Taxing Abortion

We all know that so-cons are great haters. They hate the feminazis, the homoseckuals, the secularists, etc. etc.

But what do they hate the absolute worstest?

Taxes.

So, putting two simple thoughts together, a state senator in -- where else? -- Kansas wants to tax abortion.

[Mary Pilcher Cook] noted that governments routinely use tax policy to effect [sic] behavior – cigarette and liquor taxes, for example, or tax breaks designed to spur economic activity.

“If you want less of something, you tax it,” Pilcher Cook said.

Several Senators liked the idea. Sen. Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican, said it would not only reduce abortions, it might also convince another late-term abortion provider from setting up shop in Kansas now that George Tiller’s clinic is closed.

Most resisted the idea, though no critics voiced opposition to the abortion tax. Instead, they argued against reducing the overall sales tax increase.

Pilcher Cook’s amendment failed 17-22.

In the comments there, some (sane) people doubt whether a sales tax on abortion would actually deter women. One genius pipes up that that would depend on the tax rate. He says:

I'd make it 700%. That'd send 'em up to Iowa, huh?

Hm. That reminds me of someone else. Oh yeah, Mr Kicking Abortion's Ass proposing a 500% tax on contraception to make the 'sterile' pay for their future entitlements.

So, big loss for the fetus fetishists?

Seems not.

The fetus fetishist reasons thus:

. . . I think taxing it is a pretty horrible idea.

When you tax something, especially targeting something specific, it creates a revenue stream that politicians get addicted to – thus making the object of your taxation harder to eliminate.

Taxing something also gives it legitimacy in the eyes of many. Even objects that fall under the so-called category of “sin taxes” have this legitimacy – almost as if being taxed gives you government approval.

Politicians would like the munny and the people would get the idea that abortion is, you know, OK.

Let's do it! Tax abortion! Tax marijuana! Tax equal marriage! Tax clear thinking!

All right, I'm getting carried away. . .

Happy F*cking Mother's Day

Keith Martin writing in The Mark:

As we prepare to celebrate Mother’s Day, the future doesn’t look so bright for women in the developing world.


This week, some of the world’s top doctors met in Vancouver to share their extraordinary research on how we can save lives and improve the future of the world’s most vulnerable people. But a dark cloud hung over the meeting. It was impossible to miss the deep concern, fear, and shock these scientists felt about the Canadian government’s position on maternal and child health.

Only a few months ago, these same physicians were overjoyed when they heard that Canada was going to make maternal and child health a priority at this summer's G8 summit in Ontario. They understand very well the interplay between the fate of a mother and that of her children. Their joy, however, turned to shock when this life and death issue turned political and regressive.

These scientists asked: Why is Canada putting itself in a corner, separate from all other G8 nations on the abortion issue? Why does Canada want to deprive woman in developing countries from having the same reproductive rights as Canadian women? Why is Canada cutting funding to groups such as Plan International and Match International, groups that have provided women access to family planning and safe abortions where it is legal, funded violence prevention initiatives, combated the practice of female genital mutilation, and supported gender equality?

They wondered: Doesn’t the Canadian government know that 63,000 women die every year from septic abortions and that these deaths are entirely preventable? Don’t they know that when a mother dies in a low-income country, more than half of her children under the age of five will also perish? Don’t they know that rape is used as a tool of war and that men are frequently forced at gunpoint to rape female members of their family, with some of these women becoming pregnant as a result of this horrific act?

These physicians were aghast that the debate in Canada has turned so ugly. They were deeply worried that this will derail efforts to enable Canada to lead the other G8 nations to develop and implement a plan of action that can move their excellent research from the bench to the bedside. Such a plan would save the lives of the nearly nine million children who die every year from largely preventable causes.

Harper again makes Canada an international pariah.

By the way, the argument that 'abortion is mostly illegal in the developing world anyway so what does it matter' is, surprise, surprise, bullshit. Abortion -- at least to save the life of the woman, and often to preserve her mental and/or physical health -- is nominally legal in most of the counties where aid is desperately needed.

Access, of course, is a totally different matter. And that's where the West must help, providing training and supplies and supporting local efforts to improve access and expand the conditions under which abortion is allowed.

Lock Up the Tenants!

When I saw this at The Disaffected Lib, I didn't believe it. Mound of Sound is messing with us, I thought.

But it's true.

Tenants caught growing as few as six marijuana plants in their dwellings could face automatic jail terms of at least nine months, under a federal drug-sentencing bill revived Wednesday that imposes harsher penalties on home renters than on owners.

DJ! readers may recall my recent and vivid experience of the lowly legal status of citizens who rent their homes -- and, yes, I'm still planning on blogging about the whole ordeal -- but I'm gob-smacked.

What on earth could be the justification for hitting tenants harder than homeowners?

I read on:

The Harper government's proposed legislation imposes stiffer punishment on renters than it does on homeowners, because involving a third party is one of several aggravating factors.

Huh? Third party? Who? The landlord?

This just adds a whole new layer of idiocy to the Tory 'Stupid on Crime' program.

Let's go over the pressing reasons King Steve the First had to stack the Senate to pass this steaming pile of doo-doo.

The crime rate has been trending lower for decades.

Mandatory sentencing does not work to deter crime.

Mandatory sentencing works very nicely at filling up jails though -- to the point that many Merkin states are going broke over it.

And low-life tenants deserve harsher sentencing than homeowners. . . well, just because the ReformaTories are authoritarians with a hard-on for hurting vulnerable people.

Oh. No. Wait. I just remembered. According to the Minister of Farm Hair, it's for the wimmins:

“Our government has done more than any other government in the history of this country to keep women safe,” says Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, who is also in charge of the status of women in the Harper government.

“We have introduced new laws to make sure that we keep rapists and murderers off the street and to make sure that we protect children from sexual predators. That is what women want.”

Rona knows better than Sigmund Freud. But Bill Cosby really knows:

“Sigmund Freud once said, "What do women want?" The only thing I have learned in fifty-two years is that women want men to stop asking dumb questions like that.”

Another day. . .

Another group of experts for the ReformaTories to dismiss, ignore, or slander.

This time it's 41,000 cops and doctors and nurses and survivors of gun violence.

Supporters of the long-registry have launched a new website. Here's a list of the groups:

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police
The Canadian Police Association
The Canadian Association of Police Boards
The Canadian Public Health Association
The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians
The Canadian Association for Adolescent Health
The Canadian Paediatric Society
The Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists
The Trauma Association of Canada
The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions
The YWCA of Canada

The website is full of facty-logicky stuff -- for example, cops accessed the registry more than 4 million times last year at a cost to us of a buck each time.

Pretty reasonable, eh?

Oh. Did I say 'reasonable'? My bad.

If a program or policy is reasonable -- instead of say, idiotic, counter-productive, regressive, and insanely expensive -- that's enough for these ReformaTories to kill it.

I hate these people. Why can't we get rid of them?


h/t to Scott Tribe for the new website.

My Dream for a Mothers' Day present.

This is what I fantasize might happen.

Margaret Harper will arrive at 24 Sussex and will slap some sense into Stevie Spiteful to punctuate what the appropriate response to STFU might be. I don't know if that would be salubrious for her well-being but it would sure perk up my spirits. Now there's a maternal health initiative that Stevie should support.

Then she, Laureen and the spawn will go off for lunch somewhere without The Corpulent One.

Would it be evul for me to want a souvenir photo of Margaret slapping Stevie?

Note for the humour impaired, literal-minded Blogging Tories, and other assorted whining rightwingnutz. This is a fantasy. I'm willing to bet that yours are waaaaay more violent and involve torture.

STFU

Eric Mang nails it.

'Defunding' Plan Canada, or, Not Shutting the F*ck Up

So. I wrote to Plan Canada -- a group I've been supporting for more than 20 years to the tune of now just over $400 a year -- to tell them I am defunding them. I also took Michelle at babble's advice and cc'ed the other pusillanimous and activist-chiding signers of the statement.

secretary @ unicef.ca, info @ plancanada.ca, info @ care.ca, office @ results-resultats.ca, sccan @ savethechildren.ca, info @ worldvision.ca

ZOOM! About four hours later, I got an email from Rosemary McCarney, Pres and CEO of Plan, offering to discuss the matter further and suggesting that I contact her assistant to arrange a time to speak.

I thought about it for quite a while then replied:

Dear Ms McCarney,
Thank you for your personal interest. But unless Plan is ready to back down from following Nancy Ruth’s STFU advice, I don’t see the point of further discussion.

I understand why Plan is doing this. You have been intimidated by the anti-woman Conservative government. In my Canada, citizens are not intimidated by their government. They stand up to such evil.

This government is merrily slashing programs that help the poor, women, children — almost everybody but their corporate pals. By shutting the fuck up, we give them the premise on which to spin: ‘See? Nobody is complaining. We know what Canadians want.’

I won’t be party to this charade.

It is time for me to sponsor less mainstream organizations than Plan — perhaps one of the groups whose funding was just cut off. Or one of the groups under threat like International Planned Parenthood.

You are making a mistake here, Ms McCarney, but I wish you luck.

Yours truly,
fern hill

By the way, there's another Facebook group to join: Canadians who want foreign aid spent on women's reproductive health, with membership last time I looked approaching 4,000.

Barbara Kay would like to remind you she's not getting any.

This post was originally titled: "Why does Barbara Kay hate women's freedoms?" Then I took another look at the churlish, sour puss decorating her column and reconsidered. Because there's really no other reason for writing such a resentful, gynophobic screed.

It's a bizarre spin about a relatively reliable contraception. Does she really believe that contemporary women are so shallow that their 'happiness' rests on medication? Clearly Babs misses the pharmaceutical fog that Valium gave her peers, back then.

Instead of putting the focus on the fact it allows women to plan when to be pregnant (or not to be, ever) and couples to control their reproductive abilities so they can parent the children they want as best as they can, Kay quotes skewed research from the obscure Timothy Reichert - you could at least spell his name correctly, toots. As you can well imagine, Reichert's bloviations have become akin to the New Testament, over at LifeShite.

But in the final analysis, Babs is shrieeekkking at all those selfish, selfish, selfish!!! young women who turned down her son's Jonathan's invitation to be his baby mama, and to give her the grandchildren she wants, dammit!

More Funding Cuts to Women's Groups and a Poll

A buncha uppity wimmin NOT shutting the fuck up.

Critics are accusing the Harper government of ideologically driven intimidation for cutting funding to women's groups even as it prepares to champion maternal health at next month's G8 Summit.

The Conservatives have axed funding for up to 14 women's groups in the past two weeks. News of the cuts surfaced a day after Tory Senator Nancy Ruth warned aid groups that they risk a backlash from the government if they don't “shut the fuck up” on the government's refusal to include abortion in the G8 plan.

Please, Canadians, make it stop.

And the CBC's Question of the Day:

Do you think that aid organizations risk funding cuts if they disagree with the government?

At the moment, the non-stupid, non-insane, non-indoctrinated are winning -- 85% yes.