Manhattan Mini-Storage strikes again

Remember these controversial bus shelter and outdoor poster ads from Manhattan Mini-Storage?:

Here's their latest one:

The hands! That's perfect. Little details like that are what makes a good ad great.

(via feministing)

LPC -- Just say NO to McKenna

The Liberal Party of Canada is a progressive party, right? And that means they look out for womens' rights, correct? So they're pro-choice, no? Well, not so fast.

Those of us who were following Bill C-484 (the "Kicking Abortion's Ass" bill) expected the Conservatives to vote for it en masse, but were dismayed to find that it was actually a small contingent of socially conservative Liberals whose votes helped the nefarious thing get past its second reading.

Now Dion is stepping aside and a new Liberal leader being sought, and one of the names that's come up is Frank McKenna. It's bad enough that the Liberals harbour some socially conservative MPs, but now they're considering a virulently anti-choice leader? I concur with Birth Pangs:

"Birth Pangs readers will remember that New Brunswick is Canada’s answer to Kansas. A place so benighted that the provincial government flouts the Canada Health Act and refuses to pay for abortions unless they are carried out in a hospital with the APPROVAL OF TWO DOCTORS. A place so uncaring about women’s rights that said provincial government is being sued by Dr Henry Morgentaler — he of the Order of Canada — to secure the same rights for New Brunswick women as for other Canadian women.

And Frank McKenna had a lot to do with what is the matter with New Brunswick."

Just imagine how McKenna as Liberal leader would respond the next time another Bill C-484 comes around (and it will -- the fetus fetishists probably started lobbying for some MP to put forward another Private Member's Bill the minute the election was over). If the LPC is a progressive party, it needs a progressive leader, not a dinosaur who opposes womens' reproductive freedom. Not only that, but the LPC caucus needs to get its shit all in one bag as far as where it stands on stealth legislation that erodes abortion rights. Smarten up, Libs.

Abortion rate in US at record low

According to a new study from the Guttmacher Institute, abortion in the US is at it's lowest rate since Roe v. Wade was passed. A couple of interesting highlights:

"...Most of the change is due to declining abortion rates among women aged 20 to 24 since 1989. Experts disagree on the cause of this shift, with some pointing toward easier access to contraceptives, and others citing state laws that require parental notification for minors' abortions. Minors, however, account for only 7 percent of all abortions.

The proportion of women accessing abortion who've already had an abortion is falling. In the words of Guttmacher, "There is no evidence that abortion is being used as a primary method of birth control." " (emphasis mine)

It's amusing how the fetus fetishists try to spin this into something that shows their oppressive policies are responsible. Yeah, I'm sure those "parental notification" laws have a major effect all those 20-24-year-old women. Clearly, it isn't idiotic anti-choice laws, but a foundation of comprehensive education (ie. not this bullshit) and increased access to contraception that's contributed to the lower numbers.

Apart from that, it's good to see the specious "abortion as birth control" argument blown right out of the water. Not that that'll stop the fetishists from using it, but anyway.

All in all, this is good news. Hopefully someday the US will follow in Canada's groundbreaking footsteps and realize that abortion laws are completely unnecessary.

Steeeeerike 2!

Anti-choicers used to love flogging the so-called abortion-breast cancer link -- until the supposed "link" was beaten to a pulp, thumped, asskicked and chain-whipped by medical experts so many times that only the most delusional cretins will still reference it. That being the case, they had to come up with a new and less tangible Horrible Side Effect of abortion -- what better than its supposed detrimental effect on mental health?:

University of Oslo researchers compared 40 women who had had a miscarriage with 80 who chose to have an abortion.

Miscarriage was associated with more mental distress in the six months after the loss of a baby - but abortion had a much longer lasting negative effect.

SHRIEEEEEK! They went for it explosively, playing up the so-called "link" on websites and in the anti-abortion media. When the American Psychological Association finally started a task force on it, fetus fetishists hyperventilated in breathless anticipation:

"The American Psychological Association (APA) recently removed an old statement about abortion and mental health from its Web site, a statement that declared abortion to be largely benign. They have convened a task force on the subject, and will issue a new statement in 2008."

We'll leave aside the thick-as-a-brick irony that all this commentary on mental health is coming from people who like to while away the hours by the roadside brandishing signs festooned with dead fetus porn.

Because -- stand back! -- the APA's statement on the issue is finally out, and according to their press release:

"There is no credible evidence that a single elective abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in and of itself causes mental health problems for adult women, according to a draft report released Tuesday by a task force of the American Psychological Association." (emphasis mine)

While they were giving the abortion-mental health "link" a good shitkicking, the APA also called bullshit on the Exciting Studies that supposedly showed the link:

"The task force observed that many of the studies published during the period reviewed suffered from serious methodological problems. Thus, it focused most closely on those found to be most methodologically sound to arrive at its conclusions. Inconsistencies in findings reported by published studies were judged to reflect differences in study quality and failures to control for potentially confounding factors."

Keep throwin' 'em, fetus fetishists, we'll just keep hittin' 'em outta the park. HAHAHAHAHA!

(Big H/T to Chet, via email)

Stumbled upon

Searching for something else, I happened to stumble over this letter the One & Only Dr. Roy dispatched to the Globe & Mail:


One point of interest, if you please -- Dr. Roy says:

"There aren't many third-trimester abortions because physicians realize that abortions in the third trimester are tantamount to murder, and refuse to do them."

While Dr. Roy is probably arguing in favour of a law, his statement above is one of the very reasons we don't need a law: self-policing.

Apart from the "murder" hyperbole, I can't wait to drop that little gem the next time some half-bright halfwit tries to argue that not having an abortion law means abortions being done right up to the last day of the third trimester. "But one of your own people says..."

How mudfortunate.

World Public Opinion Poll -- Abortion

World Public Opinion.org is a project initiated by the Program on Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland to study international public opinion in various countries. They've just released the results of a poll surveying over 18,000 people in 18 different countries on the question of the state's role in abortion -- should it be left to the individual, discouraged by non-punitive governmental means (ie. restrictions), or discouraged by criminal enforcement. Interesting stuff:

In half the countries surveyed, the overwhelming majority believe the decision should be left to the individual, particularly in the "western European" and North American countries. (Note: even residents of Catholic-heavy countries like Poland and Mexico, which have fairly dogmatic abortion laws, would actually prefer the state to butt out.) These opinions also followed education and income lines (the higher the education and/or income, the more likely the respondents were to feel that abortion should be left to the individual to decide). Interestingly, there was no variance between male and female respondents.

It's the sex-ed and contraception, stupid

Birth Pangs reports that new Statscan data shows abortion is in decline. This is great news -- in spite of what the anti-abortion lobby would have you believe, abortion isn't as casual a decision as wearing heels or flats. Not even for those of us who know from the moment we see the blue line what our course of action will be. So I for one am glad that less women are having to make that choice.

Anti-choicers are understandably anxious to take credit for the decline since it would seem to justify their insistence on keeping their noses firmly stuffed you-know-where, but hello? If anything, the anti-contraception gospel they preach is a mass-abortion waiting to happen. And as Robert points out, the decline occurred without any of the kind of regressive, nanny state abortion laws anti-choicers advocate. Hmm!

The probable reason for the decline is fairly obvious and threefold:
1.) More and better sex education
2.) Easier access to contraception
3.) The economy, stupid: More people are working, more people can afford to have a kid. Yep, it's that simple!

If anti-choicers want to believe the decline is due to a big anti-abortion wave sweeping across the country, who am I to deny them their fantasies? Although the fact that it's happening by choice and not by force of law isn't something I'd want to draw much attention to if I were them. But that's just me!

Oh, the compassion.

Where would anyone get the idea that anti-choicers don't care about women? Maybe from things like this odious, execrable piece of, um, "legislation" that passed in Oklahoma yesterday. The bill would require even victims of rape and incest having abortions to get an ultrasound first:

"State legislators today voted to override Gov. Brad Henry's veto of an anti-abortion bill." [...]

"The bill would have required women to get an ultrasound of an unborn child before an abortion. The bill also was intended to protect health care providers' rights not to participate in abortions and decisions whether to dispense a pill to end early pregnancies. [...]

"While I support reasonable restrictions on abortion, this legislation does not provide an essential exemption for victims of rape and incest,” Henry wrote. "By forcing the victims of such horrific acts to undergo and view ultrasounds after they have made such a difficult and heartbreaking decision, the state victimizes the victim for a second time.”

SB 1879 requires that the woman be given a description of the ultrasound images and that medical providers display the ultrasound images so the woman can see them.

Nothing in the bill prevents the woman from "averting her eyes” from the ultrasound."

Yet.

What took so long?

I'm amazed this comparison hasn't been made before now, but if anyone can dig up heretofore unused analogies and try to apply them to abortion, it's SUZANNE:

Next up: "the War in Afghanistan vs. Abortion". What? No??

Oh, ouchie.

Nothing hurts like a freeped internet poll...

Freep that poll til your fingers bleed, nitwits, it doesn't change a thing. But don't let us (the pro-choice majority) stop you from having fun!! Freep on, and forgive us if we don't participate. We're too busy enjoying our reproductive freedom *wink*.

Bite me, Frum

It's Bizarro-World... one of the Bush Administration's chief warpig propagandists, David "Axis of Evil" Frum, pontificated recently in the National Post about how a legal decision giving women the right to abortion "cheapened the worth of human life". Typing was no doubt difficult with hands still sticky from the dried blood of Iraqi children, but nonetheless Frum managed to peck out a screed against the Morgentaler Decision, saying:

"On January 28, Canada marks the 20th anniversary of what may be the most astounding decision in the nation’s legal history: R. v. Morgentaler, the case that struck down Canada’s abortion laws.

The Morgentaler case was followed the next year by Daigle v. Tremblay, which clarified and amplified the Morgentaler ruling.

The result of the two decisions was to give Canada the western world’s most radical abortion regime. The mother’s ownership of the pregnancy is absolute and final, and she may end it at any moment, for any reason. Neither the father of the child-to-be, nor the government, nor the child itself has any rights in the matter at all."

"The western world's most radical abortion regime" -- gee Dave, you say that like it's a bad thing.

In fact, that radical freedom of choice is something many women, including myself, take as a point of pride. "Most radical?" -- in a world of repressive, sexually-twisted authoritarians who'd gladly dictate every aspect of our personal lives, maybe so. But one could also characterize Canada's "abortion regime" as the western world's most respectful of a woman's right to privacy and self-ownership. Thanks to Dr. Morgentaler, we have unrestricted reproductive choice. Thanks to Chantal Daigle, nobody can fuck with that choice by using (abusing) the legal system to force women to be unwilling incubators. Remember "freedom is on the march" and "let freedom reign" and "they hate us for our freedom"? Freedom is good!

Frum went on to damn late-term abortions -- no zygote zealot worth his salt will forget to give disproportionate time and space to the less than 1% of crisis abortions performed late-term. He ended:

"... the answers offered by R. v. Morgentaler will look more and more inadequate, shallow, short-sighted, and obsolete."

On that much we can agree. A woman's right to reproductive self-determination, including the choices of contraception and abortion, should be explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. Maybe then the Frums and the other anti-choice nitwits of the world will finally mind their own business and... (you know what's coming) get their snouts out of our crotches!

(h/t TGB)

This spring's colour is "late-term"

Speaking of free speech, here's some freedom of the press that's got anti-choicers' panties all in a twist. (Like I said, they're all in favour of free speech as long as it's their free speech.)

Vogue Magazine recently ran a photo spread in which the subject talked about her pregnancy that was terminated late-term. Only an anti-choice nutter could construe this as being an attempt by Vogue to make the dreaded late-term abortion "fashionable":

"Vogue is feeling the heat of religious and pro-life organizations over an article these groups say promotes partial-birth abortions with a photo shoot that makes the subject appear fashionable.

"Private Lives," a column which appears in the January issue of Vogue, was written by Lori Campbell, a New York woman who in 1998 was advised by her doctors to have an abortion 22 weeks into her pregnancy after being told the baby would not survive." [...]

"Some pro-life and religious groups argue that the article promotes the controversial abortion procedure.

"Cleverly marketing legal abortion as a boon to women's emancipation has been the most important task of the abortion industry and lobby for 30 years," one pro-life blogger wrote. "In this month's edition, the gruesome procedure of partial birth abortion has been given a style makeover by the world's most influential fashion magazine, Vogue."

I am serious when I say "dreaded" -- nobody has an abortion at 5 months because they just suddenly decide "Meh, I don't want to do this anymore". It's almost always a wanted pregnancy that has to be terminated due to health reasons, either for the mother or because the fetus itself is damaged or non-viable. Hardly something that women would consider the ultimate fashion accessory. A "style makeover"? Yeah, and the next time I read about someone with ovarian cancer, I'll sure be wanting some of that for my spring wardrobe. Nitwits!

Anti-choice = cheapass

Surprise surprise: taxpayers can't dictate which medical procedures their tax dollars fund:

"An anti-abortion crusader who refused to file his tax returns as a form of protest has been found guilty of three counts of failing to pay taxes and ordered to pay a fine.

David Little refused to file his income tax returns between 2000 and 2002 because he felt the federal government was funding abortion procedures." [...]

"Judge Leslie Jackson handed down the 62-year-old's sentence in Fredericton on Friday. Little has been told he must pay $3,000 or spend 66 days in jail."

Oh, boo-freakin'-hoo, break out the violins. But wait... Fredericton? Fredericton, New Brunswick? New Brunswick is one of the most disgustingly difficult places to get an abortion in the whole country. Women have to jump through so many hoops getting the procedure "approved" that most end up spending $500 to get it done at the Morgentaler Clinic. Mr. Little has little to beef about.

Or is something else going on?

Interesting that the taxes Numbnuts is refusing to pay are from two non-consecutive years, and five to seven years ago at that. If he's been paying his taxes like a good little boy in the interim, that doesn't help his credibility as a civil disobedience crusader -- in fact, it kind of looks like he's just trying to get out of paying taxes for those two years. Correction, it really looks like he's just trying to get out of paying taxes for those two years.

So what now? Rather than pay the $3000 fine, maybe he'll do a little time and when he gets out -- still have to pay the taxes! Why? Because that's the way democracy works, we don't get to cherrypick where our tax dollars go. If we did... well, goodbye separate school funding. See ya 'round, tax-exempt status for churches. Do they really want to go down that road? Didn't think so.

Huckabee calls abortion "Holocaust"

And blames it for immigration. Whew, two birds with one stone. Colour me disgusted:

"Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce," the former Arkansas governor said. "It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973."

Maybe he was trying to say that the anti-choice movement is a "hollow-cause"?

(h/t designated protest zone)

Lifenews or Live Science? No contest.

When it comes to the ever-popular, though completely mythical, abortion-breast cancer link, who ya gonna believe? This drooling halfwit, from something called "Lifenews":

"A leading web site on science issues ran an article on Tuesday from its "junk science" reporter that misleads women by saying the abortion-breast cancer link is nonexistent. It also says there is little or no way to prevent breast cancer, despite studies showing that having children helps protect women from the disease."

Or a medical issues writer at "livescience.com":

"A persistent myth that the survey did not address is that abortions can cause breast cancer. This is based on real science—studies of rats in the 1980s indicating a possible correlation between hormones and breast tissue growth. But the issue was thoroughly resolved by the 1990s.

Nevertheless, the Bush Administration revisited the issue in 2002, gave equal weight to the earlier, smaller studies showing a correlation, and told the National Cancer Institute to state the possible abortion-cancer connection in its fact sheets and Web site. It took Congressional action and a three-day conference on the topic to remove this erroneous information by 2003." (emphasis mine)

It's less indicative of their cognitive dissonance than their vicious mean-spiritedness that anti-choicers refuse to let this one go no matter how often medical science debunks it.

I don't think DKos is worried

More drooling stupidity from the religious right popped up in my Google alerts this morning with this blog entry titled "One" [of] "the stupidest headlines ever written". Father Fetus of "What" [the fuck] "Does The Prayer Really Say?" is foaming hard over a Daily Kos diary titled "How the Vatican kills women", that points out the grave reality of how the Vatican's zero tolerance abortion policy is responsible for the deaths of women in Nicaragua:

It's all the usual bleating you'd expect from a fetus fetishizing nitwit, complete with accusations of "anti-Catholic bigotry" as the inevitable persecution high sets in. But the part I really liked was "I'll post the content here so that you don't have to give their site any traffic"?? Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, fuck.

"I knew it!"

I bet that's what James Dobson, the inexplicably influential head of christofascist group "Focus on the Family" will be saying today about GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson. Dobson suspected from the start that Thompson wasn't a "Real Christian" ("Real Christian" being fundie-speak for "anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage"). Now the pinch is in for old Fred.

The Crime: Thompson isn't as anti-choice as he purports to be. The Evidence: having at times happily taken money to lobby for pro-choice groups. Ooh, Fred. Think of all the fetuses that ended up in biohazard bins because of your lobbying. Think of the children. Why does Fred hate the Children?

Throughout his campaign, Thompson has devolved steadily from someone who initially agreed that abortion was between a woman and her doctor to a 100% anti-choice, "Roe v. Wade is bad law" blah blah blah, in a blatant suck-up to the GOP's social conservative base. So it comes as no big whoopin' surprise to find that Thompson's anti-choice credentials are shakier than he'd have the dumb socons believe. The fact that he actually lobbied for an abortion rights group is irony as thick and delicious as whipped cream (with chocolate sprinkles on top).

But don't believe me -- see for yourself! Here's Fred, then and now:

Spin that, Freddie.

Finally, one of them admits it.

Here in Pro-Choice Land the real motivations of the fundies in the anti-choice movement have long been suspect. Our logic -- call it "women's intuition" -- tells us that it isn't about "saving fetuses" at all, but a sick obsession with controlling the sex lives of women, and exacting punishment on those who dare to indulge their sexuality while trying to avoid a follow-up package. From a fundie standpoint, having sex for procreative purposes is fine; having it for enjoyment, not so much. It's nothing new: the Madonna/Whore dichotomy is as old as Christianity itself.

Anti-choicers routinely deny this, saying they couldn't care less about our sex lives, only their occasionally accidental results. Yet here's Mark Noonan at "Blogs For Bush" questioning Roe v. Wade because of its basis on privacy rights, not the "right to life" of a fetus:

"A right, per our sublime Declaration of Indepence, is something we are edowed with by our Creator. While there can be debate about application, there can be no debate in the fundamental existence of the thing. A right to privacy, if such exists, means a right to not have our personal business exposed to public scrutiny unless we choose to make it so. Does this sound like something our all-knowing Creator would endow us with? There is certainly nothing private from God - so why should there be anything private from our fellows?" (...)

"...There is a right to not do stupid things; there is a right to keep one's mouth shut - by keeping the trap shut and not doing stupid things, we'd find that we have no need of a right to privacy because we'd have nothing we'd want to hide from public view."

So he questions the validity of Roe because he apparently believes that there's no such thing as a right to privacy. The right to privacy, in the world according to Mark, only exists to protect people from public scrutiny when they've done what he deems as "something stupid". Something like, oh I don't know... getting laid? The stupid, slutty stuff that you don't want anyone to find out about.

It's interesting, because it's the first anti-choice argument I've seen that didn't once refer to a fetus... just the activity that produced it. If this represents the thinking among the anti-choice movement, I wonder how long it will be before they drop the pretenses and openly demonize women just for being sexual.

(via pandagon)

They never stop

Further to the entry I made a couple of posts down about the CBC "Great Canadian Wish List" Facebook space (or site or whatever they're called), the fetus brigade have been wetting themselves in ecstasy and rage all day because the biggest discussion topic on the Wish List discussion board is Abortion. Wowee friggin zowie -- like abortion isn't always the biggest comment-generator no matter what kind of discussion board it's posted on. (It even leaves gay marriage in the dust.) I didn't have time to really look at the Wish List when I posted about it before because I was literally on my way out the door. But once I was in for the duration, I decided to investigate the discussion and see what new and idiotic hyperbolic bullshit the fetus fetishists were barfing out. I clicked in and landed on a random post, which just happened to be...

...some poor member of the reality-based community trying (in vain) to reason with SUZANNE: "No actually Suzanne, fetus are not human beings..." Would that be the same SUZANNE who most Canadian political bloggers (and certainly all feminist bloggers) are all too familiar with, bugfuck nutty Queen of the Fetus Fetishists? I mean, what are the chances? This is a totally random discussion involving people from all over everywhere. What's the mathematical probability that the first thing I click on will be someone trying to deal with HER?

I had to laugh for a number of reasons, but primarily because this tells me that there are a lot less of them than we think, certainly a lot less than they think. Hey Suzanne, how many sock puppets ya got going there? Any fetus sock puppets? DAMN, that must be hard work! Oh well, have fun! Gotta go, I'm driving someone to the womens' clinic. Hahahahaha!

Next Day Update: She's still at it! She took 4 or 5 hours off to crash and maybe dust the plastic fetus mobile hanging over her computer, and got right back into it. And her sock puppets too! Bahahaha!

CBC Facebook Wishlist

CBC has a Facebook space with a "Great Canadian Wishlist" where Canadians can Make A Wish. I know what I wish. I wish the Fetus Fetishists would get their snouts out of women's crotches and go play with themselves or something. That's what I wish. What do you wish?