Martyrgasm, Supreme Court Style

Linda Gibbons, serial and unrepentant clinic harasser, has had her day in the Supreme Court.

By an 8-1 margin, the justices rejected Linda Dale Gibbons’s argument that she should never have been charged under the Criminal Code for picketing too close to a Toronto abortion clinic.

The high court did not wade into the emotionally and politically charged abortion debate, but instead confined itself to a single, technical, legal point: whether Ms. Gibbons should be dealt with under criminal or civil law.

Ms. Gibbons maintains she should have been dealt with under civil law for disobeying a court order, not charged criminally.

She was charged under section 127 of the Criminal Code. She argued that she should have been entitled to an exemption under that section that would have taken her case out of the criminal courts.

The justices disagreed.

The ruling means she will go to trial if the prosecution decides to pursue the case.

(Comments are closed on the Globe story.)

Cue the martyrgasms!

From the NatPo:

Linda Gibbons, 63, who is in jail again, has long maintained she has a right to peaceful protest and that the courts were unfairly pursuing her because of her unpopular views on abortion.

Gibbons, calling from prison in Milton, Ont., said she was not surprised the court ruled against her.

“The courts and the government have failed in their duty to protect the unborn.”

Ya dimwit. The courts are pursuing you because you will not obey a COURT ORDER.

Now the conspiracy theory from LifeShite.

It's not a matter of DISOBEYING a court order, they say. She trying to overturn the bubble injunction.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal by pro-life prisoner of conscience Linda Gibbons on Friday morning as she continues her 18-year battle to overturn a Toronto injunction banning pro-life activity outside of abortion facilities.
. . .
Her lawyer, Daniel Santoro, argued that the Crown is taking her before the criminal court because the civil court would have the power to overturn the injunction.

Really, fetus fetishists should raise more money and buy her a lawyer who, you know, understands Law.

So, she's gonna keep getting her ass tossed in jail. Fine.

And DJ! is now done with her. (Unless, of course, more blazing brain damage is occasioned.)

Liars Gotta Lie

When the morning-after pill was approved, the actual mechanisms weren't well understood. It was thought that one way it worked was to prevent implantation, and since most definitions of pregnancy use implantation as the starting point, Plan B didn't cause an abortion.

But the lying liars insist that a whole complete 'person' is formed at the collision of egg and sperm, and so if implantation of the zygote is disrupted -- ABORTION!

From a report today:

Since then, the science has developed a much clearer picture of the drug's effects. Study after study has conclusively shown that emergency contraception (or EC) actually prevents egg release—and without eggs, naturally, fertilization can't happen, let alone implantation. Other studies have in fact shown that the drug is ineffective when taken after a woman has already ovulated. By this year, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics issued a statement that the three emergency contraception drugs on the market conclusively "do not inhibit implantation."

Will this shut the liars up about 'abortifacient' drugs?

Fat fucking chance.

Cue the SHRIEEKING!

Way cool science.

In a development scientists are calling a "tour de force," researchers have reconstructed the genome of a fetus using DNA samples from the parents.

Because their technique did not require an invasive test to take samples from the fetus itself, it's an important step toward what could become a low-risk way to identify genetic disorders early in development, experts say.

It's non-invasive, highly accurate, and could detect roughly 3,000 conditions known as Mendelian disorders, including Huntington's, hemophilia, and sickle-cell anemia.

It's also currently wildly expensive and a long way off from your local clinic.

"I think this paper is a tour de force," Hamosh [Dr. Ada Hamosh, director of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine] said. "This was unthinkable six months ago. Is it ready for any kind of clinical application? Not at all yet."

And oh, yeah. Fetus fetishists are already SHRIEEEKING about it. Designer babies! Genetic engineering! Abortions, abortions, abortions!

Should such a test become widely available, will it be misused? Yup.

But would it save people from despair? Yup.

One of the cruelest diseases is Huntington's disease. If one of your parents has it, you have a 50 per cent chance of getting it.

I have a friend whose father had it. She and her two brothers watched him die and her mother suffer. They all decided not to have children.

There is a test and none of them got it done. I mean, who wants to know years in advance what a horrible future you're facing?

When her twin brother was diagnosed in the mid-90s, she pretty much stayed drunk for a couple of years (early symptoms can look like inebriation). When he needed care, she sobered up and took it on.

Brother committed suicide while he still could. My friend went off the deep end again.

This was a family blighted by fucking Huntington's.

Test for it? Hell, yeah.

The Vatican Taliban gets pissy with an uppity nun

Though I'm not a fan of the NYT's Maureen Dowd, her succinct overview of a theological dispute between Sister Margaret Farley and the dogmatic Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (aka the Catholic Sharia) is pitch-perfect.

[...] the latest chapter in the Vatican’s thuggish crusade to push American nuns — and all Catholic women — back into moldy subservience.

Even for a church that moves glacially, this was classic. “Just Love: a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” by Sister Margaret Farley — a 77-year-old professor emeritus at Yale’s Divinity School, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar — came out in 2006.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which seems as hostile to women as the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, spent years pondering it, then censured it on March 30 but didn’t publicly release the statement until Monday.

The denunciation of Sister Farley’s book is based on the fact that she deals with the modern world as it is. She refuses to fall in line with a Vatican rigidly clinging to an inbred, illusory world where men rule with no backtalk from women, gays are deviants, the divorced can’t remarry, men and women can’t use contraception, masturbation is a grave disorder and celibacy is enshrined, even as a global pedophilia scandal rages.

In old-fashioned prose steeped in historical and global perspective, Sister Farley’s main argument is that justice needs to govern relationships. In the interest of justice to oneself, she contends that “self-pleasuring” needs “to be moved out of the realm of taboo morality.”

The photograph of Sister Farley is taken from her page at Yale Divinity School. Note that she doesn't wear traditional nun burqa garments.

This fundamentalist zealot, clearly a supporter of the savagely misogynistic Catholic Sharia, trashes her for her radical feminism. Heh.

My dream debate would be Sister Farley going 9 rounds against the odious Margaret Somerville - who has never had and never will, a book on Amazon's bestselling list.

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.

Dating services for anti-Choice Men.

Another day, another RWNJ politician in the US shares fond memories of ...

New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, [...] who just received the Henry J. Hyde award for Americans United for Life for his career dating back to his days as a pro-life organizer at Trenton State College in 1972, [...] is also concerned that pro-abortion initiatives are being pushed in Obamacare and in U.S. overseas programs, something he would fight if he succeeds in his bid to become the next chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee next year. “To me the right to life is the most elemental right,” he said.

In receiving his Hyde award, Smith noted that even his wife is deeply involved in the anti-abortion movement, something that brought the two together at Trenton State. He said that when he helped create a pro-life caucus at the school, she joined in but rejected his requests for a date. So he made her treasurer of the group and eventually they became a couple.

*Seduction* tactics from the deeply paternalistic.

Who would have guessed that anti-choicers were limited to such a small breeding dating pool? And that they'd have to resort to bullying tactics to wear down women's resistance and to coerce them into marrying them?

Meanwhile, this study highlights how systemic sexism persists, particularly from men whose views are reinforced by their own traditional marriages.

Black Out, Speak Out

More information.

Vancouver Canucks on Board with Gore Tour?

Oh dear. Seems like someone closely associated with another NHL team has stepped in the fetushist cowpie.

Mark Donnelly is an opera singer based out of Vancouver, but he's perhaps best-known as the Canadian anthem singer at Vancouver Canucks games. The tenor has been leading the Rogers Arena crowd in his stirring renditions of "O Canada" for years, and he's become a recognizable local figure for it. He's very closely linked to the team, listed on the Canucks' website under Game Entertaiment Performers and often touted as "Canucks anthem singer Mark Donnelly" in commercials and at other Vancouver events.

That in mind, one has to wonder how the team feels that their noted anthem singer has also decided to become closely associated with the New Abortion Caravan, a group of trucks with 7-foot tall and 22-foot long billboards adorned with graphic abortion imagery that will be driving across Canada beginning this week.

On Tuesday, he sang the anthem at their launch on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Yup. There is he is. Nice images for a family-friendly sports franchise eh?

This is what he had to say before he sang:

"I'd just like to say. There's a lot of Canadians, both born and unborn, and this is for all of us, for everyone out here too and all of Canada.
Remember if we can't discuss things rationally, then we're not Canadians, we have to be able to talk."

Doesn't sound like the sharpest knife in the drawer, does he?

But trading on his local celebrity to help launch an anti-abortion campaign in Crunchy Granola Land?

Not cool.

Here's the Gore Gang he's now associated with. These are the people also behind the 'Genocide Awareness Project', which regularly causes ruckuses on university campuses. And of course, there's the infamous postcard campaign that mightily pissed off Calgarians last March.

Now, DJ!'s sports fans will remember the spot of bother the Ottawa Senators found themselves in when their 'Better Halves' (that would be wives and girlfriends) decided to play footsie with a lying Xian forced crisis pregnancy centre*.

So. How's this little stunt going over with fetishists?

SUZY thinks it will open a whole new market to the Message.

The New Abortion Caravan Makes the...Sports Page?

The guy who sings O Canada at the Vancouver Canucks' Game sang the anthem at the launch of the New Abortion Caravan. Yahoo Sports covered it.

Way to go Abortion Caravan. People who were never exposed to abortion issue were not made aware of it. Thumbs up.

(Um, I think SUZY's got an extra 'not' in there? Or is SHE being subtle?)

How about the fans?

Oh dear again.

Wow. Mark Donnelly (anthem singer for the @VanCanucks) sang O Canada at an anti-choice rallyPlease contact Nucks org and complain.

— Lisa Why (@lis0r) June 1, 2012

That would be the team's official Twitter account @VanCanucks.

In related news, you gotta follow @FetusCaravan, the blow-by-blow of the Gore Tour from inside the bus, so to speak. Hmm, the account seems to have undergone a staffing change. Related to this perhaps?

On the road again! The fetusmobile is crowded. Packed in like sardines, rubbing up against each other and and and ahhhhhhhhh !loiwsfpgh

— Fetus Caravan (@FetusCaravan) June 1, 2012

Rest assured that DJ! will be following this.


*More on the Vicious Abortion Crusaders Crusade against the Ottawa Senators can be found here.

They See Dead Fetuses

So, maybe this Debate about the Debate hasn't been a total waste of time. There have been some illuminating moments.

Like this one into the pretzelly mind of SUZYALLCAPSLOCK.

A-yup. We in Culture of Death® want to kill fetuses. We want fetuses DEAD DEAD DEAD.

It's aaalll about the fetuses.

No thought of the woman. Let alone 'for' the woman. The woman whose sole thought is 'Make this go away.'

This is why we won't debate them.

They are insane.