Jonathan Kay to the rescue of patriarchy!!!

*Shorter* Jonathan Kay: women lie, women are murderous, women make men do evil things.  

And so, to protect society from homicidal women, he opines that CPC politicians should pass a law that would give government "oversight' in determining a specific gestational minute when an abortion is no longer a therapeutic medical intervention, but a CRIME.

Never mind that in Canada for the last 25 years, the public health care system has efficiently regulated the termination of unwanted or life-threatening pregnancies by applying medical protocols, procedures and restrictions.

Patriarchy [is the name given to a] societal structure whereby men are dominant not in numbers or in force but in their access to status-related power and decision-making power. It is also connected to economics in that patriarchal societies men will have greater power over the economy. 

In our society, because men have higher income and greater access to the economy, they are said to be dominant. Power distribution in society should not be confused with power struggles at an individual level, although they can be reproduced in a smaller scale as well. 

For example, in many small businesses, the owner and top managers are male, and they will hire women to work for them. [And fire them, too.] Patriarchy can be enforced in a variety of ways, including intimidation of women through violence, sexual assault and other forms of harassment, and the discrediting of their efforts to organize and resist. 

Patriarchal societies are typically more authoritarian and rely heavily on legal-rational modes of organization, show stronger military implication and more reliance on police repression to impose authority. It is a society that tends to hold contempt for women [...]   

We've had it with Kay's smarmy, sneering assumptions about women, cloaked in a veneer of gentility and respect for the "public order" he perceives to be threatened by women stuck in a choice between a rock and a hard place. (Trigger warning: these stories by women who had late second trimester and third trimester abortions are heart-wrenching.)

Depicted below are Jonathan Kay's ideological comrades at arms: men like him, who expect the worst from women; they act pre-emptively against anticipated treacherous female machinations.

This guy, for example:

A prominent Saudi Arabian preacher who raped his 5-year-old daughter before torturing her to death because he reportedly questioned the child’s virginity has been spared a death sentence or even a lengthy prison term after agreeing to pay “blood money” to the slain girl’s mother.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a former drug addict who rose to national prominence as an Islamic television preacher, was arrested last November and charged with brutally raping and torturing 5-year-old Lama al-Ghamdi to death. According to a medical report, the little girl had been tortured with whips, electric shocks and an iron. She had broken arms, fractured ribs, a broken back and a crushed skull. She died on October 22.

And these ones: 

There are “two forms of feminism,” Buehner argued. There are “cute” feminists like Sarah Palin who will find jobs in the “marketplace” and “get themselves a husband” but will “never submit to the husband, in fact they will use their power probably to make their husband submit to them.” Then, there are the “ugly” feminists whose “lack of attractiveness has not given them access to power that they wanted in the marketplace.” These “attractively challenged” feminists will only find careers in academia and in government agencies, for instance, “you can run the EPA.”

What all these feminists have in common, Swanson argues, is that “all of them want to be free from the family” and together with “the homosexuals” are “destroying society.” Buehner speculates that in the future, feminism will be remembered as “a time in which women lost the love of their children” and “decided to become selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores.”

And how about this one:

Diallo, in a civil sexual assault case against Strauss-Kahn, is saying his alleged actions reflected a pattern of misogynistic behaviour. New York City recently passed a law against gender-based violence and there have been other allegations made against Strauss-Kahn by women. Diallo's lawyers wrote in her latest claim: "Strauss-Kahn's conduct towards women generally is, and more specifically his sexual assault of Ms Diallo was, motivated by a gender-animus and a misogynistic attitude."

[...]Soon after his arrest in New York, the French writer Tristane Banon accused Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her during an interview in 2003, a claim he called imaginary and slanderous. Prosecutors said they believed the encounter qualified as a sexual assault but the legal time frame to pursue her complaint had elapsed.

Then French authorities lodged preliminary charges of alleged aggravated pimping, claiming Strauss-Kahn was involved in a hotel prostitution ring including prominent figures and police in the northern city of Lille. Lille prosecutors have said they are looking into an allegation that Strauss-Kahn might have been involved in a rape during a sex party in a Washington hotel in 2010.

[...]Diallo's lawyers allude in Tuesday's filing to all those allegations, as well as to an affair Strauss-Kahn had with an IMF subordinate.

Some would disagree that Kay belongs on this spectrum of men who enable, justify, exploit and enforce gender inequality through violent means.

Yet his cavalier disregard for facts in favour of anti-abortion propaganda could inflame mentally unstable individuals, much as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly did when he repeatedly called Dr Tiller a "killer".

Consider this: patriarchy rewards him hugely, when he advocates for a pre-emptive law that undermines women's human rights. 

In fact, Kay gets quite richly paid for pontificating that it's a "moral" question when in fact any decision regarding the termination of a pregnancy in its third trimester should be informed by medical science and ^NOT by the religious quackery of conservative politicians such as Woodworth, Vellacott and Warawa.

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.

Catholic Church: Facts matter when money is involved.

This was in the news yesterday.  As you can imagine, it has been the topic of pro-choice discussions since, as we've written many, many times at DJ!, the US Catholic Church has been one of the best-financed and insistent organization to lobby politicians, in its opposition to abortion and birth control.  All of it involves indirect actions and proxy groups of course, as the Vatican Taliban doesn't want to imperil the tax-exempt status its churches enjoy.

The Catholic Church is on record stating that life begins at conception That is the basis of their opposition to abortion in all circumstances. It’s the basis on which they argue that Obamacare violates their (and their followers) religious freedoms (which of course trump any rights or freedoms anyone else may have.)

[...]Sometimes, actions tells us just how deep a religious conviction in the sanctity of life really is. It turns out that at least for one Catholic healthcare provider, that deeply held religious belief suddenly becomes less important when a few dollars are at stake.

This story began on New Years Day in 2006. Lori Stodghill was 31-years-old and seven months pregnant with twins. She went to St. Thomas More Hospital, suffering from nausea and shortness of breath. Her obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, was on call that night – but never answered his pager. Stodghill’s main artery to the lungs was clogged, resulting in a heart attack. She died within an hour of arriving at the hospital, as did the twins – some time later. Stodghill’s husband, Jeremy filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of the couples then 2-year-old daughter, Elizabeth and himself. Their lawyers argued that Stodges should have made it to the hospital or at least ordered the emergency room to perform an emergency c-section.

From here.

[...]when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs, argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”

Above from here; text below from previously quoted.

The thing that smells in this case is the hypocrisy. On one hand, the “sanctity of life” matters when it comes to denying a woman access to reproductive health. The women’s life is secondary to that of a zygot or a fetus in the name of religious freedom. A woman’s dignity is secondary to that same religious freedom. But, when a few dollars are at stake, suddenly these deeply held religious beliefs don’t matter.

One might think that the gospel, and all those deeply held religious values really are only wallet deep.

SHRIEEEEEEEEEK!!! It's what you'd expect from the likes of SUZYALLCAPS at Blob Blogging Wingnut, right?

Curiously, no. All is silent over there, except for a short riff on a piece of glurge about the bishop of Denver SHE posted on January 22nd, the day before the damning news story above was published.  Coincidence?

We provide no click-links to BBW because if we do, SHE will re-direct all traffic to pictures of human anatomical detritus, aka fetal p0rn.

In case you think that we exaggerate when we say so-called "prolife" is pro-lies, note that in HER blogpost, SUZY states that the bishop of Denver studied medicine.  

Wrong, incorrect, false.

The man himself says that he worked as an orderly in a hospital.

Prevaricate much, SUZY?

Today's BBW blogpost demonstrates how SHE deigns to hold up a woman's exemplary choice to carry a pregnancy to term because that particular choice fits HER object lesson of the day.  Although this woman is a lesbian, SHE conveniently decides not to address that ideological inconsistency - HER Catholic homophobia has been on display in many previous posts - because shut up.


ADDED by fh on January 25: From Daily Kos

Now, lest you think that an attorney representing a Catholic organization that manages a Catholic hospital does not actually speak for the Church, and therefore, the arguments in legal documents do not represent the Church itself, au contraire, smarty pants. Let's go below the fold to review the Taco Bell rule, shall we?

The Taco Bell rule was first offered by Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, when the bishops were hissy-fitting themselves over insurance coverage of birth control. Under this rule, there is no distinction between the Catholic Church, Catholic-affiliated organizations, or privately owned companies that appear to have no religious affiliation, but that are owned or managed by someone who claims to be Catholic. Like, say, someone who opens a Taco Bell franchise. Under this rule, it's all the Catholic Church, according to the Catholic Church, and should all be afforded the exact same legal protections as the Church itself.

A trio of bishops are going to 'review' the argument.

But what's that saying about closing a barn door after the horse has left? The defendants already made the argument—and won. So what's the plan? The bishops are going to decide the legal argument is invalid and the widower is owed a payout for the wrongful death of his wife and twins? If there's one thing we know for certain it's that the Catholic Church will go to very extreme lengths to avoid legal or financial accountability, including, but not limited to, obstructing criminal investigations.

So regardless of what the bishops determine with their review, they lost this fight. It's over. A fetus is not a person and should have no rights or protections under the law, and that's how it should stay. Amen.

As they say: awkward.

ShriEEEk! Radical foreign lobby funds Canadian group

Oh.  Wait. 

This radical foreign "special interest" lobby?

The Catholic Organization for Life and Family [...] was cofounded by the Conference of Bishops and the world’s largest fraternal Catholic organization, the U.S.-based Knights of Columbus, “to build a culture of life and a civilization of love by promoting respect for human life and dignity and the essential role of the family.”  [...]
Although COLF is autonomous and they do their own publication, they still rely on outside sources to survive and are co-funded largely by the Conference of Bishops and the Knights of Columbus  [...] Based out of Connecticut, the Knights of Columbus run a network of charitable organizations which fund everything from broadcast media and construction of churches to scholarships and political activism. As of February 2011, the Canadian Knights have 227,538 members comprising 1,942 councils which form a dominant part of a link connecting potent Members of Parliament, the pro-life movement and the Catholic church.
Woodworth is a Knight, as are Americans John Boehner, Jeb Bush, and Rick Santorum.  [...]  The Canadian March of Life received $6,250 from the Knights of Columbus in 2004. In 2005, the Ottawa march disappeared from the books, but the Campaign for Life Coalition became an item on the cash recipient list with $17,752 in total financial support from 2005 to 2007.
Furthermore, according to a public statement by the Canadian Knights of Columbus, the annual interest of their $1 million Bishop du Laval fund is given directly to the Conference of Bishops. The statement also notes that the “Canadian Knights have also been key supporters and participants in Canada’s annual March of Life.” [...]
A March news release by the American Knights of Columbus records a private luncheon attended by Supreme Director of the Canadian Knights, Robert Cayea, and Speaker of the House, Conservative MP Andrew Scheer. The Speaker is himself a member of the Knights of Columbus Council 10418 in Regina. Other notable members of the Knights include Conservative MP Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, and a potential successor to PM Stephen Harper.

From here.



Its representatives (that we know) in the House of Commons: MP Stephen Woodworth, Minister Jason Kenney and Speaker Andrew Scheer.

Where's *Ethical Oil* Kathryn Marshall to shrieeek about a radical "foreign special interest" lobby and the art of political puppetry when her incomparable performance art is required?

This will have to do, then. 

Grand merci to Teri Mooring.

Truthiness

Last night I responded to Chris Selley's tweet promoting his opinion piece in the NatPo.

No acknowledgement. So I'll post what I cited in my tweets to him.

This jumped out and seemed scientifically incorrect to me; I found stats to challenge it.

“It’s a fraught issue, which stirs emotions on each side,” Ms. Newman wrote, in the Telegraph piece that touched off this controversy. “Is it right that we terminate pregnancies, which might, with the medical care now available, result in healthy babies?

That "healthy babies" claim sounded suspiciously like the glurging over that pro-liars do when they have no cogent argument to present, when they're presented with scientific facts, data and stats.

So I went looking and I found evidence about extreme neonates that refutes Newman's pretense.

In the UK, nine out of a hundred neonates born at 23 weeks of gestation will survive; only one of them will live a fully able-bodied life. 

What this means is that 91 of every hundred fetuses born at 23 weeks of gestation in the UK will die in the neonatal intensive care unit, eight others will be afflicted for the rest of their lives with grave handicaps or severe medical conditions while only one will be able to live a normal life. 

Only one percent.

Like Stephen Woodworth and his many fake claims that it's all about the science, it's not. It's about morality and punishing women by forcing them to remain pregnant, even when a fetus has stopped developing and is putrefying inside her uterus.

It's actually about the government interfering with the provision of a legal medical procedure that is available to pregnant women.

It's about criminalizing women, physicians and abortion.

It is christian Sharia.

Doin' the Twitter Block!

It happened to JJ. It has happened to fern hill.

And now, I'm proud to report that many right-wing, religious zealots that people Twitter have also made me the target of their hissy-fit blocking.

It happens of course when prochoice activists ask too many inCONvenient questions and point out CONtemptuous fallacies in the tweets of abortion-criminalizing fetushists.

So, I've been blocked by cpc MP Stephen Woodworth.

In his *parting* tweet, Woodworth even had the chutzpah to throw back at me the words of the brilliant Molly Ivins that I quote on my Twitter profile page.

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful.

I responded to his tweet by pointing out he had no idea who Molly Ivins was. He also appears aggrieved and to consider himself victimized by prochoice activists who can think faster and better on Twitter than he does.

So, about that iceberg ...

A MASSIVE parting shot at the PBl antichoice, Pro-fetus-lobby boy-os: my *REAL lefty* heart will go on, without the aggravation of being in a blogging aggregator that claims to be progressive but supports those who would allow women's rights to be eroded by the CONtempt Party.

Thanks to all the REAL progressive bloggers who have supported us in blog bursts throughout the years, we will continue to read you and to link to you and to tweet your posts.

Turning the tables on the Fetus Lobby.

From here - it means to reverse a situation and gain the upper hand.

Read and rejoice:

[Todd] Stave is the landlord of a medical clinic in Germantown that offers abortions. Reproductive Health Services Clinic became a big focus of anti-abortion protesters when it was leased to LeRoy Carhart, one of the few doctors in the nation who acknowledges performing late-term abortions.

There are always protesters outside the office park property quietly praying or holding a vigil, with signs, rosaries, statues of Mary and bloody, gory posters of mangled fetuses.

“Totally appropriate. It’s their right. They are protected by the First Amendment. And outside the clinic is probably the most appropriate place for them to express their views,” he told me this week.

This has been a way of life for Stave. He’s not just a landlord. That office was his father’s clinic. Then his sister ran it.

“I’ve been a member of this fight since Roe v. Wade. Since I was 5 years old,” he said. The office was firebombed when he was kid, and protesters gathered outside his father’s home as he was growing up. So he’s no stranger to the harassment and bullying of doctors and their families.

It’s become routine for protesters to distribute fliers, posters and create Web sites with all of a doctor’s personal information and urge others to target them. Kansas doctor George Tiller was killed in 2009 and his protegé, Carhart, had his farm burned to the ground. [...]

But his harassers crossed the line last fall, when a big group showed up at his daughter’s middle school on the first day of classes and again at back-to-school night. They had signs with his name and contact information as well as those awful images of the fetuses.

Soon after that, the harassing calls from protesters started coming to his home. By the dozens, at all hours. Friends asked him how they could help. He began to take the names and phone numbers down of anyone who contacted him with an unwanted call. And he gave those lists to his friends and asked them to call these folks back.

“In a very calm, very respectful voice, they said that the Stave family thanks you for your prayers,” he said. “They cannot terminate the lease, and they do not want to. They support women’s rights.”

This started with a dozen or so friends, then grew. Soon, there were more than a thousand volunteers dialing.

If they could find the information, Stave’s callers would even ask the family how their children were doing, and mention their names and the name of their school. “And then we’d tell them that we bless their home on such and such street,” giving them their address.

In some cases, the family of a protester who called Stave’s home could get up to 5,000 calls in return.

Hmm ... I know a couple of women in their sixties, wonderful grandes dames who belonged to Les filles d'Isabelle (the Knights of Columbus Ladies' Auxiliary) until they couldn't stand the sight of their peers being told to suffer silently while their ostentatiously pious businessmen husbands abused them, beat their children and eventually dumped their families for young trophy girlfriends.

How difficult could it be for them to infiltrate the local Fetus Lobby group that organizes 40 days of Harassment©™ and vigils outside the Women's Clinic - to get their hands on a database of all the shrieeeking abortion-criminalizing wingnuts?

To paraphrase the Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would do unto you.

And also: remember when Blob Blogging Wingnut suggested, in HER typical passive-aggressive manner, that "abortionists" (and their supporters) in Canada should be documented?

Ladies: Send your menstrual detritus to MP Woodworth!

To quote the fightin' words of JJ at unrepentant old hippie, that would be: CPC MP Stephen Woodworth, Pride of Kitchener’s K of C and another crotch-nosing fetus fetishizing Womb Cop who believes government should be juuuuust small enough to crawl up your vagina and police your uterus.

Woodworth, who is a fundamentalist Catholic who believes "life" starts at the moment of conception, wants to police Canadian women's sexual and reproductive autonomy by criminalizing abortion. This is what we should all do, so he can determine through forensic analysis how many zygotes & embryos we are sluttishly allowing to slip out of our bodies every month.

Depending on the "strength" of your menstrual flow, you should be able to cram all your pads and strained uterine detritus - such as suspicious clots - into one 9 x 12 bubble-wrap-lined enveloppe.

Mail it to Stephen Woodworth, c/o the House of Commons, Ottawa K1A 0A6. You don't have to pay postage to send MPs or the PM (hint, hint) mail.

It sounds gross, but if we don't ACT UP and speak out against Woodworth's project, this is what may soon happen in Canada.

Workers at the Stamford wastewater treatment facility on Harbor View Avenue discovered a dead human fetus while sifting through sewage Saturday morning.

Police do not know exactly how old the fetus is or its sex.

The fetus has been taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where an autopsy will be conducted, Lupinacci said. Police plan to investigate further after they have received a report from the medical examiner.

"We're hoping on some DNA and we're going to have to somehow check pregnancies and whatnot," Lupinacci said. "It could even possibly be a miscarriage. We don't even know if it's a legal fetus at this point."

A fetus is considered viable if the pregnancy lasts beyond 24 to 25 weeks, said Dr. John Morris, a gynecologist who practices in Stamford. A fetus that is about 4 inches in length is probably pre-viable, meaning it most likely could not survive outside the mother's body, he said.

"Viability is kind of a gray area," Morris said. "Most people will give you between 24 and 25 weeks as an age limit. Before that, the lungs won't be developed enough and you have all other sorts of issues."

Nobody in their right correct mind would want this investigated, you say? You would be wrong.

We cannot allow the CONtempt Party to criminalize women, health care providers and abortion.

Misogynist lawmakers are the truly "depraved".

Rennie Taria Gibbs was 15 years old in 2006 when she got pregnant. When she miscarried at 36 weeks of gestation, prosecutors "discovered" Gibbs had a cocaine habit - which makes you wonder which antichoice busybody at the hospital violated her confidential medical records -and they charged her with murder under Mississipi's rarely used "depraved-heart" law.

Her trial - continued multiple times since 2006 - was scheduled to commence in February 2012.

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

She is not alone. Christian Sharia (state religious law) in the US exists, and it is used to punish women.

It should come as no surprise that Rennie Gibbs is Black, as repressive laws in the US mostly target, and are applied to, Latino and Afro-Americans.

What if. . . ?

The Contempt Party of Canada is denying and flailing and spinning and finger-pointing and lying and blustering. You know, the usual.

But these election fraud allegations appear to have legs. Pretty strong legs. Helped along perhaps by a pissed-off press corps sick of being regularly and routinely shat upon by Harpercons.

What if Canadians do ^NOT fall asleep again, as Stevie Spiteful and crew are desperately praying for?

What big guns will the Contempt Party Brain Trust pull out?

Could it be the abortion debate that nobody wants?

I put absolutely nothing past them. Stephen Woodworth's Private Member's Motion is coming up for debate sometime in March.

It is March.

Thinking ahead here -- if the motion passes and a stacked committee of parliamentary Fetus Lobby members is convened to listen to all the same old crap again, I have a suggestion.

Suppose they had an abortion debate and nobody came?

Nobody but the fetus fetishists of course.

They've been creaming their Depends since Woodworth raised this notion.

They'd all be lined up around the block to spout their lies, tut-tuts, finger-wagging, et fucking cetera.

Picture it. One after another, the Forced Pregnancy gang makes their depositions.

Charles 'The Homo Annihilator' McVety.

Margaret 'The Pearl Clutcher' Somerville.

Andrea 'The Mean Good Girl' Mrozek.

Throw in a few of the 'Tough Guys in Dresses' chorus.

And the prochoicers?

Do. Not. Appear.

They reply politely to invitations, if any, with 'Been There. Done That. Won. Thx.'

Just say no.

And leave the Fetus Lobby howling like this.

Cons for the pre-born. After? Not so much.

A member of the NDP says the Speaker of the House of Commons, Andrew Scheer, demanded that her 3 month old infant be removed from the House before a vote in connection with the bill on the abolition of the gun registry, yesterday. The office of the Speaker refuses to confirm or deny these allegations.

The MP for Verchères-Les Patriotes, Sana Hassaina gave birth to a boy that she named Iskander-Jack, in memory of the former NDP leader. She had recently returned to work and since she is breastfeeding, her husband who is on paternity leave accompanies her to Parliament. She was warned the vote would take place and finished nursing her baby. She searched the crowded lobby for her husband but not finding him, entered the House with her infant.

Once inside, she was told by a page that the Speaker wanted the baby to leave.

News item, in Google translate.

Original version here.

The CONtempt Party that's providing one of its MPs an opportunity to explore the legal status of the unborn - and reopen the abortion debate - won't let a tiny infant stay briefly in the House while his mother votes.

"Family values" - unless it's inCONvenient.

Grand merci to lagatta who provided the original news item.

UPDATE: @vickyatclc links to this - labour standards & women breastfeeding in the workplace.

CBC coverage of incident and Speaker's denial.

Woodworth's dog & pony show.

Yesterday, while Stevie's Contempt Party government fêted The Queen's Jubilee, Con MP Woodworth "went rogue".

Or at least, that's what we are meant to believe.

In which parallel universe would the MASSIVE micro-manager Harper allow a backbencher to break away from the official party line?

So, it's probably safe to assume that even if Woodworth and PMSHithead were both to claim plausible deniability regarding the K-W MP's initiative, somebody in the PMO∕Politburo had a little chat with the backbencher to map out the tactic and to rein him in if he started dancing outside those lines.

I'm listening to Radio-Canada's phone-in political program; all the callers see through this little ploy.

Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that Woodworth's project to consider the status and the wellbeing of the zygote, embryo and fetus were sincere. Why not strike a Royal Commission and consider it from that perspective, as well as examining what the quality of life should be for potential and actually born infants? But then, it would become apparent that the reformaTory imperative to control and punish women is a minority view that should not take precedence over the rational and heartfelt arguments that pro-choice organizations like the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Bar Association would present, as well as the perspectives multitudes of women's groups would express.

It's not happenstance that Woodworth is attacking women's right to choose through the Criminal Code. Ken Epp tried it in 2008 and Harper voted in support of his private member's bill C-484, as Hélène Buzetti reminded us.

The Harper government's agenda includes the criminalization of abortion. This is now clear, though the Cons lie about their intent. This is the first step in a campaign strategy based on the incremental erosion of women's access to contraception and the right for each woman to stop a pregnancy or to carry it to term.

Human zygote, embryo, fetus are potential human beings. During gestation, pregnant women give life. They are not passive breeders. The Cons want to use the Criminal Code to award nascent beings rights that will trump those of pregnant women.

We will not let them do this.

UPDATE: Parliamentary procedural information from Kady O'Malley, here.

The *Hidden Agenda* decloaks.

One wonders if Stephen Woodworth has been given explicit or implicit permission by the Contempt Party and Stevie's "strong stable mandate" to use an official government media room for his February 6 event.

More about those fetus fetishizing *Hidden Agenda* balloons that Con MPs have been testing out.

Grand merci to @goddamitkitty's tweet.

UPDATE: Kady O'Malley covered Woodworth's "happening" which was competing with the Harper government's ballyhoo for The Queen's Jubilee™©.

Ditch that Pink Ribbon.

And stop donating to the Susan Komen Foundation.

[The US'] most famous breast cancer charity pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it's well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women's health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

According to Jezebel, this is the reason this year's grant was cancelled.

[...]with the addition of a vocally anti-abortion ex-politician to the ranks of Susan G Komen For the Cure.

Karen Handel, who was endorsed by Sarah Palin during her unsuccessful bid for governor of Georgia in 2010, has been the Foundation's Senior Vice President for Public Policy since April 2011. During her gubernatorial candidacy, she ran on an anti-choice platform, vowing that if elected, she'd defund Planned Parenthood. Handel wrote on her campaign blog [...] "since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood."

She even promised to eliminate funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings provided by the organization.

The NFB has produced a feature documentary called 'Pink Ribbons, Inc.' that reveals how the reality of women living, surviving or dying of breast cancer has been appropriated by large companies using the marketing appeal of a "dream cause". They profit the most from the "Pink Ribbon" branding.

Instead of demanding better research into the environmental factors that increase the risk of developing breast cancer, women's energies and attention are diverted towards feel-good events.

'Pink Ribbons Inc' will be released across Canada on February 3rd.

Shrieeek! Where is the fetus lobby?

Doctors in Peru said they would operate today on a 3-year-old boy to remove the body of his would-be twin.

Isbac Pacunda has the body of his twin inside his stomach – bones, eyes and even hair on the cranium. Dr. Carlos Astocondor, a plastic surgeon at the Las Mercedes Hospital in Chiclayo, told the Associated Press that the partially formed fetus weighs about a pound and a half and is 9 inches long. He and a team of 12 doctors will surgically remove the tissue from the boy’s stomach today.

From here.

So, why is it the Vatican Taliban has not threatened to excommunicate the doctors and the parents of Isbac Pacunda for allowing this fetus to be surgically removed?

Oh. Wait. He's not a 9 year old girl who was raped by her step-father.

I wonder if photographs of Isbac's twin will make their way into Blob Blogging Wingnut's gallery of fetal remains?

Hey SUZANNE! Is this what you mean?

Former Catholic priest James Boudreau took advantage of a young man’s friendship and another’s interest in the clergy when he sexually assaulted the two in the 1980s, a city courtroom heard Wednesday.[...]

Boudreau served as pastor at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, on Victoria Road North, from 1978 to 1985. He went on to work at six other Ontario churches, including Kitchener’s St. John’s Catholic Church.

One of the complainants was an active member of the St. John the Baptist parish in July 1984 and was a family friend of Boudreau when the sexual assault took place, said assistant Crown attorney Steve Hamilton.

From here.

So, if someone or some organization out there would like to continue with the project, let me remind you of the kind of information to gather that SUZANNE doesn't think is an invasion of privacy or likely to promote violence against individuals: photos, credentials and certificates, disciplinary records, news articles, videos, criminal histories, and more.

Though Blob Blogging Wingnut believes ALL abortion services providers in Canada should be documented, DAMMIT JANET! suggests a registry for Catholic pedophile priests should be limited to *only* priests suspected of, alleged to have committed, charged with or convicted of criminal sexual offenses against children and youth.

Oh, and Church Fathers like Bishop Bernando Alvarez must also be thoroughly documented; members of the Vatican Taliban definitively should be held accountable for lying about child abuse and shielding their priests from investigation and criminal prosecution.

SUZANNE is a prick. Cue the shrieeeking.

What? Oh, should I have used the hard-C word?

Consider Blob Blogging Wingnut and HER prick actions, emulating the tactics of Patrick Ross.

SHE publishes inflammatory posts. When folks who disagree with HER views link to these posts, SHE re-directs them to sites that feature pictures of the gory by-products of medically assisted or spontaneous miscarriages, culled from anatomical textbooks.

SHE moves the goal-posts.

SHE tweets and blogs about such *news* as the purported sexiness of ovulating women, pix of man sexually abusing a dog, a priest evangelizing mall shoppers, CIDA funding, breast implants, robots for interventions with autistic children, StunTV programming and most prevalent, Fetus Lobby truthiness to discredit scientific research.

When links are provided to allow people to read specific tweets at HER Twitter account @Roseblue, SHE blocks access.

Not surprising behaviour from this MOMMIE DEAREST who is compelled to breed by the Vatican Taliban, trumpeting the reason SHE is overpopulating the planet is ^NOT because SHE loves kids - SHE sees it as a competition to win: producing more progeny than HER ideological adversaries.

SHE is one dangerous passive-aggressive rightwing religious zealot. HER children's chances of growing up to be normal, compassionate human beings would improve if SHE let that humanoid robot raise them.

SUZANNE - do you really want to go there?

Local fetus-lobbying, abortion-criminalizing Catholic zygote zealot @Roseblue aka Blob Blogging Wingnut SUZANNE FORTIN recently suggested her own project, based on this US initiative of a "hit-list" of abortion services providers.

Our blogging & tweeting colleagues Dr Dawg and Canadian Cynic responded.

Although the Vatican Taliban and Pope Maledict haven't honestly said so, most Church Fathers clearly believe all this nastiness about holding Rome and its powerful clergy accountable for their priests' abuse of children is inappropriate.

How will the Church be able to recruit and keep priests if not for the pedophile bait it once dangled in front of the right men?

Thus Catholics have been ordered to breed more and more, to satisfy dogmatic need to mold children, body & mind, and break their will so that they'll be blindly devout Catholic foot soldiers.

The organizations representing women and men who were physically and sexually violated as children by church clergy should start, as SUZANNE suggests, a registry of names and known addresses for pedophiles and abusers, as well as the names of the bishops, cardinals and other Church Fathers who facilitated their crimes and protected them from judicial prosecution.

That should end well, no?

Meanwhile, back in Ontario ...

We could use some actual information about abortions instead of the truthiness, prevarications and outright lies the fetus lobby propagates.

Campaign Criminalize Abortion pamphleted 20,000 homes in 24 provincial ridings, claiming it costs $30-50 million every year to provide abortions to Ontario women "for the killing of children in the womb".

Campaign Criminalize Abortion Youth has also been gathering signatures for a defund abortion petition that is to be presented to the Ontario Legislature in the near future and urging people to contact their MPP to tell them that abortion is a financial drain on our health care system and should be delisted from OHIP.

Based on figures available here, Campaign Criminalize Abortion has doubled and possibly tripled the costs of providing health care to women who choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Here's recent information about what happens when medically safe and legal abortions as well as reliable contraception are not accessible to women.

Abortion rates are higher in countries where the procedure is illegal and nearly half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe, with the vast majority in developing countries, a new study concludes.

Experts couldn’t say whether more liberal laws led to fewer procedures, but said good access to birth control in those countries resulted in fewer unwanted pregnancies.

The global abortion rate remained virtually unchanged from 2003 to 2008, at about 28 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, a total of about 43.8 million abortions, according to the study. The rate had previously been dropping since 1995.

About 47,000 women died from unsafe abortions in 2008, and another 8.5 million women had serious medical complications. Almost all unsafe abortions were in developing countries, where family planning and contraceptive programs have mostly levelled off.

“An abortion is actually a very simple and safe procedure,” said Gilda Sedgh, a senior researcher at the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute, designated by the World Health Organization as an official Collaborating Center for Reproductive Health. “All of these deaths and complications are easily avoidable,” said Sedgh, the study’s lead author.

Unfortunately, abortion criminalizing organizations prefer to spin their propaganda.

Merci to AntoniaZ who provided links to the news realease from the January 16 anti-abortion campaign.