The Best Argument For Comprehensive SexEd In Canadian Schools

Once upon a time in the Dominion of Canada, there were abortion bans and criminal restrictions, imposed by legislation and enforced by police.

Some effects of these laws were as follows:

They ignored utero-human needs and were done without consultation of the populace affected.
They showed utero-humans, by law, the only real life value of a utero-human was expressed in their fertility and that fertility must be controlled by the state.
They killed utero-humans who desperately resorted to unsafe abortion methods.
They criminalized utero-humans whose only crime was being pregnant
They caused humiliation, scorn and shunning of utero-humans forced to continue pregnancy but not owning a wedding ring.
They caused harmful medical conditions and killed utero-humans whose forced pregnancies went biologically crippling and literally toxic
They caused utero-humans forced to continue unwanted pregnancy to drop out of education and/or employment.
They targeted utero-humans and their families who were financially disadvantaged, because evidence abounds that economically-advantaged people simply ignored the laws and had safe abortions by means of money and complicit medical staff.
They forced babies onto families already stressed by economics and other factors, closing options for betterment of the already living.
They caused utero-humans to wedlock with penile-humans they really didn't want to life partner with, but couldn't afford societal shunning; resulting in familial misery that washed over onto children in the situation.
They forced utero-humans to continue pregnancies started by rape.
They forced utero-humans whose *wanted* pregnancies had turned biologically lethal/non-viable to continue pregnancy, no matter the wasteful, costly threat to their lives and families.
They forced utero-humans to continue pregnancy, survive childbirth and then surrender the resulting baby to adoption, where, if it wasn't immediately adopted, became a ward of the foster system or orphanages, with all the hazards attached thereto.
They granted legal control over pregnant utero-humans to everyone but the utero-humans themselves. Often, 'everyone' meant 'penile-human'.

The overall effect of these laws is as follows:

THEY.DIDN'T.STOP.ABORTION. They only took away the right of utero-humans to legally and safely control their own bodies, lives and decisions.

Once upon a more recent time in Canada, those laws were finally and totally struck down, returning legal, safe control over their own bodies to utero-humans inside Canada's boundaries.

Look around at the amazingly unremarkable nation that survives in the wake of that. The quiet has maddened some.  But these Retroactors realize they're getting little traction with the adults who remember the 'When There Were Laws' bloody times, so, naturally, they're now going after the young and uninformed.

Unlike Catholic schools (mostly, but check the '6th to last' paragraph), where class credits can be gained from voluntold staffing of forced-pregnancy protests, and evangelical Protestant schools; students in Canadian public schools must have their public sidewalks turned into a target of freeze peaches in hopes of finding teenagers to plump forced pregnancy promoters' ranks.

Mostly, public school students roll their eyes and walk past the Usual Suspects, but this is an In-Your-Face vector of misinformation and oft-debunked lies.

The easiest way to innoculate young people against Arguing From Feelings and Faith is evidenced-based sexuality and reproductive education, with age-appropriate levels of actual sexual reality from elementary to high school.  (emphasis mine)

Don't wait until secondary education, it's not always an option for teenagers. Walking in to college and work environments without a grounding in sexuality and reproduction leaves teenagers and young adults having to ascend the Mt. Everest of sexuality learning curve without informing oxygen, when they could be focused on fearless learning and doing.

Sexually developing kids are under primal physical and psychological stress while shifting to adult.  It makes them vulnerable to exploiters and 'caretaker' claims about the world. Fall down on arming kids with reality and facts and critical thinking and you leave them swinging in the wind, unsafe, able to be harmed by the accusations mounted by the Just-So Feelings brigades.

Those accusations, touted by adults, inform school bullying of many stripes, escalating into the greater community, up to and including laws that deny rights to the humans and society we *have*, while praising Dystopian Up Is Down Fantasy Islands of those invested in fear and servitude.

Canada's 26 years without forced pregnancy laws is an evidenced signpost that abortion is a practical, private choice between a utero-human and medical support.  For those that weren't born before those years and don't understand the consequences of the aggressive push to return to laws as in the past, look South of the Medicine Line and gaze your fill.

Gaze upon those American laws Pro-Liferating (puns for Namos) to restrict the lives of utero-humans,  those desperate utero-humans and their allies fighting to keep the criminalizing nets from tightening, those growing underground networks to defy high sounding but bad law to support utero-humans' control of their lives.

Make no mistake, the same forced-pregnancy groups in the US are inside our borders, sharing funding. Canada's law-free quiet is the beacon that shines on their lies.  We're not perfect. Canadian access to safe abortion must still be improved, but the US pregnancy panic is the fate that awaits Canada the moment we forget how blackly despair can settle onto a utero-human's psyche when pregnancy is proved and they are now a disposable being in the eyes of their society's laws.

That is reality. Teach your children well.

PS: For those wondering at my choice of 'utero-human', remember, not all women have a uterus and fertile ova and not all men don't.  I also think sometimes, the mere use of the word 'woman' in a conversation flips some switch inside people's internalizations to marginalize associated concepts, so let's see if it makes any difference to mindsets.

Religion-based hate crimes against women...

This happened.

The leader of a dissident Amish sect was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in prison for a series of bizarre beard- and hair-cutting attacks on other Ohio Amish that drew national attention.

Samuel Mullet Sr., 67, the leader, was sentenced in Federal District Court in Cleveland for coordinating assaults that prosecutors argued were motivated by religious intolerance. Fifteen of his followers, including six women, were given lesser sentences, ranging from one year and one day to seven years.

The breakaway Amish were convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy and hate crimes, which carry harsher punishment than simple assault.

Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence for Mr. Mullet. Defense lawyers claimed the government was blowing out of proportion personal vendettas that Mr. Mullet harbored against former followers and other critics, and thus did not deserve a long sentence.

[...]Judge Dan Aaron Polster told Mr. Mullet and his co-defendants that they were being punished for depriving victims of a constitutional right, religious freedom, whose fruits they enjoyed themselves as Amish through exemptions from jury service and other laws.

The trial of the 16 defendants, including three of Mr. Mullet’s sons, unveiled a tiny sect in thrall to its leader, who in the name of purity abolished Sunday church services and punished men for ogling non-Amish women by confining them to chicken coops. Testimony also detailed how Mr. Mullet pressured married female followers to have sex with him, including a daughter-in-law.

[...]In handing Mr. Mullet 15 years, Judge Polster said he oversaw his flock with “an iron hand” and that he was “a danger to the community.”

Could abortion criminalizers who justify their violent actions with their own twisted interpretations of religious text, be prosecuted for their hate crimes against women who choose to terminate a pregnancy, and their health care professionals who provide medical support?

Some of the more extreme antiChoice terrorists have been brought to justice, but those who incite them to such actions, remain at large.

What if the sustained campaign of threats and legal intimidation carried on by fundamentalist christian politicians as well as failed ones like Randall Terry were scrutinized under the laws that brought Mullet to trial?

I wonder if there's a district attorney anywhere in the US brave enough to go down that road?

Asking a Clear Question: Who Decides?

This question should be included in every abortion poll.

Republicans for Choice wanted to know: Who decides?

"Regardless of how you personally feel about the issue of abortion," the polls, which surveyed 1,000 adults, asks, "who do you believe should have the right to make that decision regarding whether to have an abortion… [?] should the woman, her family and her doctor make the decision or should the government make the decision?"

Predictably, 89 percent of Democrats believed "strongly" that the woman should decide.

More remarkably, 71 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of independents also believed strongly that the woman should decide. An additional 10 percent of Republicans believed "not strongly" that the woman should decide, and a total of 81 percent who identified as "pro-life" responded that the woman should decide.

"We challenge ALL national pollsters to include this main question (Q1) in all of their surveys to test the validity of this outcome," Republicans for Choice said in a press statement.

The results portray a much different picture from that of a Gallup poll in May, which found pro-choice identification at its lowest point - 41 percent - since Gallup began asking respondents to label themselves.

Here's the Gallup poll from May that had fetus fetishists crowing in glee. It asked people their 'self-identified position' on abortion.

'Pro-choice' and 'pro-life' have become such loaded and muddied terms that in 2010 NPR changed its policy on language.

"NPR News is revising the terms we use to describe people and groups involved in the abortion debate.

This updated policy is aimed at ensuring the words we speak and write are as clear, consistent and neutral as possible. This is important given that written text is such an integral part of our work.

On the air, we should use "abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)" and "abortion rights opponent(s)" or derivations thereof (for example: "advocates of abortion rights"). It is acceptable to use the phrase "anti-abortion", but do not use the term "pro-abortion rights".

Digital News will continue to use the AP style book for online content, which mirrors the revised NPR policy.

Do not use "pro-life" and "pro-choice" in copy except when used in the name of a group. Of course, when the terms are used in an actuality they should remain." [An actuality is a clip of tape of someone talking. So if a source uses those terms, NPR will not edit them out.]

'Clear, consistent, and neutral' is essential for reporting. It is also essential in polling.

The ReThuglicans are shovelling shit against the tide on this issue. When will they wake up? After they get slaughtered in the next election?

Pro-choice in Egypt

There's been much discussion since January 25th about the role of women in a democratically engaged Egypt. During the peaceful, millions-strong demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square and across the country, women participated next to their confrères.

Unfortunately last week, the ugly despotic face of institutionalized gynophobia appeared in the form of thugs sent to harass women demonstrating in Tahrir.

The fight to achieve human rights for all - women and men - is ongoing in Egypt, just as women as experiencing push-back in many countries around the world, including Canada.

And now that Stockwell Day is abandoning the Harper Regime, who will Faytene "Serena Joy" Kryskow use as her wing man when she flashes her *all-access-pass* on Parliament Hill to lobby politicians and advance her evangelical cause?

On a deeper optimistic note, here's a blogpost that has waited for a good time to be shared with our readers. From monasah: I was created with love.

The story of how I was conceived:

I was created with love. I was born while my dad was in prison. He was sentenced to spend 5 years in prison because he was part of a communist group opposing Mobarak and his regime.

When the verdict came, my mother was not in Egypt. Their friends managed to hide him away and bring them together before he goes to prison. Mama knew Baba will be away for years. They both wanted a baby girl and she thought that having a baby would soften the coming years with out him. So they hid away, took their time in creating me and in bidding each other farewell.

When they were certain my mother was pregnant in me, my dad went and turned himself in. [...]

Do something every day which honours women and brings each one closer to the respect of her human rights.

Walk for Choice

Yesterday, in addition to the rallies -- universally ignored by the MSM -- held all over the US in solidarity with the Pizza Revolution, there were also lots of 'Walk for Choice' events. And such actions are increasingly necessary as the ReThugs ramp up their War on Women.

I just found a site loaded with pix of great pro-choice signs.

This is my fave.

Choice: the gift of life and love.

Blob Blogging Wingnut probably believes Kristine Casey's gift was an abomination - SHE has produced shrieeeking diatribes about assisted reproduction in the past, so it's unlikely that HER so-called *pro-life* ideology includes Casey's choice.

Kristine Casey accepted to become impregnated with, and carry her daughter's fetus to term.

From here:

Almost 39 weeks ago, Kristine Casey set out on an unusual journey to help her daughter and answer a spiritual calling. Her goal was achieved late Wednesday when she gave birth to her own grandson at age 61.

Casey, possibly the oldest woman to give birth in Illinois, served as a surrogate for her daughter, Sara Connell, who had been trying for years to have a baby. Connell and her husband, Bill, are the biological parents of the child Casey carried, which grew from an embryo created from the Chicago couple's egg and sperm. [...]

The Connells decided in 2004 to try to have a baby, but Sara, now 35, soon discovered she wasn't ovulating. After undergoing infertility treatment at the Reproductive Medicine Institute in Evanston, she got pregnant but delivered stillborn twins, and later she suffered a miscarriage.

Kristine Casey chose to provide the physical, emotional and spiritual environment that her daughter and son-in-law's fetus needed to develop to term, and to give life to her grandchild. Modern medical science can be astounding - but not as amazing as a gestating woman extending the range of her procreative power.

Unfortunately, this event occurred in a country that may give religious zealots permission to murder doctors who provide medical care for women who need to terminate a pregnancy.

Today's whining over at Blob Blogging Wingnut.

SUZIE-CAPS-ON! gets all whiny and preachy today as she provides her own fabulation / interpretation of Rob's misgivings at The Abortion Gang. He's upset at Emily Bazelon who wrote a well-balanced report for the NYTimes: The New Abortion Providers. I think that it's excellent journalism, with in-depth historical background and insightful portraits of the physicians who ensure that contraception and pregnancy termination are taught in medical schools, and they are provided to their patients as important elements in a primary health care model.

Rob was disturbed that Bazelon wrote that money for fellowship program which funds two or three years of seed money for abortion training for OB-GYN residents at medical schools (58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada have received financing) comes from one foundation and from one family. But Pro-Lies and other abortion-criminalizing groups are aware this funding is given by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. As well, he feels that she has irresponsibly exposed the people she interviewed to harm, and the universities to harassment.

I disagree; paragraphs such as these, given the danger and threats posed to physicians by rabid extremist zygote zealots (which STE-NITOUCHE deplores but always justifies) were surely vetted with the potential targets of anti-abortion violence.

Many of the two dozen young doctors I talked to for this article were similarly conflicted. They wanted to talk about their work. They see it as part of making abortion mainstream. But the murder of Dr. George Tiller last year scared them.

One 33-year-old family-medicine doctor I met in Rochester drives 90 miles each week to perform abortions at a clinic in Syracuse. She is pregnant with her third child, and she asked me not to use her name after her father insisted that she’d be putting herself and her kids at risk.

Still, at her Episcopal church, where she feels safe, she is open about what she does. “When people are surprised, I say, ‘Yes, a Christian can also be an abortion provider,’ ” she told me.

The honest descriptions of behind-the-scenes reality Bazelon presents are authentic and faithful to the lives of women and respectful of the choices they make, physicians, care-givers and patients alike.

Yet Blob Blogging Wingnut perorates:

"It seems that they take it for granted that "objective" media is about serving ideological ends, not giving all sides of the story. Shocking, isn't it?"

What's really "shocking" is that SUZIE-CAPS-ON! does not attack the NYTimes article. And that's because it's more than HER capacity to spin dogmatic truthiness and religious propaganda can handle.

On 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life'

Alison in the comments here reminds me of a post I've been meaning to write.

In a discussion of the terms 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice' at the Left-Wing Fringe Group Called 'Women' on Facebook, I said:

On 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice', all news orgs should follow NPR's lead on this. I'm OK with being called an abortion rights supporter or whatever. As long as the fetus fetishists lose 'pro-life'.

Here's the link to NPR.

This updated policy is aimed at ensuring the words we speak and write are as clear, consistent and neutral as possible. This is important given that written text is such an integral part of our work.

On the air, we should use "abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)" and "abortion rights opponent(s)" or derivations thereof (for example: "advocates of abortion rights"). It is acceptable to use the phrase "anti-abortion", but do not use the term "pro-abortion rights".

Around the anti-abortion bunfest in Ottawa, I collected some headlines from MSM outfits.

Here the Toronto Star uses 'pro-life' but it is a letter to the editor and the writer of it uses the phrase.

A National Post column has this title: Sense of momentum bolsters pro-life rally.

The Ottawa Citizen has Thousands gather for pro-life rally on Parliament Hill.

And an article in the Toronto Sun has 'US anti-abortion group pleased with Canada' (and doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart?)

CTV covered the die-in protest at Bev Odious's office with Pro-choice protest and XTRA had Pro-choice supporters make presence felt at the National March for Life.

Here at DJ! of course we will continue to refer to the two sides as 'fetus fetishists/zygote zealots/braindead' and 'the sane people' but then we're hardly mainstream.

Despite the Manning Centre's Wishful Thinking. . .

Canada is pro-choice and socially liberal.

And a new poll demonstrates it again.

According to an EKOS survey provided exclusively to The Globe, 52 per cent of Canadians describe themselves as “pro-choice;” 27 per cent say they are “pro-life;” 10 per cent chose “neither” and 11 per cent opted for “do not know or no response.”

The long-dormant abortion issue popped up earlier this year after the government announced that maternal health in the developing world would be a key priority for the G8 meetings hosted by Canada this year. This week U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged the Conservative government’s view that such an agenda could be addressed without including abortion as part of the options for women.

EKOS pollster Frank Graves says these Canadian numbers are virtually unchanged from 10 years ago. He also says this latest survey challenges the theory put forward by the Manning Center that Canadians are becoming more small-c conservative on social issues like abortion.

The right-leaning think tank’s survey, released last month, found 60 per cent of Canadians strongly agree that abortion is morally wrong. It also concluded that the “political centre” in Canada is becoming more conservative.

The fact the EKOS poll asks the same question as one posed 10 years ago shows there is no movement on abortion, Mr. Graves says.

In his news release, the pollster hints that he is working on research that could counter the Manning Centre’s theory that Canadians are becoming more conservative generally.

“We are not yet in a position to consolidate our research, but the early evidence suggests that on issues of social behaviour, the trend seems to be, if anything, in the opposite direction,” he states. “When measured over time, we have found that on indicators such as same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of marijuana, and capital punishment, Canadians are becoming less conservative, not more.”

Suck it up, TheoCons.

Pro-choice Payback Time

Katha Pollitt has an excellent point (emphasis mine).

If healthcare reform becomes law, you can thank prochoicers. In the end, forced to decide between sacrificing abortion coverage and voting down coverage of everything else for 30 million people, abortion-rights supporters took the hit. Prochoice representatives, who had vowed to vote against any bill that restricted access to abortion more than the infamous Hyde Amendment has already done, will have reversed themselves and voted for it. (Don't kid yourselves, the Senate bill is a major blow to abortion rights. As antichoice evangelical David Gushee told followers stuck on Stupak: "Accept victory while you can get it.") NARAL, Planned Parenthood and NOW stepped back. You can call prochoice leaders hypocritical or cowardly or feeble or excessively deferential to the president's agenda. But one thing you can't call them is selfishly obsessed with their own political purity. That would be the antichoicers--the Catholic bishops, Bart Stupak, Ben Nelson. They were the big evil babies who were willing to let millions suffer and 45,000 people die every year unless they got to deprive women of their reproductive rights.

She goes on to list some proposed or stalled legislation and programs in areas like pay equity, maternal health, reproductive health for poor people, and so on that the Obama administration could get to work on to pay back the prochoice forces who saved his butt.

If I were living in the Excited States, I'd be emailing Nancy Fucking Pelosi -- first female Speaker of the House -- hourly.

And, oh, boo-hoo, Big Evil Baby Stupak has been deemed a turncoat by the fetus fetishists and they are not going to give him the coveted *cough* Defender of Life award.

Med Students Organize Pro-Choice Event

Remember Medical students for choice ? I decided to check up on them to see what was new at their website and found this.

Faith in Choice: A Perspective Panel

Penn State is undergoing curriculum reform to incorporate abortion education. We are located in rural Pennsylvania, and operate in a very conservative environment where anti-choice sentiment is pervasive and sometimes hostile. To disprove the misconception that Americans of faith are unanimously opposed to reproductive freedom, we wanted medical students to hear an underrepresented voice in the ongoing abortion debate.

I contacted many local congregations for speakers. We were fortunate to find wonderful panelists from Episcopalian, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist backgrounds that were both impassioned and informed on the issue of reproductive choice. We advertised with printed posters around campus and had digital posters emailed to the first- and second-year medical students. We also sent email invitations to members of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith-based student organizations, the Women's Health Interest Group, and the chaplains of our medical center.

The Rabbi gave an analysis of abortion in ancient Hebrew scripture, and the application of scripture in modern day Judaism. The Reverend shared her personal experience with a complicated pregnancy, and the emotional process of considering abortion. The Father discussed his personal experience with interfaith reproductive health initiatives, and the social/political components of this issue.

What an admirable initiative. I'll do some research to see how Canadian medical students for choice are raising awareness with their peers and colleagues.

Medical Students for Choice.

The United States and Canada face a dangerous shortage of trained abortion providers. In 2000, 87% of the counties in the United States had no provider*. The “graying” of current providers (57% of whom are over the age of 50, violence that targets physicians, and restrictive legislation threaten to drive these numbers even lower. In addition, medical schools are simply not addressing the topic; most physicians are graduating with little more than circumstantial knowledge of abortion.

From Medical Students for Choice.

Not all schools or faculties of medicine provide a curriculum that allows their students to acquire, along with the anatomical, physiological and pathological dimensions of reproductive health, knowledge regarding all aspects of contraception in order to address the needs of their male and female patients.

The reasons why schools don't provide comprehensive family planning education go beyond simple time-management issues. For one thing, the same relentless pressure from the anti-choice movement that plagues practicing abortion providers is also directed at medical schools. Susan Wicklund, a Montana OB-GYN and author of "This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor," says, "I've witnessed pressure by antiabortion groups on administrators and professors in medical schools not to discuss abortion. There's the threat of being picketed or boycotted at the school itself if they do any teaching of abortion." Says Creinin, "For anything that creates controversy, it's easy for a med school to say, 'Look, it's not worth it.'"

Furthermore, Backus points out, "Part of it also is that largely in medicine, being equally focused on the full range of women's healthcare needs is still a struggle. What I still hear from medical students is, they get two to three hours on Viagra and half an hour on every contraceptive method combined. That's the reality in American medical education."

That's even more troubling in light of research that shows exposure to comprehensive family planning education, including abortion, is a strong predictor of whether a medical student will go on to become a provider. Says Creinin, "Some residents that come in conflicted, most of them get an idea of what it really is. They realize it's an important part of learning how to be a complete physician." Carolyn's experience bears this out. "I wasn't sure how I'd feel when I saw [an abortion], or if I really wanted to polarize my life that way," she says. But after "meeting the women who came to that clinic, hearing about their lives, counseling them through the procedures -- I can't imagine not doing abortions." That decisive experience, it's important to note, did not come from her school's medical program. "All of my abortion training prior to residency was through elective extracurricular work."

From here.

Sigh. I checked their messaging page and discovered that the information about Canadian abortion services and support was wrong. *The medical termination of pregnancy is available in nine provinces and one territory.* I wrote to them, offered the correction, as well as a source for precise pro-choice information in Canada.

Pro-Choice Panda

Thanks to Dr Pale at A Creative Revolution for turning me on to Onion News Network.

Fireworks

Memories. JJ tweaks a few chords as she recaps the pomp and fury generated by The Fetus©™ fetishists' MASSIVE melt-down around this time last year.

It's been a month now since Dr Tiller was publicly executed during Sunday worship at his church by a rabid anti-abortion fanatic.

The pro-lies crusaders soldier on, a range of christian denominations loosely connected by their misogyny, their homophobia, their persecution complex and their adherence to fundamentalist religious ideology.

The testerical bloggers at SoWrongOrNuts have declared War against everyone who believes in / follows a moral compass that's not been enshrined by the Vatican Taliban. In other news, US president Obama is scheduled to meet the Pope on July 10 after a G-8 meeting in Europe. Carol Marin, a respected career journalist and recipient of numerous prestigious awards wrote about this meeting for the Chicago Sun-Times:

Pro-choice President Obama goes to the Vatican next month to meet pro-life Pope Benedict. "The Vatican has been seeking common ground with Obama, although some American Catholic bishops have been hostile to his administration," the AP reported.

Let's pray that the spirit of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin fills the room ... Bernardin and Obama, despite a deep difference on abortion, shared much: Chicago. A commitment to dialogue. And a belief that common ground can be found even across the most fractured fault lines of faith and belief.

But it's treacherous territory.

A vivid demonstration of why that territory is so fractured and treacherous can be read in Tom Roeser's response to Marin's column.

"Not only is the Sun-Times’ Carol Marin a whimpering, simpering ultra-lefty, she is a hard-eyed propagandist calling herself Catholic who adroitly suffocates the truth. 'Pro-choice President Obama goes to the Vatican next month to meet pro-life Pope Benedict.' Wrong. Obama is not pro-choice. He is the most pro-abort president we have ever had ..."

More in the same loathsome vein follows. Vile pro-lies malevolence festers on in the US. According to the scribes of the shrieeeking hordes however, it's "law-abiding" - let's pause for a moment to let the irony of that sink in - abortion criminalizers who are being victimized, being as their tactics, weapons and intentions are as pure and innocent as The Fetus©™ they fetishize.

Top photo from pollywog.

Spin and shrieeekkk watch.

Pro-choice supporters advocates have allowed to a certain extent pro-lies zealots to set the terms of an 'abortion vs no abortion' orthodoxy.

Because abortion-criminalizers are rigid, absolute, dogmatic, uncompromising, and extreme in their ideological discourse, pro-choice individuals and organizations have articulated and developed official positions that offer the same political intransigeance, as counter-weight.

Frances Kissling - you may remember her from this - raises some challenging and complex questions in the first part of an essay posted at Salon.

We are pro-life to the extent that we do not want to abuse or harm living things if we can avoid it. That at least is our ideal -- which we then regularly violate with war, torture, the death penalty, and the callous way in which we deny those in need healthcare, food, shelter and education. Still, I realize that expressing pro-life values, when you're pro-choice, is much more complicated. The fact that the fetus resides in the body of a woman requires special consideration of her rights.

Protecting the fetus in any way comes with a cost that only women can bear. But I have come to believe that women's autonomy does not require that all efforts be made to protect women from pain or from hearing the word "no." The Supreme Court attempted to balance women's autonomy and respect for life in Roe [vs Wade] by allowing states to "proscribe abortion [after viability] except when it is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother."

These are valid considerations in the US where the laws are different. In Canada, the termination of a pregnancy has been for over 20 years a strictly medical intervention regulated by the health care system. Yet we know for a fact that access to first-trimester abortion is not quickly nor easily available in all jurisdictions and that has consequences for women's reproductive health as well as their choices.

It's safe to predict that Blob Blogging Wingnut and other fetus fetishists will prevaricate and spin snippets of Kissling's reflection while ignoring its resolutely pro-choice foundation. SHE has sneered and twisted HER own meaning from such iconoclastic musings before - it may be the fact that Kissling is a former president of Catholics for Choice that gets HER knickers in knots.

In parting, we at DAMMIT JANET! support Emma the Embryo and her perspective, as drawn below by Alison at her own blogsite Creekside.

O'Reilly smack-down.

Earlier this week I offered the opinion that O'Reilly would turn down the volume on the inflammatory words he expressed towards Dr Tiller, before his public assassination.

I was wrong. This is what happened:

O'Reilly had the opportunity to apologize for his words, and he didn't. He had the opportunity to say that this tragic outcome was something about which he felt sorry. He didn't. When restraint and perspective were called for, he fanned the flames higher. In fact, on his June 1 "Talking Points," he played the martyr, saying his critics were seeking to stifle any criticism of "people like Tiller -- that and hating Fox News is the real agenda here." On his show the next day ... he again called a murdered man "Dr. Killer."

Those are the observations of Mary Alice Carr, vice president of communications for NARAL Pro-Choice New York. She was invited by the producers to appear on O'Reilly's show; she said she would not and explained:

" ...when an O'Reilly producer called and asked me to come on the show to 'discuss the reasons why women have late-term abortions,' I held fast to my pledge. I told his producer what I thought: that I had had that conversation on air with O'Reilly five years earlier and that he agreed with me at the time that the decision was between a woman and her doctor. That O'Reilly then went on to pretend we had never talked about it and continued condemning women and doctors.

That the nation and those of us in the pro-choice community are reeling from the murder of a doctor who helped women. That we hold O'Reilly responsible for helping to create a climate in which hate was allowed to fester. That I refused to dignify his irresponsible behavior, not to mention his deplorable reaction to Tiller's shooting."

Although Carr had second thoughts, eventually she came to this conclusion:

"What an opportunity, I thought, to sit across from O'Reilly and call him out for what he has done and where his responsibility lies. To speak for everyone in America who is hurt and scared and angry. I have never been a Fox News hater; clearly, I've used the show for the benefit of my movement and my organization, and I've answered his questions on some of the toughest issues around. Didn't I have the right to also call him out for his speech?

But then I realized I just couldn't. Because if the murder of a man in a house of worship wasn't enough to make Bill O'Reilly repent, what hope did I have?"