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.

Religious Influence + Weaponry = Terrorism?

In the comments after this post on "honour" killings, brebis noire says among other things that one "can read much of the Old Testament as a recipe for mass genocide."

Islamophobes like Mark Steyn and Kathy Shaidle are prone to screeching and shrieking variations of 'moozlim extremism' whenever it suits their respective political (rightwing neocon) and personal (revenue-generating) agendas.

It seems though that using a work of literature declared "holy" by a particular religious institution or corporation as template for plotting acts of vengeance, fury and violence is nothing new. Religious texts can be exploited as the ideological justification for crusaders' rampage against those labeled pagans, heathens or infidels or blamed as the source for inciting terrorism.

It would be a challenge to identify how - and if - reading the Bible was a determinant factor in the reasoning, as it were, for Howard Barton Unruh's well-planned killing spree on September 6 1949.

Unruh killed five men, five women as well as three young children in New Jersey's Camden area.

An honourably discharged World War II combat veteran and pharmacy student, he had kept a journal of his intended victims for up to a year before the shootings. Those he killed were either intentionally targeted, or were merely unlucky enough to have been in his way.

An expert marksman, Unruh executed his massacre plot in the blue-collar neighbourhood with calm precision. Those he gunned down included a cobbler, a barber, some neighbours who had complained about him playing loud music, and a three-year-old boy peeking out of a window.

A tailor on Unruh's death-list had left his shop on an errand, so he shot the man's bride of six weeks instead, ignoring her pleas for her life.

Unruh - who had been sharing an apartment with his mother at the time of the massacre - told police he was convinced his neighbours were plotting against him. ...

He was described as a recluse who liked to read the Bible and had a passion for guns.

Once more, inspired by Steyn's pithy observation: "Must be convenient to have a [biblical] code that obliges all your pathologies."

Raped for being a lesbian ...

And killed, as in the case of Eudy Simelane.

As well as being one of South Africa's best-known female footballers, Simelane was a voracious equality rights campaigner and one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in Kwa Thema.

Her brutal murder took place last April, and since then a tide of violence against lesbian women in South Africa has continued to rise. Human rights campaigners say it is characterised by what they call "corrective rape" committed by men behind the guise of trying to "cure" lesbian women of their sexual orientation.

Now, a report by the international NGO ActionAid, backed by the South African Human Rights Commission, condemns the culture of impunity around these crimes, which it says are going unrecognised by the state and unpunished by the legal system.

The mindset and beliefs that support these forms of targeted violence are found anywhere where hatred against women exists in the mind of misogynist men. This happened a few months ago, near San Francisco, a North American city where it would seemingly be safe to be honest about one's sexual orientation.

The 28-year-old victim was attacked on December 13 in Richmond after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. Police said the attackers made comments indicating they knew the woman, who lives openly with her female partner, was a lesbian.

The attack began when one of the men approached the woman, struck her with a blunt object and ordered her to strip. He then sexually assaulted her with the help of the others, according to detectives. When the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building.

She was raped again inside and outside the vehicle and left naked outside the building while her attackers took her wallet and drove off in her car, police said.

Heterosexuality is no protection against sexual assault however. If a group of men terrorize, sexually torture and assault a woman to teach her a lesson, those religious and cultural values that fuel their rage and hatred must be addressed and put on trial, just as its enforcers should be.

As it is with pedophile priests, the common element in these crimes is the institutional validation of the power to control and harm women and children.

A Real Compliant and Malleable Doll™

Via feministing and The Globe and Mail, a news item about a female robot.

Mr. Trung's next goal for Project Aiko is to get her walking. But that would cost thousands of dollars. Until an investor comes calling, he plans to keep working on what he calls his biggest achievement to date.

"She can work 24 hours, no break, no pay and she won't ask for a raise," he says. "That's okay for a home budget."

There is no doubt in my mind that the business vultures are circling the Brampton, Ontario inventor of this robot at this very moment, offering him lucrative incentives to sell them his product so they can further develop her, repackage her and market her as the ultimate sexually abusable sex toy. For more information about this industry, check out Real Doll™ and BoyToy™.

And once the buyers of this robot get bored with inflicting various violent acts upon her and not obtaining the thrill that terror-filled eyes, screams and blood can procure them, they will move on to live human victims. And keep the robot to clean up after their mess, of course.

"Live Free Or Die!"

“Live free or die!” - with the emphasis on “DIE!” if you become a target for fundamentalist right-wing extremists. Yes, this post is about the US, or as some call it, the Excited States of America.

In the past year, we have written about anti-choice terrorism aka murderous fetus fetishists. The bombing of women’s clinics and the assassination of their doctors is not a topic that lends itself to humour. However, an unassuming little US blog has done the heavy lifting for us, here.

While most Conservatives are thrilled with the Supreme Courts 2nd amendment decision, some groups are very concerned. According to the Pro-Life Action League’s Eric Scheidler “The last thing we want is abortion doctors with a means of self defense.”

The Pro-Life Action League does not participate in violence against abortion providers or women’s health clinics, it’s spokesman Steve Klaske confirmed, “We feel that our more extreme Pro-Life brothers in arms could be in danger if abortion doctors are allowed to carry guns.” … Klaske went on to say the Pro-Life Action League would support legislation allowing the unborn to “pack heat”. According to the Pro-Life Action League, “The womb is a home and the fetus has a 2nd amendment right to defend its self.”

Read more.

First posted at Birth Pangs.