You know you're a bad mother when...

you take your 12 year old daughter to a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show under the guise that Michael J. Fox – her crush at the time – is one of the actors.

During the movie she kept whispering in my ear and asking me when would his character show up. I eventually completely lied and said that he was one of the guests at the Time Warp party – there was a midget who looked remotely like him – after all what’s one more tiny prevarication when you’ve already sold your child a bill of goods anyway?

A few years later, when the RHPS became fashionable with high school crowds she could nonchalantly and coolly observe : “Rocky Horror Picture Show? Saw that years ago,” though still being reproachful that I had lured her to see it under false pretence.

Just one more bad mother moment, right up there with taking her to see “Watership Down”, a cinematic event she claims to this day traumatized her and gave her nightmares for years thereafter about that bunny bully General WoundWorth.

I always thought that Fiver had a touch of tranny rabbit.

Advantages of Abortion: Part 3

Over at Birth Pangs where deBeauxOs and fern hill began their blogging careers, by far, the most common search string bringing visitors to the site was 'advantages of abortion'. They then found this little post hoc propter hoc piece and this more serious take on the matter.

Well, today there is news of another advantage to abortion:

Women who have had two or more induced abortions have a reduced risk of pre-eclampsia, researchers in Norway said.

Affecting at least 5 percent to 8 percent of all pregnancies, pre-eclampsia is a rapidly progressive condition characterized by high blood pressure, the presence of protein in the urine, swelling, sudden weight gain and headaches, although some women report few symptoms. Women who have previously given birth to a child have lower risk of pre-eclampsia, the researchers said.

The study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, shows that women who have had two or more induced abortions reduced their risk for pre-eclampsia by 60 percent.

Wow. Sciency stuff again. While only fetus fetishists claim that there are links between abortion and breast cancer, abortion and mental illness, abortion and going str8t to hell, here again is Evidence that abortion is a medical procedure with little down-side and some proven up-side.

When everything old is New™ again!

Transparency. Who would have imagined, in their wildest dreams, that Stevie and his Harpocrites would succeed in changing the meaning of that word to its complete opposite?

“The way we can protect our democracy is through openness and transparency, and when the important political debates take place in public. To close access completely to their debates on their policy issues, says that they are not proponents of democracy, and have no interest in being open and transparent, that their concern is controlling the message to the point of stifling democracy, even it is from within their party,” said Jennings.

Indeed, they have. After a day of in-camera workshops that excluded all accredited media (those were the ones allowed inside the Winnipeg Convention Centre and permitted to remain corralled inside one room) from access to the delegates, a number of resolutions have made it to the plenary for open debate and voting. No surprises there. Two propositions that betray their anti-feminist agenda will be debated; P207, and P213. From here:

Protecting Pregnant Women / The Conservative Party supports legislation to ensure that individuals who commit violence against a pregnant woman would face additional charges if her unborn child was killed or injured during the commission of a crime against the mother.

Women / The Conservative Party supports gender equality through all policy and legislative considerations the full participation of women in the social, economic, and cultural life of Canada. i) The Canadian workforce has evolved to include more women than ever before. The Conservative Party believes all Canadians have the right to freedom from discrimination in the workplace and equality of opportunity.ii) Individuals should be judged on skills, qualifications and merits. Women must be entitled to equal pay for work of equal value equal work.

Note what has been removed and what has replaced it. We await news of the debate, via the conventional (Kady O’Malley and her colleagues) and the blogging media.
First posted at Birth Pangs.

Don’t be lettin’ that door hit’cha on your way out.

Sarah Palin riffing on a theme:

“I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door,” Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “And if there is an open door in ‘12 or four years…" 10 Nov 2008 The Associated Press

“If there is an open door in 2012 or four years later and it’s something that’s going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, I’ll plough through that door,” she told Fox News. 12 Nov 2008 Independent

“My life is in God’s hands,” Palin said. “If he’s got doors open for me, that I believe are in our state’s best interest, the nation’s best interest, I’m going to go through those doors.” 13 November 2008 The Associated Press

In a series of national television interviews, Palin did not rule out seeking the presidency, saying, “It’s crazy to close a door before you know what’s even open in front of you.” 14 November
2008 The Associated Press

Good grief. What is this: the Republican version of “Let’s Make A Deal”? As LuLu over at Canadian Cynic said: Bible Spice, your 15 minutes of fame are sooooo over!

First posted at Birth Pangs

A tale of two grandmothers of note.

Matriarchs are not often mentioned in our posts because many of our blogs are inspired by current news items regarding women’s reproductive health and choices. So we are pleased to feature today two grandmothers who have made choices in support of their own daughters’ choices.

First up: Jaci Dalenberg of Ohio decided that she would be a surrogate mother and carry her daughter’s fetus to term. Kim already had two children was unable to become pregnant because of a hysterectomy.

A 56-year-old woman who gave birth to her triplet granddaughters a month ago is recovering from a Caesarean section and hopeful that one of the girls will be home from the hospital by Saturday. … Dalenberg said she wasn’t frightened to be pregnant at her age.

“I’ve always been really healthy. I did get medical clearance, including psychological testing,” Dalenberg told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “When we found out it was triplets, I did get really nervous for about four days, but that passed real soon.” …

Dalenberg, who has four daughters, ages 31 to 36, said she would have preferred to try natural
childbirth, but her doctor told her that was out of the question. “I’m fine. I feel great,” Dalenberg said. “Knowing the outcome, I would do it over again, but … I’m not going to do it again,” she said with a chuckle. “We wouldn’t do that to her again,” her daughter said, smiling.

And then, Marian Robinson who may become the most famous granny in the US.

When the Obamas do finally move into the White House in January, they will be determined to take their normal family life with them – and that includes Michelle Obama’s mother, who has reluctantly agreed to leave her home on Chicago’s South Side and move to Washington. The nation’s new First Granny is Marian Robinson, 71, who regularly looked after Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven, while their parents were campaigning. …

It is the first time in living memory that three generations of a presidential family have all moved to
Washington, although Mrs Robinson has not yet decided whether to take rooms in the White House or live nearby. Mrs Obama “begged” her mother to come with them. “The girls are going to need her, as part of their sense of stability,” she told Newsweek. “And what is true for my mom is that she does anything for us and her grandkids.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Will Zygote Zealots Rule at the Con Con?

Back in July, Le Devoir disclosed that members of the Québec CPC were unanimously opposed to a resolution that was presented in the slate of policy resolutions for discussion and ratification at the November convention.

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

From here.

In the interval between then and now, Stevie and his Harpocrites threw Ken Epp and his Bill C-484 under the bus in a miscalculated bid to placate Québec voters and remove any obstacle to their desired majority rule. Now it has been revealed that a modified version of C-484 is among the hundreds of resolutions up for approval next week at the Con Con.

Is anyone actually surprised? I hope that there are fireworks and MASSIVE confrontations between the fundamentalist religious Cons and the pro-choice Cons.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Onward Christian Soldiers to the RepubliCon Convention

Among the pages and pages of policy resolutions that the Con rank-and-file members will be considering for approval at their convention in Winnipeg next week there’s this:

PROTECTING CANADA’S HEALTH AND SAFETY Policy Floor Resolutions - Conservative Convention 2008 RESOLUTION P-118 … Foreign Affairs Principles i) The Conservative Party supports a foreign policy that protects Canada’s sovereignty and independence, promotes our national interests (political, economic and strategic), contributes to collective security and defence, promotes democratic principles and human rights, and assists in international development. ii) A Conservative Government will recognize the importance of an ethical dimension in foreign policy and will advance the values broadly supported by Canadians. iii) A Conservative Government will coordinate Canada’s international relations, trade and foreign aid policies to advance the country’s economic interests while promoting human rights and individual freedom. iv) A Conservative Government will integrate our foreign policy with policies on trade and national defence. Foreign Policy Social Values Proposed by Ottawa-Vanier: iii) A Conservative Government will coordinate Canada’s international relations, trade and foreign aid policies to advance the country’s economic interests and social values, while promoting human rights and individual freedom.

Those who can hear the dog whistle know that from so-cons, the expression “social values” is RepubliCon-speak for no-choice, anti-contraception and anti-abortion. It is no accident that this resolution came from the Ottawa-Vanier riding Cons where a number of fundamentalist organizations and associations have established residency, including the National House of Prayer.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Not your run-of-the-mill liar: Behold Jill Stanek

Enough. Someone should check her medication.

"Barack Obama was elected president despite the fact he supports abortion into the fourth trimester.
Either the 63 million people voting for him didn’t know about his radical record, which includes abandoning abortion survivors to die, didn’t care, or didn’t believe it."

This is beyond willful and malicious fabrication. This is hallucination.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

US evangelicals and teen sex

Many people may have wondered why conservatives were so unruffled when Sarah Palin announced the pregnancy of her teenager daughter, Bristol, in September. This summary of a New Yorker article provides some clues.

In replying to a question about why it appeared that conservatives, Republicans and right-wing groups seemed relatively unperturbed when Sarah Palin announced the unintended pregnancy of her teenage daughter Bristol, hours after her appointment as the VP candidate in the US elections,

…Marlys Popma, head of evangelical outreach for John McCain’s presidential campaign, suggested in responding to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy [...] “There hasn’t been one evangelical family that hasn’t gone through some sort of situation.”

Other facts emerge:

…Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, [...] has surveyed 3,400 teens ages 13 to 17 and analyzed the government’s Add Health study of adolescent health.

Regnerus uses evangelicalism as a proxy for conservativism — an imperfect method, to be sure — and finds that 74 percent of evangelical teens say they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage.
That compares to half of mainline Protestant teens and a quarter of Jewish teens.

At the same time, according to government data, “evangelical teenagers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestant and Jews,” and they make their “sexual debuts” earlier, just after turning sixteen, Talbot writes. Only black Protestants start having sex earlier, she notes….

It’s easy to guess the next piece of the puzzle. Evangelical teens also decline to use contraception more often, meaning that pregnancy becomes an immediate concern when they start having sex.

Read the original article at The New Yorker by Margaret Talbot.