Another member of the corporate old white boys' club flaunts his privilege.

Kay Fils is a venal and meretricious stenographer: an eager and willing corporate MSM lackey, servicing the interests of the 1% wealthy. 

DAMMIT JANET! has been massively critical of JK's turgid scribbling for over a decade.

 

I do understand why Kay chooses financial fealty. Though I am also a member of a maligned tribe, which in my case is the impoverished working class, my choices and my political allegiances are different. I don't own a splendid investment portfolio that allows me to hobnob with ruling class chuds like Ken Whyte and to acquire the veneer of privilege that Jon enjoys. This entitles him, he believes, to regurgitate the corporate doctrine with opinionated authority. It suits his intellectual laziness and inherent dishonesty -- no need to rebut any of the actual facts that JK abhors.

"But while it’s sad that such a scene would unfold in a country that many Canadians once looked up to as a democratic beacon, the idea that it has any relevance to Canadian political culture — or that it signals some sort of inveterate malignancy among “white people,” as the Star would have us believe — is nonsense. [..] If right-wing populism really were going to metastasize northward in a meaningful way, it would have happened by now. But it hasn’t."

Kay Fils and his ideological soulmate the egregious Mark Steyn service the needs of their MSM overlords by negating all valid criticism of systemic white privilege and its manifestations. One might view their dumbed-down, disingenuous whataboutism as _Fascism for Dummies_.

Steyn and Kay are the new Ettore Ovazza. To paraphrase Mark's pithy remark on violence, in the context of how he defends and justifies the Capitol Riots: "Must be convenient to have a [corporate] code that obliges all your pathologies."

Shocker! Responsible Abortion Reporting from National Post!

Crazy busy, but a quick post because I want to encourage responsible reporting about abortion. Here is the National Post's story on a report about abortion access in Canada. [Spoiler: Access needs a lot of improvement.]

Because people either don't know or forget from one abortion story to the next, the NP piece includes this de rigueur statement.

There is currently no federal law governing abortion in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country’s previous abortion law as unconstitutional in 1988.

Clear on that, are we?

Here's the new and admirable bit.

Abortion is governed by guidelines adopted by professional associations. The vast majority of elective abortions happen before 12 weeks, according to data collated by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. It’s virtually impossible for women to access the procedure past 24 weeks without a compelling medical reason.

Note the change from this piece of bullshit from new Walrus editor Jonathan Kay in February 2013.

The fact is that Canada is the only nation in the Western world without any abortion law. It is perfectly legal in Canada to have or perform an abortion — for any reason, or no reason at all — at 20, 25, 30 or 35 weeks gestation. This is a disturbing state of affairs.

What's disturbing is that a self-proclaimed "national" newspaper continued for so long to try to stir up Da Base on the settled matter of legal abortion. (Access, as the links above show, is another issue altogether.)

Maybe, just maybe, the powers that be are wising up to the notion that demonizing abortion is in direct conflict with the views of the majority of Canadians who are decidedly pro-choice.

So, provisional "yay" to Natty Po! We'll be watching to see that you keep up the good work.

Bonus: Graphic accompanying the NP story. Useful information.

UPDATE: From King Rat in the comments: According to Live-Action News, Canada is Abortion Heaven. Or, every stupid lie about abortion in Canada in one conveeeeenient POS.

Hey, Boko Haram Is Just Acting on "Conscience Issues" Too

Justin Trudeau's decree that all future (not, note, sitting shoo-in MPs) Liberal candidates must be prochoice has twisted up some Conservative knickers.

Specifically over the matter of sacrosanct "conscience issues."

Here's the At Issue Panel. The abortion discussion starts around the 7:30 mark. Coyne does his thing. Then Chantal rips him a new one, starting around 8:40. Coyne is left blubbering "but not all anti-choicers" bububububub. Mansbridge does his patented mincy mouth. Watch.



Coyne followed this up in the National Post, as did Jen Gerson and today the august NatPo editorial board weighed in. Apart from fetus fetishists, the National Post and these two of its columnists seem to be the only entities in Canada who want to reopen the abortion debate.

Most Canadians are bored to tears by it, but others are mortally offended by the notion that women's rights are mere "conscience issues" for a bunch of boyos to recreate their middle-school debating club over.

This tweet sums it up brilliantly.

Why is your religious belief sacred and inviolable, whereas my bodily autonomy is up for debate all the time? http://t.co/Y1WlFGqtEa — Lauren DH (@roseneath_rd) May 10, 2014

I await the defenders of "conscience issues" and religious beliefs backing of Boko Haram's kidnapping of 300 Nigerian girls. After all, they're just acting out of sincere religious beliefs, right?


UPDATE: Andrew Coyne who thinks its edgy or something to follow me just offered a correction on Twitter. The editorial board of the Toronto Star also takes issue with Trudeau, but does not advocate for the reopening of the abortion debate.

Beware the Mouthy Minority

This poll released today has USian fetus fetishists stoked.

While a majority -- 55% -- still think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, that number is shrinking, down from 60% in 1995.

But what has the zygote zealots really revved is the answer to the time-limit question. As more and more states ban abortion past 20 weeks, the poll asks whether people support such a limit as opposed to the current 24 weeks.

A majority -- 56% -- prefer the lower limit.

OK. That is the Excited States where they are simply insane on the subject.

In Canada 94% of us think abortion should be legal in all or some cases according to a poll the National Post* and we reported on in July last year.

Some 60% of us also support the introduction of a law that places limits on when a woman can have an abortion, with an example: 'such as during the last trimester'.

Our fetus fetishists ignored the tiny minority who want to recriminalize abortion and instead cottoned onto that 60% as proof that a majority of Canadians are 'pro-life'. (Hint to FFs: I'd betcha that 99.99% of us are prolife, just not as you twist define it.)

What a majority of us are NOT is anti-choice. In fact, 49% believe that 'abortion should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants one', in other words, 'on demand'.

By contrast,the new USian poll shows that only 20% of Merkins think that abortion should be legal 'in all cases'. Also, their nutbar fringe, as represented by the 'illegal in all cases' segment, is much bigger than ours at 15%. Oddly, though, a majority (54%) oppose making it more difficult for abortion clinics to function.

The state of abortion insanity in the US matters to us in Canada for two reasons: when their FFs get stoked, so do ours, and because we've still got a lot of work to do on access.

The NatPo* reported today on a new study on rural access in BC.

Bottom line: women in rural BC have way less access.

The author, Dr. Wendy Norman, said:

“What concerns us is that all surgical abortions in rural B.C. communities are performed in a hospital operating room setting, often under general anesthesia,” says Norman, one of the lead scientists on the Canadian Contraception Access Research Team (@cartgrac). “And half of the abortion providers reported difficulty booking time for abortion procedures due to conflict in operating room scheduling, or nurses or anesthesiologists who refuse to work with abortion cases.”

Bottom line there: Stigma and opposition.

But a hopeful note:

“One encouraging trend we noticed is that almost half of the rural cases are done medically, which is safe and affords women more privacy. This is much higher ratio than previously thought,” says Norman. “But we need to better educate women about this option as it is only available to women within the first seven weeks of pregnancy.”

As we've argued here repeatedly, medical abortion is the way of the future -- private, quick, and cheaper.

And now let's hear from the other coast, where there are significant barriers to women in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Again, there's access in St John's, but not so much elsewhere and the province does not cover all travel expenses.

Robin Whitaker argues that the procedure can and should be carried out in local clinics and doctor's office and medical abortion should be more widely available. But she points out that the preferable drug, RU486, is not approved in Canada.

In this province, RU486 could make early pregnancy termination locally accessible to many more women while saving public money. In addition to family doctors, there is no medical reason that these drugs could not be administered by nurse practitioners, midwives and even via telemedicine, provided that backup medical care was available. (It would also be vital to ensure that government did not download costs onto women by requiring them to pay for the drugs themselves.)

Our fetus fetishists will take anything a pandering CONservative government might offer: defunding, regulations based on spurious claims like sex-selective abortion, continued foot-dragging on the approval process for RU486.

In Ontario, panty-sniffer and amateur statistician, Patricia Maloney, is asking the courts to intervene in her quest for abortion statistics.

Make no mistake. Our fetus fetishists may be small in number, but they're LOUD and relentless. Right now they're sniffing some heady anti-choice emanations from the south.

And by SHRIEEEEKING and fomenting stigma, they have an undemocratically large influence on our private medical business.

Just look at what they're doing in the US with only 15% support.

Canadian women demand expanded, not restricted reproductive options.


*Fuck the National Post. They've just instituted a hit-and-miss paywall. Some stories I can read but can't get back to. Others have an immediate paywall. I'm not linking to them anymore and I apologize to readers of older posts that have links to them.

Hell must have frozen over...

Today the National Post published a rational, factual "full comment" regarding Canada's status quo on abortion.

Read Jesse Kline's piece.  It's fair, correct, reasonable.

It even has a quote from Ralph Klein which, one might hope, would appease the Fetus Lobby.

Unlikely.

Abortion — to borrow a phrase from Ralph Klein — is best left as “a matter between a woman, her doctor and her God.”

The shriEEEking: But what about the gawdless sluuuts?!?! has begun.

The knuckle-draggers have emerged in full force in the comments. These are the folks who share Jonathan Kay's view on the role of politicians in regulating women's reproductive organs; sadly their mastery of the English language is not quite as impeccable, nor their misogyny quite as discrete.

And to emphasize that point, the National Post chose a photo of a pro-Choice protester at a March for Lies on Parliament Hill that likely corresponds to the image their readers would use to illustrate the fundamentalist religious notion of a gawdless sluuut.

In response, it seems only fair to post a photo of some of the anti-Choice zealots, no?

How many ways does the National Post get it wrong?

Exhibit A

The headline: "quandry"? Is that something like a quandary?


Exhibit B

The photo: its caption reads "Anti-abortion protesters attend the March for Life on Jan. 25, 2013 in Washington, DC." 

Were the excitable young Canadian people who staffed the FetusMobile (aka the Whine-a-bago) Gore Tour across Canada last spring not photogenic enough for the National Post's exacting standards of attractiveness?


Exhibit C

The content: facile misdirection, truthiness and glib obfuscations faxed directly from the Fetus Lobby HQ aka MP Maurice Vellacott's office.

One physician, a medical specialist in obstetrics refuted the assumptions made by the three con MPs in their letter to the RCMP.  He asked for anonymity; antiChoice zealots have a history of directing violence against health care professionals who don't share their views.

If newspapers could be charged with committing crimes against journalism, the National Post's lawyers would be very, very wealthy.

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.

Where men are men and women know their rightful place.

Following Robert McClelland's recommendation, I read Jonathan Kay's account of his whirlwind field trip -  well financed, and likely as comfortable as CONvenient - to *collect* examples of First Nations folks who are almost just like NatPo readers.

About 40 paragraphs into Kay's piece, I started wondering why he didn't speak to any Indigenous women in the course of his research.  Then a couple of women make an appearance; the men that Kay has exclusively chosen to interact with, introduce them. Their contribution:

“Family dynamics is a big problem,” she tells me. “There’s lots of separation and switching of partners. The kids in school are basically suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. You’ve got a 16-year-old trying to deal with their parents splitting up when he was three. And a big part of that is addiction — alcohol, drugs and gambling. When you’re high, you fool around with someone else. And the next thing you know, you’re separated. That pattern has become common.”

At this, Eva Lazarus, Ms. Moore’s mother, who’d been listening from the side of the room, jumps in: “I know a woman here with four, five, even six children, all from different fathers. Then everyone sees it, and thinks growing up like that is the norm.”

Can't trash *pagan* beliefs and the *old ways* without highlighting good old boys' - and gals' - christianist slut-shaming, can he?  Jonathan is after all, his mother's son.

Kay applauds all the non-deleterious effects of religious indoctrination and how it has facilitated assimilation instilled a christian work ethic in the objects of his article - in spite of the horrific abuses inflicted at residence schools.  He only alludes to the long-range effects of PTSD suffered by adult survivors in one short poignant exchange with a non-native nurse.

But ... HOCKEY!!!  Yes. Boys playing hockey is seemingly the best hope, the most dynamic potential First Nations communities have of succeeding in Kay's rightful, paternalistic and euro-centric vision of Canada. "Balancing tradition and capitalism" ... indeed.

Kay is not alone in disregarding the dynamic role of women in Indigenous communities; he is following the "norm" established by centuries of patriarchal ideology who diminished, discredited and tried to destroy matrifocal traditions.

This is worth reading, for its insightful deconstruction of gendered contempt - specifically gynophobia - that has contaminated most news items about Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence's use of fasting as a strategy and as well, has disparaged the Idle No More movement. 

Sadly, it isn't only right wing nut jobs and CONs who disrespect First Nations, Metis, Inuit and all activist women of Indigenous ancestry. In the guise of well-intended concern, this blogger is wagging his phallic substitute at the women who originated the name of Idle No More (yet never claimed ownership of the movement) as he attacks them in his churlish screed.

In case we forget, here are some photographs of Indigenous women, from here.

 
 
The next vigil for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women will be held on February 14 on Parliament Hill.  More information here.

Grand merci to Kathryn Ssedoga for the wealth of links and resources on her Twitterstream.

Barbara Kay Lies Again

Last night Barbara Kay and I had this exchange over her column and my response to it.

@fernhilldammit The 1989 Holly Howe study using a N.Y. IA registry has never been refuted or withdrawn.

— Barbara Kay (@BarbaraRKay) October 5, 2012

(The Howe study is the only link in her piece backing up her 'abortion causes breast cancer' lie.)

Withdrawing a paper is a very big deal indeed and rarely happens. But science consists of refutation and refinement. I was curious what others -- scientists and non-scientists -- had to say about this particular study.

First, I regular Googled 'H.L. Howe cancer abortion'.

The first non-sponsored link is to the abstract itself. (The sponsored link is to an abortion clinic.)

I checked only the first five pages containing 50 of the 1.5 million links. But those were all links to anti-choice or religious sites or known anti-choice so-called scientists like Joel Brind.

Then I Scholar Googled it, which says that it has 83 scholarly citations.

That seemed low in the face of 1.5 million links on regular Google, but too many for me to waste time on. Especially since more than 100 of the world's leading experts have already concluded that there is no elevated risk of breast cancer after abortion.

So I went to PubMed Center, aka the US National Library of Medicine, where it says that nine other papers in its collection cited it.

I checked them out. One was not related to breast cancer but to colorectal cancer, so I didn't bother. Two were by our pal Joel Brind, aka 'a leading advocate of the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, a theory rejected by major medical bodies'. I didn't bother with those either.

Of the remaining six, not one supported the Howe study and four specifically refuted it.

It seems to me that this study is so old and so oft-cited by the fetus fetishists that some researchers feel the need to at least nod at it in the References section.

Kinda the way someone writing a history of science would nod at phlogiston.

Barbara Kay is correct to say that the paper has not been withdrawn. But she's lying again when she says it has never been refuted.

This morning I asked Kay on Twitter if she stands behind only this study of the ones she links to in her column. No reply, but I'll update if there is one.

BONUS: Here's a real scientist taking on the BAD science of ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link. Fascinating and thorough.

Note to NatPo Visitors

A couple of days ago I left two comments on Mike Schouten's (the guy behind We Need a Law (Like a Hole in the Head) brain-twister in the National Post, in which he threatens PMSHithead that for abandoning the abortion issue the Mighty Evangelical Bloc will punish him by voting NDP.

One identified Schouten as a Dominionist; the other was in reply to someone asserting that fetus fetishists had nowhere else but the Contempt Party to park their votes.

Um, Mike ran as a Christian Heritage candidate.

In each, I left a link to the May 1 DJ! post about Schouten and his connections.

Since then, I've been deleting a bunch of barely coherent splutterings from various Anonymice.

This one just came through and I thought I'd share. Look for the tells.

I was speeding through a playground zone and told the cops that they had no right to impose their values on me. Strangely though, they didn't buy it. I told them that nobody had the right to tell me what to do with my body, and if I wanted to press hard with foot on they gas pedal, who were they to constrain my freedoms? They still gave me a ticket. And I am a lesbian womyn. Therefore, all police are mysoginistic homophobes, clearly, as are the bigots who make traffic laws. Stupid ignorant people. All law is imposition of values. Stupid silly morons. Every time I hear or read one of your inane slogans I cringe a little bit. I die inside just a little bit more whenever I try to fathom how irrational some presumably mature humans can be. What a sad, sad world, so filled with idiots.

Now I wouldn't wish ill on anyone, but I sure hope this Anon bookmarks DJ! and keeps on reading. ;-)

NOTE to NatPo readers and would-be commenters: DJ! will not provide a venue for your vitriol. DJ! is reserved for our vitriol.

That Damned Stubborn Debate Won't Open!

Agenda? What agenda? Nah, the NatPo has no abortion agenda.

Well, somebody really wants to reopen the so-called debate.

Two pieces today, one on Saturday, gasbag de Souza last Thursday, two last Wednesday, one Tuesday, all spurred by the sex-selection story. (That link is to André Picard, sensible on this as he is on so many issues.)

Going further back, but still in January, NatPo ran more stories about abortion in Canada:
Jan. 13, news about the human rights complaint in New Brunswick, but dig the heading: 'New Brunswick abortion debate could reopen as province seeks to block doctor’s human rights complaint'.
Jan 11, Gunter's Grunts
Jan 7, 'Attempts to fire up abortion debate in Canada fizzle'.

And December 12, 'Tory MP boldly calls for abortion debate with statement that avoids using the word "abortion"'. That would be Chief Fetus Lobbyist (at the moment) Con backbencher-in-search-of-an-issue-any-issue Stephen Woodworth.

Plus all the letters to the editor that fit in print.

In just over a month, eleven stories humping that really really uninterested leg.

Today, Margaret Sommerville witters as usual, but Kelly McParland really belts one outta the park.

Taken to its logical extreme, abortion would ultimately prove its own undoing. If enough women abort female festuses [sic and snerk], eventually the world would be depopulated of women, ending the need to worry about whether abortion is moral or not.

Such spectacular stupidity can not be out-done, yes?

Wrong. The best-rated comment is by known dunderhead 'Sassylassie'.

Or the new progressive gay utopia sans females? Sick thing is the solution to the shortage of females in China is to force women to marry more than one man. The sickos are always one step ahead of the rest of us, abort us enmasse and then victimize the survivors sans enforced polygamy.

The evul plan hatched by homos and feminazis is working nicely, isn't it?

And they wonder why we sane people don't want to debate them.

Today's Top Fetus Lobby Comment

Today, there are two -- count 'em -- stories in the NatPo on welfare-mom, anti-choice-poster-granny Linda Gibbons.

In each one she is depicted as a martyr who has suffered enough/been oppressed for her cause.

(The occasion is the hearing of her case by the Supreme Court today.)

As is not unusual, I'm on deadline but waiting for client to get back to me with info vital to my getting the fuck on with it.

In short, I'm kinda stuck at my 'puter.

So I posted a comment on each, then got into it with a couple of fetus fetishists. I also posted a link to that old DJ! post at the top.

On the second one, by Dan Gurney, the discussion seems a bit more rational for some reason. Yet, when I remarked that the NatPo had two stories on this pathetic person today, I got this in reply:

Fern I love your arguments. They are as empty as befits an airhead. Your mother should have aborted you and saved the state money on wasted education. I know you will take this as a compliment as a flappy collection of fetal material. Hitler was perhaps right, worthless human beings should be exterminated. I trust you would be first in the queue.

Oh and if this post offends you, trusting you understand it, go back and read that vile blog you referenced. I know you will treat this post with the same sense of amusement

Calling my blogpost vile while wishing me exterminated, with Hitler thrown in for good measure.

The day is still young, but I'm calling this one FTW!

UPPITY-DATE: Apparently, NatPo called it for the win too. It's been deleted. That link takes you to the article. My comment and the reply both gone.

MORE UPPITY-DATE: My bad. All comments are gone.

Looney Tunes and lunatic rightwingnuts.

Another batshitcrazy Blob Blogging Whiner post and thus another 'puter screen sporting tea splatters expelled from one's nose.

[...]John Ivison calls Michael Ignatieff the Wile E. Coyote of political strategy.

I used the same comparison in a column I wrote in February. Kind of interesting that he used the same image that I did.

Part of me thinks Ivison was inspired by my column. The other part thinks that the comparison is too obvious to be explained by plagiarism.

Gee, ya think? Otherwise, expect Ivison to find his "inspiration" (HER euphemism for plagiarism) over at Five Pints of Bitter, Boiling Cat Piss and Dodo Can Spew in the near future.

Strange, I never thought of Ivison needing to snort sewage pond scum but I guess the National Post's columnists require succor when times are tough.

Guilty!

Blame feminism because sloppy and lazy columnists have found it's a facile way to make a buck while sitting in their pajamas at home, scratching their balls and pecking out words on a laptop while watching porn on cable TV.

... in the M. T. case, Ms. Timson blames the girl's actions on "a very retro scenario," an "ages-old pre-feminist scenario" in which girls believe they have no power on their own. So they convince themselves that they must attract a man and keep him at all costs, even murder. Pardon me? Girls have turned to murder because they have no power? The truth is, they have turned to murder and "obsessive irrational hatred of one girl toward another, depict[ing] an emotional landscape devoid of respect, conscience or heart," because they have too much power. I don't mean too much power relative to boys -- with whom they are now equals in every real sense -- but rather relative to teens of past generations.

It is just possible that all of this is the logical end product of feminism, instead of, as Ms. Timson postulates, the harbinger of some return to a regressive age.

"The logical end product of feminism" .... shriEEEkkk!!!! Why not blame feminism for the following, then?

NEWS ITEM: Investigators confirmed Thursday that two small bolts in the main gearbox of a helicopter that crashed off Newfoundland two weeks ago broke in flight sometime before the aircraft slammed into the ocean, killing 17 of 18 people on board. Blame feminism for forcing women to seek employment in non-traditional jobs; that crash was the logical end product of men threatened or distracted by their female colleagues.

NEWS ITEM: The RCMP says it has busted a marijuana grow operation at a home in western Quebec that doubled as a daycare centre. ... spokeswoman Caroline Poulin says a couple in their 50s have been arrested in Gatineau and will appear in court at a later date. Blame feminism for the increased use and popularity of daycares; their exploitation as fronts for home grow-ops is the logical end product.

NEWS ITEM: The bonuses paid to some executives at American International Group have become a symbol of Wall Street greed in the last two weeks. Citizens and legislators alike were infuriated to learn the insurance giant, which received a federal bailout of more than US$180 billion, paid out $165 million in bonuses to some of the employees who almost ran the company into the ground. Blame feminism for the practice of giving generous bonuses to executive-level employees; they're the logical end product of judges awarding their first wives more of their assets when their husbands divorce them.

NEWS ITEM: Police have apologised to a widow for giving her the rope her husband had used to kill himself. Mr Gilmore's possessions were returned to his wife, who lives in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, because she was his next of kin. Police had given Ms Gerelli three bags containing her husband's laptop, wallet and briefcase, but when she looked in the bags she noticed the rope. Blame feminism for forcing those officers to apologize when it's obvious that male suicide is the logical end product when women are no longer feminine enough to please their men.

a creative revolution and April Reign blogged brilliantly about that odious NP column.

Keep Talking

We at Birth Pangs are laffing our asses off at Ken Epp, the Reforma-Tories, the so-conned, etc etc on the demise of Bill C-484, aka The Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill.

But this, as they say, is gonna leave a mark.

The freakin' Editorial Board of the National Pest, main MSM stirrer of the C-484 pot, has also made a screeching 180. Under the title 'Conservatives choose clarity over compromise on Epps' Bill', it opines:

(Quick, swallow anything you have in your mouth.)

As Mr. Epp explains here, the bill is careful to define lawful abortions by willing women as non-criminal acts, and in explicitly taking away the possibility of the defence that a fetus is not a human being, it even acknowledges, in a sense, that it is not necessarily founded upon any unstated notion of fetal rights. The Conservative government could probably have defended and passed this bill on that basis, without making the public uncomfortable or in any way reviving the abortion debate. But it rightly prefers not to take chances conveying nuance to the Canadian public through the generally cockeyed instrument of the media.

Nuance . . . generally cockeyed instrument of the media . . .