Jonathan Kay Explains Lying

Last night on Twitter, I asked Carolyn Bennett to respond to Jonathan Kay's demonization of later-term abortions.

She did. She asked him why he misrepresented the facts.

He denied he did and challenged her to point out where he was in error. They went off in other directions about bureaucrats and regulations and what-not.

I chimed in with this.

@jonkay @carolyn_bennett Here is the lie: 'abortion — for any reason, or no reason at all — at 20, 25, 30 or 35 weeks gestation'. 1/2

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) February 2, 2013

Bennett agreed.

Kay's response.

@drdawg @carolyn_bennett @fernhilldammit Since the only way u can try to nail me is by not quoting whole sentence, its clear you got nothing

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) February 2, 2013

So I quoted the whole sentence, in two tweets.

It is perfectly legal in Canada to have or perform an abortion — for any reason, or no reason at all — at 20, 25, 30 or 35 weeks gestation.

@carolyn_bennett @jonkay @fernhilldammit It's lying by implication--suggests that late abortion is entirely unregulated.

— Dr.Dawg (@DrDawg) February 2, 2013

“@drdawg: @carolyn_bennett @jonkay @fernhilldammit It's lying by implication." So, in other words: it's not lying.

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) February 2, 2013

Isn't that special? Redefining his way out of a pickle.

Like all lying liars.

(The date-stamps on those embedded tweets are weird. This all happened this afternoon.)

ADDED: The original story has been corrected. Not in the way we want, but it can be done. Who knew?

Jonathan Kay to the rescue of patriarchy!!!

*Shorter* Jonathan Kay: women lie, women are murderous, women make men do evil things.  

And so, to protect society from homicidal women, he opines that CPC politicians should pass a law that would give government "oversight' in determining a specific gestational minute when an abortion is no longer a therapeutic medical intervention, but a CRIME.

Never mind that in Canada for the last 25 years, the public health care system has efficiently regulated the termination of unwanted or life-threatening pregnancies by applying medical protocols, procedures and restrictions.

Patriarchy [is the name given to a] societal structure whereby men are dominant not in numbers or in force but in their access to status-related power and decision-making power. It is also connected to economics in that patriarchal societies men will have greater power over the economy. 

In our society, because men have higher income and greater access to the economy, they are said to be dominant. Power distribution in society should not be confused with power struggles at an individual level, although they can be reproduced in a smaller scale as well. 

For example, in many small businesses, the owner and top managers are male, and they will hire women to work for them. [And fire them, too.] Patriarchy can be enforced in a variety of ways, including intimidation of women through violence, sexual assault and other forms of harassment, and the discrediting of their efforts to organize and resist. 

Patriarchal societies are typically more authoritarian and rely heavily on legal-rational modes of organization, show stronger military implication and more reliance on police repression to impose authority. It is a society that tends to hold contempt for women [...]   

We've had it with Kay's smarmy, sneering assumptions about women, cloaked in a veneer of gentility and respect for the "public order" he perceives to be threatened by women stuck in a choice between a rock and a hard place. (Trigger warning: these stories by women who had late second trimester and third trimester abortions are heart-wrenching.)

Depicted below are Jonathan Kay's ideological comrades at arms: men like him, who expect the worst from women; they act pre-emptively against anticipated treacherous female machinations.

This guy, for example:

A prominent Saudi Arabian preacher who raped his 5-year-old daughter before torturing her to death because he reportedly questioned the child’s virginity has been spared a death sentence or even a lengthy prison term after agreeing to pay “blood money” to the slain girl’s mother.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a former drug addict who rose to national prominence as an Islamic television preacher, was arrested last November and charged with brutally raping and torturing 5-year-old Lama al-Ghamdi to death. According to a medical report, the little girl had been tortured with whips, electric shocks and an iron. She had broken arms, fractured ribs, a broken back and a crushed skull. She died on October 22.

And these ones: 

There are “two forms of feminism,” Buehner argued. There are “cute” feminists like Sarah Palin who will find jobs in the “marketplace” and “get themselves a husband” but will “never submit to the husband, in fact they will use their power probably to make their husband submit to them.” Then, there are the “ugly” feminists whose “lack of attractiveness has not given them access to power that they wanted in the marketplace.” These “attractively challenged” feminists will only find careers in academia and in government agencies, for instance, “you can run the EPA.”

What all these feminists have in common, Swanson argues, is that “all of them want to be free from the family” and together with “the homosexuals” are “destroying society.” Buehner speculates that in the future, feminism will be remembered as “a time in which women lost the love of their children” and “decided to become selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores.”

And how about this one:

Diallo, in a civil sexual assault case against Strauss-Kahn, is saying his alleged actions reflected a pattern of misogynistic behaviour. New York City recently passed a law against gender-based violence and there have been other allegations made against Strauss-Kahn by women. Diallo's lawyers wrote in her latest claim: "Strauss-Kahn's conduct towards women generally is, and more specifically his sexual assault of Ms Diallo was, motivated by a gender-animus and a misogynistic attitude."

[...]Soon after his arrest in New York, the French writer Tristane Banon accused Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her during an interview in 2003, a claim he called imaginary and slanderous. Prosecutors said they believed the encounter qualified as a sexual assault but the legal time frame to pursue her complaint had elapsed.

Then French authorities lodged preliminary charges of alleged aggravated pimping, claiming Strauss-Kahn was involved in a hotel prostitution ring including prominent figures and police in the northern city of Lille. Lille prosecutors have said they are looking into an allegation that Strauss-Kahn might have been involved in a rape during a sex party in a Washington hotel in 2010.

[...]Diallo's lawyers allude in Tuesday's filing to all those allegations, as well as to an affair Strauss-Kahn had with an IMF subordinate.

Some would disagree that Kay belongs on this spectrum of men who enable, justify, exploit and enforce gender inequality through violent means.

Yet his cavalier disregard for facts in favour of anti-abortion propaganda could inflame mentally unstable individuals, much as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly did when he repeatedly called Dr Tiller a "killer".

Consider this: patriarchy rewards him hugely, when he advocates for a pre-emptive law that undermines women's human rights. 

In fact, Kay gets quite richly paid for pontificating that it's a "moral" question when in fact any decision regarding the termination of a pregnancy in its third trimester should be informed by medical science and ^NOT by the religious quackery of conservative politicians such as Woodworth, Vellacott and Warawa.

Jonathan Kay Still Ignoring Women

As promised, Jonathan Kay responds (sorta) to Carolyn Bennett and his other (ahem) pro-choice critics.

In other words, Ms. Bennett concedes the literal truth of my statement that abortion is “legal” at any point in gestation. But she also argues that I’m “misrepresenting” the situation, because some people will infer from what I’ve written that third-trimester abortion is professionally sanctioned and common, even in cases where there is no medical necessity.

It is completely true that third-trimester abortions are rare in Canada. It’s also true that a pregnant woman who is deep into her third trimester of pregnancy can’t simply walk into a Canadian clinic and immediately receive abortion services without providing some evidence of medical need or fetal abnormality. But it is not true that there is any universal gestational cut-off. . .

He then says that the limit varies from province to province and that the rules 'generally permit wiggle room for doctors'.

Of course they do. Though I'm sure the professionals assessing individual cases wouldn't call it 'wiggle room'. They'd call it, um, 'assessing individual cases'.

Which is precisely why hard rules are a bad idea, or as legal scholars put it: 'hard cases make bad law'.

Almost by definition, a woman in a later stage of pregnancy wanting or needing an abortion is a 'hard case'. And all of them would be different: different health situations, different geographic situations, different economic situations.

Different. Or as the Canadian Medical Association puts it: in 'exceptional circumstances'. (Kay quotes that, by the way.)

He then provides some vague evidence of 'non-medical' abortions citing -- hilariously -- our fave obsessed fetus fetishist, a repeat of his tweet yesterday which I captured in case he realizes what he'd done. (He obviously hasn't heard of the phrase 'reliable source'.)

Even more hilariously, SUZYALLCAPLOCKS's post cites homophobe and professional pearl-clutcher, Margaret Somerville. Kay refers to her as 'a McGill bioethicist', not by name, when a quick search reveals that Frau Doktor S. has recently written at least three columns for the Natty Po. Why so coy about another of your in-house fetus fetishists, Jonathan?

So then he says, in effect, if the medical profession already imposes a limit, why not have a law, as they do in 'civilized' places like Europe? (Doncha love how the Right loves Europe on abortion policy, but hates it on just about every other human rights/workers' rights/women's rights/20th or 21st century policy?)

Here is his actual question.

And so I ask: If some Canadian decision-making body is going to determine when a women is allowed to have an abortion on demand, why is it better that such a body be composed of unelected doctors, rather than elected politicians?

And here we are again, back at the beginning of this particular circle of hell.

Because, Jonathan, barring 'exceptional circumstances', women who 'demand' abortions do NOT want to be pregnant and, again barring 'exceptional circumstances', act promptly to get themselves de-pregnantized.

It is a woman's decision. Not anyone else's, whether elected or unelected.

In those 'exceptional circumstances' where things have gone horribly wrong, it is STILL not the business of anyone but the woman and the professionals she chooses to help her.

To sum up: he concedes that women aren't strolling into abortion clinics in later stages of pregnancy demanding to be set free but continues to insist (from decidedly dodgy evidence) that it does too happen.

What he continues to ignore is that these 'hard cases' are wanted pregnancies gone wrong. And that the system we have to deal with them -- as evolved over the past 25 years -- works just fine.

ADDED: Antonia Zerbisias's debunking of SUZY's 'revelations' from 2009.

Where men are men and women know their rightful place.

Following Robert McClelland's recommendation, I read Jonathan Kay's account of his whirlwind field trip -  well financed, and likely as comfortable as CONvenient - to *collect* examples of First Nations folks who are almost just like NatPo readers.

About 40 paragraphs into Kay's piece, I started wondering why he didn't speak to any Indigenous women in the course of his research.  Then a couple of women make an appearance; the men that Kay has exclusively chosen to interact with, introduce them. Their contribution:

“Family dynamics is a big problem,” she tells me. “There’s lots of separation and switching of partners. The kids in school are basically suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. You’ve got a 16-year-old trying to deal with their parents splitting up when he was three. And a big part of that is addiction — alcohol, drugs and gambling. When you’re high, you fool around with someone else. And the next thing you know, you’re separated. That pattern has become common.”

At this, Eva Lazarus, Ms. Moore’s mother, who’d been listening from the side of the room, jumps in: “I know a woman here with four, five, even six children, all from different fathers. Then everyone sees it, and thinks growing up like that is the norm.”

Can't trash *pagan* beliefs and the *old ways* without highlighting good old boys' - and gals' - christianist slut-shaming, can he?  Jonathan is after all, his mother's son.

Kay applauds all the non-deleterious effects of religious indoctrination and how it has facilitated assimilation instilled a christian work ethic in the objects of his article - in spite of the horrific abuses inflicted at residence schools.  He only alludes to the long-range effects of PTSD suffered by adult survivors in one short poignant exchange with a non-native nurse.

But ... HOCKEY!!!  Yes. Boys playing hockey is seemingly the best hope, the most dynamic potential First Nations communities have of succeeding in Kay's rightful, paternalistic and euro-centric vision of Canada. "Balancing tradition and capitalism" ... indeed.

Kay is not alone in disregarding the dynamic role of women in Indigenous communities; he is following the "norm" established by centuries of patriarchal ideology who diminished, discredited and tried to destroy matrifocal traditions.

This is worth reading, for its insightful deconstruction of gendered contempt - specifically gynophobia - that has contaminated most news items about Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence's use of fasting as a strategy and as well, has disparaged the Idle No More movement. 

Sadly, it isn't only right wing nut jobs and CONs who disrespect First Nations, Metis, Inuit and all activist women of Indigenous ancestry. In the guise of well-intended concern, this blogger is wagging his phallic substitute at the women who originated the name of Idle No More (yet never claimed ownership of the movement) as he attacks them in his churlish screed.

In case we forget, here are some photographs of Indigenous women, from here.

 
 
The next vigil for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women will be held on February 14 on Parliament Hill.  More information here.

Grand merci to Kathryn Ssedoga for the wealth of links and resources on her Twitterstream.

Why does Jonathan Kay hate Olympic-hopeful female athletes?

From Dr Dawg, we learn that Kay may have experienced some form of intellectural melt-down, standing on his hind legs and baying at B'nai Brith.

Full disclosure: we at DAMMIT JANET! find the writing of Kay mère and Kay son to be dedicated to the unimaginative and humourless re-hashing of their pet peeves. In their haste to attack anything and everything which remotely suggests feminism, they have respectively parroted the most inane clichés.

But Kay's lashing out at B'nai Brith is perplexing. Perhaps there's something so Aryan, so Germanic about female ski athletes that it triggered a MASSIVE head-on crash between two conflicting beliefs he held. He and his mother did not contribute to coffers and war chests that should be only dedicated to the campaign to fight anti-semitism, in order to see these resources squandered on the fight that female skiers are waging against the IOC.

No matter that perhaps one of these athletes, if not more, must somehow be connected to causes near and dear to B'nai Brith, in order to have been granted its institutional support.

Competitive, muscled, Jewish women ski jumping? Not at home breeding babies as they should?!?! Shrieeeek!!!! In Kay's porn dreams perhaps, but not on the slopes and certainly not in the Olympics.

He must have experienced an epic melt-down, much as the character Ash did in Alien.

If you repeat a lie often enough ...

Why do zygote zealots and fetus fetishists lie and lie and lie and lie?

Self-righteous pricks like Con MPs Woodworth, Vellacott and Warawa claim they want to *open the debate*.  The sixth estate exposes their lies; these rightwing religious fundamentalists want to pass laws that criminalize abortion.

With the help of paid propagandists like Jonathan Kay, who can't be bothered to present accurate and correct facts in his odious piece of obfuscating glurge.

My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

It required a medical intervention to prevent an infection that could have killed me, which happened to Savita Halappanavar in similar circumstances, and to facilitate healing so I might become pregnant in the future, as was my desire.

Now imagine what that would be like if abortion were criminalized at 19 weeks? 

Documentation and evidence would have to be gathered - just like a rape kit - to prove that I hadn't "provoked" my own miscarriage, and then hauled myself to emergency while something bigger and more intense than four menstruations' worth of blood gushed forth. 

At the hospital, I (and my husband) would be subjected to an interrogation from the cop on duty, just to satisfy prurient, sanctimonious crotch-sniffers like Babs Kay, Woodworth, Vellacott, SUZANNE and Maggie Somerville - that it was "really and truly" a miscarriage. 

Health care professionals providing the necessary emergency dilation and curettage would have to complete numerous forms as proof that this health crisis wasn't a "homicide", and that none of us deserved to be jailed, as the fetus lobby would like to see happen.

As fern hill said, there is no LAW regulating abortion but there are medical protocols, procedures and RESTRICTIONS that our public health care system has established with regard to the termination of gestation.

Disgusting tactics that vilify and demonize women and their physicians only serve to provoke acts of violence from mentally unstable people who believe such lies.

Do Canadian doctors, or perhaps a surgical team providing a life-saving procedure to a pregnant woman need to become the target of an abortion vigilante before people like Jonathan Kay take responsibility for publishing LIES?

Illustration above from here.

BAD Journalism Makes Science BAD

Babs Kay has her pearls in a death grip again. And gives us a dandy example of how journalists *cough* either deliberately or simply stupidly misread reports resulting in biased, agenda-driven (BAD) science info.

First she provides a link to a recent study that finds increased risks of psychiatric problems for children born prematurely, or pre-term birth (PTB).

Then, gripping those pearls, she goes on to SHRIEEEK that abortion is a MASSIVE risk factor for PTB and rattles off a scary bunch of numbers from a study 'proving' it.

Interestingly, she does not provide a link to that study.

But commenter KentsKorrections does provide a link then proceeds to take Babsy out behind the woodshed in two comments.

He -- rather patiently I thought -- points out the fatal flaw in the MASSIVE numbers she cites.

BTW Odds ratios are NOT a measure of risk but of effect size (sorry for Wiki but it was easier to find a simple explanation for the issue).

"Odds ratios have often been confused with relative risk in medical literature. For non-statisticians, the odds ratio is a difficult concept to comprehend, and it gives a more impressive figure for the effect.[13] However, most authors consider that the relative risk is readily understood.[14] In one study, members of a national disease foundation were actually 3.5 times more likely than nonmembers to have heard of a common treatment for that disease - but the odds ratio was 24 and the paper stated that members were ‘more than 20-fold more likely to have heard of’ the treatment.[15] A study of papers published in two journals reported that 26% of the articles that used an odds ratio interpreted it as a risk ratio.[16]

This may reflect the simple process of uncomprehending authors choosing the most impressive-looking and publishable figure.[14] But its use may in some cases be deliberately deceptive.[17] It has been suggested that the odds ratio should only be presented as a measure of effect size when the risk ratio can not be estimated directly.[18]"

I am 100% behind providing as much information as we can to patients no matter what the procedure as everyone should be made aware of the risks. However it should be CLINICALLY RELEVANT. This is why we have doctors and not journalists deciding what information is relevant to disclose.

Good to see more volunteers stepping up in the BAD Science Watch.

UPDATE: Another snarky and informative comment from the appropriately named smarterthanyou.

You would think a crack journalist like Kay might take the time to look at a real consent form for abortion before she writes about the subject.  These consent forms are often much more comprehensive than your typical hospital consent form for any other procedure, and give women way more information than they typically get if continuing a pregnancy. (Nobody ever told me that peeing and pooping could be problematic and post-natal psychosis could be in my future. But I digress.)  

Why does she not name the studies she claims definitively prove her claims?  Consent forms typically state that which is proven and accepted in the medical community as fact. Consent forms may even stretch a bit and mention possible risks when the jury is still out. But in service to the truth and accuracy is helping their patients assess risk, they don't jump on every bad science claim that comes along, unlike the brilliant Postmedia writers such as Kay, Jonathan Kay, Fr. de Souza, Margaret Sommerville, Naomi LaKritz and Susan Martinuk.These anti-choice writers love to exploit every possible claim that abortion will cause every bad thing that ever happens to you after without question. They never saw an anti-abortion study they didn't like. They never question why these claims are not supported by any major medical organization like the SOGC, CMA, Canadian Cancer Society, or Health Canada. Anti-abortion studies have become an industry. Any academic who starts spitting them out can get instant play from the likes of the above mention writers, who are eager to jump on any bad news about abortion that supports their belief that all women should be forced to continue all pregnancies all the time, because they think so.

ALSO: KentsKorrections says both at NP and here in comments that he (she?) tried to post an argument-destroying link that wasn't allowed.

More Mansplaining on Superb Owl Day

After yesterday's Twitter brouhaha, Carolyn Bennett commented at the NatPo and reproduced it on her blog.

Today on Twitter Mr. Kay asked :"if you can find an incorrect sentence in my article, identify it. The misleading sentence is "It is perfectly legal in Canada to have or perform an abortion — for any reason, or no reason at all — at 20, 25, 30 or 35 weeks gestation". I am totally fed up with 'lawyered' assertions that totally misrepresent the facts. While in Canada, we do not have a law, we do have very strict professional guidelines. No physician in Canada can terminate a pregnancy over 24 weeks without serious indications: the life of the mother at risk, or the fetus has very serious malformations. I have sat with these women as they received the terrible news and sat with them throughout the terrible long, tear drenched process. Mr. Kay's assertion that late trimester abortions can be performed 'for any reason, or no reason at all' is just not true. I challenge him to find ONE late trimester abortion perfomed in Canada to a healthy mother with a healthy fetus. I am one of many politicians 'willing to tackle' this subject. He needs to be one of many journalists who are prepared to admit when their fine prose may have misled Canadians ...in this case admit that late-trimester abortions are NOT happening in Canada without 'reason'.

Kay takes note and intends to reply.

@carolyn_bennett I appreciate your blog post on the abortion issue, and will respond tonight on @fullcomment.

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) February 3, 2013

Oh boy, more mansplaining. On Superb Owl Day to boot.

I will update later or at least link.

Demonizing Late-Term Abortion Must Stop

Because Canadians are ignorant on the facts of abortion in Canada*, the Fetus Lobby® is able to get away with repeated -- and unrefuted -- lies and distortions.

Like this from Jonathan Kay today. Writing about Vellacott et al.'s ridiculous grandstanding, he says:

The fact is that Canada is the only nation in the Western world without any abortion law. It is perfectly legal in Canada to have or perform an abortion — for any reason, or no reason at all — at 20, 25, 30 or 35 weeks gestation. This is a disturbing state of affairs.

While this is true in the strictly legal sense, it is outrageously misleading.

There are no legal restrictions, but there are medical restrictions and regulations, worked out over the past 25 years by women and healthcare providers.

The facts are available.

• Fewer than 1% of abortions are carried out after 20 weeks' gestation.

• NO abortions are done after 24 weeks in Canada.

• There are very few doctors who will perform abortions past 20 weeks.

• The vast majority of these so-called late-term abortions are medically necessary because of catastrophic fetal anomaly or serious threat to the woman's life or health.

In other words, they are tragic endings of wanted pregnancies.

Yet these tragedies are routinely trotted out by heartless anti-choicers to be demonized as frivolous or irresponsible or convenient.

They have no compunction about trivializing a family's grief and loss as some silly woman's decision that she needs to fit into a bikini six months into her pregnancy.

You want to talk 'disturbing', Jonathan? Think of a woman going through the harrowing discovery of some horrible condition, the gut-wrenching decision on what to do about it, the painful and protracted process of a later-term abortion, and the ensuing grief and self-recrimination. (What did I do wrong?)

Now think of her reading your breezy brain-farts and reliving her experience.

That's disturbing.

Every fucking time this no-restrictions-at-all-for-all-nine-months canard gets an airing in the media, professional healthcare organizations should DEMAND that the outlet retract or clarify.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists should assign someone to full-time Bullshit Watch. (Bloggers like me will help.)

They owe it to their patients.


*Actually, that so few people are aware of the facts might be seen as a good thing. Canadians believe that abortion is a private matter and assume that it is available if necessary.

The Me, Myself and Irony Booby Prize to Jonathan Kay.

for his precious and self-effacing piece about Christopher Hume.


Lunatic overstatement? Oh puh-leeze, Jonathan? Aren't you running out of shelf space already, for all those trophies you've been awarded several times over for the "Most Afraid of Pustules on my Willy", the "I-Ran-Out-Of-Ideas-So-I-Borrowed-A-Cup", the "How Dare You Attack Me I'm on Your Side", the "Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day", the "I'm Being Persecuted by Fundamentalist Secularists", the "Vive le French Colonialism!", the "I'll Tell You What Censorship Is", the "Let Me HyperBole That For You", the "I Know It's Elitism Because I'm Excluded From It", the "Most Disingenuous Title", and so much more.

It does bring to mind that old saying about people and glass houses. Just saying.

A very CON-veeenient shock and outrage.

The advance team for CPC MP Woodworth's M312 also known as "The kinder, küche, kirche Motion" has started tactically framing the discussion for the CONservatives.

Last year, the CPC sent out Rona Ambrose to cluck about "Sex selection feticide denies millions of girls the right to be born merely because they are girls."

The specific language used is chosen ^NOT to denounce the fundamentalist religions and patriarchal societies that support many, many, many forms of violence against women, but to attack women's rights to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. That was in December.

Now, this.

There's a name for a pathologically threatening mental disturbance whereby an individual exercises his need for attention and control by appropriating another person's reality. It's called Münchausen syndrome by proxy and this is how it manifests itself when men tell women what's good for them.

A paternalistic columnist for a national newspaper - viz. Jonathan Kay - deliberately exaggerates facts and fabricates outrage by declaring himself to be a de facto defender of vulnerable females; whether impregnated or fetus. With deception at its core, this tactic proposes to decide on behalf of the victims what the outcome should be, without addressing the religious, social and political forces that have produced the alleged victimization.

Got it? The use of inflammatory terms like "missing women", "snuffed out" and "exterminate" is sex-selective manipulation and rhetoric.

When Kay and other rightwing gynophobes start crying genuine tears over Aboriginal "missing women" and girls who have been "exterminated" and "snuffed out" (as they are now doing metaphorically to curtail women's right to choose) on that day I might consider the authenticity of their outrage.

Until then, I will correctly assume that anything they say is a CONtemptible stratagem used to justify their misogynist imperative to control women's procreative choices.

Illustration source.

Hell must have frozen over...

Today the National Post published a rational, factual "full comment" regarding Canada's status quo on abortion.

Read Jesse Kline's piece.  It's fair, correct, reasonable.

It even has a quote from Ralph Klein which, one might hope, would appease the Fetus Lobby.

Unlikely.

Abortion — to borrow a phrase from Ralph Klein — is best left as “a matter between a woman, her doctor and her God.”

The shriEEEking: But what about the gawdless sluuuts?!?! has begun.

The knuckle-draggers have emerged in full force in the comments. These are the folks who share Jonathan Kay's view on the role of politicians in regulating women's reproductive organs; sadly their mastery of the English language is not quite as impeccable, nor their misogyny quite as discrete.

And to emphasize that point, the National Post chose a photo of a pro-Choice protester at a March for Lies on Parliament Hill that likely corresponds to the image their readers would use to illustrate the fundamentalist religious notion of a gawdless sluuut.

In response, it seems only fair to post a photo of some of the anti-Choice zealots, no?

And this is where I draw the line.

It must be that I'm one of those pacifist Canadians, still living (in my heart and mind) in that Canada that Jonathan Kay says we're best rid of, thanks to the ReformaTories.

I would not wish an untimely death upon the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

This US guy would, and explains the reasons why. He also has some astute observations about Sarah Palin.

Though Rob Kall pulls back from his punch with this conclusion:

The thing is, my wish is probably moot. Limbaugh surely has great health coverage and will, unlike the tens of millions he'd withold insurance from, get the best health care available.

And what about that pesky little thing called karma?

One could reflect on whether the judicious application of the Christian Golden Rule - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - might satisfy the goddess Kali.

Shocker! Responsible Abortion Reporting from National Post!

Crazy busy, but a quick post because I want to encourage responsible reporting about abortion. Here is the National Post's story on a report about abortion access in Canada. [Spoiler: Access needs a lot of improvement.]

Because people either don't know or forget from one abortion story to the next, the NP piece includes this de rigueur statement.

There is currently no federal law governing abortion in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country’s previous abortion law as unconstitutional in 1988.

Clear on that, are we?

Here's the new and admirable bit.

Abortion is governed by guidelines adopted by professional associations. The vast majority of elective abortions happen before 12 weeks, according to data collated by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. It’s virtually impossible for women to access the procedure past 24 weeks without a compelling medical reason.

Note the change from this piece of bullshit from new Walrus editor Jonathan Kay in February 2013.

The fact is that Canada is the only nation in the Western world without any abortion law. It is perfectly legal in Canada to have or perform an abortion — for any reason, or no reason at all — at 20, 25, 30 or 35 weeks gestation. This is a disturbing state of affairs.

What's disturbing is that a self-proclaimed "national" newspaper continued for so long to try to stir up Da Base on the settled matter of legal abortion. (Access, as the links above show, is another issue altogether.)

Maybe, just maybe, the powers that be are wising up to the notion that demonizing abortion is in direct conflict with the views of the majority of Canadians who are decidedly pro-choice.

So, provisional "yay" to Natty Po! We'll be watching to see that you keep up the good work.

Bonus: Graphic accompanying the NP story. Useful information.

UPDATE: From King Rat in the comments: According to Live-Action News, Canada is Abortion Heaven. Or, every stupid lie about abortion in Canada in one conveeeeenient POS.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah?

Sarah Grunfeld, that is. One of her peers tackles that problem, in a zesty manner reminiscent of Molly Ivins' best take-downs of her goofy Texan political foes.

[...]York University senior Sarah Grunfeld [...] made shanda-esque headlines when she put her social science professor’s career in jeopardy over an anti-Semitic remark that turned out to be—well—not. The statement “All Jews should be sterilized,” Professor Cameron Johnston explained in the introductory lecture to his class, was an example of an invalid and dangerous opinion; his point was that in academia especially, opinions must be reasonably qualified. Grunfeld failed to catch that qualifier, though, perhaps because before the prof had a chance to offer it, she had stormed out of class and enlisted the on-campus Israel-advocacy group, Hasbara (Hebrew for “Explanation”), to call for his immediate resignation.

Word of Johnston’s so-called racism exploded virally online by way of what National Post columnist Jonathan Kay has dubbed the “Bubbie-net” (Jewish grandparents frantically emailing their kin with fresh findings of alleged anti-Semitism); at the same time widely-respected Canadian Jewish civil rights association, B’nai Brith (Children of the Covenant), leaped in with equal gusto to champion Grunfeld’s claim. Then came the big reveal: Ms. Grunfeld had made a mistake. Not only was professor Johnston not an anti-Semite, he was a Jew. To borrow a more accessible Yiddish phrase, political correctness at York University had effectively schtupped itself.

Another take on the Sarah Grunfeld problem, here.

Why the pic of Sarah Palin? (which I found at this great blogpost, btw) Well, I couldn't locate a photo of Sarah Grunfeld and Palin looked so ... ah, piquante in pink - well, there it is.

Grand merci to Dr Dawg for the link to Emma Teitel's witty item.

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!

Does Kay remember the fear of getting pustules on his willy?

There doesn't really seem to be any other rational explanation for Jonathan's bizarre foray into self-righteous moralizing.

Did he suffer great personal trauma in high school when his phys. ed. teacher showed the boys a slide show of photographs of male genitalia that displayed symptoms of advanced sexually transmitted diseases? Did it permanently affect his sex life? Is he now bitter and therefore advocating for a similar approach as a way to justify and enforce female abstinence?

One of the lamentable results of the culture wars is that women have been taught to regard abortion -- a medically profound event that either kills, or pre-empts, a unique, genetically determinate human being -- as if it were merely an act of feminist self-empowerment. Showing a mother an image of her "soon-to-be-dead fetus" will disabuse her of that myth."

uh-oh. It sounds like Jonathan was fed anti-feminist ideology in his mama's milk. That might be the explanation for his holier-than-thou, punitive approach to controlling women's access to medical services.

Be thankful that Kay is only a pissant opinion columnist.