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

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

Specifically over the matter of sacrosanct "conscience issues."

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



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

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

This tweet sums it up brilliantly.

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

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


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

Canadian Media Provide Comfort to the Enemy

In the media coverage of the tenth anniversary of equal marriage in Ontario, I noticed an odd thing.

Not one anti-gay spokesperson was polled on his or her 'take' on the situation. That's odd considering how strident opponents are and how readily they will spout their hate and lies.

No. In fact the coverage was rather self-congratulatory. Golly gee, aren't we enlightened and aren't we pleased to have moved on?

Look at this CBC piece for example.

And we have come a long way pretty damn quickly.

In 2002, an Ekos poll found that 47 per cent of Canadians had an unfavourable opinion of same-sex marriage. Taking into account the high number of undecideds, the pollsters concluded that opponents of gay marriage made up a majority. In 2012, an Ipsos Reid poll found that just 18 per cent of respondents were “totally opposed” to same-sex marriage. What happened?

Well, some would say that 'media happened'.

Even in the US, things are moving along on this front. Here's a bit of video on media there congratulating itself for its role in normalizing USians' view of gays and gay culture.

In fact, one pundit says: 'Gay culture is American culture'.

Funny thing. Here, pro-choice culture is Canadian culture.

But does our media celebrate that achievement? Does it congratulate itself for moving the issue forward and normalizing the notion that women have the same right to bodily autonomy that men do?

Does it appropriately marginalize the tiny percentage of extremists -- around 5% -- 'totally opposed' to abortion rights?

No. Canadian media -- perhaps envious of the acrimonious and profitable abortion 'debate' in the US -- continue to try to whip up controversy where it just doesn't exist. In covering Dr Morgentaler's death 22 of 35 stories saw fit to consult wannabe abortion abolishers to 'balance' the views of Dr Morgentaler's friends and supporters.

One would think this is counter-productive. After all, a large majority of Canadians -- two-thirds of us -- don't even want to talk about it.

But a group that does want to talk about it is the nutters themselves of course. In fact, the media's obeisance to their foot-stomping and shrieking has them crowing 'The media is ours'.

If this was war, one could say that the Canadian media is giving comfort to the enemy.

We ask again: When will Canadian media step up and celebrate the achievement of human rights for women?

Vatican Taliban FAIL

I'd say that a nominally Catholic country that legalizes abortion in the face of the shitstorm hurled by the Vatican Taliban is on its way to happier days.

Good news! Uruguay just joined the club.

Latin America is home to about half of the world's Roman Catholics and the Church is opposed to abortion under any circumstances. But Uruguay, a country of 3.2 million people, has a strong secular tradition.

Perhaps surprisingly, civil unions for LGBT folk are legal too.

The new regime is not perfect, of course.

Under the bill Congress passed, a woman can end her pregnancy during the first 12 weeks of gestation, but she must meet with a team of health professionals, who, by law, should discourage the abortion. The woman must then reflect on the decision for five days.

"This process is complicated and legally unjustified," the nonprofit Coordinating Group for Legal Abortion said in a statement. "This means there's no recognition of a woman's right to decide freely about her life and her maternity."

Here we learn something of the politics behind the move.

The developments however come under the government of a president who is a doctor by training, Jose Mujica, and a deputy health minister, Leonel Briozzo, who is an obstetrician.
. . .
Uruguay is now only the second South American country to legalize abortion, after English-speaking Guyana in 1995. Cuba, a Latin American nation in the Caribbean, did so in 1965 and procedures are also legal in Mexico City.

"The explanation is that Latin America is the last outpost of the Roman Catholic Church," Briozzo said.

There's a cool re-organizable chart showing Catholicism by country here.

By percentage of population, the top four Catholic countries are East Timor, Malta, Honduras, and Venezuela.

The raw numbers create a different list. Brazil, where 65% are Catholic, has 123.3 million adherents. Mexico is 83% Catholic with 95.5 million. Philippines is next at 81% and 75.5 million. Then the US at 24% and 74 million.

This news from Uruguay adds to the good news from Northern Ireland last week.

The cracks are appearing. Slowly but slowly.

For sheer religious misogyny -- outside the Islamic world, that is -- Philippines takes the communion cracker.

Abortion is illegal, of course, but the Church is adamant that Filipinos remain pig-ignorant on matters sexual.

Sensible people there have been trying for 14 fucking years to pass the Sexual and Reproductive Health Bill

The bill was first introduced some 14 years ago, but has been languishing in legal limbo since. It would extend sexual health education in school, make contraceptives more widely available and improve pre and post-natal care. The bill would not legalize abortion.

.
The local branch of Christian Sharia is having none of it. They've fraudulently labelled it an 'abortion bill' and insist that its passage will lead to promiscuity, infidelity, and MORE abortions.

And now election season is about to begin there and the bill will likely get sidelined again.

Ah well. Two steps forward and still playing Statues in Philippines.

Progresss Comes to Ireland

This is great news for Ireland but there's a heckuva long way to go yet.

The first private abortion clinic will open in Belfast next week.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where the Abortion Act 1967 does not apply, owing to opposition from the churches and almost all the parties at the Stormont assembly. Like their counterparts in the Republic, where abortions are illegal, women from Northern Ireland have to travel to elsewhere in Britain for terminations.

But the clinic will provide only medical abortions and the National Health Service won't cover the pretty hefty price.

Terminations will only be offered to women in the first nine weeks of pregnancy and will cost £450. The new city centre clinic, which opens next Thursday, also offers a range of sexual and reproductive services including short and long-term contraceptive options, emergency contraception and HIV testing.

Irish women needing abortions past nine weeks will still have to travel, find a place to stay overnight, and pay for all that.

There is definitely a need for the service.

Last year, 4,149 women from Ireland travelled to England or Wales for an abortion, as did 1,007 women from Northern Ireland.

In one respect, however, it is fabulous thing. As this piece puts it: Finally we can be open about Irish abortions.

Fetus fetishists always point to Ireland where abortion is outlawed and where maternal and infant mortality is very low as proof that banning abortion does NOT cause dangerous illegal procedures done by dodgy operators.

Not when there's a country where it's legal just a short hop away.

Irish women do have abortions. The truth can now be told.

Well. Maybe not just yet. Expect more of this: 'Marie Stopes: the clinics named after a Jew-baiting racist', written by a 'priest of the Church of England' yet.

Like Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes was a progressive and controversial woman of her time.

But progress is progress. Even in Ireland, it seems, women's rights cannot be held back forever.

Woodworth Is a Scaredy-Cat

So, somebody in the PMO leaked to the Globe yesterday.

The Prime Minister’s Office is putting heavy pressure on members of the Conservative caucus to vote down a Tory MP’s effort to trigger a legislative review of when human life legally. It’s unusual for a PMO to work against its own MPs’ motions and private members’ bills but Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are anxious to avoid association with any legislative activity that could be characterized by opponents as re-opening the debate over abortion.

MPs are privately being reminded that support for fellow Conservative Stephen Woodworth’s motion would be considered a vote against Mr. Harper’s wishes. Word being spread in the Commons lobby recently by senior Tories – not the PMO – went even further, saying a vote for Mr. Woodworth’s motion is a vote against Mr. Harper.

This informal coaxing is focused on those who are not considered to have taken firm positions in what has become a polarized debate, including rookie Tory MPs elected for the first time last year as well as fence-sitters and those with strong ambitions to rise in the caucus.

Which was echoed by the Sun (emphasis mine).

Conservative MPs are under intense pressure from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to vote against a Tory MP's non-binding motion that calls on Parliament to study when human life begins.

Tory sources say Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants southern Ontario MP Stephen Woodworth's motion eliminated before Parliament rises for the summer in late June.

"The PM himself wants this vote beaten down," one source tells QMI Agency.

There were rumours on Twitter yesterday that Woodworth's Wank would NOT be debated tomorrow nor be voted on on June 13.

So I was wondering if Woodwank were being strong-armed into withdrawing it, which, as I understand things, is the only way to stop it.

But no. This morning:

Woodworth has apparently swapped his spot with Scott Brison, and is now #14 in the PMB precedent list: is.gd/YUSQjW #hw

— kady o'malley (@kady) June 6, 2012

Hmmm.

What's so urgent about Scott Brison's -- a Lib, mind, though former Con, -- private member's motion?

M-315 — April 25, 2012 — Resuming consideration of the motion of Mr. Brison (Kings—Hants), seconded by Ms. Murray (Vancouver Quadra), — That the Standing Committee on Finance be instructed to undertake a study on income inequality in Canada and that this study include, but not be limited to, (i) a review of Canada’s federal and provincial systems of personal income taxation and income supports, (ii) an examination of best practices that reduce income inequality and improve GDP per capita, (iii) the identification of any significant gaps in the federal system of taxation and income support that contribute to income inequality, as well as any significant disincentives to paid work in the formal economy that may exist as part of a “welfare trap”, (iv) recommendations on how best to improve the equality of opportunity and prosperity for all Canadians; and that the Committee report its findings to the House within one year of the adoption of this motion.

Well, that's all laudable, I guess.

But now in 14th place and with little time before the House goes on vacay, The Wank® is unlikely to see the light of day until fall.

Is Woody cruising for a bruising from the PMO? Or just trying to stay alive to fight another day?

Or. Using that well-known Fetus Lobby tactic of Stringing the Fetus Fetishists Along.

And while I was writing that, Kady O'Malley did a quick explainer. (That's why she gets the big bucks. She's fast.)

Under the rules governing private members' business, Woodworth can keep his motion alive virtually indefinitely by trading down the precedent list whenever his name threatens to reach the top. At some point, however, one suspects that his supporters might start to wonder why he seems so reluctant to put the question to the House.

Stringing them along.

Yup. They seem to like it.

Diluted Rights 200C

People in favour of diluting human womb owners' legal 'personhood' rights like to use the framing of pregnancy as justification.  The actual existence of a born individual in a society is denigrated in favour of enabling legal 'personhood' for the gestating potentiality of 'homo sapiens sapiens' replicating cells triggered by initially successful union of haploid cells.

This dilution of extant power in favour of potentiality is touted as something that makes society stronger and better and womb owners scientifically happier and healthier.

It occurred to me where else this argument is offered. Homeopathy.  Homeopathy is an alternative 'medical' practise where repeated dilution of a substance is said to make its efficacy as a a health cure incredibly potent , while negative side effects are completely neutralized.

Less is more .  It might explain why social conservatives are so often all about the fetus and not about a born baby or the woman forced to carry it to term.  There's too much humanity in the born forms, not diluted enough.  But diploid cells? A zygote? Not even implanted yet?  That's the kind of diluted cellular count Legal Persons they can invest their time and money in.  The quack science for dilution of rights and solutions seems to be pulled from the same rebutted holes.  I wonder how much overlap there is in the camps of belief?

When will the homeopaths lobbying Harper's government be getting a debate in Parliament?

Kicking Butt with An Arthritic Knee

Seriously, I’m too old for this shit. I feel like I’ve been giving the same lessons on the fundamentals of women’s rights since the 1970s. A court decision ushered in a short period of relative calm and rationality concerning our reproductive rights. It was a done deal, Canadian women had full autonomy of their bodies, and we breathed freely and focused on other work to improve the lives of women and girls.

Harper knew this was the status quo and perfectly acceptable to most, except for a small, loud and annoying minority. That’s why Harper disingenuously claimed that he would not re-open the abortion debate. He was walking that tightline between moderating his image for the general public and appeasing his hard right supporters. But Harper is a liar and pushed his agenda incrementally. It’s been a carousel of slight of hand initiatives (e.g., the Status of Women cuts and mandate changes, the CIDA maternal health program and defunding of Planned Parenthood, the appointment of a rookie, anti-abortion backbencher as Minister for the Status of Women) and disingenuous motions from individual backbench MPs (e.g., Epps, Vellacott, Bruinooge).

The bottom line is that Woodsworth is a dishonest, evangelical, woman-hating creep who is more concerned with getting a toe in on criminalizing abortion than about updating a 400 year old law where the toe in a birth canal is some defining benchmark for legal personhood. And it’s galling to see self-described progressives claim that such a debate is timely and reasonable.

There are no nuances that need debating when it comes to my right to decide what I do with my body FULL STOP. My ‘lady bits’ (h/t Alison) are wizened and of little interest to these patriarchal hacks, but I will continue to kick and scream in order to protect the rights of younger women and future generations, so they too can consult with their GPs about health decisions in privacy and without intimidation.

Meanwhile, let’s hope we manage to save universal healthcare so that clinical termination of pregnancies and knee replacement surgery remain accessible for all.

Misopolis

Diesel for Women.

Under that photo, there's more copy:

Take misprostol - the pregnancy ends. Wake up and believe whatever you want to believe.

Pretty shocking, eh? (Go look at the other photos. I'll wait.)

So, is it a teaser?

We have a stupid dream.
What if we gave female factory worker the same rights as successful people?
A factory where they decide over their own bodies.
Whey they can have happy accidents without consequences.
A factory for only the brave.

Looks like it. Here's copy from another page:

Misopolis is coming soon.
This was just foreplay.
Come again for the climax.

There's a Facebook page, too.

And of course, there's a press release.

Diesel is proud to announce a new milestone in its ongoing campaign for successful living. To make a free lifestyle possible for young women in emerging markets, it will help them conquer a key life challenge: the right to safe abortion. Welcome to Misopolis, a brave new world for female factory workers.

What would it be like to give the female factory workers the same lives as successful people? Give them rights, fair wages and proper working conditions? Pregnancy leave? The right to safe abortions? A factory for only the brave?

After launching Diesel Island, Land of the Stupid and Home of the Brave, Diesel now creates Misopolis, a factory where brave female workers can have happy accidents without consequences. Misopolis will be the least fucked-up fashion factory in the world. But this is not just another factory – it is a destination that finally grants them real autonomy.

Blogger Dollymix has this to say:

If it's genuine, its possibly the most ill-advised piece of advertising I've ever seen.

We can see what's being attempted here: it's a sort of 'reaction piece' to the increasingly powerful pro-abstinence movement that's gaining ground in the States: a tongue-in-cheek rejection of it intended to resonate with liberal-leaning women.

The ads are clearly designed to court controversy and 'go viral' and you might well argue that this article is itself just rising to the bait - but I honestly don't think that Diesel will get the type of notoriety they wanted from trivialising such a sensitive topic.

Anything tingling yet?

Should be by now.

Fashion industry violate women's rights
A new initiative by fashion brand Diesel to improve working conditions and to provide free abortion pills to its female factory workers could have been an appropriate gesture by Diesel. Diesel is one of the fashion brands that uses production factories that refuse to pay a living wage to their workers, violates their human rights and forces them to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions.

Misopolis (www.dieselforwomen.com) claimed to provide free abortion pills to its female workers in order to set them free and to create a fun factory.

This is, of course, a hoax, aimed at the garment industry to expose the violation of workers rights.

The hoax was devised by Women on Waves and Women on Web, both non-profit organizations concerned with women’s human rights and specifically with access to safe medical abortion. The organizations worked with the Yes Lab, which is a project of The Yes Men to help activist groups carry out media-savvy creative actions on their own.

In response to the hoax, Diesel send a letter threatening to take legal action, which was followed by a letter of the React group which is an organization in fighting counterfeit trade. (see the letters under press on the dieselforwomen.com website)

Women on Waves then denies any infringements and goes on to state the facts of the global garment industry.

Approximately 30 million people are making clothes and textiles across the globe. Between 75% and 90% of workers in garment industry are women. Fashion companies hire subcontractors that employ female workers in a highly exploitative context. The women are forced to work in hazardous conditions that pose a threat to their physical health and violate workers’ rights, fail to pay living wages, with long work hours and no maternity leave. Female garment workers generally are young (average age 19), unmarried, with little education or training, no prior work experience, of rural origin and from poor families. The female garment workers run a high risk of sexual harassment and rape. Often young and from extreme poverty, the women do not have resources to protect themselves in the event that they are abused. They cannot speak out for their rights without risk of losing their job. Workers are not provided with a written contract and trade unions are forbidden.

In May 2011 SOMO and the India Committee of the Netherlands released a report 'Captured by Cotton'. It proved that Diesel buys from suppliers that use the 'sumangali scheme’. Girls are being coerced to work in certain spinning mills and factories, with the promise of getting a big lump sum at the end of a 3 year period. This lump sum is actually part of their wage, which is below the legal minimum.

Most of the female workers in the garment industry live in countries where abortion is illegal, such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mongolia, Madagascar, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines, Morocco, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Jordan.

Approximately 21.6 million women globally still have an unsafe abortion each year, resulting in an estimated 47 000 deaths, largely among the most vulnerable women such as poor, unmarried and, especially, young women. In addition to the women who die every year due to unsafe abortion, an estimated eight million women annually experience complications that require medical treatment.

Medical abortion is a very safe method to end a pregnancy. It can be done with the medicines Mifepristone and /or Misoprostol. Misoprostol is a medicine also available in countries where abortion is illegal. Both mifepristone and Misoprostol are on the list of essential medicines of the World Health Organization (WHO).

To support this campaign and women in need of safe abortions, please donate to Women on Web, and share by Facebook

For more information
Women on Waves

info @ womenonwaves.org

I love Women on Waves. A gutsy gang. And a great campaign.


h/t IAmDrTiller

Tripling Down on Women's Rights

The US Congress seems to be having a competition over who can come up with the most outrageous anti-choice legislation.

Most recently, there is the Let Women Die Bill.

And now there's the You Can't Talk About That Here Amendment.

Seriously, radical misogynist TeaBagger Jim DeMint has just come up with a doozy.

Anti-choice Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) just filed an anti-choice amendment to a bill related to agriculture, transportation, housing, and other programs. The DeMint amendment could bar discussion of abortion over the Internet and through videoconferencing, even if a woman’s health is at risk and if this kind of communication with her doctor is her best option to receive care.

Under this amendment, women would need a separate, segregated Internet just for talking about abortion care with their doctors.

Spiteful, misogynist, hoop-hopping and, for extra bonus points, sneaky.

Amanda Marcotte has a great post at RH Reality Check on the War on Women today. Here's a sample (emphasis mine):

Both the activist and political behavior of anti-choicers lately has made one thing excruciatingly clear: shame is the name of the their game. The vague principle of “life” has always been a farcical cover story for anti-choice sentiment, of course, and much of this website lately has been dedicated to drawing a line between recent anti-choice antics and how little relationship they have to this cover story about “life”. If anything, however, the response to being so exposed hasn’t caused anti-choicers to retreat and look for new ways to convince people that they aren’t the anti-sex misogynist obsessives that they are. They’ve just been doubling down lately, as two recent news stories show.

The two stories are the Let Women Die Bill and the outing of an anonymous abortion doctor by Troy Newman and Operation Scumsuckers. Effectively targetting her as they did Dr. Tiller.

Amanda should have waited a few hours. Make that TRIPLING down on women's rights.

Well said, Chris!

NatPo has a pair of columns today on abortion. (I hadn't noticed that it was a slow news day.) Babs does her usual hand-wringing that I won't bother linking to, but Chris Selley makes an interesting point about the value of the fetus versus that of the woman.

In June, Gallup asked Americans to identify themselves as pro-choice or pro-life, and then ran some scenarios by them. Among the pro-lifers, nearly 70% think abortion should be legal when a woman’s health or life is in danger — meaning, logically, that they value an adult life over one in utero. Even more interestingly, 35% of self-professed pro-lifers think abortion should be legal in the first trimester, 59% think it should be legal in cases of rape or incest, and about a quarter think it should be legal when the baby might be physically or mentally impaired. Abortion equals murder? Not for these “pro-lifers.”

A majority of fetus fetishists agree that so-called fetal rights are subordinate to women's rights.

He then draws the inescapable conclusion.

The law is far too blunt an instrument to impart any wisdom on this endlessly complex and emotional issue. When the vast majority of people believe abortion should be legal in some circumstances, the only legal demarcation between medical procedure and murder that makes any sense is the one we have now: Birth.

War on Women Goes Global

Weird, dark days for women's rights and not just in the Excited States, though they do take the (fruit) cake.

In the UK, they have an adoption czar, who wants women to, guess what? Give up unwanted children for adoption.

Women who are pregnant with unwanted babies should be advised to have the child and give it away for adoption, the Government’s new adoption czar said today.

They should be offered adoption as a routine ‘third option’ alongside abortion or struggling to raise the baby themselves, he said.

What are the qualifications for adoption czar, you ask?

Mr Narey, a former Prison Service chief who became an advocate of adoption while running the children’s charity, said social workers should no longer press pregnant women with personal difficulties that they should bring up their child.

This, a day after scandalous abortion stats were released showing that some women aborted fetuses that would have become 'special needs' children. So, I guess those women should have carried to term and loving couples would be lined up around the block to adopt.

Yeah. Right.

Now, Poland, poor benighted Poland, where fetus fetishists are also on a roll and want to outlaw abortion altogether.

The draft had been submitted to parliament by anti-abortion activists, drawing support from about 450,000 petitioners from the conservative opposition as well as a rightist, liberal party in the ruling coalition.

Abortion is outlawed in Poland except in cases when pregnancy results from rape or incest, poses a health risk to the mother or if the foetus is severely deformed.

But even under such conditions, hospitals are known to refuse abortions.

Illegal abortions can be punished by up to two years in prison for those who perform them, while the women themselves are not liable.

Polish women's rights group say there are up to 180,000 illegal abortions in Poland each year, while official data indicates just hundreds of legal terminations annually.

We've followed stories from Poland before: like this one of a raped 14-year-old girl caught between the forced birth gang and more humane forces. She was separated from her mother and bullied by a priest into refusing an abortion. Sense prevailed.

This story didn't have a good outcome. A severely myopic woman feared for her eyesight if she continued her third pregnancy. She consulted a bunch of doctors who agreed that her sight was endangered but who wouldn't sign the permission for an abortion. Right to (fetal) life trumps right to see.

And now for some good news.

Last year, Spain liberalized its abortion and contraception laws. The Poop was pissed and Spain was declared to be on a direct route to hell.

Well, looky here. A year later, abortions have declined.

Funny, innit? Treat people like grownups and they act like grownups.

Too Far, Baby

I lived in Florida -- one of the states progressives had great hopes for -- for a lot of this bullshit.

I was managing a donut shop. (Don't ask.) Arguments raged. Everything Rachel talks about: unisex bathrooms, homosectuals' rights, women in combat, destruction of the fambly. . .

My assistant manager was 20, looked 12. She had thick blond hair she wore in braids. She was living with another employee that most customers knew and liked. (They were engaged, so it was mostly OK.)

She also had the absolute best stupid deadpan I've ever seen on a non-professional actor. I used to send her out to deal with angry customers. They'd be raving about something, she'd listen, nod sympathetically, tell them how sorry she was, and they'd immediately calm down.

She looked like a really dumb Heidi. Who could argue with a really dumb Heidi?

One day, the bathroom issue was being debated.

She interrupted: 'I don't get it.' People stopped to listen. 'Larry and I share a bathroom. What's wrong with that?'

Silence. The rednecks looked at each other and realized what dipshits they were being.

She made it back into the kitchen before exploding into giggles.

I wonder what the arguments will be this time. . .

Saudi Women Can Do It

Tomorrow, June 17, is the day that Saudi women are taking the wheel. It is not a one-day protest.

Their Facebook campaign, dubbed Women2drive, says the action will start on Friday and keep going "until a royal decree allowing women to drive is issued" in the ultra-conservative kingdom -- the only country where women face such a ban.

It was organized through social media and needs social media support.

Activists pushed the movement via Facebook, Twitter and other online outlets before some of those accounts were shut down. And al-Sherif was arrested and jailed after her YouTube video (pictured above) hit the web. Al-Sherif was eventually released from a women’s prison after nine days, pledging she would no longer drive nor take part in the Women2Drive initiative.

But online support for the campaign has lived on through copies of earlier Facebook groups. And people in other parts of the world have also taken up the cause. The Honk for Saudi Women viral campaign is one example, featuring videos of women and men from around the world, honking their horns in support of Saudi women who will drive on June 17. The campaign also has a petition on online activism platform Change.org, asking Oprah to make a similar video in a show of support.

So get out there and honk and tweet and blog. And follow on Twitter, #women2drive. Let's make Saudi Arabia the laughingstock of the world.

Global Sluts!

SlutWalk, with origins in Toronto, goes global.

Some 2,351 people have signed up via Facebook to attend a SlutWalk through Boston on Saturday, when they will chant "Yes means yes, no means no," and "Hey hey, ho ho, patriarchy has to go."

Further SlutWalks are planned in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.

And that's before you get to Argentina, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the UK.

Sluts of the world, unite!

DJ! Poll: Which of Stevie's Bitch Slaps Galls the Most?

The best ShitHarperDid video yet.



For me, the most low-down, dirty-rotten, despicable thing done to women by the Harper Regime was killing Sisters in Spirit. Pick the most disadvantaged group in the country and stomp them. Way to go, Stevie!

DJ! poll: Which of Stevie's misogynist moves galled you the most?

Here's a bit of a refresher from the Feminist Alliance for International Action, as if we need one.

Yo! Ladies!

Feel a laser targetting beam on your back?

Stephen Harper embarks on his fourth national election campaign in seven years with a mission: to finally secure a majority government. And he plans to achieve that majority by convincing more women to vote Conservative.

Above anything else, this election is about Mr. Harper, a determined if extremely partisan leader whose personality earns the respect of some and the distrust of others.

Messrs Ibbitson and Friesen have provided a pretty short continuum of responses there.

Let's extend it a little, shall we? To include fear and disgust.

Unfortunately for Stevie Peevie, but fortunately for the country, a good many women regard the Cons with some combination of distrust, disgust, and fear.
The Proud Fringers, for example, whose number is over 5400, formed when an amateur video of Stevie crowing to what he thought was a private gathering about his accomplishments in silencing 'feminists and other left-wing fringe groups' surfaced.

An offshoot, Women Against Stephen Harper, numbering over 600, formed to WASH that man right out of our collective hair.

More than 1200 women joined a group called Women Who Are Creeped out by Stephen Harper. 'Nuff said there.

And when Senator Nancy Ruth counselled a bunch of women angry over the Cons' refusal to include family planning -- let alone safe abortion -- in his cynical G8 'Maternal Health Initiative' to 'shut the fuck up', another Facebook group sprang up. I don't need to tell you what it's called. (That audio clip is NSFW or children, by the way.) This group has more than 2800 members.

Granted, there is a lot of overlap in those numbers. (I think I belong to all of them. I have some strong -armed -minded Facebook friends.) But still, there are lots of Canadian women who wouldn't vote Conservative even if that target on their back were actually bleeding.

But what of the other thousands and thousands of women the Cons need for a *shudder* majority? What can we say to women who might be swayed?

Let's look south to the Excited States, where a wave of Tea Party victories in various states has unleashed an unprecedented orgy of misogyny. All manner of programs intended to benefit women and children have been slashed to ribbons: family planning, child care, violence against women, and, most importantly in this time of fiscal trouble and job losses -- abortion of course.

Ah, but Canada is a kinder, gentler place than the US, you say.

Oh yeah? Let's take a look at what Stevie Peevie has already 'defunded'.

1. Aboriginal Healing Foundation
(cuts affected several healing centres that focused on providing support to abused women, such as the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal)
2. Action travail des femmes
3. Alberta Network of Immigrant Women
4. Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale (AFEAS)
5. Canadian Child Care Federation
6. Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW)
7. Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition féminine
8. Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada
9. Child Care Resource and Research Unit, SpeciaLink
10. Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail (CIAFT)
11. Elspeth Heyworth Centre for Women Toronto
(funding cut by CIC in December 2010)
12. Feminists for Just and Equitable Public Policy (FemJEPP) in Nova Scotia
13. First Nations Child and Family Caring Society
14. International Planned Parenthood Federation
15. Marie Stopes International,
a maternal health agency, has received only a promise of "conditional” funding IF it avoids any & all connection with abortion
16. MATCH International
17. National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL)
18. Native Women’s Association of Canada
19. New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity
20. Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH)
21. Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care
22. Réseau des Tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec
23. Riverdale Immigrant Women’s Centre, Toronto
24. Sisters in Spirit
25. South Asian Women’s Centre
26. Status of Women Canada
(mandate also changed to exclude "gender equality and political justice" and to ban all advocacy, policy research and lobbying)
27. Tri-Country Women’s Centre Society
28. Womanspace Resource Centre (Lethbridge, Alberta)
29. Women for Community Economic Development in Southwest Nova Scotia (WCEDSN)
30. Women’s Innovative Justice Initiative – Nova Scotia
31. Workplace Equity/Employment Equity Program

(Note that immigrant and Aboriginal women are ˆNOT spared.)

That's what Stevie and his gang have done to Canadian women and children -- with a MINORITY government.

Imagine what he'd do with a majority.


(cross-posted at Unseat Harper blog)

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. . .

SUZYALLCAPSLOCKS Gets It!

Zow!

And do feminists care that babies blobs of tissue die? No. So long as female autonomy is upheld, that's all that matters. It's the only thing that matters. The baby's blob of tissue's life is of lesser value.

Exactamundo, SUZY. Now you're cooking with gas!

Autonomy -- aka women's rights -- is the only thing that matters.

(No link because she'll redirect to fetal pr0N.)

Progressive Push-Back

I started this blogpost soon after the Merkin election, but then got too busy for a long, linkful post.

While I was mightily depressed over the results, I was looking for silver linings. And I found a few.

Traditionally (somewhat) more progressive places like Illinois, New York, and California stayed Democratic.

In the Illinois governor's race, the Democrat beat the Teabagger after trailing badly for weeks in the polls. On election morning, did the good/sane people of Illinois wake up and say 'Holy crap! What were we thinking?'

In Colorado, where, despite its nutbars' obsession with the Humpty-Dumpty Initiative, the rest of the people are really quite sane. Not only did they thumpingly reject yet another attempt to give 'personhood' to fertilzed eggs, they crushed the ambition of another Teabagger, much credit going to the women.

Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, says Ken Buck lost his Senate races because independent women voters flocked to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on Election Day.

“Ads attacking Buck on abortion and rape and all those issues were targeted to unaffiliated women and it worked, Buck became unacceptable and they voted for Bennet,” Wadhams said in an interview.

(This is the jerk who, as district attorney, referred to a woman's rape as 'buyer's remorse'.)

New York stayed Democratic too.

And in California, after one of the most vitriolic campaigns against an incumbent I've ever seen, the Dem won.

Yet in spite of her perennially weak approval ratings, a political climate that favored Republicans and what she called the "toughest and roughest campaign" of her lifetime, Boxer pulled out yet another victory, trouncing former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina 52% to 42.6%, with some ballots still to be counted.

Carly Fucking Fiorina is anti-choice, natch.

In the governor's race, millionaire businesswoman Meg Whitman went down to defeat at the hands of Jerry 'Moonbeam' Brown, after reportedly spending $175 million of her own dough. This time, credit the Latinos after Whitman got 'tough on illegals'.

So, where the Dems had the wit to actively campaign against the nuttier notions of the Douchebaggers, the sane people woke up.

And I think -- and this guy too thinks -- that the extreme anti-abortion position acted as the clarion call.

While almost nothing went right for Democratic candidates this fall, one issue turned out to be a winner in some of the closest Senate races in the nation: abortion.

By branding Republican challengers as outside the cultural mainstream on the issue, Democrats managed to hold on to at least a slice of the political center by courting and winning over moderate women in a handful of key states.

The strategy ran counter to the one that enabled the party to broaden the political map in 2006 and 2008, when Democrats thrived by running candidates whose positions on abortion were closely attuned to the socially conservative areas where they sought office.

This year, however, Democrats adopted almost the opposite approach late in the 2010 campaign. As many of the anti-abortion Democrats elected over the last four years were going down in defeat, the party made abortion a central concern in a handful of battleground Senate races — and they ended up in the Democratic column as a result.

I think the boyos in the 'war rooms' underestimate the (sometimes) slumbering giant of women's rights as an issue.

Over Motherhood Steve's totally hypocritical Maternal Health Initiative, I was encouraging the fucking Liberals to use abortion rights as a wedge issue.

But, of course, being fucking Liberals, they fucked it up.

Maybe this US election will show our progressives how to do it right.

Call the shitheads out. Show them to be the extremists they are. Fight back!

Fucking Liberals

So there I was, having a quite pleasant day, happily anticipating the Liberal abortion gotcha -- backed by the NDP and the Bloc -- designed to force the TheoCons to show their true colours over family planning and women's rights.

Earlier, after an 'emergency' caucus meeting, the ReformaTories had come up with an absolutely brilliant counter to it -- the motion is 'anti-American'.

No. Really. They went with that. I was laffing my ass off all over the Intertoobz.

I was enjoying the witty comments at the various sites that reported the Cons' genius move.

Like this one from the Globe site:

I suppose its Anti semitic as well.

The Freaks were exercised too -- always fun to watch.

The CBC's Question of the Day was: Should access to safe abortion be part of a maternal health plan? The sane answer to that was doing very well indeed.

And, extra bonus! Kady was going to liveblog the latter part of the debate and the vote.

I mean, it was a no-brainer, done deal, all the Opposition would vote for it and the Cons would look like ijits. Poifect! Non-binding but at least Canada wouldn't look quite so stooooopid on the world stage.

Well. If you haven't heard yet, the MOTION WAS DEFEATED.

BY THE FUCKING HARPER LIBERALS, to wit, Dan McTeague, Paul Szabo, and John McKay, who voted with the TheoCons against family planning.

Yes, indeedy, in the 21st century, there are people who have the gall to call themselves Liberals and yet vote against their party in order to tell the wimmins -- yet again -- what we can do with our lady parts.

Two other Harper Liberals -- Albina Guarnieri and Gurbax Malhi -- abstained.

And here's Kady on the other Liberal no-shows:

Curiously absent from the Chamber, despite having been there just a few moments earlier: Derek Lee.

Other Liberal absences, some of whom, at least, were simply not in Ottawa and would almost certainly have supported the motion had they been around, from a list provided by the ever helpful PMO: Anita Neville, Gerard Kennedy, Andrew Kania, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Alan Tonks, Marlene Jennings, Joe Volpe, Lawrence MacAuley, Stephane Dion, Mario Silva (paired with B. Calkins), Jim Karygiannis.

Just when I was developing a smidge of respect for the Liberals. . .

Just when I was not quite so despairing of Opposition cooperation . . .

Well. That shows me, I guess. Women's rights, here as in the Excited States, are always negotiable. At least for Liberals.

Here is Sister Pale's take complete with a reminder of where that other great Liberal leader, Stéphane Dion, was when another assault on women's rights was passing second reading. When the Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill was being voted on, Dion was absent, eating little pink hamburgers in celebration of -- are you ready for it? -- International Women's Day.

Ah well. As the Liberal boyos are saying today, 'no big diff'.

You look like absolute, complete idiots, Liberals. You couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery. And the Cons are crapping their pants laughing at you.

You deserve every snide snigger and gloating guffaw.