Zombie Day - Zombie Arguments

Beg pardon to any not interested in me bringing this forward from comments here to a post. Anonymous honoured my post regarding the PB fallout with the following:

AnonymousApr 7, 2012 12:26 AM

"Why? Because it is my prerogative to not accept that I must stay quietly in place and accommodate someone who can look me in the eye and tell me that I, and any womb possessing human of a certain fertility, shouldn't mind if our bodies and lives are *debated* over cocktales as being *unworthy* of autonomy, by authoritarian, lying, anti-evidence, theocracy-pandering plutocrats who smugly know that whatever prescriptive law exists, exists for the 'little people', which of course, aren't them."

wow...exaggerating much?

I replied (among others)


NilesApr 7, 2012 01:09 PM

Doubting Anonymous:

Simple answer to a simple question: nope.

If you feel my statement is exaggeration, share your reasons as to why you believe so

Anonymous was civil enough not to just be a drive-by commentor. Presuming it was the same anonymous.


AnonymousApr 7, 2012 11:50 PM

    well, do you honestly think that everyone in the anti-choice movement are "....authoritarian, lying, anti-evidence, theocracy-pandering plutocrats who smugly know that whatever prescriptive law exists, exists for the 'little people', which of course, aren't them."? Perhaps that isn't what you meant, but that's what I took away from it
It was when I got caught up in responding that I hoped no one would mind if I upped the conversation to the front page. So, here is my response and other contemplation.

Doubting Anonymous:

Please point out to me where I said *everyone* in the anti-choice movement was as my quoted description?

That is an inference and exaggeration you made all on your own recognizance. I will, however, append my description to the many leaders of anti-women forces in the world, especially those walking the halls of power and financing politicians while getting tax-exempt status and taking monies from followers to live the personal 'gospel of prosperity' life.

I'm not surprised at all that authoritarian leaders draw trusting followers to them to do their footwork and repeat their mantras.  They demand uncritical trust and many people are trained to give that to leaders, especially the religious.

What annoys those authoritarian leaders is that there's a growing proportion of educated populace, evidence and law that is undermining their power base and fearmongering.  They're naturally fighting to retain and regain it.

But the 'touchy topic' of bodily autonomy still boils down to this, if (the general 'you' not specific 'you', Doubting Anonymous) you don't want an abortion, don't have one.  If you don't want to use contraception, don't use it.  If you want to bear a high risk pregnancy or one started by accident, rape or just bad timing, the best of luck to you in your endeavours and let there be support for you to survive and thrive. If you want to support a woman that has made one of those decisions and the consequences thereof, the best of days to you as well.

If you want to control the bodies of women who are not you -- for whatever sincere or lying reason, if you want to deliberately destroy access to support structures in society so as to force each and every woman through circus hoops, physical and psychological stress, shame, censure, poverty, medical crisis, dependency on violent partners, inability to care for already living children, abstinence; if you intellectually decide that half the population is a 'special interest' group that needs a firm hand from rational thinkers informed by Natural Law to know what's best for not-men, and constant punishment and deprivation of autonomy in favour of a glob of cellular development is your happy place...

...that's when you need to unpack all the ingrained prejudice built atop women's backs throughout history and examine presumptions we all are taught from day one about women's inability to be active owners of even their personal lives. We're not talking about somewhat comfortably well-off white women in richer nations.  We're talking about all women, of all colours and classes and sexualities. It's still a global meme for men that no matter what else, at least they are not born a woman, that even the lowest social class men should have authority over any woman, because...well, those goalposts squirm out from under refuting evidence and find another BECAUSE to rest on, denying the previous goal meant anything. All too often, the most telling BECAUSE is the LucyVanPelt solution; violence, direct and indirect, individual and societal.

It's very high odds that my saying that will meet immediate denial and accusation of exaggeration, just as Doubting Anonymous fastened on, not the greater message I was putting out about the baseline of progressive alliance being the Charter of Rights and laws founded in that for the dignity and equality of women in society, but DA's inference that my descriptor had meant something I hadn't said, with a return implication to me that I was being irrationally and unfoundedly hyperbolic and hence, dismissed as a poisoned well for the rest of the post.

Now, it's true that having made the descriptor, I'm in the nominal position of proving it with evidence, which leads in a very circular way back to the entire PB foofarah with DJ!  How many times a week is evidence provided here at DJ! and other blogs to prove how much lying is being done by authoritarian anti-women leaders and followers?  How many times over the centuries, the years, the months, the weeks has the autonomy of women's bodies been 'settled' only to have naysayers trade on prejudice they've profited by and say 'what was that? eh? No, sorry, don't have that memo, tl:dr, was a feminazi source, Is it that time of month for you? That doesn't make common sense, where's your PhD dissertation by no not that one, the other one...-scrapescrapescrapesoundofgoalpostsbeingmoved'.

It's very reminiscent of the argument I suspect 99% of readers around DJ! have been in. Someone loudly proclaims something as fact, you refute it and they, who had produced no evidence for their own declaration and feeling no evidence is needed beyond repeating themselves louder with more emphasis, demand on the spot all the research ever done to prove your countering claim.  And in the times when you're pissed off enough to do so, they then declare you heard them wrong and they never meant that, they meant x;x being whatever gets them out of being wrong=ergo rubber/glue.

It's very easy to win arguments when you're using Fizzbin as a rhetorical basis.

So, when faced with the *fact* the Supreme Court (Canada, not the US you wannabee teabaggers) rendered a very clear, sound, legally binding national decision, and we've had decades of anticlimactic OMGAbortionArmageddon!!1!! statistics underpinning its soundness, why are taxpayers, many of whom are women, being faced with a Parliamentary version of that stereotypical loudmouth telling them "Therethere, we're only talking about the humanity of hortonhearsawhohumans, abortion?pishposh! (Does the sombre rational concern strike anyone else as the same whiny tone as 'I'll only put it in a little/pull out before anything happens/you know it doesn't feel the same when I wear one/if you really loved me/what are the odds/I'll be there for you baby/my wife doesn't understand me/I'll pay you extra atop the babysitting fee').

Why? Say it with me - authoritarian, lying, anti-evidence, theocracy-pandering plutocrats who smugly know that whatever prescriptive law exists, exists for the 'little people', which of course, aren't them.

The null hypothesis of the day truly is, I don't need to find proof of lying liars or that women deserve bodily autonomy.  The evidence has been presented, proofed, reviewed and settled, ad nauseum. Anyone who wants to prove otherwise has to bring sincere proponents out who do not uncritically rote-repeat lies as fed to them by lying sources but have actual evidence beyond appeals to deities, imagined futures, or taxes 'wasted' on slutty women, why women should be legally dehumanized to the status of criminally stupid incubator of a cellular clump.

And no, the presenter does not deserve a taxpayer funded authority platform to doodlecrap quackery and falsehoods from.  I suspect though, that they'll get one, because the Harper government has already shown it doesn't mind spending billions of dollars on a lethally malformed creation that should have been aborted immediately, yet despite the desperate insistence of scientific experts, has gone to great lengths to deliver it stillborn while 'misrepresenting' to the birthing family about its inability to be viable, at crippling costs to everyone involved...but him.

Why would Harper break with a trend?  Spinspinspin that platter, doc!  This one goes out to him and Woody. The Zombies and ohhhhh those wimminz!

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.

Recent research proves zygote zealots are wrong - again.

Remember those religious extremist fetishists of The Fetus©™ who shrieeeked: The Pill Kills!!!

These rightwing fundamentalists, for example?

According to a study just published in the British Medical Journal it seems that The Pill actually saves women's lives:

Those who had used the contraceptive were less likely to die from a range of diseases, including heart disease and cancer, researchers found. Overall, the drugs cut the risk of death from bowel cancer by 38 per cent and from any cause by around 12 per cent.

The findings will be reassuring for millions of women who are taking or have taken the Pill, following a number of health scares, according to experts from the University of Aberdeen, who carried out the study.

Although there was small increased risk of death among women under 45 taking the Pill, in part because of the well-known increased chance of suffering a blood clot, that effect disappeared after around 10 years. And the health benefits to women as they got older more than offset the risks to under 45s, the researchers said.

Introduced in 1961, and initially for married women only, around three million women in Britain are now thought to take the Pill regularly to prevent unwanted pregnancy. [...]

Dr Alison Ross, from Cancer Research UK, said: “This large study should help to reassure women that on average, the long-term benefits of taking the Pill, including lower odds of dying from cancer, outweigh the risks. "We still need more research to understand how the balance of risks and benefits might change in specific groups of people taking the current versions of the Pill. "Even so, it is encouraging to see that using the Pill appears to substantially lower the risk of dying from bowel, womb and ovarian cancers.”

As well, women who used this contraceptive avoided dying from health complications arising from pregnancy.

Grand merci to Croghan who brought this news item to my attention.

Just another fetishist of The Fetus©™

We learn, via CC's blogpost The Justin Chronicles that another Blogging Tory blathers on and on, using the familiar "Because I say so" approach to zygote zealotry. Expect the same-old same-old rationalizations and equivalencies, as always based on the premise that a blob of dividing cells has more human rights than the female vessel that carries said blob.

Hey Justin, one more reason to give thanks to your g-d that you were't born female, right?

Clearly nobody is going to force you to endure 9 months of unwanted pregnancy, but being a neocon man, you have the right to opine about humanity. And bonus points for you - you'll have the opportunity to kill human beings who have the bad grace of living on land that a government (who considers them sub-human) wants to occupy.

"The Pill Kills" - Florida Version.

Those Wacky Rightwing Womb-bats are at it again! Yes zygote zealots in Florida are attempting to bring their own brand of lunacy to the state legislature.

Anti-abortion conservatives are proposing a new constitutional amendment that critics claim would make it a crime to take birth control pills in Florida.

The "Personhood Amendment" that conservative activists are filing today in Tallahassee would add language to the state constitution that defines someone as a "person," regardless of age or health status, "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being." ...

On the group's side is the American Life League, a socially conservative Virginia-based organization that is supporting similar amendments in about two dozen states. The national group spent $250,000 on a campaign that put a similar question on Colorado's ballot in 2008. Voters rejected that measure roughly 3-1.

Though the wording of that proposal differs from the one pending in Florida, their meanings are similar. The 2008 proposal in Colorado defined human beings at "the moment of fertilization." The Florida amendment refers to "the beginning of the biological development," which McEwen defined in a Thursday interview to mean a fertilized egg.

That, opponents say, would make it a crime not just to kill a fetus by abortion, but also to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus as birth control pills can. "By their definition, anything that you might do to interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg would be tantamount to murder," said Marc Farinella, a campaign consultant for Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, presumptive Democratic candidate for governor.

As described by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, birth control pills and intrauterine devices work partly by causing the lining of the uterus to thin, "making it less likely that a fertilized egg can attach to it."

And what about those eggs? It always about the pre-hatched, um, pre-born - doesn't anybody crusade for the pre-fertilized ones?

A zygote zealot moment.

Over at Blob Blogging Wingnut's Site of Perpetually Screeching Jeremiads HER headline shrieeeks:

Jim Pouillon's Murder Likened to Abortion

This is what passes for "logic" as SHE spins off from the zygote zealot glurge and stock pro-lies propaganda expressed at the funeral service for Jim Pouillon and, this quote in particular:

"Jim had no way to run from this attack, just like the babies in the womb..."

Earlier SHE had made a case for the canonization of Pouillon, saying of him:

"...he was an average schlub, by the looks of things, except for his disability."

Right. So an adult man in a wheelchair is said to be like a fetus because of his disability.


The Fetus©™ fetishists. It's always about The Fetus©™ and only The Fetus©™ - because even an adult can be profitably re-purposed, martyrized, foetishized and canonized.

Development and Peace cleared.

Last spring SoWrongOrNuts had himself some testerical hissy 'episode' about the Catholic-supported and widely respected Development and Peace. He, and other self-righteous religious individuals and groups (Lifeshite) accused the international organization of funding groups that advocate for practices forbidden by the Church, including contraception, abortion and the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of AIDS.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has released a report about the investigation into those accusations. Dennis Gruending wrote an excellent blogpost about some of the history behind this explosive situation.

Shorter Blob Blogging Wingnut on the report: "They lied! TheyliedtheyliedtheyliedtheyliedTHEYLIED!!! (Not the bishops. I'm not saying the bishops are lying - they were manipulated!)"

So, Canadian Catholic religious fundies are now foaming at the mouth about this, because the report also .... how shall we say this? ... reprimands them.

We make an urgent appeal to the leadership of Lifesite News that it establish an open and fruitful dialogue with Canadian Catholic groups. We are convinced that when a group makes allegations, accusations and denunciations against another, this can bring nothing positive to our Church and is a counter-witness to that Gospel spirit that should guide all Christians. Negative actions of this kind encourage suspicion, scandal and division in the Church.

But, but, but, but, BUT-HEADS! Fetishists of The Fetus©™ like and want suspicion, scandal and division.

Why? Because they truly believe: "We're right! We'rerightwe'rerightwe'rerightwe'rerightwe'rerightwe'reRIGHT!!! And everyone else is wrong and wishy-washy lefties."

It's why we call them zealots.

UPDATE: An article, from the Western Catholic Reporter - Canada's Largest Religious Weekly says that Bishop Weisgerber ...

is urging Catholics to turn to their bishops rather than blogs and websites when it comes to defining who or what is Catholic. "People are taking interpretations and making them fact. People are believing these facts as though they were indisputable, when clearly they are very disputable," said Weisgerber. "They are interpretations from a political standpoint."

Blogs and websites ... by that does he mean sanctimonious scolds like HERSELF and SoWrongOrNuts and their political agenda for The Fetus©™ ?

Like a broken clock, Blob Blogging Wingnut is sometimes correct.

SUZANNE SAID: "The vast majority of feminists do not care what happens to the fetus."

Shorter Blob Blogging Wingnut: How do you like MY anti-feminist generalization? I got a MILLION of them!

SHE is right. Abortion-criminalizing, zygote zealots are the ones who obsess about "the fetus" - and nothing but "the fetus".

While feminists care about women.

There's a lot of posturing and blathering in rightwing neocon and in anti-feminist fundamentalist religious groups about individuals taking responsibility for their own actions, and how the government interferes too much with the lives of private citizens. So let women be responsible for decisions regarding their own fetus.

Feminists care when women become pregnant - with or without intent - we care whether they have access to the medical care they need. If women choose to give life, to carry their pregnancies to term and to give birth, feminists care that they're able to do so in the best conditions possible.

Feminist advocacy for women's reproductive health includes all aspects from menarche to menopause. And health care providers need to get it.

One of the themes of the annual meeting of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada is to consider how inducting labour rather than letting it proceed as it does normally has negative outcomes.

For most expectant mothers, labour begins spontaneously, at about 40 weeks into the pregnancy.Induction of labour occurs when medications such as prostaglandin and oxytocin are used when a woman is past her due date to ripen the cervix and get the uterus contracting.

Says Dr. Andre Lalonde, “The message to doctors, nurses and midwives is, be patient and do not consider inductions before the end of the 41st week,” said Lalonde. “If you wait that extra week to 10 days, you will find that most women — a large percentage — will go into spontaneous labour.” He says “the number one risk” of induction is that it leads to earlier decisions about a C-section, which now stand at an all-time high in Canada. Nearly 28 per cent of babies were born surgically in Canada in 2007-08, according to a national report released last week. That’s up from five per cent in 1969.

Induction can lead to longer, more painful labour and continuous electronic monitoring of the baby’s heart rate, which itself increases the risk of C-sections, because it generates “a lot of information. In fact, too much information,” says Dr. William Ehman, a family doctor in Nanaimo, B.C. who will be leading a session on normal birth at this week’s meeting of pregnancy doctors and gynecologists. “So you are trying to sort out the important things versus what’s not important.”

Research shows that, in healthy pregnancies, checking the baby’s heart rate after contractions by listening, or using a hand-held device, reduces the risk of interventions.

Healthy pregnancies for women. Because pregnancies have consequences.

The photo was taken from Birthing without fear.

Spain slowly moves away from medieval age.

Although some countries remain resolute in maintaining laws that endanger women's reproductive health and deny their rights and choices, the Spanish government has advanced a plan to decriminalize abortion, facilitating pregnancy terminations in the first trimester.

The new proposal, which would allow women to seek a termination within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy without having to give a reason, has set the Socialist government on a collision course with Spain's Catholic Church. The bill, which needs ratifying by parliament, eases strict abortion laws that have been in place since 1985 and is the latest in a series of social reforms by the Spanish prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero. The proposal tackles one of the traditionally Roman Catholic nation's final taboos and will bring the abortion law in line with most other European countries.

Under the current law abortions are only offered under restricted circumstances and rarely in a public hospital. Terminations are only allowed until the 12th week of pregnancy in cases of rape or until the 22nd week in cases of severe fetal
malformation.

Women who get an abortion outside the terms set by the legislation are committing a crime, at least on paper, although arrests are extremely rare. The new law would erase abortion from the penal code altogether.

The zygote zealots are already spinning the usual disinformation and prevarications.

The Catholic Church has launched a massive [there's that favourite qualifier again] campaign against the plan and the Bishops' Conference said unborn children already have their rights protected less than law pertaining to flowers and trees.

Mmm. Is that all they can use as examples? Our own religious fanatics are so much more imaginative, comparing the loss of an embryo to the theft of a parrot in a cage or a wide-screen TV.

Complaints.

Fetus fetishists complain. Oh how they like to complain.

Over at Canadian Cynic CC connects the dots between the sanctimonious bleating about the lack of mainstream media coverage for the Forced Pregnancy March and blogging reformaTories who don't like demonstrations by brown-skinned people drawing attention to the whole scale murders of civilians in Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile Blob Blogging Wingnut parrots MP Bruinooge's prevarications against those who are suppressing zygote zealots and stopping them from speaking out. Rod (Ask Me About The MASSIVE Poll!) Bruinooge conflates a bunch of things which he claims is proof that abortion-criminalizers' free speech rights are being disrespected.

For example, this:

"And although there are close to 100,000 abortions every year in Canada, we actually know very little about the practice. For example, we don’t know the gestational age of the unborn child in over 60% of the cases because abortion providers aren’t required to report this information. Nor are they required to report health complications or the reasons women obtain abortions. Stifling free speech allows the whole secrecy surrounding the practice of abortion to thrive."

Demanding reporting mechanisms for medical interventions is not free speech. What Bruinooge wants is access to patient health information files which are confidential not 'secretive'. If Bruinooge had an embarassing health emergency, for example if a rogue magic bullet got stuck up his rectum and he needed medical assistance, he would certainly be happy that nobody (except, he would hope, discreet health care providers) had access to his patient file.

A forty-shrieeeker anniversary.

Our blogging buddy JJ over at unrepentantoldhippie reminds us that today, May 14th, is the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act

... an omnibus bill that introduced major changes to the Criminal Code of Canada. It was introduced as Bill C-150 by then Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau in the second session of the 27th Canadian Parliament on December 21, 1967. ... The bill was a massive 126-page, 120-clause amendment to the criminal law of Canada. It proposed, among other things, to decriminalize homosexuality, allow abortion and contraception, ... The bill was described by John Turner, Trudeau's successor as Minister of Justice, as "the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country". Trudeau famously defended the bill by telling reporters that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation", adding that "what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code".

The usual bunch of no-choice, abortion-criminalizing, meretricious, homophobic, fundamentalist religious zygote zealots will gather on Parliament Hill, their numbers swollen by the busloads of Catholic school students converging on Ottawa to provide better optics. Sure hope that Gawd doesn't rain on their parade.

Zygote Zealots in New Zealand.

New Zealand Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign researcher Alison McCulloch wants the abortion-criminalizing organization that is currently attempting to secure a court ruling to award full human rights to fertilized eggs to disclose who is funding its legal battle.

“It’s not just about abortion. It never is,” Ms. McCulloch said. “It’s about a minority morals agenda that opposes sex education, contraception, civil unions and gay marriage. Embryos have human rights, gays and women don’t.”

Meanwhile, the Abortion Law Reform Association is lobbying members of its Parliament to publicly support the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

"The Crown lawyers defending the ASC, and in turn the reproductive rights of New Zealand women, need to be given the full backing of legislators in the face of a
case that is aimed at ending access to safe abortions," Alranz president Margaret Sparrow says in a statement.

In New Zealand, most abortions are allowed by physicians on mental health ground. Women and their health care practitioners are bound by laws regulating the termination of pregnancy. Dr Sparrow suggests New Zealand could do what the Australian state of Victoria did - decriminalize abortion. However, until that happens, legislators should defend the status quo.

Did we mention the persecution complex disorder?

Shrieeekkk!!! Police brutality harassment attention!!!

As JJ described it here, there was a non-event of MASSIVE portentousness that unfolded outside the Governor General's residence last Tuesday morning. The predictable and perfunctory scrutiny - to which all formal and non-formal gatherings of people for the purpose of contacting the GG are subjected - was ominous and threatening, as reported by Lifesite.

MacDonald, said, however, that the event took an odd turning at several points. Proulx, he said, informed the group while receiving the petitions that they did not have permission to take photos. But as they were on a public sidewalk, and what appeared to be a news camera was present, photos were taken. It was later discovered that the news camera was a camera-man sent by the Governor General's office to record the event, although it was unclear for what purpose.

I believe that the non-event was documented and recorded because zygote zealots and abortion-criminalizers have a history of accusing those who are neutral (or not undies-wetting supportive) of exhibiting hostility towards them. Thus, if David MacDonald (sperm donor), Frances Wilkenson (a woman holding up a sign reading 'I regret my abortion'), Faytene Kryskow (self-styled christian charismatic youth leader) or any member of the delegation claimed that the two members of the G-G's office who accepted the petition sneered at them, there would be proof that this in fact was not the case.

Is it an exaggeration to surmise that fetus fetishists are collectively or individually paranoid, hyper-reactive or suffering from persecution complex disorders? Judge for yourself - if you're in possession of a steady stomach or able to scrub down your keyboard/monitor set-up in the aftermath of an chucked-up lunch, go read SoCon Or Bust's impressions of the non-event.

I’m not sure what kind of thuggery the RCMP was engaging in, but I trust David’s account completely. ... And as for the Governor General’s big brother approach with the professional camera, I find that very eerie. ... There was no reason at all for the rough treatment these peaceful pro-lifers received from the RCMP.

"big brother" ... "rough treatment" ... There was nothing unusual about the actions that the GG's communications or security staff took. Photographic recordings, closed-circuit video equipement and verbal questioning have become the standard operating mode. This reported "odd turn" is quite disingenuous since the ideological glue that bonds abortion-criminalizers of all religious and political stripes seemingly justifies the actions of convicted terrorists and murderers.

Fetal personhood used to deny women who chose pregnancy their rights.

It gives us no pleasure to say we told you, but here it is. From Salon:

We all know that establishing the "personhood" of microscopic Americans is a means of characterizing abortion -- legally, and even culturally -- as murder. Though the Supreme Court decision making abortion legal turns largely on the right to privacy, it also notes -- in an aside that has become anything but -- that if fetuses were "people," they would be entitled to protection under the 14th Amendment, ergo entitled to "life." The Center for Women Policy Studies has stated that "legislative efforts to establish fetal patienthood, victimhood and, therefore, personhood represent the primary threat to Roe v. Wade." But as the National Advocates for Pregnant Women point out in a brand-new video, they also represent a threat to pregnant women -- all pregnant women, including those who plan to carry to term.

One woman featured in the video became critically ill at 25 weeks pregnant. Her doctor's hospital board filed for an emergency hearing to determine the rights of the fetus. The court supported the hospital's contention that an emergency C-section should be done without the pregnant woman's consent. Her doctor objected, stating the surgery could kill her. The operation was performed; neither woman nor fetus survived.

Thus Lifeshite and their posse of fetus fetishizing goons continue to bully legislators in their willingness to sacrifice the female vessel (aka pregnant woman) to achieve their political goal: the recriminalization of abortion.

Bravo for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women for their activism!

Un grand merci to Pareta.

Pet-Pee

This was predictable. The convergence of the arrogantly sexist authoritarian marketing campaign with soft-pedaling, dissembling authoritarian believers.

Support for reproductive choice by women who are grandmothers, mothers, adolescent girls, women from all ethnic and religious backgrounds becomes this:

Women are told by old-school feminists and, too often, their own family members, that killing their unborn child is a valid “choice.”

Now there's text-book spin, aka disinformation, written with the intent to distort facts and reality to suit an ideological imperative. The PWPL crew is rabidly anti-abortion. No one is forcing any of them to have an abortion. Yet they would deprive all other women of the choice to carry or not carry a pregnancy to term.

But you know what? In spite of their high-and-mighty judgmental position with regard to other women's life choices, DAMMIT JANET! generously offers them a graphic for their t-shirts, in the same spirit of sisterhood that PWPL demonstrates.

Doing the fetus fetishists' back-pedal

It's not a new dance craze. It's what the zygote zealots do when they attempt to gloss over their MASSIVE tactical error, by blindly supporting octuplet mom Nadya Suleman.

Quick to pass judgment is Karoline Byler, a Roman Catholic who received hormone shots to stimulate ovulation. The Vatican has taken an official position against abortion and in-vitro fertilization but Byler was able to get pregnant yet obey the doctrine of her Church because she carried all six fetus to term. It wasn’t easy, though the Bylers’ pediatrician authorized nursing assistance since one of the babies still required oxygen three months after their birth by C-section.

Nadya Suleman recently turned down support from the Christian group Angels in Waiting which had offered to raise money to provide her and the babies with a house and 24-hour care. Sniffed Karoline Byler: “To be frank, I think that she’s an attention whore.”

Could that be the sound of sour grapes talking? The Bylers once had an exclusive contract with Inside Edition. Wonder how that’s going for them, now that sextuplets have become ho-hum.

Fetus FetishistLand Who's Who.

Over the next weeks, DAMMIT JANET! will be looking at the different types of individuals who adhere to the zygote zealots' and abortion criminalizers' agenda, in an effort to understand why they have chosen to polarize the debate, and at times, to implicitly support the violence and terrorism of some of the fringe members of the enforced-pregnancy and no-choice movement.

Today we feature Homo Fetus Fetishist Meddleinterferensis.

Description:

These meddling and interfering zygote zealots are found individually or in pairs. Middle-aged to elderly, their prime focus is to dictate what the procreative imperative of their children or other people's children should be.

In their youth, they may have been parents who justified their workaholic habits by satisfying every of their own materialistic whims or their children's by providing them with the most expensive toys, the most lavish of amusements and entertainment.

Now that their nests are empty, they have Regrets,

Not content with confessing their perceived 'sins' to their spiritual community leader, priest, rabbi or imam, they insist that their adult children must provide them with the means to gain redemption before it is too late.

They blame Planned Parenthood if their children have not produced the grandchildren they want to alleviate their sense of loneliness and inadequacy.

Females of the species can be particularly adept at pushing daughters' guilt buttons when pressuring them to procreate. Males tend towards harassing the staff of women's health clinics. Some, though not all, can become physically intimidating or threatening towards those who do not share their views. Either gender can become verbally abusive towards pro-choice activists.

Regardless of their income level, they are vulnerable targets and popular prey for the fetus fetishists sub-species Fundraisingensis.

One man in Australia welcomes the fire

and brimstone too, no doubt. When facts, reason and compassion reside in the pro-choice camp, religious fundamentalists will resort to threats, opportunism, and literal interpretation of selected scripture from the bible.

Pastor's abortion dream inflames bushfire tragedy - The Catch the Fire Ministries has tried to blame the bushfires disaster on laws decriminalising abortion in Victoria. The Pentecostal church's leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah, claimed he had a dream about raging fires on October 21 last year and that he woke with "a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia ... Asked if he believed in a God who would take vengeance by killing so many people indiscriminately - even those who opposed abortion, Mr Nalliah referred to 2 Chronicles 7:14 to vouch for his assertion that God could withdraw his protection from a nation.

"The Bible is very clear," he said. "If you walk out of God's protection and turn your back on Him, you are an open target for the devil to destroy."

In news reports, officials have declared that some of the fires may have been deliberately set by arsonists. One has to wonder if any of them were disciples of Mr Nalliah?

One former supporter of Mr Nalliah's fundamentalist sect is recoiling from his words.

A furious Peter Costello has rounded on a Christian cult for suggesting the Victorian bushfires were divine retribution for the state's abortion laws, describing it as "beyond the bounds of decency". Just three weeks ago, the former federal treasurer sent a video message to a special Australia Day prayer meeting organised by Catch the Fire Ministries leader Danny Nalliah.

But he reacted angrily to a statement by Mr Nalliah yesterday recalling a dream concerning the consequences of Victorian abortion legislation that became law last year. ... "To link the death and the suffering of bushfire victims to other political events is appalling, heartless and wrong," he said. "Those who have suffered deserve every support and sympathy. It is beyond the bounds of decency to try to make moral or political points out of such a tragedy."

Last month we wrote about the decriminalization of abortion in Australia and a recent study that was done regarding women who faced unintended pregnancies.

Grand merci à lagatta!

More abortion recriminalizers' propaganda, Down Under

Over at unrepentant old hippie, JJ reminds us of the zygote zealots' rightwingnutz mob mentality, complete with an eloquent photograph. Hyperbole + overwrought visuals = fanaticism.

In the southern hemisphere, a study from Australia - a country that recently decriminalized abortion services - presents a complex portrait of the reasons why women choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Prior to the law's introduction into Parliament, the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) carried out an investigation, which presented three options to Parliament. The first was codification of the existing law, which made it a criminal offence to destroy the life of an unborn child "capable of being born alive," which was said to be any time after 28 weeks gestation. The second option was allowing an abortion to be performed at any stage of a pregnancy, if a woman gives her consent and the medical practitioner considers it ethically appropriate. The third option was the two-tier system which was finally accepted, using 24 weeks as the defining point. According to figures from the VLRC investigation, about 94.6% of abortions in Victoria are carried out before 13 weeks of gestation, 4.7% between 13 and 20 weeks, and less than 1% after 20 weeks. Yet, although only a small number of women need late-term abortions, the ones who do are the most vulnerable: teenagers, victims of sexual assault including incest, sufferers of mental illness, women who have experienced a sudden tragic life circumstance or have discovered a fetal abnormality. .... An all-women task force of leaders from central Victoria's Anglican Church diocese submitted their comments during the VLRC investigation: "In our view, public acceptance of the reality of abortion, including acceptance of the practice among women of diverse religious communities, indicates that a change in the law is timely."

The study audited data recorded over a 12 month period of phone calls from women facing unintended pregnancies and who wanted an abortion. The 5400 calls were received by the Royal Women's Hospital's Pregnancy Advisory Service from women seeking advice between October 2006 and September 2007.

Of about 3000 women who gave a primary reason for wanting an abortion, 23 per cent said they did not want children now, 11 per cent said they were too young, and .4 per cent said their partner was violent or they had been raped. But 16 per cent of callers mentioned violence as a contributing factor in their decision to seek advice, a statistic Dr Rowe said was disturbing. "It does suggest that 'exposure to violence' needs to be included in all health services for women, because it is a common occurrence in the community and it's only just been acknowledged," she said.

Predictably, no-choice abortion recriminalizers gave the findings their own spin, proclaiming that the women were using abortion as a form of birth control. In fact, 29 per cent of the callers in the study had used contraception to prevent pregnancy. Just another day in the no-choice fetus fetishists propaganda factory, cranking out more lies and more shrieeekkks!!!

Malignant and malicious Bush legacy.

When Bill Clinton completed his second term as president and then vacated the West Wing for his successor and his team, the Republicans reported various acts of 'outrageous' vandalism, such as the letter "W" missing in action, since claiming it had been pried off most of the keyboards in all the offices.

When George "Dubya" Bush leaves, his malignant and malicious legacy will be of a completely different order.

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws. ...

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to "assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity" financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But three officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including its legal counsel, whom President George W. Bush appointed, said the proposal would overturn 40 years of civil rights law prohibiting job discrimination based on religion.

The counsel, Reed Russell, and two Democratic members of the commission, Stuart Ishimaru and Christine Griffin, also said that the rule was unnecessary for the protection of employees and potentially confusing to employers.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already prohibits employment discrimination based on religion, Russell said, and the courts have defined "religion" broadly to include "moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong, which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional
religious views."

More background here: More about religious fundamentalist bullying and here: The Haters' Agenda, Part II.

Grand merci to TD for alerting us to this recent development.