

There is much much more of this sort of criticism, featuring the words 'not', 'failed', and so on. It's pretty apparent she fucked up majorly in the methodology.

Now, on logic, I'm on stronger ground. As I argued at the time, correlation does NOT equal causation. Something, Abel and Brocklehurst also note:

Second, in the first paragraph of the Discussion (p.183), Coleman states with apparent certainty that ‘. . . nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be directly attributable to abortion.’ This is about as unambiguous a statement of causality as could possibly be made, in the face of clear guidance on the potential pitfalls of drawing such conclusions when applying the PAR.

Well, duh. The correlation/causality fallacy is dealt with early in basic logic, classic example being: 'If the streets are wet, it's raining'.

I'm ready to sit corrected, but it seems to me that her flouting this basic basic basic law of logic is what got up most scientists' (and non-scientists') noses.

Next, her declaration of 'conflict of interest' was, incredibly: 'None.'

Julia H. Littell and James C. Coyne say:

An article in the British Journal of Psychiatry6 calls attention to the importance of non-financial conflicts of interest in the psychiatric literature. Coleman has at least two types of conflict of interest here. Among the most important of such conflicts is an agenda-driven bias, by which authors seek to influence legislation and social policy. David Reardon is a co-author with Coleman on seven articles included in the review and an author on an additional study in the review that does not involve Coleman as a co-author. Reardon is quite explicit about his agenda to instil fear of abortion as a way of facilitating passage of anti-abortion legislation.7

Coleman is the first author on 6 studies and co-author on 5 additional studies in her review; thus, she authored or co-authored fully half of the 22 studies included. According to the Cochrane Handbook,8 this is another potential conflict of interest, since it may ‘unduly influence judgements made in a review (concerning, for example, the inclusion or exclusion of studies, assessments of the risk of bias in included studies or the interpretation of results) . . . This should be disclosed in the review and, where possible, there should be an independent assessment of eligibility and risk of bias by a second author with no conflict of interest.’ Coleman did not obtain an independent assessment of the studies she authored or co-authored, nor did she acknowledge these conflicts in the review.

That's enough for now, except to note that David Reardon and Fergusson et al., (the latter also among the references provided by Vellacott) both defend her. And they are the only ones to do so. Surprise.

Here are Littel and Coyne again:

It is unclear how this paper got through peer review at the Journal. It appears that peer reviewers and the Editor ignored published standards for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Given the serious methodological flaws contained in Coleman’s review and the author’s failure to report obvious conflicts of interest, we believe the article should be retracted.

Let's hear from the editor of the 'prestigious journal' itself, shall we (emphasis and parenthetical comments mine)?

The article by Coleman1 was submitted in October 2010 and accepted for publication in March 2011, so predated the Munk-Olsen paper [yet another paper finding NO causality] paper ,2 as Coleman has indicated in her reply below. The handling editor was W.W. [Waquas Waheed] and the paper was accepted after revision with two reviewers supporting publication and one recommending rejection. It was recognised that the paper was likely to attract attention and P.T. [Peter Tyrer] suggested that a commentary should be published alongside the article. Unfortunately the major concurrent work [guess what it concluded] on this subject (commissioned by the Department of Health) had not then been completed and it was felt unfair to delay publication, so the article appeared without comment. Dr Coleman stated that she had no conflicts of interest to declare and when invited to revise this view subsequently when reminded of our guidance again reiterated this. She has again defended this in her letter; readers are free in the light of these full statements to come to their own conclusions. The failure to declare an interest is not a reason for retracting a systematic review even if failure was unequivocally demonstrated, and this situation is very different from other ones in which the publication of a paper has been retracted.3 [This footnote goes to the infamous Lancet retraction of the autism/vaccine fraud] We have nevertheless decided to give new guidance for the preparation of reviews in our authors’ instructions so there is greater clarity for both authors and reviewers. The correspondence and commentary in this issue indicates the importance of the subject and the value of an active correspondence column in a journal; it is not a reason to avoid the publication of a controversial subject.

Shorter: We didn't want to wait; it was going to generate (fun!) controversy; so what she lied; but we're changing the rules anyway.

Weasels.

But the real fun comes in Priscilla's defense of herself. She's NOT biased. Everyone else is.

By raising concerns of publication bias and attempting to undermine the credibility of an individual researcher who managed to publish in a high-profile journal, several people have sought to shift attention from the truly shameful and systemic bias that permeates the psychology of abortion. Professional organisations in the USA and elsewhere have arrogantly sought to distort the scientific literature and paternalistically deny women the information they deserve to make fully informed healthcare choices and receive necessary mental health counselling when and if an abortion decision proves detrimental.

To recap: bad science, conflict of interest, sloppy review, poor editorial oversight, only defenders also fetus fetishists = ALL GOOD.

I can't wait to hear what James Coyne and PZ Myers will have to say.

For my part, the word 'prestigious' will never appear in front of the words 'British Journal of Psychiatry' again. I'm thinking maybe 'shitty' or 'sensation-seeking' or 'weaselly'.

Aside: Priscilla Coleman is something of a hobby here at DJ! That link demonstrates the strength of our interest.

Anti-Choice: Suckers for Scientists for Hire

(Whoa. This got long. Sorry.)

As promised, we take up the matter of the 'ignored' information in the CTV investigation into a fake clinic, as alleged in the eight-page press release issued by Maurice Vellacott.

By the way, Kady O'Malley had this to say about it.

I believe Maurice Vellacott may have just sent out the longest press release in the history of Canadian parliamentary democracy.

Among many, here's the complaint about bias. (I don't like Scribd. One can't copy and paste. Grrr.)

'The report ignored the scientific literature referenced in the centres' brochures which substantiates the centres' claims that abortion is associated with increased physical and psychological health risks.'

So, one of the eight pages is devoted to providing that missing information. There are eleven references. I looked them all up. Three seem legit, if not quite saying what Vellacott implies.

For example, the one by Ostbye. T., et al. is a simple comparison on abortion outcomes by location, i.e. looking into whether women have fewer complications from abortions performed in hospitals as opposed to clinics. It has nothing to do with abortion risks as such*.

Two, Moreau, C., et al. and Shah and Zao, focus on the relationship between previous abortion and risks of subsequent pre-term or low-weight delivery.

Again, both seem legit and do find a correlation. However, the first is based on French data from 1997, specifically because French women have a higher rate of abortion than many. The second is based on only 37 cases. Both caution that more study is necessary on the topic especially into what manner of abortion and what sorts of complications are also associated with low-weight or pre-term delivery. Not terribly damning, in other words, but at least legit.

Which is way more than can be said for the other eight.

Joel Brind is 'a leading advocate of the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis', which has been debunked countless times. 'Nuff said. Moving on. . .

A PDF of the Fergusson, D.M., et al. paper is available at the Toronto-based de Veber Institute. 'What's that? you ask?

The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research conducts and disseminates research on topics connected to human life in its biological, social and ethical dimensions. These topics are selected for study depending on emerging medical, technological and social developments. In undertaking this work the Institute believes that a sense of the inherent value and dignity of human life and of the human person as an end and not a means is a foundational perspective to bring to bear on its work.

A glance at its current projects (abortion and breast cancer, abortion and mental health, abortion and infertility) confirms: yes, another bogus anti-choice science for hire gang.

(BTW, like other such echo-chambers for lies, the site also cites the Ostbye study, but lies about its purpose and conclusions: 'A study conducted by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario shows that after induced abortion there is a 4 times increase in medical admissions and a 5 times increase in surgical admissions to the hospital.')

The Ring-Cassidy and Gentles paper is also associated with the de Veber Institute, its authors being principals there. Ring-Cassidy is a psychologist with a 'continued interest in Catholic Psychology and has taken American Psychological Association Continuing Credits in this area', while 'Ian Gentles is a Professor of History at York University's Glendon College and at Tyndale University College, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.' Yup, fully qualified to research 'women's health after abortion'.

Now we come to Angela Lanfranchi whose abortion=breast cancer paper was published in The Linacre Quarterly. Never heard of this prestigious medical journal? Me neither.

Linacre Quarterly, established in 1932, is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Catholic Medical Association. The journal primarily focuses on the relationship between medicine and spirituality and in particular on medical ethics.

An example of how the journal approaches both religious and medical issues is provided by an article in the August 2006 issue that discusses the medical aspects of crucifixion, given that the Crucifixion of Jesus is a central element of the Roman Catholic faith.

Ho-kay then.

But we're not done with Angela yet.

Her work can also be found at Breast Cancer Prevention Foundation, of which with Joel Brind (see above) she's a co-founder and at the Association for Interdisciplinary Research inValues and Social Change, which at least has the grace to admit that it is a 'pro-life' organization.

The Association for Interdisciplinary Research in Values and Social Change is a professional organization for pro-life researchers and educators which offers a forum to exchange ideas of scientific and social science disciplines. The Association is a network of pro-life professionals who encourage research and academic publication and the development of textbooks and curricula for high schools and colleges. Since its 1986 inception, the Association has published a quarterly news bulletin which has done extensive academic work, especially on Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS), a pattern of psychological problems suffered by some women and men after abortion. Professional research and writing on PAS is vitally important because it is an emerging new field.

(PAS is complete bullshit, BTW, again debunked countless times.)

Vellacott likes Angela. He brought her to Parliament Hill in 2007 to lecture on the inevitable cancer/abortion link.

We've saved the best for last. Four of the eleven references are to our old pal and professional liar-for-hire Priscilla Coleman, who is Perfesser of Home Ec and Abortion Trauma for Sluts.

Priscilla is aaaall over the newly announced World Expert Consortium for Abortion Research and Education, or 'wecare' for short. (Awww.)

She is ubiquitous in the articles and publications sections and is the ONLY person in the presentations section.

She is obviously making hay with her recent notoriety occasioned by the publication of a piece of typical bullshit in the 'prestigious' British Journal of Psychiatry, which is celebrating its bicentennial with a bit of hubbub about that very paper.

The editor says:

We have seldom been a campaigning journal, because campaigning, even in pursuit of a noble cause, indicates partiality, and we also like to think that we are independent of the many lobbying groups that surround our subject, even though we sometimes venture into territory occupied by factional fighting, as illustrated for example in the correspondence in this issue (Howard et al, p. 74, etc.) over a paper we published in September.

Annoyingly, that from the editor is the only bit not behind the sub wall. I've put out a twitter call for someone with a sub (and repeat it here) to clue us on on what transpires in eight letters, an editors' response, and and an author's reply.

There have been many calls for BJP to retract the paper, as the Lancet had to over the fraudulent work of Andrew Wakefield on the vaccine-autism non-link.

Somehow I doubt BJP will have the balls of the The Lancet.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, bravo to CTV for 'ignoring' a bunch of science-for-hire bullshit. These people need to be exposed every time they weasel their way into serious, grown-up discussions.

Again, we say: THIS is precisely why we won't debate them. Because they lie.

UPDATE: Ain't the twittersphere grand? Thanks to goddammitkitty for PDFs of BJP letters, editor's reply, and author's response. New blogpost coming.

UPDATE UPDATED: British Journal of Psychiatry ^NOT 'Prestigious'.

*Correction: From Dr. Dawg, we learn that the Ostbye study is not completely irrelevant. There was a control group of women who did not have abortions. But the conclusion is the same. The complication rate for abortion is low.

From Dr. Dawg's link we also learn that they've been pumping the same old crap for ages.

When Liars Are Exposed, It Ain't Pretty

How many members of the Contempt Party's Fetus Lobby have gone off-leash on the Hidden Abortion Agenda now? Trost, Woodworth, Ambrose, Watson, and now, predictably, Vellacott.

As deBeauxOs reported yesterday, the long-time fetus fetishist and forthright misogynist has his panties in a twist over a three-part investigative piece by CTV on a crisis pregnancy centre, or as they are more correctly termed 'fake clinics run by anti-choice, lying, manipulative Xians'.

Here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Watch and see for yourself if the series is 'one-sided' as is claimed in Vellacott's meandering and maundering eight-page (!) press release.

I'll get back to the press release in another post, but here I want to talk about how the investigation was handled and reported.

I first heard about it a couple of weeks ago when Andrea Mrozek at ProWomanProLie posted a link to a panicked bleat from Lara Lansink, director of the South Fraser Pregnancy Options Centre. Under the heading 'Some troubling news':

Dear Friends and Supporters,
Because I know you love our Centre and our ministry, I wanted to share some troubling news with you about an incident that recently occurred.

On December 15th, a woman claiming to be in distress because of an unplanned pregnancy came to our Centre for help. One of our volunteer peer-counselors was able to see her immediately and they spent close to an hour talking through the woman’s concerns as well helping her to understand what choices were before her as she pretended to contemplate whether or not to have an abortion.

What this peer-counselor didn’t know, however, was that the woman had actually been sent by CTV News and that the woman was secretly recording the entire session with the hope that our peer-counselor would give false or biased information. Naturally we are very disappointed to see that CTV would use this type of tactic, particularly since the woman that came in pretending to be a legitimate client did agree to, and sign, our agreement of services which says in part:

"please turn off all devices with recording capabilities prior to the session. POC Staff and Volunteers do NOT consent to any recorded conversations".

Waaah! She signed the form!!

On January 5, they find out about it, when the reporter, Jon Woodward, tells them and asks UNREASONABLY for their side of the story.

Mr. Woodward also requested that a representative of our Centre speak to him on camera and implied that to refuse this request would make it appear that we had something to hide. Our board recognized that because of the tactics already employed, we felt it was likely that our Centre would be portrayed in a negative and misleading way despite his assurance of being impartial. We therefore declined his invitation to speak on camera as we did not feel that our explanations would be accurately or objectively presented.

Unfortunately when we declined, Mr. Woodward let us know that he would simply wait in the parking lot until someone from the Centre appeared and would then ‘confront’ us with his ‘questions’, meaning that we would be filmed even though we had declined his ‘invitation.’

(She goes on to invoke Gord's help and ask for supporter's prayers.)

As you can see from the clips, no such gotcha occurred. Rather, the liars wisely decided to sit down with CTV and it was hardly a confrontation. In fact, one of them admitted that the 'counsellor' may have gone off-script and that the brochure in question will be reviewed.

Back to Mrozek who on seeing part 1 said:

This could have been a lot worse.

Even sister and fellow fetus fetishists didn't find it that bad. Coulda been a lot worse, indeed.

It coulda gone like this.



CTV more than went out of its way to be fair to the lying liars. But those fetus fetishists do love their martyrgasms, don't they?

UPDATE: Vellacott's bullshit references exposed.