Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
Michelle Malkin now takes on the cause, and the rhetoric, of the misogynist anti-autonomy movement and its efforts to eliminate accessible reproductive healthcare.
Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of prenatal, contraceptive, and abortion care in the US. In a country in which over 85% of all counties have no abortion services provider at all, in which health insurance plans are not required to provide contraception, and in which government-provided health programs for the poor are prohibited from providing abortion or, at times, even information about abortion, Planned Parenthood is often the only reproductive health provider available in many communities, and usually the only one available at reduced cost.
This drives the anti-woman brigade screaming crazy. There has been an organized campaign against Planned Parenthood by the sex-negative right wing for years, using a combination of smear tactics, lies, distortions, and political lobbying. Attacks range across everything from Margaret Sanger’s racism (don’t believe what you hear from hypocritical liars), Planned Parenthood’s practices of murder, malpractice, and coverup (don’t believe what you hear from anti-woman liars), and the - in Malkin’s terms - “obscene profits” Planned Parenthood makes from the lucrative business of providing subsidized healthcare to uninsured patients in poor communities (don’t believe what you hear from financially illiterate liars). The reason, of course, is that Planned Parenthood is doing what they are dead set on wiping out: making reproductive autonomy real for the most vulnerable women in America.
Michael Gerson, Bush administration tool and terminal sufferer from Conservative Comprehension Disorder, continues his pattern of getting everything exactly backwards in his Washington Post-sponsored campaign of attacks on Barack Obama. The day after April Fool’s Day (he must have missed a deadline), Gerson published another misinformed screed, this one claiming that Obama is an “extremist” on abortion for opposing laws that would have sentenced women to death. As usual with Gerson and the forced-pregnancy crowd generally, almost everything he says is factually false, and a repetition of standard right-wing myths. The column consists of nothing more than Gerson and the Post carrying water for the organized anti-woman crowd by repeating their well-worn talking points verbatim, with no pretense of originality or reportorial integrity. (more…)
“Reproductive Health Reality Check” is running an April Fool’s Day blog carnival against “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that mislead patients seeking abortion with deliberately deceptive tactics and false information. “CPCs” are medical fraud - there is no other description for it. And they are an increasing problem as abortion services are continually targetted and women have fewer real options; currently they outnumber real, full-service reproductive health clinics 2:1.
College women are specifically targeted by these charlatans - sometimes with official support from the colleges themselves. Shockingly, not only does Georgetown University - a Catholic school - refuse to provide any form of contraception or abortion referral through its campus healthcare center or hospital, they apparently have also been blanketing the campus with anti-abortion stickers whose only pregnancy-care referral number is to a CPC, not a real health clinic. (Full disclosure: I have an MA from GU, from the early 90s, and their behavior in this regard was even more reprehensible then.) UNC Chapel Hill students have had to create their own sex-ed programs for fellow students, who mostly come from local high schools with “abstinence only” programs and literally don’t know anything about reproductive health, and then are targeted for lurid propaganda by a CPC located just off campus. Students at other schools have had to do the same.
CPCs are a threat to the larger patient population as well. Vicki Saporta of the National Abortion Federation documents many of the problems they represent, including their deceptive tactics, medical fraud, and the support they receive from the anti-choice right (including over $30 million in taxpayers’ money from the Bush administration, and more from state legislatures). Allyson Kirk reports her experience with a CPC that had deliberately located itself along the entranceway to a real health clinic; after receiving an appointment at the real clinic, she mistakenly entered the wrong door, deliberately made up to look like a pro-choice facility, and was treated as if she was the expected patient, then subjected to invasive questioning and fraudulent misinformation.
This kind of behavior would be criminal in a real health clinic. CPCs present themselves in a deliberately fraudulent manner, impersonating real clinics with trained personnel (almost invariably, nobody at a CPC is a licensed healthcare practitioner) offering appropriate healthcare services, for the deliberate purpose of manipulating patients’ decisions and foreclosing their options; they then defend themselves legally by denying that they are subject to the professional obligations of real healthcare providers. The more this is known, and the more their tactics are exposed, the safer women will be.
I don’t usually write link-only posts, but this is worthwhile and the stories some contributors have to share are appalling. Go take a look.
I read Chuck Palahniuk’s latest novel, Rant: an Oral Biography of Buster Casey, on the strength of a description of its plot. I thought it might raise some interesting bioethical issues. I suppose it does. Mostly it makes me want to take a shower.
Honestly, I have no idea what to think about this business, but . . . here goes:
Rant is a pseudo oral history of the life and exploits of the title character, Buster “Rant” Casey. Palahniuk delivers over 300 pages of short-paragraph-length observations from peripheral characters describing their interactions with him from overlapping and mismatching perspectives. (The book reads quickly because, given the large amount of white space between the “recollections”, it’s probably closer to 250 pages of real text.) We’re supposed to reconstruct the events described on the basis of which stories we believe. When you solve the puzzle, you get a picture of a dysfunctional and paranoid society suspiciously like our own, in which the government has vacated all civil liberties, imposed lifetime detention without trial for undesirable elements, and sequestered half the population in a dark underworld in which they are doomed to menial, marginal existences, receive a grudging minimum of social services, and can be shot on sight for being caught in the wrong place with the wrong paperwork; the justification for all this is . . . (wait for it) . . . the security of the nation, in the face of an existential threat from an invisible but omnipresent enemy. Young people respond to this with desperate nihilism, engrossing themselves in bizarre and self-destructive practices, as well as drugs, mindless sex, and violence. Behind the scenes are shadowy conspiracies enacted by powerful individuals who maintain the danger and the resulting oppression for their own interests: corporate, political, or religious.
Palahniuk’s take on this otherwise none-too-fictional theme is that the danger in question is not terrorists or traitors, or weapons of mass destruction, but biology. The world is driven to the brink of collapse by an unstoppable epidemic of rabies, passed mouth-to-mouth through close, casual contact, through sex between unknowing partners, and sometimes by those who deliberately seek infection as an act of rebellion. Rant Casey is the source of the infection, and of much else that goes on in this strained and tortured world.
[Spoilers Follow]
Chris Muir is the bizarrely unfunny cartoonist behind “Day by Day” - a conservatively-themed Webtoon that is so consistently incomprehensible that it has spawned an entire cottage industry consisting of the reworking of his strips by liberal bloggers on a desperate quest to force them to make some sense. Adding to the through-the-looking-glass fun are Muir’s many signature artistic tics: utterly non-sequitur dialog, references to Muir’s personal political hotbuttons that are so obscure many of the cartoons appear to have no recognizable content, a cast of characters that consists of weirdly-drawn urban hipsters spouting conservative cliches while striking pointless poses, a female cast that consists exclusively of huge-breasted slim-waisted sexpots with low necklines and bare tummies, artistic skills so marginal that his human poses often simply leave out major body parts or appear deformed, and a strange penchant for showing dialog balloons emerging from implausible parts of the speaker’s body. Plenty of nutty goodness there for those who have the time and energy to wade through it, which I rarely do.
This week, however, Muir joined the creepy talking-fetus brigade of conservative ‘toonists. It’s been discussed before, but it’s apparently a growing meme on the right wing - fetal “personhood” taken to such a bizarrely literal extreme that they imagine fetuses as having fully-functional adult personalities, and sometimes adult bodies (and why not? - with all the retrograde scientific claptrap the right wing has latched onto, the homunculus theory is hardly out of place). This can’t be a coincidence. Literalizing the claim of fetal personhood distinctly changes the relationship between, and relative moral standing of, a woman and her fetus, to the detriment (need it be said?) of the woman. That this delusional characterization of pregnancy has become so common and so widespread of late signals another move in the ongoing assault on the effective moral personhood of women. Here is Muir’s contribution to the war:
Classic Muir. The first panel makes no sense. (Emphasizing the word “must” makes the second woman’s response seem like a logical deduction from the first woman’s statement - but it’s non-sequitur. As commentary on the immigration bill issue, it’s equally nonsensical: who is legal? why “must”? what the hell is he talking about?) He hits bottom in the second panel, when the woman’s fetus addresses her directly and declares itself to be an “illegal immigrant” in a voice loud enough to be heard by the woman next to her. This panel’s a three-fer: creepy fetus fetishization, self-contradiction (the fetus appears to be claiming solidarity with illegal aliens, which is against Muir’s own point of view [does he not actually read his own strip?]), plus nutjob rhapsodizing about marriage that is both false and idiotic (there’s nothing illegal about being conceived before your parents were married, as this fetus is said to have been; he’s somehow elevated a right-wing obsession with adult women’s sex lives to the level of a criminal act on the part of the fetus, which is impressive doing even for Muir). The third panel is just dumb. (What has late-night TV got to do with a talking fetus? Is she hallucinating the voice? That would undercut the fetus-fetish message, plus the other woman seems to hear it, too. Is the fetus watching TV? That’s even creepier.) It’s like he feels no responsibility to relate the content of one panel to another, let alone make his weird asides and personal in-jokes make any sense to anyone else.
The bottom line, though, is the talking fetus. No matter how dumb the rest is, talking fetuses are weird, scary, and implicitly misogynistic.
Which means, of course, that it’s time for another Chris Muir cartoon upgrade project. I’ve posted my weak efforts below the cut. Feel free to pile on. (Add your edited cartoon in comments, or just quote the dialog for the balloons.)
Mingle2 - a blog that links a lot of quizzes, surveys, and other online game-type-stuff, offers this nifty service: What’s My Blog Rated? Enter the URL of your blog, journal or other Web site, and it gives you an MPAA-style rating of its content.
I’m delighted to report Sufficient Scruples received the following:
Why, however?
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
- sex (17x)
- abortion (14x)
- breast (6x)
- death (3x)
- drugs (2x)
- gay (1x)
Ah, yes. The old “dirty words census” protocol. Some anginal panty-sniffer with a clipboard checking off all the naughty words - predictably, mostly related to sex - that send his blood-pressure up gets to determine whether your interests - and your audience’s - are worthy or not. In this case, it’s obviously done with a script, which I guess is not as bad as that “CapAlert” clown crouching in the back of movie theaters obsessing over “the foulest of foul words” and “female body parts ghosting through clothing”. I gather this site is intended ironically, also. But even so, it functions as a kind of childish dirty joke - that is, that there could be such a rating system, and that it could function on a mere count of perfectly ordinary words like “sex”, “abortion”, “breast”, or “death”, and not be nonsensical or unrecognizable as a rating system, is a measure of how immature we still are as a society. We have allowed self-appointed evangelical Beavises & Buttheads to censor our airwaves, Super Bowl Halftime Shows, and now blogs (”It says ‘breast’, huhuhuh!” “NC-17!!!1!”). Mature people don’t let themselves to have their tastes dictated or censored by immature children.
From any reasonable perspective, rating Web sites on how often they use the words “sex” or “gay” makes as much sense as rating them on how often they use bold-face fonts, or adverbs - the idea that ordinary elements of language could be dangerous in themselves is comprehensible only in a world in which the crazies who have made certain elements of language objectionable are taken seriously. That world is long past its freshness date.
Hat Tip:: Echidne of the Snakes, and several others.
Making with the sorely overdue link-love: two months ago, Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon, and the best thing that ever happened to John Edwards) linked my prior post on right-wing propaganda about Margaret Sanger (as a way of attacking Planned Parenthood). She points out the fact that, in Sanger’s day, PP was actually anti-abortion (largely for reasons of the relative safety of the procedure, much lower then than now), and that the wingers seem to have no conception of the irony of their slanders.
The article generated a fascinating discussion thread, however (with minimal, but nonzero, trollage) - one that I only stumbled across today by following a visitor link (thanks!). I’m sorry to be so late on this but I encourage everyone to run over there; the discussion is interesting and, collectively, it includes a fascinating list of resources on the history of abortion, abortion and race, and sexual autonomy as seen from a variety of times and places, and presented in a variety of media (the rock-opera version of a 19th-century German play about the link between lack of sex ed and unplanned pregnancy sounds . . . wild - and I had no idea there was a whole list of early silent movies on the same topic!). Now I’ve got a lot more reading to do! So do you.
Joe Carter, rising star in the right-wing religious think tank milieu and blogger of the always-interesting Evangelical Outpost, makes one of his not-infrequent visits to fetus-fetish loopyland today. He contributes an overwrought and, basically, just kind of weird open letter to early-stage fetuses:
Let me begin by congratulating you on making it through the embryonic stage. Too many of our fellow humans don’t even make it as far as you have now. Many died of natural causes. Others were cut down prior to implantation by an abortifacient. Still others are trapped in the freezers of IVF clinics, in suspended animation awaiting their fate. . . .
He then offers “advice” to fetuses on how to avoid abortion (don’t have birth defects, don’t be part of an at-risk multiple pregnancy, etc.). Joe, it should be explained, is not dumb enough to think he can talk to fetuses. He just does it anyway. Naturally, all his “advice” to the fetus is really veiled criticism of the pregnant woman: for failing to carry three or more fetuses to term regardless of risk, for failing to have a child with birth defects, for being one of the roughly 0.04% of American women who pursue sex selection, or for having genetic-health preferences he doesn’t approve of.
Naturally as well, the piece goes to lengths to paint every possible alternative for a pregnant woman, except, notably, the one he approves of, as evidence of that woman’s depravity. He explicitly quotes the facts that:
Carrying three babies to term would more than double the woman’s risk of developing the most severe diseases of pregnancy, such as preeclampsia. The average triplet is born two months premature, significantly raising the risk of disabilities . . . .
But he excoriates the choice to reduce multiple pregnancies to avoid these risks. He characterizes the implantation of multiple embryos to increase chances of pregnancy (because of the high failure rates in IVF) as efforts “to save money” - but he previously harshly criticized Amy Richards, the subject of an infamous New York Times profile who had a selective reduction of her unplanned, accidental triplet pregnancy as well. So, not only is it immoral to subject yourself and your fetuses to the increased risk of multiple pregnancies, but it is also immoral to do anything about it if you do find yourself in that position. And, being unable to afford multiple rounds of IVF at $10,00 - $20,000 a shot is, of course, mere selfishness, but you’re forbidden to assert your own worth even if you didn’t pursue a multiple pregnancy “to save money”. (His pretended concern for the risks to the woman of a multiple pregnancy is clearly window-dressing; no woman is allowed to act to reduce that risk no matter how or why she encountered it.) You’re bad if you implant more than two embryos, you’re bad if you can’t afford not to, and you’re bad if you reduce the risks you face after stumbling through the previous two problems. In other words, taking any positive action to control your risks and outcomes according to your own values and desires is immoral.
The rest is just typical emotive fetus-swooning (”May our Lord have mercy on your poor fetal soul”; ” society has decided that it is better for you to be put to death”; “Your best hope is to pray and hope that others are praying for you too”) and woman-hating (there is not one reference to a woman’s “choice” that suggests there would be any positive benefit to her to control her own biological destiny; women’s autonomy is, literally, for Joe, nothing more than “the right to kill a fetus for any reason you choose” - not one of which such reasons he mentions or acknowledges might even exist). In none of the situations he mentions - birth defects, unplanned multiple pregnancies, risky pregnancies, genetic diagnosis - is there the slightest hint that being denied the right to control your own and your offspring’s future could be of any benefit. In every case, he picks what he considers the least defensible exercise of a woman’s choice not to carry a pregnancy - Down’s Syndrome, “squinting” - and mocks the very idea that anyone should be allowed to have preferences about the matter. More serious choices - Huntington’s Disease, Tay Sachs - are never mentioned, and clearly form no barrier to forcing women to continue a pregnancy against their will.
But what else would this be? I didn’t expect any sudden access of insight or empathy in such a post. I do find it useful to chart the clinical course of right-wing dementia, however. Now they’re talking to fetuses. What next? More importantly, is there an end stage, or are they all just going to wind up like Strom Thurmond, 100 years old, babbling like a banshee and yapping offensive remarks at women in their intermittent lucid moments? (OK - maybe this is the end stage. But how long can this go on?)
“Wendi Aarons” contributes an open letter to the McSweeney’s collection:
AN OPEN LETTER TO
MR. JAMES THATCHER,
BRAND MANAGER,
PROCTER & GAMBLE.February 6, 2007
Dear Mr. Thatcher,
I have been a loyal user of your Always maxi pads for over 20 years, and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core™ or Dri-Weave™ absorbency, I’d probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I’d certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can’t tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there’s a little F-16 in my pants. . .
Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered from “the curse”? I’m guessing you haven’t. . . .
Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: “Have a Happy Period.”
Are you fucking kidding me? . . .
Today is International Women’s Day, and for that reason also Blog Against Sexism Day. I want to use the opportunity to take notice of the degree to which sexism is the root of many healthcare ethics issues affecting women, or, to put that another way, how much of women’s health issues arise from or are shaped by sexism and gender oppression.
[NB: I began this review just after the movie came out, almost 15 months ago, and never finished it. Finally, sitting around this weekend, sick and procrastinating, I decided to get it off the books. Here it is, for whoever’s still interested.]
The 2005 techno-thriller The Island hides a ham-handed anti-biotech message amidst its helicopters, gun battles, and explosions of various kinds. It trots out some of the standard “clone army” cliches, but goes beyond this, in places literally taking its dialog directly from the religious-right’s anti-science talking points. It fills a certain niche in the long line of biotech-nightmare morality plays, but with a particularly preachy, and notably slanted, take.
Every day is freedom day, autonomy day, self-determination day, choice day, as far as I’m concerned. Reproductive choice is one part of the freedom and autonomy we all enjoy throughout our lives - the birthright of every moral person, the foundation of morality in both its constraining and its liberating guises. That pervasive freedom, and the moral responsibility it brings, must remain inviolate if we are to be moral persons at all, and to act from that stance of moral agency in any and every part of our lives. In that sense, every threat to the moral dignity of the individual is equally a threat to freedom in all its aspects and manifestations.
If you are pro-freedom, you must be pro-choice - and pro-free-speech, and pro-marry-whom-you-want, and pro-fuck-whom-you-want-and-how-and-when-and-why, and pro-feminist, and pro-speak-truth-to-power, and pro-read-what-you-like, and pro-write-what-you-like, and pro-vegetarian, and pro-wear-leather, and pro-wear-makeup, and pro-hate-makeup, and pro-piercing, and pro-no-piercings, and pro-disability-righs, and pro-lift-up-every-voice-and-sing, and pro-hip, and pro-square, and pro-people-in-all-their-crazy-ways - for freedom enables all of these, and freedom is lost when any of these is banned. That’s good enough reason - a reason that makes a necessity - for being pro-choice and all the rest, every single day you value freedom.
No, not me (the “use/mention distinction” is hereby incorporated by reference). One of my students said it the other night, as an explanation for why she wasn’t feeling well and had to leave class.
I never know how to respond to that sort of thing.
The New York Times hits the right note, almost in passing, in today’s article on the difficulties working-class women face in breastfeeding due to opposition from employers. Women are more and more pressured to breastfeed (witness the Times’s own notorious article - titled “Breast-Feed or Else” - virtually accusing them of child abuse if they do not), but those with fewest choices economically have the hardest time doing so, especially because employers, while sometimes paying lip service to woman-friendly policies, prohibit women from doing what is necessary to keep their kids in best health.
Right-wingers have been beside themselves over a small cluster of deaths from toxic-shock-like syndrome, caused by infection by certain specific microorganisms, in patients who had obtained medical abortions using RU-486 or a similar preparation. Specifically, there have been 4 such deaths from 2003 - 2005, plus one previously; the most recent 4 all involved women in California who had been given an “off-label” vaginal suppository for Mifepristone Misoprostol (one of the two drugs used in the most-common medical abortion procedure), as opposed to taking it orally. These similarities prompted concern among health officials; the American College of Gynecology, which had endorsed the off-label usage, convened a study panel on the issue, and Planned Parenthood stopped using the vaginal-delivery method (which is otherwise more comfortable, easier, and more effective than oral delivery). The anti-choice contingent, however, of course began trumpeting the incidents as “proof” that all medical abortion was “unsafe”.
This “proof” suffers somewhat from certain facts: (a) no clear cause of the toxic syndrome in these cases has ever been determined; (b) the medication has been used safely, orally and vaginally, by over half a million women, as compared with only 5 deaths; (c) the death rate for medical abortion - as for every other form of early- to mid-term therapeutic abortion - is lower than that for childbirth, making abortion in general, and RU-486 in particular, the best choice for women from a safety perspective. Now, the results of ACOG’s review of the situation show that this safety differential favors RU-486 even more than was previously known.
Jill Stanek, raving but rarely comprehensible anti-choice knee-jerker, looks at this:
. . . and comes to this conclusion:
The cartoonist who penned this is liberal. However, the cartoon can be taken two ways, [which is] I’m sure not Ohman’s original intent.
Yeah, I’m sure it wasn’t. In fact, I’m sure there’s almost no one but a committed anti-choicer who would look at the choice between safe and legal abortion and widespread abuse, death, and disability from illegal abortions, and think there’s more than one good option.
It’s really hard, sometimes, to resign yourself to living in a world with these people in it.
Brace yourselves:
If you’re anything like the American public, some of you can’t handle this. AP notes some of the reactions to this cover shot on a magazine devoted to caring for new babies:
“I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine,” one person wrote. “I immediately turned the magazine face down,” wrote another. “Gross,” said a third. . . .
Babytalk is a free magazine whose readership is overwhelmingly mothers of babies. Yet in a poll of more than 4,000 readers, a quarter of responses to the cover were negative, calling the photo — a baby and part of a woman’s breast, in profile — inappropriate.
One mother who didn’t like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.
“I shredded it,” said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. “A breast is a breast — it’s a sexual thing. He didn’t need to see that.” . . .
“I’m totally supportive of [breastfeeding] — I just don’t like the flashing,” she says. “I don’t want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn’t want to see.”
Look, you nutcase - unless your husband or son are crazier than you are, there isn’t a breast they don’t want to see. (Gay husbands or sons perhaps excepted - and I admit I harbor a hope that Ash’s family includes at least one of the above, just for the sake of imagining her reaction.)
Voices of reason don’t help:
Babytalk editor Susan Kane says the mixed response to the cover clearly echoes the larger debate over breast-feeding in public. “There’s a huge Puritanical streak in Americans,” she says, “and there’s a squeamishness about seeing a body part — even part of a body part.”
“It’s not like women are whipping them out with tassels on them!” she adds. “Mostly, they are trying to be discreet.”
Kane says that since the August issue came out last week, the magazine has received more than 700 letters — more than for any article in years.
“Gross, I am sick of seeing a baby attached to a boob,” wrote Lauren, a mother of a 4-month-old.
The evidence of public discomfort isn’t just anecdotal. In a survey published in 2004 by the American Dietetic Association, less than half — 43 percent — of 3,719 respondents said women should have the right to breast-feed in public places.
Oh, god. It’s not like we haven’t seen this before.
Personally, I favor the tassels.
The Dominican Republic legislature narrowly defeated an amendment to a bill that would have permitted abortions in cases of pregnancy by rape. The amendment was heavily opposed by the Catholic church and other religious right-wingers; the local bishop claims the issue has nothing to do with religion.
The House of Representatives of the Dominican Republic has backed away from legalizing abortion in cases of rape in a new National Penal Code, approved on Tuesday. The new Code now goes to the Senate for approval.
Last week lawmakers presented the reformed penal code, the first draft of which included a clause legalizing abortion in cases of rape. The initial draft drew widespread protests from the Dominican Republic Bishops’ Conference and other organizations.
Although it initially appeared that the modified Code - including the abortion legalization clause - would be approved, lawmakers in the House were persuaded by pro-life lobbyists not to include the clause in the final draft. . . .
Last week, the Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Ramon Benito Angeles, explained that an abortion in the case of a rape does not benefit the woman who has suffered such a trauma. . . .“Abortion is not a religious issue, it’s a human rights issue. Those in favor of abortion paint the discussion as if this were a question of imposing religion. This is not about an argument between religions. Today in the Dominican Republican we are being plagued by apparently uncontrollable violence. Every day the media surprises us with more reports of horrendous deaths and deplorable events,” the bishop said.
There you have it. Abortion is terrorism, not having to bear a rapist’s child is of no benefit to women, and the Catholic church’s concerted efforts to impose forced pregnancy and forced childbirth on rape survivors have nothing to do with imposing their religious beliefs on others; women’s rejection of the Church’s teachings about forced childbirth do not constitute an argument between religious beliefs.
That clears that up.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute has an excellent national roundup of pending legislation aimed at reducing reproductive freedom.
Read it and weep:
Abortion
Abortion Bans to Replace Roe
‘Choose Life’ License Plates
Crisis Pregnancy Centers/Alternatives to Abortion
Fetal Pain
Mandatory Counseling and Waiting Periods
Medication Abortion
Minors Reporting
Parental Involvement
‘Partial-Birth’ Abortion
Physician-Only Requirements
Postviability Abortion
Private Insurance Coverage of Abortion
Protecting Access to Abortion
Protecting Access to Clinics
Public Funding of Abortion
Requiring Abortion Providers to Have Hospital Privileges
Reporting Statistical Information to State Agencies
Stem-Cell and Embryo Research
Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers
See Also:
Contraception and Prevention: Abortion-Related Restrictions on State Family Planning Funds
Fetal Assault
Refusal Clauses: Abortion Services (See also General Medical Services)
Contraception & Prevention
Abortion-Related Restrictions on State Family Planning Funds
Contraceptive Coverage
Emergency Contraception
Requiring Pharmacists or Pharmacies to Dispense Contraception
State Medicaid Family Planning Eligibility Expansions
See Also:
Youth: Child Abuse Reporting
Refusal Clauses: Contraceptive Services (See also General Medical Services)
HIV Testing of Infants and Pregnant Women
Nonmedical Use of Ultrasound
Substance Abuse During Pregnancy
Refusal Clauses
Abortion Services
Contraceptive Services
General Medical Services
Minors Access to Reproductive Health
Sex Education
See Also:
Abortion: Minors Reporting
Abortion: Parental Involvement
Contraception & Prevention: Parental Involvement
Hat tip: Reproductive Rights Blog
In her continual display of not getting it, “Jacquefromtexas” offers another bit of inspired reasoning: because you can’t kill your dog, abortions must be illegal.
Every once in a while, I’ll have a random thought that inspires anger in me. Yesterday, when feeding my dog a treat, I had such a thought.
Daisy is the sweetest dog in all Dogdom, the epitome of all cuteness. . . .
Daisy is dependant on me. Daisy requires me to give her food and water, to keep her warm, to keep her clean and healthy. She requires me to give her love and protection from those big, scary thunderstorms.[M]ay I use forceps to twist off her body parts? May I stick scissors at the base of her skull and suck out her brain? May I immerse her in a saline bath to burn her to death both inside and out? How about dismembering her with a suction aspirator?
How about just not giving her food and water? . . .
Bottom line is this: There is such a thing as moral responsibility towards the weak and vulnerable- especially one’s very own children. That is why child abuse and neglect is criminal, as is animal cruelty and neglect.
[emphasis, and spelling errors, original]
Good thinking.
There’s a weird freak-show quality to internecine dustups between extreme right-wingers, especially on the religious anti-sex front. One is going on now as to who is the most authentically sex-negative. Worrisomely, though, one of the combatants is a professional counselor who uses her position, and credentials, to push a highly personal agenda while also pulling rank on people with dissenting opinions.
“Jacquefromtexas” is an MSSW (though not, apparently, with a clinical social work license). She writes a blog mostly devoted to simplistic anti-choice rants, and she also serves as an “expert” on About.com’s answer-board devoted to abortion, where she cites her professional credentials to bolster her standing. One would think that would impose on her an obligation to act within the understood bounds of professional behavior - to support those she counsels in developing and exercising their independence, to remain neutral in assisting them in working through their issues, to acquire and diligently use factually correct and scientific information when providing factual input, and to avoid using her position to promote a personal agenda through her clients. One might also hope it would be exercised by someone with the maturity to stay out of public pissing fights with people with other opinions. In this case, one would be disappointed (all quotes below from About.com except where noted).
“Non-directive counseling:”
I joined AllExperts to counter to pro-abortion opinions and irresponsibility that I saw, like the downright lies that people like “Angel” wrote. . . . I share your concerns and am pleased to report that neither myself nor the other expert who now answers abortion questions would ever promote or refer for an abortion. . . .
[H]aving abortions hurt your body and your ability to have children but oral contraceptives are bad for you, too. They make you infertile (that’s there job) and hurt your ability to conceive later. They are also abortifacient, which means you may not be having surgical abortions, but you’re still aborting by using the pills. If you heart has changed toward abortion and feel like it is morally wrong, then oral contraceptives are not a good choice for you, either. . . .
I think you’re transferring some of that pain and burden onto yourself, saying that because you aborted 3 of your babies, you don’t deserve to have another because of the risks you created. Nicole, God doesn’t work that way. He will forgive you and bless you if you recognize that what you did (abortion and premarital sex) was wrong and you seek Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for forgiveness. If you beleive that He was the son of God, died to your salvation and rose again, then you can be saved and reunited with your children. And any guilt or shame can be taken from you and God can reward you with healthy children if He chooses to. . . . There is so much forgiveness, Nicole. So much. [NB: This was to a questioner who hadn’t mentioned feeling guilty, or having any religious feelings whatsoever.]
My friends [who had abortions] tell me that the feelings of guilt, grief and shame almost never go away. Many feel like they chose themselves over their babies, that they were selfish and let their babies down and feel like a murderer. Many of them report having nightmares of killing babies, of bloody babies crying, or just wake up to a crying baby that’s not there. . . . [etc.]
“Professional neutrality”:
I joined AllExperts to counter to pro-abortion opinions . . . I commonly refer to places that provide free pregnancy help [i.e., anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers”] . . . [N]either myself nor the other expert who now answers abortion questions would ever promote or refer for an abortion.
Abortion clinics charge for ultrasounds and the counseling that a person receives there is minimal. All services provided by non-profit pregnancy centers are comprehensive and free. . . .
The latter is particularly odd in light of this response:
[Question:] I want to ask you a question but you dont say if you are balanced in your opinion. . . . Can you say if you answer that you are fair and accurate or biased?
While I appreciate your question, I’m afraid I can not answer it. I am a professional and bound by a Code of Ethics that forbids me from answering personal questions about myself.
WTF? I’ve reviewed the entire National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics and the Clinical Social Work Federation Code of Ethics; one or the other is also the basis for most codes of ethics of state or regional social work societies in the US. I cannot find anything even remotely similar to the above in either of them. Certainly no medical association has a code of eth
