Pool’s open: jump in, the water’s fine

As the Annual March of the Catholic Schoolchildren winds up and lurches away for another year in a mass of twitching, persecutiongasmic protoplasm, it is customary for the Annual Spinning of the Attendance Numbers to begin.

Normally (though I hesitate to use that word in relation to this  demented little shindig), the “March For Life” gets anywhere from 5-8000 attendees: a respectable number by any measure for a fringe protest.  But nonetheless the reported attendance number is always an occasion for MASSIVE dispute and disagreement, fetus fetishists feverishly insisting that the Liberal Media is purposely under-reporting their numbers.

Then the fun begins, as they retaliate with their own estimates that are orders of magnitude larger than those reported by crowd control experts, cops, and the media covering the event.  In our years of observing fetus fetishist behaviour, we’ve watched in stunned amazement as they work themselves into a Mass Persecution Frenzy of such brain-damaged intensity that they insist the event drew double and triple what the media reported.

There’s a reason, and it isn’t, as one might expect, recreational hallucinogens.  In their minds, it’s imperative that every year’s attendance blow the doors off the previous year’s, because it shows their movement has  Momentum (and keeps those checks coming in fast and furious to Campaign Life). When in fact this year it had what might be more accurately described as NOmentum…

A much smaller crowd than expected slowed traffic during the March for Life on downtown Ottawa streets Thursday.

Organizers claimed they were expecting more than 15,000 pro-life supporters to converge on Parliament Hill. However, today’s crowd on a cool, blustery spring afternoon is estimated at perhaps 4,000 people.  [...]

Organizers of the Thursday march believed this could mean an even larger crowd than the 15,000 the Campaign Life Coalition says participated in the 2011 event — however that has not occurred.

Liberal Media Conspiracy?  Too bad that little nugget came from the Ottawa Sun, not known as a bastion of liberalism by any stretch of the imagination; even a fetus fetishist’s imagination.

And the stretching of imaginations brings me to this.  As is the usual practice on this day, we Fembots were predicting what kind of numbers they’d spin up, but this year promises to be so double-plus entertaining that we decided, what the hell, let’s make it intere$ting.  A feminazi pool has been formed accordingly and $10 bets are now being taken on what spun-out attendance figure the fetus fetishists will eventually settle on… so whaddya say, ya hit or ya sit?

HillCam, today about 2pm Eastern

You stay classy, Toronto Star!

Well this is Special: Canada’s major progressive-leaning newspaper, known affectionately to conservatives as The Red Star, is running an online article with a direct link to the “Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform”.

For the happily uninitiated, CCBR is (cached link, fetus pron warning) the leading Canadian purveyor of fetus pron. Indeed they is: they put it on posters to be waved on streetcorners and cause 10-car pile-ups as passing motorists reach for the barf bags, they make bigass grotesque public displays of it where they compare it to the Holocaust (never any mention of the Tubesock Holocaust, though), they festoon it all over their Fetusmobiles©, and of course their website is crawling with it.

For brain-damaged halfwits who respond “Well, if abortion’s such a great thing, why shouldn’t people see it?”, look pal, most normal people don’t especially want to see the gory tray of leftovers from open-heart surgery either.  Or knee surgery or a hip replacement or any other medical procedure including the lobotomy that was clearly had by whoever at the Star was responsible for this article.  The icing on this foul and feculent cake is that this particular imagery is displayed for the express purpose of restricting womens’ rights… not a compelling reason to remove it from the public sphere, but maybe something the *cough*progressive*cough* Star might want to consider when deciding whether to link to it (or not).

AND (heh, I’m on a roll) before some addlepated dingbat starts jabbering about “Free Speech”, this isn’t a free speech issue.  I have in the past defended the right of anti-abortion students at the University of Calgary to exhibit the CCRB’s gross images as part of their demented, ignorant, in-your-face display.  PETA does the same thing with doctored images of seals: if it’s okay for them, it’s okay for the fetus fetishists.

No, it’s about propagandizing, which is all that the CCRB website does, and the fact that it’s bad form for the progressive media to assist the propagandists by sending a shitload of traffic their way.

Geeeeeeeez Star, ya THINK!??

P’wndering the Non-Debate Debate & Subsquent Foolish Fallout

So that happened.

I was unfortunately waylaid by a flu bug of such savage magnitude that I was unable to participate in any bursting of blogs, but it seems to have all worked out for the good.  Motion 312 was exposed for the sleazy little fetus-humping sham it is, an attack on womens’ rights unworthy of the time and taxpayer dollars wasted on debating it.

The highlight was MP Stephen Woodworth, the source of this demented irritant, being given a top-drawer pro-choice asskicking by his own caucus whip, Gordon O’Connor, while the world watched.  Among other things, O’Connor reminded Woodworth in no uncertain terms that the House is neither a medical nor religious body:

The House of Commons, however, is not a laboratory. It is not a house of faith, an academic setting or a hospital. It is a legislature, and a legislature deals with law, specifically, in this case, subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code.

Woohoo!  Go Gordio!  But this little nugget was my personal favourite:

The decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision, and in a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual must be paramount and take precedence over that of the state.

Hear hear!  And here here!

But predictably, in the wake of the M312 debate we’ve been beset by a frenzy of furious pearl-clutching over Canada’s lack of legislation governing this personal medical decision.  Apparently “Canada needs a proper open debate on abortion policy” because the status quo isn’t what the Supreme Court intended.

Well guess what: the status quo isn’t what anyone thought would happen.  Back in 1988, even I assumed that eventually abortion would be codified in some kind of law.  I doubt anyone could have imagined that Canada was about to embark on a 24-year experiment in glorious “lawlessness” that would work out so incredibly well.  An experiment in which women and doctors proved themselves more than capable, thankyouverymuch, of making these kinds of decisions and regulating themselves without the long hairy arm of the State reaching in and using its coercive power to manipulate private lives.  An experiment that concluded with a lower abortion rate.

Could it be that women and doctors know better than government bureaucrats?  Say it ain’t so.

In fact, our “experiment” worked out so fantastically well that the only answer to the suggestion that Canada needs abortion legislation is…

Why?

(h/t AntoniaZ)

BALLS!

And with that I bid PBs a fine farewell.  But first…

I have to admit I’m impressed with the nerve, the gall, the chutzpah, the unmitigated, brass-plated, gold-gilded, steel-belted BALLS of the disingenuous pricks defending the idea that Motion 312 might be a pretty cool, or at least not too bad, idea.  While I have no desire to revisit the Progs vs Progs donnybrook, there is something that’s come up in the course of the altercation that I’d like to set straight, which is the way Dr. Morgentaler has been misrepresented by some of the, uh, “Motion 312 isn’t such a bad idea” bloggers, aka “disingenuous pricks”.

These guys (and gals) fell all over themselves to quote Dr. Morgentaler’s remark about having ethical issues with late term abortion:

Morgentaler said he has concerns about late-term abortions.

“We don’t abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies,” Morgentaler said from his Toronto clinic.

– as if Dr.M’s private, personal opinion on this extremely rare procedure (an opinion which, interestingly, he somehow restrains himself from imposing on others) means it’s okay to have a public debate about the possibility of Open Season on Abortion Rights.  Worse yet, and this is where the stench of duplicity rises like putrid swamp gas, they ignore the all-important follow up quote — from the same interview, no less:

Morgentaler said he does not see a need for rules on late abortions, despite his personal ethical opposition to them.

“DOES. NOT. SEE. A. NEED. FOR. RULES.”  Whoopsie.

Yet when I pointed this out to a couple of the bloggers who were using the first quote to intimate that “Even Morgentaler Himself!” might favour restricting abortion… *crickets*

Now I am the last person to question anyone’s “progressive” cred, since my own is routinely beaten like a gong, rode hard and put away wet.  “Progressive cred” has never been my issue with this thing as much as… The Lying.  Such as insinuating that women are having late term abortions Right Up Until The Moment of Birth!! because we have OMFGWTF NO LAW!.   Such as omitting little factoids about Dr.Morgentaler’s views that don’t fit the desired narrative.

“Pro-life” I can handle.  Pro-lie, not so much.

Shouting “Abortion!” in a crowded blogosphere

No, human rights — including womens’ rights — are not like free speech rights which some (though not I) believe can and should be legally curtailed in the interest of the so-called “greater good”.

In fact, the state’s prerogative to impose its will ends where my uterus begins.

Human Rights — including women’s rights — are non-negotiables: the benighted who walk among us may privately agonize over the rights of others all they want.  But in the interest of maintaining those rights, they’d be well-advised to keep their inner conflicts to themselves, particularly in the face of an imminent threat to said rights.  There is no valid “nuanced” position when it comes to human rights, and anyone who disagrees has never had theirs “up for debate”.

It is mindblowing in the extreme that some people can’t understand how completely and utterly, dumptruck-full-of-dirty-assholes offensive this whole “Debate My Rights” thing really is.

This one’s for you (you know who you are)

Free Speech!

“Speechies“?  Hello??

Is this thing on?

Woodworth’s Wank Revisited

Like many progressives, fern hill is looking for a way to unite the opposition parties, and she may have found one.

Regular readers will recall MP Stephen Woodworth’s bilious bleating on Twitter about “when life begins”, which unlike most Canadians, Woodworth contends is “in the petri dish”.  His embryo-obsessed Twit-jaculations started in December and evolved into the waste of taxpayer dollars known as the Motion 312 debate scheduled for April 26th.  There’s been a surprising dearth of commentary from our elected officials on this thing, considering the profound impact it could have on women’s reproductive freedom.  The motion is a dumbly transparent attempt to get a foot in the door to turning back the clock on rights which were hard-fought and hard-won by the side of liberty many years ago… yo, fetus fetishists, we won.  You lost.  Get the fuck over it.

As decidedly absurd as the motion is, assurances that pro-choice MPs, opposition and otherwise, will unite against it would be most welcome.  They are, after all, our only voice in the thing.  Which brings me to Fern Hill, The Uniter.

Yesterday in an Open Letter to Opposition Women’s Caucuses, she lit the proverbial fire under some pampered Parliamentary arses by reminding them of this issue and asking that all pro-choice MPs stand against Woodworth’s Wank (Fern’s nickname for 312: your suggestions are welcome!) when it comes up for debate.  Something like pronouncing it a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to hard-working Canadians concerned about REAL issues like jobs and the economy, then walking out in unison, would turn my frown upside-down.  (A full-on toothy grin could be achieved if the MPs were to roughly stand up, upending the debate table, and amid tumbling papers and laptops and coffees scream “Fuck you people!” and then walk out in unison… but I don’t think it’s in the cards.)

The good news is, we have signs of life!  We may see a unified opposition yet, at least on this issue.

The Vagina Ideologues

Oh joy, rapture and crapture!  More excited delirium from the “Government-Small-Enough-to-Crawl-Up-Your-Vagina-and-Police-Your-Uterus” crowd:

Conservative Arizona lawmakers hope Arizona will join a handful of other states in banning most abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, as proposed in House Bill 2036.
House Bill 2800, which would strip Planned Parenthood of federal funds for health-care services, is still alive.
And then there’s House Bill 2625, which would allow companies to opt out of covering contraception in their health-care plans for religious reasons.
But with all this, at least one lawmaker doesn’t believe Arizona has yet gone far enough.  [...]

Meet Rep. Terri Proud (R-Batshit), Arizona:

The e-mail, which has not been edited, does appear to be sent from state e-mail address. It said:
“Personally I’d like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a “surgical procedure”. If it’s not a life it shouldn’t matter, if it doesn’t harm a woman then she shouldn’t care, and don’t we want more transparency and education in the medical profession anyway? We demand it everywhere else.
Until the dead child can tell me that she/he does not feel any pain – I have no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living – I will be voting YES.”

What’s next?  A law mandating that a woman must have an abortion before having an abortion??

Fetus fetishists are all inherently anti-woman, but it’s been my sad experience that there’s no fetus fetishist more viciously misogynist than the zealous young female variety, and Ms. Proud certainly perpetuates that stereotype.  Her words are disturbingly reminiscent of videocam-wielding anti-abortion authoritarian Lila “Abortions should be done in the Public Square” Rose, a young woman who wears her loathing of her own sex on her sleeve and makes a good living at it in the Abortion Shaming Industry financed by the religious right.

I’d like to consider this story to be just another chapter in an ongoing series chronicling spittle-flecked anti-choice insanity, but that would imply an eventual conclusion, which is something I’m not so sure of.

Tsk, what a shame

And the beat-down goes on at Komen for the Cure.  Well, what did they expect? That’s just what happens when you let fetus fetishists run the show:

Two top executives at Susan G. Komen for the Cure have announced their resignation, amid reports that the breast cancer charity is struggling to raise money and repair its reputation after its decision to defund Planned Parenthood and subsequent reversal. [...]

A Komen insider told HuffPost that “employee morale is in the toilet” since Komen leadership made the controversial decision to defund Planned Parenthood, one of the nation’s most prominent women’s health and family planning organizations. The move was led by anti-abortion executive Karen Handel, then Komen’s senior vice president for public policy, who has since resigned.

Sad but true: the only kind of enterprises that prosper when anti-abortion headcases are permitted to run mad-dog loose and impose their repugnant values on policymaking are the kind that exist primarily to promote fetus fetishizing.   In any other venue these people are a freaking disaster, fetus fetishism not being a business philosophy that translates well into the mainstream.

Live & Learn!  And other charities… take note.

 

Shakedown!

I guess Karen Handel has never heard about the First Rule of Holes — when you’re in one, stop digging:

Karen Handel, the former senior vice president of public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, accused Planned Parenthood of extortion during an appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network. [...]

“It’s clear that Planned Parenthood proactively went to [the Associated Press],” Handel said. “On top of that, what is even more disturbing is the gross mischaracterization of the decision, the solid evidence that this was a premeditated, orchestrated attack on a breast cancer organization.”

I love the smell of Righteous Indignation in the morning.  Smells like… BULLSHIT.

Seriously: a “premeditated, orchestrated attack” by Planned Parenthood?  A “shakedown”??

How is that even possible?  The shit didn’t hit the fan until after Komen made the announcement about cutting PP’s funding, and even then it was largely an outraged, spontaneous grassroots response on social media.   (It was in fact a glorious testimony to the mountain-moving power of the Internets in the hands of Angry Citizens.)

Sorry Karen, but everyone knows what happened here and no amount of demented, bizarro-world tap-dancing will change it.  The sad and sorry little factoid that defunding Planned Parenthood has been your “signature issue” since, like, forever (or at least long before you infested the Komen organization) is what they refer to in poker as “the tell“.

In that spirit, I’ll see your phony shakedown and raise you a live one:

Vaginia, I mean Virginia, backs off on State-Enforced Vaginal Probe Law

Apparently a law mandating non-consensual (ie. forced) vaginal probing isn’t something a Vice Presidential hopeful wants on his resume.

Accordingly, Virginia Governor and Vice Presidential wet-dreamer Bob McDonnell has backed away from the bill that’s come to be known by names like “The State-Enforced Transvaginal Probe Law”.  Because, well dangit, who knew just how invasive it would be to have a blunt instrument jammed up your hoo-haw by Order of the State.  I wonder what part of “forced transvaginal probe” McDonnell wants the public to believe he didn’t understand?:

Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) said on Friday that he changed the terms his support for a controversial GOP-sponsored mandatory ultrasound bill at the last minute this week because he didn’t realize until that point that the law would require an invasive, transvaginal procedure.

The demented GOP lawmakers responsible for this reprehensibly intrusive and misogynist piece of legislative feculence then celebrated the return of Small Government by amending the “forced vaginal penetration with blunt instruments” aspect of the bill:

Instead, he and a few Republican delegates rewrote the bill to mandate regular abdominal ultrasounds before an abortion, even though they are ineffective during the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

…but not much else.  So it’s still the State Up Your Quivering Mound of Love Pudding; just in a slightly less painful and humiliating way.

Ron Paul, Contraceptives & Abortion

Of the four(4) GOP primary candidates still standing, the only one I can even come close to listening to with a serious ear is libertarian Ron Paul.  Now before everyone jumps all over the comments section with the “Ron Paul is no friend of progressives!!” stuff, yeah yeah, I get that, but I don’t have to agree with 100% of his ideas for some of them to make sense to me.  (I also give him enthusiastic props  for being stubbornly contrarian on issues like goofy sabre-rattling and war-mongering and drug prohibition, even though his positions on these issues almost invariably provoke boos, jeers and hoots of derision from stupidly doctrinaire GOP primary audiences.)

But as much as I find some of Dr.Paul’s ideas interesting and even commendable, I’ve always been distressed and confused by his brainlessly retrograde position on reproductive rights …even contraception.  On last night’s show, Lawrence O’Donnell took Dr. Paul to task for marketing himself as a libertarian while espousing such decidedly UN-libertarian views on Womens’ Health:

Can’t say I disagree. Too bad this guy dropped out of the race.

Winning! (Part Duh)

What took you so long, shithead?:

A high-ranking official resigned Tuesday from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity after a dispute over whether the group should give funding to Planned Parenthood, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Karen Handel, the charity’s vice president for public policy, told Komen officials that she supported the move to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. She said the discussion started before she arrived at the organization and was approved at the highest levels of the charity.

Um err yeah sure it did.

And of course, she’s deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of her asinine-assed, fetus fetishizing, anti-woman treachery:

I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it,” Handel said in her letter. “I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve.”

 Well Karen, not much to add except…

Cry me a freaking river.

UPDATE:  Boo hoo, fuck you.

UPDATE the second:  Because I promised…

Last but not Least, the Predictable Whinefest

Fetus fetishists whining and crying victim because they didn’t get their way with Komen/Planned Parenthood?  Now whoever coulda seen that coming!?  K-Lo breaks out the violins on Twitter:

But not before the deranged SUZANNE had added her dulcet tones to the rising tide of whine:

Oh boo hoo hoo

Oh well, I suppose it changes things up from regular entertainments like ratting out the neighbours!

But I digress…

So let me get this straight — the Komen Foundation tries to sleazily cut funding to Planned Parenthood, possibly putting thousands of women in harm’s way, presumably because any whore who goes through the doors of Planned Parenthood deserves whatever she gets…

From Komen's message board on Wednesday

= NOT bullying.

A public outcry against the putrid, festering, ideologically-driven misogyny that initiated this despicable move = BULLYING.

Get that?  When they jack us around, it’s all good!  When we fight back, they need to make some bullying videos about the whole traumatic experience  because… well, because… err… because The Komen Foundation is gay?

CAUTION:  It’s fetus fetishist logic, trying to understand it may be hazardous to your sanity.

The Komen Decision that was Totally Not Political

…but was secretly nurtured and guided by former Bush Press Secretary and Planned Parenthood critic Ari Fleisher:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, secretly helped guide Komen Foundation’s disastrous strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Hm.  This is starting to get like drawing back a glittery curtain of sequins and pink chiffon, only to find a load of maggot-infested manure steaming away behind it.  What next from this supposedly apolitical, non-partisan charity?  Or are they some kind of right-wing anti-choice PAC?

Is it time to take a look at their tax-exempt status?

#WINNING(?)

Well, maybe.

At least consider the Komen controversy well and truly #occupied:

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation backed down from its decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and birth control services, a move that had thrust the world’s largest breast cancer charity into a deeply politicized controversy.

Komen faced a massive outcry from its own supporters as well as Planned Parenthood’s, who believed Komen had came under pressure from anti-abortion activists.

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” Komen said in a statement on Friday signed by its board of directors and its founder Nancy Brinker.

Brinker: take your fauxpology and stuff it.  The walkback is only the beginning of Step One (and it remains to be seen if the funding will actually materialize).  Step Two: Clean House.

Your choice of VP, the repulsive Karen Handel, who retweets things like this:

…and any of the other woman-hating fetus fetishists (and bigots)  who’ve undoubtedly infested the upper levels of Komen will try this again if they’re left in positions of responsibility.  They are all in dire need a gold-plated, pink-ribbon-festooned, frozen steel-toed boot to the ass, el pronto.  If they love fetuses so much more than women, let them spend their time riding around in a fetusmobile©®™, not sucking back huge amounts of unwitting donor dollars from a breast cancer charity that they treacherously use to devise sleazy ways to jack women around.

Komen has fucked up royally: I for one will never donate to them again because I simply can’t trust them.  Certainly not as long as people like the putrid Handel are on board.  That an organization whose slogan is “Dedicated to a world without breast cancer” would put anti-choice ideology before women’s heath is absolutely unthinkable.  That the likes of Handel will try it again is inevitable.

Winning?  We’ll see.  Believe me, we’ll be watching.  When Karen Handel gets the gold-plated Boot, I’ll be the first to tweet her a  sympathetic “Cry me a freaking river”.

All About the Timing

The movie “Pink Ribbons“, which explores breast cancer fundraising by groups like Susan G Komen, is being released tomorrow.  Komen’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood has been in the works for some time now; one top Komen official quit over it in December.

As Dave suggests, the Komen Foundation had to know “Pink Ribbons”, a decidedly negative take on the breast cancer fundraising industry,  was coming out this week.  At first blush it would seem like the worst possible time for them to make the public aware of their decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, given the absolute certainty of a widespread negative response… or is it?

Why would Susan G Komen wait until this week to make this announcement?  Because it would be irresponsible not to speculate, have at it in the comments.

Meanwhile, here’s the trailer for “Pink Ribbons”, coming soon (tomorrow) to a theatre near you.

UPDATE:  Haha.  A girl and her Photoshop go horribly wrong.

#Occupy The Cure

I’ve either got the flu or I’m nauseated by the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood fiasco.

I’ll take Door #2, SGK/PP, for $200 — the donation that will now go fucking directly to Planned Parenthood since Komen made the ill-advisedly cruel decision to acquiesce to the ideological pressure of fetus fetishists on its board and cut funding ties with Planned Parenthood (Komen: do not pass GO, do NOT collect MY $200).

As a breast cancer survivor, I can’t even begin to describe how upset I am by the idea that an organization I *thought* was a friend to women like me would turn on us like a mad dog.

The notion that there are women — waitresses and cashiers and in this economy, unemployed — who will now be unable to get breast screening because they rely on Planned Parenthood for such services, and who might in fact DIE because of Komen’s decision, is more horrific to me than anyone could imagine.  I was a waitress just barely getting by when I was diagnosed: if I’d had to pay for that fateful mammogram, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed, I would have been dead.

Apparently I am not alone in feeling this way.  Surfing the twit machine between bouts of nausea — Komenausea? — last night, I saw this outstanding example of People Power: some enterprising pro-choice hacker hit the Komen website and “edited” one of its ads.  The original:

Which through the magic of technology became the New & Improved:

Ain’t technology wonderful?  Occupy the Cure!

UPDATE:  Regarding Komen’s “new rule” of prohibiting funding of any group being investigated by the government (no matter how lame and ideologically-driven the investigation), this is interesting:

Komen, the marketing juggernaut that brought the world the ubiquitous pink ribbon campaign, says it cut-off Planned Parenthood because of a newly-adopted foundation rule prohibiting it from funding any group that is under formal investigation by a government body. (Planned Parenthood is being investigated by Rep. Cliff Stearns, an anti-abortion Florida Republican, who says he is trying to learn if the group spent public money to provide abortions.)

But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut-off Planned Parenthood.

No, really??

(Screenshot courtesy of The General on Twitter)

Reproductive McCarthyism and a new nadir of authoritarian dumbness

Frankly, it didn’t surprise me a bit that SUZANNE would be All In with the idea of publishing a database of personal information and photos of gynecologists and other reproductive health professionals whose services include — but are not limited to — abortion. How awesome she must imagine it would feel to stand before the trembling masses of healthcare providers and the women they serve, and say:

“I have here in my hand a list…”

After all, SUZANNE is among those who greeted the assassination of Dr. George Tiller with dramatic fluttery sighs and flaccid exhortations against violence after years spent vilifying and demonizing the man, to the unsurprising end that he was murdered by one of their more zealous fellow travellers.  Not a Hit List?  Pull the other one.

But as she struggled feverishly to rationalize what is clearly and undeniably nothing more than an anti-abortion Hit List, she crossed a Rubicon of Authoritarian Madness that even surprised me.  From the comments at her blog (which is unlinkable due to her sophomoric habit of redirecting links to fetus pron):

“They might in the future”??

It’s difficult to know how to respond to that without perpetuating Godwin’s Law.

When the wind is right, is a faint odour of kerosene exhaled from SUZANNE?

“Counselling”, anti-choice style

On what deranged planet would this be considered “counselling”?:

Newsflash, fetus fetishists:  the fence is there for a reason, and it’s not so your fat asses can get some exercise running up and down ladders.

(via RealtinConnor on Twit)

Give it up, Woodworth

When you’ve lost the National Post, it’s Game Over:

Anyone paying attention over the past few weeks would have spotted the most unlikely of Canadian events: a debate over abortion.  [...]

Mr. Woodworth’s quixotic campaign — and the P.E.I. activists’ failed attempts — prove that a broad debate in Canada on abortion is almost incapable of lasting more than a few weeks.

And it’s not just the National Post pronouncing that Woodworth’s sleazy little campaign to make Abortion the Canadian Political Topic du Jour is stillborn, DOA, pining for the fjords, etc.:

Even the Catholic bishop of Calgary, Fred Henry, agrees there is more to what Mr. Woodworth is proposing than meets the eye, even though he is sympathetic with what the MP is trying to do.

“He’s reaching for straws,” said Bishop Henry. “He’s grasping for anything that will open any kind of debate on abortion.

Bishop Fred Henry… gee, that name sounds so familiar.  And who exactly is Bishop Fred Henry?  One of these radical pro-choice Catholics?  Not exactly:

Calgary’s Catholic bishop said Tuesday he’s prepared to order Calgary Separate School Board officials to ban Progressive Conservative Leader Joe Clark from its schools.

Calgary’s Bishop Frederick Henry told a local radio talk show Tuesday that it’s “scandalous behaviour” for a Roman Catholic politician like Clark, MP for Calgary Centre, to declare himself pro-choice on the abortion issue.

Much as I support your right to talk and tweet and write little pressers about whatever tickles your fetus fetishizing fancy, if I were a friend my friendly advice would be to drop this particular crusade and move on to something that’s less likely to end in crushing, psychologically-debilitating disappointment.  You lost this one years ago to the side of liberty; it’s probably a bad idea to invite the public humiliation of losing it all over again.

Also, I don’t know if it’s occurred to you, but in this Foul Year of Our Lord 2012 Canadian taxpayers would no doubt prefer that the hard-earned money they’re paying their elected representatives is being spent on something a little more pressing than revisiting some long-dead Culture War issue.

Ya think??

Trick or Fet(us)

Ewwwwwww:

Some adults are appalled that children in Loganville got dolls of 12-week-old fetuses with their Halloween candy, Channel 2 Action News reports. [...]

Joshua Edmonds, who told Channel 2 Action News he is a senior minister of the Christian social justice organization Project:Ignite, says he can’t understand why some people are upset with what he did. [...]

One of the people taken aback was John Ramsey, whose 3-year-old grandson received one of the dolls.

“When they handed that to him, he wanted to know what it was, and so the gentlemen there told him it was a 12-week-old fetus and this is what you looked like in your mother’s belly,” Ramsey told Channel 2.

“Almost everyone I’ve spoken to was appalled by what transpired,” Ramsey said. “I think there’s a time and place for everything, but I don’t think handing out toy fetuses to 3-year-olds is an appropriate thing to do.”

Not appropriate and also not sane.  But one thing it is, is creepy.

I got nothin’

...nothin’:

Michelle Duggar and her husband Jim Bob are expecting their 20^th child, the couple revealed exclusively to TODAY.

“We are so excited,” Michelle Duggar told TODAY Moms before the broadcast. Now three and a half months pregnant, the mom of 19 says she was actually surprised to discover that she’s expecting again at 45. “I was not thinking that God would give us another one, and we are just so grateful.”

Excited?  I think she really meant to say “exhausted”, but she was too tired to think of the right word.

Fetus Fetishists: Knock knock

Everyone Else:  Who’s there?

Fetus Fetishists: We Want the Debate!

Everyone Else:  I said, Who’s there?

Fetus Fetishists:  We Want the Debate!!

Everyone Else:  Hello?? Bueller??

Fetus Fetishists:  We Want the Debate!!!

Everyone Else:  I thought I heard something out there… must have been the cat, passing wind… damn, I’m not going out there for awhile.  Toxic Cat Farts…ugh…

*********************

Like an endless knock-knock joke with no punchline, it’s not easy for a fetus fetishist to get any attention these days. It seems that no sooner to do they start flapping their gums at top speed about their favourite subject than everyone else’s eyes glaze over, eardrums explode and bodies hit the floor, comatose.  Disinterest — on a massive scale.

Now they’ve launched a campaign to “Re-open The Debate“… “The Debate” that was closed over 23 years ago.  The debate that they, a tiny minority, nonetheless incessantly jabber and shriek and bitch and bleat and tear their hair over, in an escalating collective nervous breakdown that sounds less like vocalization than the brainless static of dumb white noise punctuated by monotonous feral grunts.

From what they call a “press release”:

A group within the educational pro-life movement is about to throw down the gauntlet on what the group claims is the current censorship and hostility toward any attempt to debate abortion.

Right out of the gate, the C-word — “censorship” — proving they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the word “censorship” means.  Fetus Fetishists, being small-n nazis at heart, seem to genuinely believe that not only do they have the right to mouth off, but they also have the right to an audience, the audience of their choosing (ie. women on their way into a clinic), and if their feverish rants fail to draw the audience they want, it’s “censorship”.  It never occurs to them that nobody’s being stopped from hearing what they have to say; it’s just that most people aren’t all that interested in the goofy dogmatic swill they dish up non-stop, and hearing it just makes their eyes glaze over, their eardrums explode…

This group, known as the We Want the Debate Campaign, will challenge anyone who wishes to defend abortion to an open, transparent and fair debate in front of the people of Ontario. Over the next four months, the campaign will conduct a series of activities to highlight current contradictions and misconceptions that warp the public’s view of abortion. They will expose a systematic distortion by the overwhelming majority of the media of the facts of abortion. They will also denounce the Federal Government’s disregard of the wishes of most Canadians to allow a discussion on the future of abortion in our country.

A senseless challenge:  abortion doesn’t need defending, except from them.  It’s a safe guess that the people of Ontario, and Canada for that matter, are no more interested in rehashing a decades-old debate over a gynecological procedure than they are in discussing what kind of prostate treatment should be available to men.  Most of us rightly feel that these things are between doctor and patient, and the idea of “debating” such personal issues in a public venue is tacky, weird and very bad form to say the least.

On the lighter side, the graphic on their website is inadvertently hilarious…

What the majority of Canada hears when fetus fetishists speak: “———-”

…because that’s what most people hear when anti-choicers rail on and on about abortion: a bunch of blank lines, blablablablablablabla, dumb white noise, yaddayaddayadda.  And the eyes glaze over, and the eardrums explode, and the bodies hit the floor…