First, do no harm...

Upon successfully completing their basic training, and before they take on the years of residency that will allow them to practice their science, skills and craft in a medical specialty of their choice, medical students pledge to the principals of the Hippocratic Oath*.

In Ontario, the specific application of that pledge came under scrutiny in the last year with regard to women's reproductive health rights. In its modern form, the Oath is centred upon patient care. "... Above all, I must not play at God."

DJ! has been covering this issue from the outset, here, and here. 

Ontario’s new policy is unlikely to put the discussion to rest, said Carolyn McLeod, professor of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. Patients, particularly women, will undoubtedly find it troubling if a doctor refuses their request for birth control. Doctors who object to abortion might feel uncomfortable or complicit providing patients with a referral, but setting out a clearer policy could help connect patients to care providers who can best serve their needs, Prof. McLeod said.

“To receive abortion care from somebody who is morally opposed to abortion, I think, is harmful,” she said. “I think for patients’ sake, if for no one else’s, there should be the ability for the provider to give the referral.”

Ontario’s new policy has not yet been finalized and could still be changed, depending on what the college hears during the feedback period.

Marc Gabel, former president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, said doctors could face disciplinary action if they do not comply with the new guidelines and cannot use unfounded medical reasons to withhold birth control, abortions, vasectomies, blood transfusions or other treatments.

“What we’re trying to do, I think, is set a tone to remind physicians and the public we will act professionally in ensuring their access to care and their safety,” Dr. Gabel said.

From here.

This vivid graphic

accompanied anti-Choice Pro-lies groups spin on the 'debate'.  This is their response to regulatory bodies reminding anti-Choice physicians of their professional obligations, responsibilities and duties.

No matter how the fetushists and their acolytes spin their concerns, the basis for their shrieking is fundamentally religious. Yes, a professional can abstain from engaging in activities that compromise her/his beliefs. There are nonetheless job requirements that require that she/he assist a patient in finding a practitioner who will care for, and address the needs of that patient in a timely manner. 

If Gawd-worshippy physicians won't do this, let them move on to a medical specialty or a practice where they won't be tempted to play at being Gawd.

*In my research, I came across this interesting opinion piece about the Oath. There's a relevant point about abortion.

No Country for Old White Men

Or, Point and Laugh.

A group of former Liberal backbenchers is blasting Justin Trudeau’s “discriminatory” decision to call on all party MPs to vote in favour of abortion rights in Canada.

Many (most?) of these pathetic old misogynists and homophobes are former members of Liberals for Life, aka the Gang that Prompted Jean Chrétien to Over-ride Riding Association Takeovers Nominations.

Chief among them, of course, is Tom Wappel, an execrable POS if there ever was one. (Really, check the Wiki entry.)

Here at DJ! we're no great fans of Justin Trudeau, but you gotta love this.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, faced with an open letter from seven former Liberal MPs denouncing him for his stance on abortion, tweeted that the days "when old men get to decide what a woman does with her body are long gone."

True that those days are long gone, but those who can't accept it refuse to give up. So, the fight continues. Rallies across Canada for expanded and improved abortion access are planned for tomorrow, Saturday, September 20.

h/t for illustration.

Stories from the NB abortion clinic

At DAMMIT JANET! we have posted much about choice and abortion rights.  FH and I started off at _Birth Pangs_ over 7 years ago, writing about the erosion of women's reproductive choices and our human right to control every aspect of our sexualities and procreation potential.

Since founding DJ! we have expanded our feminist scrutiny to other current concerns, while offering our criticism, our support and our activism. 

But like salmon swimming against the current we are compelled to return to violence against women and reproductive choices; wife battering (as we called it then), rape, contraception and abortion were the hot-button issues in the 1970s and it would seem Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose...

There are two pieces that I posted that are fundamental to understanding - at the very least - abortion access as harm reduction.

Why a coat-hanger as a pro-choice meme?

No-choice Vulture Culture: Let women die or go to prison.

The one that I have yet to write would be a recollection of miscarriage, pregnancy and abortion.  Inspired by the courage of the New Brunswick woman who generously shared with DJ! the account below, I might do that soon.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"I found out that I was pregnant the day after Boxing Day. I was 5 days late for my period. I was NEVER late. I was also in the throes of parenting a 3-­year-­old boy. This coupled with the fact that I had been suffering from a terrible bout of depression and anxiety—a mental challenge that resulted from juggling my intensive role as a full-­time stay-­at-­home mom, while working remotely for a feminist maternal academic organization and publishing. It seems that not only had the bitter loneliness of being a stay-­at-­home mom and remote worker had gotten to me, but I had also started to ignore the strategies and activities that I had previously used to combat stress, such as running, weight lifting and yoga, started drinking more, and literally succumbed to the very notion of intensive mothering practices—the practices that I had been critiquing through graduate school and beyond.

When I peed on that stick, I instantly knew that I would have an abortion. Although I loved my son, the post-­partum period was less than ideal. You know that old saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’? Well, I was still searching for that village. The experience of motherhood had felt less like a village and more like a stranded island—where I had no hope of being of rescued from. I often felt very alone and had very little support (if any at all) from my family and my husband’s family lived too far away. My husband and I had decided very early on that we only wanted one child. We could deal with one. Anything above that might send me over the edge. 

I can clearly recall the sound that I made when I saw that plus sign. It was the sound of complete disappointment and sadness. My son was in the bathroom at that time. I remember my husband quickly scurrying him away as I wept on the toilet for what seemed like hours. How could I let this happen? We weren’t using birth control at the time. We were not being safe for a really long time. 

When I called the clinic, I was 6 weeks pregnant. The woman on the other end of the phone scheduled my appointment for the following Tuesday. She told me that the procedure would cost about $800. Ouch! Knowing what I knew about the public system (I spent my final year of my undergraduate degree studying public and private abortion systems in NB), I could not go through the hoops that were required for a publicly[-­funded] abortion. I was not in the mood to be possibly judged by my family doctor and being forced to endure horrendously long wait times while I continued to experience excruciating morning sickness. 

I was extremely lucky that one of my closest friends worked as a nurse at the abortion clinic. On the morning of my appointment, she picked me up in her car. I distinctly recall bursting into tears as soon as I closed the car door. I was utterly terrified. Although I knew that I needed to do this for my own mental health, I did not do well with medical situations in general. For years, I avoided medical professionals because of a debilitating case of White Coat Syndrome. I delivered my son with the assistance of midwives, so I had not seen a doctor in over 4 years! 

When we entered the clinic, I was very nervous. As I filled out the forms, I remember feeling slightly giddy and recall joking quite frequently about some of the questions on the form—perhaps a stage of denial? This stage ended promptly though, as one woman sitting across from me stood up and ran to the bathroom to vomit loudly. I had not eaten anything that morning and that was the last thing I wanted to hear as I covered my ears and hummed to myself. Sorry woman. I remember hearing an office staff member ask her if she had made arrangements for a bus ride home with Maritime Bus Service. This was not the city bus, but rather an inter-­provincial bus system. That did not sound like fun at all. I was thankful that my house was a mere 3-­minute drive away. 

When I went in for my ultrasound, the ‘vomit woman’ was getting counseled, but had to rush past us to vomit again. This is where I definitely lost it a bit. When I finally calmed down, my nurse friend continued with the ultrasound and told me that I had actually measured at 7 weeks, rather than 6. She was a little surprised that I wanted to see my fetus in the ultrasound. It was important though that I see him or her so that I knew that it was real and that my decision was real. I couldn’t think of it as just mere a mass of cells or tissue. There was a real live person growing inside of me. This could’ve been my son’s little brother or sister. This was my decision to end a life and I needed this for closure. 

After my ultrasound and counseling session (which included a dose of pain reliever and Ativan, an envelope of antibiotics, and the decision to have a copper IUD inserted immediately following the procedure), I sat and waited for the number 4 to be called, the number that was written down on a tiny yellow sticky note that was handed to me when I arrived at the clinic. As I waited, a woman with 2 children arrived and was quickly escorted to a quiet room downstairs. The fact that this woman did not have the childcare and support available during such a stressful time was profoundly sad to me. I will never ever forget the look of despair on her face. 

When my number was called, I was escorted inside to another waiting room where I was told to change into my pajamas and a robe brought from home. After I changed, I sat and waited with 2 other women—both of which were mothers themselves. One woman wasn’t ready for a second child and another woman had just suffered from a string of debilitating miscarriages and just couldn’t go through that awful experience again. We were all terrified. I recall continuously shaking my head, thinking how the heck did I get myself into this situation. I’m an educated woman. I was supposed to ‘know better’, right? 

When my time came to enter the operating room, my heart started beating a mile a minute. I remember being very light headed as I lay down on the table and placed my legs in the stirrups. When my doctor told me to scoot my bum down to the end of the table, I tried practicing my ‘yoga breathing’…breathe in through the nose, breathe out through the nose. This worked well considering I was having nitrous oxide (ahem, laughing gas) during my procedure. When I started to breathe the laughing gas in, I don’t really recall much physical discomfort or pain, I just remember the wave of emotions that I was experiencing. I don’t remember the sounds or the smells of the room, I just remember holding my friend’s hand as the tears poured down my face. I felt great despair and disappointment in myself. I felt extreme sadness for the vomiting woman who had to take the bus, for the woman with the 2 kids, and the other 2 mothers that I spoke to in the inside waiting room. But I also remember feeling extreme gratitude and love—not only for my friend who was able be there for me to hold my hand during the procedure, but for the doctor who was performing the procedure and the women that worked at the clinic. A life may have been ending on this table, but these women were saving MY life. The procedure seemed to take forever, although I know it only lasted about 5 or 10 minutes. Once completed, they performed an ultrasound to make sure that they had taken out all of the ‘tissue’ and then inserted my IUD. I remember asking if I could see that tissue, but it was already gone. 

Immediately following the procedure, I was escorted into a recovery room, where I was given juice and toast. Once the effects of the drugs wore off, I was able to go home. After picking up supplies on my way home, I arrived home to the comforting and loving faces of my husband and child. The rest of the day was spent sleeping and recovering. Although the literature given to me stated that some women often felt well enough to return to work immediately following this procedure, I did not. I needed the time to decompress and digest the experience. 

The days, weeks and months following the procedure were tremendously challenging for me. I felt that I went through a very serious and emotionally painful experience and that many people just didn’t understand. I was just supposed to ‘go back to my normal life’ and act like nothing happened. I was supposed to take care of my son and get back to work, but I found this particularly hard. The mere sound of my son crying often sent me over the edge and I often felt incompetent as a mother and scared to be alone with him. I found great comfort though in speaking with various women friends and having them confide in me that they went through the experience of abortion—many of them living in complete silence because they feared that they would be ostracized for their decision. My depression and anxiety peaked around month two, likely caused by an imbalance of hormones. I also began the initial stages of co-­editing a collection of stories on reproductive loss at this time. Reading through the research, I learned a great deal about the culture of silence that permeates society, not only with abortion, but with miscarriage and stillbirth as well. 

It has now been 6 months since my abortion. I would’ve been approximately 7 months pregnant right now. Although I don’t regret my decision, there will always be a ‘what if’ in the back of my head. Honestly though, I think that the ‘what if’ is less of me romanticizing the notion of having another child, and more of me imagining my life and emotions spiraling even further out of control. Following the peak of my anxiety and depression, I decided to begin antidepressants and talk therapy. This, coupled with the decision to put my son in full-­time childcare and to completely give up drinking, has allowed me to come to a point of recovery, acceptance and self-­forgiveness. No one will really know the complete and utter darkness that lived inside of me at that 2-­month mark or even in the years prior to that. And no one ever will. But one thing I can say for certain is that I am serious about the fact that the women at that clinic saved my life. And for that, I am eternally grateful. 

Since I started my journey of recovery, I started a daily yoga practice, which included participation in an energy exchange program where I volunteer my services in exchange for free yoga. I recently watched a documentary on yoga and one of the speakers talked about the whole notion of karma. They discussed how karma wasn’t merely just this traditional idea that you do good things and good things come back to you. But it was more of finding and working through your weaknesses and using those experiences to give back—it’s an action of selfless service. For example, if you are a drug addict, once you recover, you should use that experience of recovery to help others in the same situation. This really resonated with me. And this is why I have decided to tell this story. Not only do I want to tell my story because I feel that it is an important one to tell, but I want to be able to help other women that may be going through a similar experience. I want them to know that it is okay to grieve or not. It is okay to be disappointed in yourself or be depressed, just the same as it’s okay to think that it was merely a mistake and move on with life. Your experience is YOUR experience and it’s OKAY! 

What’s not okay? This culture of silence! I realize that a woman’s abortion experience is purely her own and it is her decision to share it as she wishes. But if she decides to share that experience and needs to do so, she should have the full support required and not feel judged for her decision. And she also needs full and free access to abortion services, both from the point of entry and beyond. 

The fact that the Morgentaler Clinic is closing next month is a tremendous shame for our province. It’s tremendously disgraceful that New Brunswick does not cover the cost of private abortions, while completely ignoring the basic human rights of its citizens. I fear that following the closure of our private clinic; we will not only see a rise in maternal mental health issues, but also rates of suicide. That is why it is important that we break the silence of abortion experience. Not only will this allow us to analyze and deconstruct traditional discourses of pregnancy loss, but it might help us to crush the barriers to access by normalizing the experience and informing the general public that, statistically speaking, the 1 in 3 women who require an abortion at some point in their lives might just be their sister, their neighbor, their mother, their friend, or their coworker. The woman might need that abortion because she didn’t use birth control or perhaps her birth control failed? She might be poor or rich. She might be a teenager or in their 30s (like me). She might experience mental or physical health issues, or she might be the happiest and healthiest person around. The fact though that she WANTS and NEEDS an abortion should be the ONLY reason she needs to justify having an abortion. Let’s normalize this reason. It is really the only way that we can ultimately move forward and push for much-­needed changes within our health-­care system. I’ll go first: my name is Angela Deveau and I HAVE HAD AN ABORTION! If you need to talk about it, please feel free to do so. I am available to listen—unabashedly and with loving and judgment-­free support! 

*Note: I am forever grateful for those friends and family in my life that provided the greatest support when I sought treatment for my depression last spring. I don’t need to name names, you know who you are! xoxox

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

FH has recently done much heavy lifting with regard to healthcare-provided reproductive choices for women in New Brunswick. Here are those blog posts:

Not-so-gentle news from the East.
Kansas? Louisiana? Nope. New Brunswick refers patients to religious counsellors.

Feminism: This is how it's done now. 

Healthcare: Unequal Access is UnCanadian.

Autism is NOT the new "orange".

This hateful diatribe was surreptiously left by a pathetic creature.  She claims to be a mother.  From the vile tone of her letter, one might also suspect she's a "pro-life" zealot, one who wants government to police women's uterus as though they were public property, but doesn't want her taxes supporting pre-natal health care, or anything in support of children's well-being once they're born and dependent upon adults' care.

Since the letter's writer suggests that the child she calls a hindrance should be euthanized and "whatever non retarded body parts he possesses" be donated to science, his family have contacted the police to investigate, and hopefully, lay charges.

Autism is a different way of being human.  Scientific and educational research is evolving; neurological differences that once were labeled "abnormal" are now accepted as one manifestation of how the brain is organized.  Adaptions are still necessary for autistic persons to be be able to navigate a world that is geared to the neurotypical.

The ugliness of that woman's letter harkens to the violence and persecution that albino folks still suffer in regions of the world, for example.

Superstition and ignorance are an affliction; autism is not.

Grand merci to @matttbastard for link to news story.

ADDED by fh: Reaction from someone who knows whereof she speaks.

UPDATE:  People rally from all around Oshawa and Newcastle in support of the autistic boy targeted by the letter, and his family.

Hail Satan!

From Joe.My.God:

All of Teabagistan went into an uproar last night after a handful of pro-choice activists allegedly chanted "Hail Satan" as a group of anti-abortion activists sang Amazing Grace in the rotunda of the Texas Capitol.

(I'm sooo stealing 'Teabagistan'.)

He says he watched the video a couple of times and could only hear 'Hail Satan' once. Me too.



So once again demonstrating their absolute humourlessness and pathological thin-skinnedness, fetus fetishists are going nuts.

And now 'Hail Satan' is trending on Twitter.

A small assortment of samples. First, the non-humour-impaired.

"Hail Satan" is trending. Good for him! He's a hard-working guy who doesn't get enough credit.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) July 3, 2013

#HailSatan Because the modern GOP isn't enough like The Crucible.

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) July 3, 2013

Now the frothing mad.

Vid: TX abortion backers chant "Hail, satan!" Photo: child holds vulgar sign http://t.co/HG0hXcq16b #stand4life #prochoiceviolence

— Jill Stanek (@JillStanek) July 3, 2013

And a representative from Faux News.

Abortion supporters chant 'Hail Satan' http://t.co/XcqrSekqu1 Catholic League says maybe it's time for a mass exorcism.

— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) July 3, 2013

Yep. Time for a mass exorcism.

Of misogynist Vatican Talibanis and their enablers and allies.

ADDED: According to Joe.My.God. the smear was started by RAPEpublican representative Scott Sanford. Text of his tweets are there, but they've been deleted from his time-line. What ignorant cowards these dinosaurs are.

Pro smack-down of M408

One of the MASSIVE irritants that swims in the eddy churned up by CON MP Mark Warawa's misogynistic M408 is the twitter spamming campaign in which the antiChoice lobby engages.

The shrieeeking, the lack of finesse, the crude lies, the pitiful attempts at logical thinking.

My co-blogger fern hill has done a brilliant job of addressing, challenging and smacking down the most odious of those tweets.  And she has blogged frequently at DJ! in response to the obfuscation and sheer stoopidity of M408.

And yet, some in the media appear content to parrot Warawa's and Woodworth's twisty prevarications about women's right to choose —with the support of Canadian healthcare professionals— whether to continue carrying a pregnancy to term or not.

It is a simple, clear-cut proposition. The voluntary termination of a pregnancy is a medical procedure.  It is regulated in Canada through public health care.  Canada is not a christian theocracy.  It has - or used to have - a secular government.  Religious freedom implies that individuals can observe their own private religious beliefs, practices and rituals at will - but NOT enforce those upon people who have different ones.

This Op-Ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen addresses the abusive obfuscation that M408 has generated, most lucidly and potently.

That the fetus you are carrying is female is certainly a terrible reason to have an abortion — but, good or bad, your reason is none of the government’s business. It’s simply not the place of our federal Parliament to voice an opinion on the merit of this or that reason behind a woman’s choice to have an abortion.[...]

It’s not for Parliament to voice an opinion on women’s reasons for having abortions, for human fetuses are neither in fact persons nor recognized as such in Canadian law. They are not persons for they have no interests; they lack the self-consciousness necessary for having interests.

Since they lack interests, human fetuses cannot be wronged. They cannot, therefore, be wronged by being discriminated against, not on grounds of sex, not on any grounds.

Warawa’s motion, then, makes no sense. No fetus is wrongfully discriminated against when it is aborted on account of its being female, so sex-selective pregnancy termination involves no wrongful discrimination for Parliament to condemn.

Now this is not to say that the fact that some women in Canada choose to abort fetuses because of their sex is no proper concern of civil society or even of the Canadian government.

It may very well be a proper matter of concern for you and me, and perhaps our government eventually has some role to play. But no one, no doctor, no ultrasound technician, no politician should seek to place any barrier between any pregnant woman and an abortion.

"It’s simply not the place of our federal Parliament to voice an opinion on the merit of this or that reason behind a woman’s choice to have an abortion."  Expect the zygote zealots to shriEEEk in reply to this view. It is a bracing, thoughtful antidote to the religious fundamentalist, authoritarian, crotch-sniffing ideologues who are lobbying to criminalize abortion.

Update: fern hill caught tweets from @ThomasHall17 - a retired House of Commons procedural clerk, who sets the record straight with regard to M408.  That alleged sacrosanct parliamentary "right" that some mansplainers tried to foist upon proChoice supporters, bellowing that Warawa was entitled to something that was bigger and more important than our silly little hill of beans? 

All self-indulgent BS.  Thomas Hall has the real 411.

It starts here.  A very good, illuminating read.

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?

You Don't Own Me

Yes.  Sing it, women!

Funny.  I was thinking of this very song recently.  

Lesley Gore.  One of the original Riot Grrrlz in music.

And. Also this, too. via Sherry's tweet.


from Pat's tweet, merci!

Why AntiChoice is Wrong

AntiChoice is the term ProChoice attributes to those who believe, based on fundamentalist religious ideology and not actual science, that abortion is MURDER!

Wrong. Something that isn't alive cannot be killed.

Gestation requires the nurturing and the giving of life.

At the moment of conception, a physiological process begins. Conditions for a zygote, then embryo and finally fetus to develop from a blob of cells into a viable being have to be correct and appropriate.

The year before I gave birth to my daughter, I had a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. From the outset, I sensed that something was wrong. The physician I consulted when first trimester bleeding occurred asked me how I felt about the pregnancy and wisely suggested that nature would take its course. When I left the hospital - follow-up care after the spontaneous abortion was required, as placental tissue had not been completely evacuated - I felt a great sense of relief.

The following year, I was in much better physical and emotional condition and I embraced every moment of my pregnancy, even the weird klutziness of the last month and a fairly easy birth - which wasn't pain-free since I went into intense labour quickly and thus there was no time to administer epidural anesthesia.

Now, as much as I try to avoid the fundamentalist catholic dogma, religious glurge and glossy photos of anatomical detritus on display at @roseblue's aka Blob Blogging Wingnut blog, every once in awhile I catch a whiff of HER sanctimonious shriEEEking and pitiful bleating - particularly when SHE is pregnant. The irony of HER situation is quite amusing. HER moans and groans about the MASSIVE difficulties and problems of pregnancy would qualify HER for martyrdom, if the Vatican Taliban recognized that female tribulation as such, which it does not.

With M312, Stephen Woodworth hopes to criminalize a medical intervention which terminates a pregnancy.

Since 1988, women and healthcare providers have worked on the parameters of how, why and when abortions happen.

That works, with no necessity for "personhood" legislation for the "preborn". Only the Dominionists and religious zealots want the government inside women's vaginas and uteri.

Perverts? In too many ways to count.

Censorship at Wankworth's FB page?!?!

Oh noez! Say it isn't so!

Sadly, according to Laura, t'is indeed what was done to her comment.

I would like to make it known that I just found Stephen Woodworth's facebook page. He made an ironic Twitter statement "International Women's Day is a good time to remember the day Canada's infamous law deeming women not to be persons was rejected."

To which I gracefully replied "How funny you should post this when your misogynist mentality is trying to take those very rights away with your Motion 312 by giving a fetus more rights than the actual woman!"

Bazinga!

Moments later my comment was removed and comments were blocked or he blocked me, haha.

Keep in mind followers of Wankworth and supporters of his M312 have set up an account that claims Madame Justice Bertha Wilson has been "censored" by prochoice activists.

Yeah, the abortion criminalizers lie. And lie. And lie.

Mystical Pregnancies - a gynophobic, hateful trope

Feminist Frequency nails it.

Watch, listen, learn. Fundamentalist religious zealots love these.

What's the opposite of having an abortion, Fetus Lobby?

Previously on DAMMIT JANET! the world of girls' beauty pageants collided with the parallel universe of Fetus Lobby, here.

Now we have this:

Katie, mother of competitors Bob and Riley (6 and 5, respectively), who is best summed up by this quote: “When I was pregnant and I found out I was having a boy, I was quite upset because I actually had the children so that we could do the pageants.”

This mendacious justification for breeding is to pro-choice folks what Sarah Palin's consideration of abortion as an option may be to zygote zealots and fetus fetishists.

Yo! Anonymous! How about #OpProchoice?

The War on Women (also title of a book on the Canadian version by Brian Vallée) is fought on many fronts.

General violence against women More specific assaults like female genital mutilation and war rape (yes, that's a term). And so on and depressingly so on.

But never in my life have I witnessed such an absolute orgy of assault on women's reproductive rights as is going on right now in the Excited States. Unbelievably cruel, petty new laws are being enacted all over the place by Tea Party Hatriots. And then, of course, there's the MASSIVE effort to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

It occurred to me that women could use some help here. And then I started thinking about an excellent article by our pal Antonia Zerbisias a couple of weeks ago about Anonymous.

And then I started thinking that I know quite a few female geeks. And many male geeks even have female partners (kidding!).

From AZ's article:

Want a revolution? There is an op for that. Op as in operation. #OpEgypt #OpAlgeria #OpTunisia. #OpPayback. These are the Twitter “hashtags’’ that disseminate dissent.

I'm thinking #OpProchoice -- or something cleverer -- sounds very good.

Here's AZ's primer on Anonymous's past and present actions.

Project Chanology (2008): This was the attack on the Church of Scientology that brought the first mainstream attention to Anonymous. When a YouTube of a manic Tom Cruise raving about the benefits of Scientology was posted, the Church threatened legal action. As a result, Scientology.Org was taken out.

Anonymous Iran (2009): During the uprising after the contested Iranian election, Anonymous and other hacktivists set up an opposition Green Party support site with news and resources for protestors.

Operation Titstorm (2010): An attack against the Australian government, which had tried to pass a law that would censor online photos of small-breasted women because they could be seen as child porn.

Operations Payback/Avenge Assange (2010): This was where Anonymous sealed its reputation as champion of WikiLeaks and free speech. Among other actions, Anonymous brought down MasterCard and Visa’s websites because they would not accept or froze donations to founder Julian Assange.

Operations Tunisia/Egypt (2011): Anonymous helped protestors by knocking out government websites and providing resources for getting around the denial of Internet access.

The Attack on HBGary Federal (2011): This is the humiliating attack on a major U.S. security firm, which claimed to have identified Anonymous leaders and was planning to out them to the FBI. The corporate website was hacked, 60,000 emails leaked, and even its phone system was disconnected. Last week, the CEO resigned.

Westboro Baptist Church (2011): Last month, on live radio, while a representative from the notoriously homophobic church was debating with an Anonymous participant, a WBC website was hacked.

Operation Koch Block (2011): Last week, the growing ranks of Anonymous went after the multi-billionaire Koch Brothers because they were working “to undermine” the political process and workers in Wisconsin. They temporarily disabled the website of the Koch-funded group, Americans for Prosperity.

Avenge Bradley Manning (2011): On Thursday, #opbradley was launched, aimed at supporting U.S. Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, the soldier charged with “aiding the enemy’’ by providing classified government documents to WikiLeaks.

Anti-choicers are all over the InterToobz, spewing hate, lies, and shame. Some enable anti-abortion terrorists. And, of course, they use those sites to raise more dough to continue and escalate their war on women.

And now I'm thinking, nice sites they got there, be a shame if. . .