Abortion & Religion

Archived Posts from this Category

June 23, 2013

Old Media, New Media: The Abortion Landscape

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Doctor Murder, Abortion Law, Abortion lies, Abortion MisInformation, Abortion Terrorism, Abortion Violence, Capitol Hill, Christian Terrorism, Church
[22] Comments 

Screen Shot 2013-06-23 at 12.57.32 PMIt makes sense that a healthy media system, one with widespread informed public participation, would be essential to a flourishing democracy. Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism states that the “central purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society” and identified nine core principles. Among the nine principles is the obligation of loyalty to the public and the obligation to truth, both principles which seem suspect in most of mainstream journalism. Problems with loyalty to the public and variations of truths are part of our current media system and that’s not healthy. As media scholar Robert McChesney claims, our current media system is set up to maximize profit for a relative handful of large companies and not to maximize public participation. Moreover, rather than act as watchdogs, the current media system operates more like lap dogs who act primarily as megaphones of government, military and corporations. The implications of the erosion of mainstream news reporting for women’s reproductive health means that stories are told but are not interpreted, investigated or contextualized.

For example, the Republican Party platform embraces anti-abortion language with no mention of exceptions for rape or incest. Stories about their platform on abortion have been dutifully reported in the NY Times and Washington Post. Meaningful journalism would go further by illustrating how a substantial number of Republicans, working from this ideological party platform, have become overtly aggressive in their efforts to restrict access to abortion. Calling these restrictions a seismic shift, the Guttmacher Institute claims that states have become increasingly hostile to abortion rights, especially during 2011. This seismic shift in the loss of abortion rights has been and continues to be addressed and contextualized in alternate media sources such as RH Reality Check, Moyers & Company and Democracy Now while mainstream media reports stories about individual state legislation without mapping out the larger picture. What this means for the public, particularly women of reproductive age, is that they are without accurate, comprehensive and reliable information about legislative actions in their state and, thus, are unable to fully participate as first class citizens. This may seem a bit of an overstatement but consider further evidence from polls that point to general approval for legalized abortion, from GOP survey findings that complain about attacks on abortion and from the rise of the Christian right–all issues that are essentially silenced in mainstream news.

Polls Favoring Abortion

In poll after poll (such as Pew, Gallup, CNN, WSJ), the majority in the United States has consistently shown general approval for access to

Screen Shot 2013-06-23 at 1.04.16 PM abortion, yet the Republicans legislators act according to their own party wishes, disregarding the voices of those they represent. Discrete stories about support for abortion in most circumstances appear in mainstream news sources. What is missing, I argue, are stories that illustrate the complexities of abortion rather than painting it as a black and white issue.

Young People frown on GOP’s Abortion Attacks

Another bit of evidence comes from the College Republican National Committee survey of young people. Among the findings is the call for Republicans to become more tolerant and open on women’s reproductive health particularly around the definition of rape, funding for Planned Parenthood, abortion access and even contraception. The GOP’s response concerning reproductive issues was to claim victimhood by responding that they had been “painted — both by Democrats and by unhelpful voices in our own ranks — in holding the most extreme anti-abortion positions.” Forget the fact, that no one forced Republicans to attack contraception or redefine rape or cut funding to Planned Parenthood.  Essentially, they opined that they needed to avoid allowing the abortion debate to be “conflated” (as if this was something done to Republicans instead of something they openly and oftentimes eagerly do to themselves) with debates over contraception, rape and Planned Parenthood but not change its stance on the issue of abortion itself. Again, mainstream media picked up the story about the findings in the survey but took it no further. It was other sources, such as Salon, Politico, RH Reality and Huffington Post, that connected the dots for those who follow alternate news sources.

The Rise of the Christian Right within the GOP

In yet another news oversight is the rise of Christian right as a powerful voice within the Republican Party and the Party’s further shift to the right in legislating morality and legitimating its ideological myths about America. Under the influence of conservative Christians, Republicans have sought to defend a traditional concept of family through debates that opposed abortion, feminism, stem cell research and gay rights. Religion is at the heart of these debates which blurs the boundaries between separation of church and state. And, according to evangelical radio broadcasters, this boundary blurring seems to be exactly what is desired as they march toward the front line of the culture wars fighting against their perceptions of judicial tyranny that legalized abortion and outlawed school prayer.

In 1995, amidst the tumultuous events of far-right militia actions against the perceived corrupt and tyrannical federal government and the Screen Shot 2013-06-23 at 12.59.12 PManti-abortion activists’ destruction and murders against clinics and doctors, Laura Flanders, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), astutely asked, “When will media see the connection?” Citing expert testimony that far-right militias and anti abortion activists were one and the same, as well as citing the 1994 Supreme Court’s agreement with pro-choice groups that anti-abortionists could legitimately be investigated for conspiracy, she argued that “the national media’s gentle handling of the anti-abortion story has amounted to a quasi-conspiracy itself” by turning a blind eye to the connections. In 2013, I would repeat Guttmacher that there has been a seismic shift away from abortion rights. The obvious lack of investigations about the actions of the far-right legislators (militia) documented attacks against a woman’s right to access abortion and other reproductive health care is more than turning a blind eye. The lack of better reporting is indicative of what Pew cites as the continued erosion of news reporting due to financial cutbacks, increased use of advertising dollars spent on digital technology, and a shift toward digital news consumption. The good news for reproductive rights is that majority of Americans have increased their news consumption after hearing about an event or issue from friends and family. Social networking is now a part of this process including sources such as Abortion.ws, RH Reality, Moyers & Company and others to provide in-depth news about reproductive health care issues.

So it seems that while mainstream news sources such as the NY Times and the Washington Post continue to report on discrete reproductive health issues, it will be up to us to connect the dots for ourselves, to act as cartographers to map the abortion landscape, and to share our work with our readers, particularly in the coming elections where we should seize opportunities to speak publicly about supporting the rights of women through political donations, petition signatures and plenty of Facebook and blog postings.

 

 

March 17, 2013

Is the New Pope Different?

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Blog, Abortion Centers, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Information, Abortion Medical | Tags: , , , |
[30] Comments 
Abortion Pope

Abortion Pope

I suppose I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to comment on the new Pope, huh?

There’s lots of talk about him taking the Church in a “new” and “refreshing” direction because he seems kinda cool and he used to ride the bus in Argentina.   Well, don’t hold your breath folks.  Just because he has already abandoned some of the fancy Pope clothes doesn’t mean big changes are in the future.  Take, for example, the Church’s long held opposition to abortion (good segue, huh?).

On October 2, 2007 then-Cardinal Bergoglio told an audience that “we aren’t in agreement with the death penalty but in Argentina we have the death penalty – a child conceived by the rape of a mentally ill or retarded woman can be condemned to death.”  He went on to say that abortion was a “death sentence for unborn children.”  I can’t help but wonder what it must have been like for a woman sitting in that audience that day who had had an abortion.  Even though this occurred in Argentina where abortion is basically illegal, make no mistake that there was a woman there who had had an abortion and she was now forced to hear the Cardinal talk about how she gave the “death sentence” to her child.  Pretty harsh stuff.

Abortion Pope

Abortion Pope

So far, I have not heard Pope Francis say anything about abortion but rest assured that it’s coming soon.  Indeed, the pro-life news service, LifeNews.com, has already reported that “Newly-elected Pope Francis used his second-ever blessing as the head of the Catholic Church to bless a pregnant mother and her unborn child.  The blessing a symbolic overture to the pro-life movement and underscores the importance the Catholic Church places on protecting women and unborn children from abortion.”

Abortion

Abortion

I looked at the video that accompanied this statement and it shows the Pope in a crowd, surrounded by lots of people.  They are kissing his hand and he is “blessing” all of them and one of the women happened to be pregnant.  So, the pro-life media is already stretching things but rest assured that the new Pope will jump in soon on abortion.

I certainly wish the Pope well and I hope he uses his position to make this world a better place to live.   But, as far as the abortion issue is concerned, wouldn’t it be something if when he inevitably condemns abortion, he also condemns the cold blooded murder of real live people who happen to perform those abortions?  Once – just once – I would like to see a Pope (or a priest for that matter) condemn the violence against abortion providers.  Indeed, for him it would be an easy one because no doubt the vast majority of Catholics condemn the killing as well.  But I’m not gonna hold my breath.

Anti Women Catholics

Anti Women Catholics

That’s because the Catholic Church is locked in their ways and the new Pope will not stray far from the flock and stir things up.  Indeed, just the other day I was reminded of the Catholic Church’s head in the sand approach to our world.  I run a local charitable organization for needy children in my area.  Right up the street from me is a Catholic Church which gives out grants to organizations like mine.  Yesterday, I looked at the application and in big, bold letters it said it would not give money to any organization that was in any way connected to “abortion” (and to other causes like the “promotion of homosexuality.”)  Ultimately, I decided I don’t even want their money.

Maybe the Pope can help change this dangerous, myopic outlook and take a more charitable view of those who do not necessarily agree with the Church.  But I doubt it.

Related articles
 

January 10, 2013

Abortion and Critical Thinking

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Rights
[62] Comments 

NoFetusDefeatUsSome of my detractors know that I teach in a private, liberal arts college. From comments collected over the years, it’s apparent that they worry about the negative influence I might have over young lives. In their uninformed perspective, they seem to imagine that I push a pro-abortion agenda (whatever that might mean) in every course I teach. In reality, I don’t worry about such an influence because my teaching aligns with our school’s mission statement. In particular, my goal in teaching is to help students become independent critical thinkers who are intellectually agile, who value vigorous and open-minded debate in a civil context and who challenge intellectual orthodoxy. Somehow, abortion simply does not figure into this goal.

So, in a course that examines mass media, students choose a controversial topic to analyze how it is framed in the media. This aim of this semester-long project is to provide them with the fundamentals of thinking like a scholar—to equip them with the resources and habits of mind to reflect critically about the impact of our media-saturated culture on issues that are often hotly debated in the media. The topics range from gun control to foreign policy, from funding the Head Start program to gay marriage, from immigration to the fiscal cliff and so on. The assignment is not to form opinions about a topic or to be persuasive in their end-of-semester presentation. It is to examine closely how media present the debates. For example, much of the gun control debates in contemporary media frame the issue as a second amendment issue versus and gun violence issue. As always with controversial topics, the media frequently does a poor job at providing much beyond the superficial sound bytes. The abortion controversy is no different. The media use humpty dumpty terms like prolife versus prochoice when in fact the controversy is much deeper.

This controversial issue project affords students the opportunity to look beyond the superficial by developing skills to research and evaluate resources and to see who and what is powering the ubiquitous media. The project also helps expand the awareness of how controversial issues are framed in the media and how these issues impact their thinking, their sense of identity as a citizen and their participation as a citizen in the global community.

In my classroom, students who believe abortion is murder, as some do, hear students who believe that abortion is a woman’s right. Both views are protected. My job is not to persuade them to choose sides. Education is not about competition or proselytizing, or, at least, it shouldn’t be. It’s about teaching them to think critically, to evaluate the validity of arguments, to recognize loaded language, and to identity the power inherent in any mediated text.

But if my sole concern was to push an abortion agenda, a fantasy of some of my detractors, I’d probably begin with video Slide1clips of protesters and reviews of prolife web sites. I’d invite them to consider the definitions of compassion, respect and civility. I would encourage them to think critically about ethics, religion and violence. I would address the rights of women vs the rights of men. With this imaginary abortion agenda, my courses would definitely change. In organizational communication, my abortion agenda would require students to study the mercenary aspects of organizations like Priests for Life, Operation Rescue or Life Dynamics. We’d compare the celebrity machinery of Hollywood to the celebrity machinery of the anti abortion industry, including the actors and the fans.  In Documentary Film-Social Justice, I would definitely focus on reproductive rights from a global perspective including family planning, abortion doulas, the women who die from illegal abortions and the impact of religious fundamentalism around the globe. I could go on and on. But I won’t. Abortion is a topic that is critically important for women. But I won’t let it interfere in my teaching. I’ll guide students to think for themselves and leave the proselytizing to the Taliban Club members wherever they live and work–whether it’s in the U.S. or Afghanistan.

Related articles
 

January 3, 2013

Ethics 101:The Propagandizing of Anti Abortionists

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Catholic, Catholic Church Abortion | Tags: , , |
[45] Comments 

Screen Shot 2013-01-03 at 8.37.13 AMReligious freedom in the United States allows those who love a particular tradition to share it with others. In fact, particular traditions obligate their followers to proselytize. It’s a tradition no different than acts of charity. But sharing your faith can be like an overly enthusiastic used car salesman. It’s like sharing that pushes too far, fails to listen and, sadly, too often lacks civility. In fact, claiming that one’s faith tradition is the only way to salvation to an unwilling audience is unethical. These are practices that anti abortionists engage in, not out of love, as they claim, but out of their own proclaimed rights to free speech and rights to practice their religion, otherwise known as pure propagandizing and harassment. Just ask those who are experiencing the anti abortionists’ proselytizing if they experience their actions as loving. If they do not, then the antis will have found the limits of what they ought to be doing. Anything more and they are no longer educating or witnessing, but propagandizing and harassing. It’s what anti abortionists do every day they lurk outside clinics.

Several years ago, a woman decided to take the protesters’ offer of a free ultrasound and traveled with them to the hospital. She said the women were very nice but that they just didn’t listen to her and didn’t respect where she was in her life. They refused to hear how she simply could not carry on with the pregnancy. They refused to help her on her terms. So she returned to the clinic and had the abortion.

Another story from a few years back centers around a young woman who arrived in a cab with her young daughter. Because the appointment would have been difficult for the daughter, all the escorts in the parking lot entertained the young child while her mother went inside. After the appointment, the woman retrieved her daughter. She and the little girl in the little umbrella stroller left the parking lot followed by doggedly determined protesters chewing in her ear all the way to the Mc Donald’s across the street. On and on, babbling, offering to buy her stuff, help her. But not listening to what she was saying. Never listening. It was a week later, when the young woman showed up again for an appointment. One protester called J-Dog recognized the young woman. Her first words to this young woman were heated, curt. She barked at her, “I TOLD YOU we would help you.”  No words of love or kindness. Just pure nastiness.  What’s comically pathetic is that after words of nastiness come recitations of prayers—all out of the same mouth, in the same breath.Screen Shot 2013-01-03 at 8.39.49 AM

This combination of nastiness and prayers is particularly evident in another protester called Linebacker. Ever busy toting her rosary and praying about spiritually adopting babies about to be murdered, this anti is also very quick to anger. She’s also quick to point out that her anger is righteous anger. (Oh, give me a freakin’ break!) One day about four years ago, Linebacker showed up at the clinic entrance with a framed image of our lady of Guadalupe. As an aside, it is noteworthy that some Catholics worship graven images of all sorts of folks. They use these images to ward off evil spirits, to talk to, and to threaten people at abortion clinics. So, back to the story. Linebacker used her show-and-tell piece to yell at a woman entering the clinic, shoving the image in the air saying, “the blessed mother is angry at abortion.” Now, here’s where the connection between religious proselytizing and anti abortion protesting goes terribly wrong. Linebacker pivots on her heels and really yells directly at me. Keep in mind, I’m videotaping all this for a documentary. She grasped her graven image firmly, raises it upward and toward me and yells, “The blessed mother is very, very angry at you Kate, you and all those who will watch your stupid documentary.” It had to be one of the funniest things I’ve witnessed for its nonsensical religious rage.

One last story comes from the likes of a Pappa Smurf look alike, white beard and all, named Gerry. He is a man who believes in himself. He once said to escorts who were rightly laughing at him, “Laugh at me and you laugh at God.” But the crowning psycho-religious comment happened when a mother and daughter arrived at the clinic. The mother revealed that her daughter had been brutally raped. Gerry’s response, in typical My-proselytizing-is-more-important-than-your-situation, was “If your daughter is pregnant because of being raped, it’s the way God wanted it.”

Screen Shot 2013-01-03 at 8.41.19 AMThe common denominator amongst the anti abortionists is a belief in a position of superiority with their faith as the only true faith. The see anyone outside their belief system as inferior, filled with errors, Satan-inspired, bound to an eternity in Hell, in need of prayers and on and on, ad nauseum. So it is little wonder that when these lovelies assume such a position in their religiously informed antiabortion proselytizing, that they are met with objections, disdain and reciprocal disrespect. Show no respect, get no respect. It’s the basics of Ethics 101.

 

 

“It is my conviction that there is no way to peace – peace is the way.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

 

December 19, 2012

From Dwindling Relevance to Extremist Discourse

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Information
[31] Comments 

HandgunsKilledLawrence Lessig, an American academic and political activist, claims that when political discourse becomes isolated, it becomes more extreme. Nowhere is this extreme discourse more evident than amongst the religiously conservative wonkery. These folks have gone from prudishly quaint to desperately pandering to boxing-above-their-intellectual-weight-class annoying. Consider the tragic shootings in Connecticut that created a groundswell of grief and sympathy across the nation. Despite any political differences, deep within us all is the dreaded reality that these unspeakable deaths could have happened to our children, sisters, mothers, and neighbors. Yet, when these events in Littleton or Fort Hood or Virginia happen, we are caught off guard. We react with shock, sadness and outrage. And interrupting our individual and collective mourning, are the increasingly irrelevant few who seize the opportunity to champion their own self-fulfilling God prophesies to convince themselves and others that they are not obsolete, that their myopic worldview is relevant to every disaster. From local yokels to more public figures, their thought processes are singular and simplistic.

Take the example of eleven skinned animals found on a Pennsylvania roadside. Originally thought to be skinned puppies, the discarded foxes generated disgust and a hefty reward. Not to miss an opportunity to talk about her favorite subject, a local anti abortion activist submitted a letter to the local newspaper. Of the skinned animals, she wrote “the same atrocities are committed against unborn children” and, further, that “a couple thousand unborn children are hauled away as infectious waste” without “public outcry.” Finishing, she wrote that the reward of $7,000 for information leading to an arrest added “insult to injury.” To say that this is a woman with extreme fixations is an understatement. From relating abortions to road kill to filing a $200, 000 lawsuit against an abortion clinic for her mental suffering due to her personal decision to protest to her obsession with others’ salaries, expensive cars and expansive homes, it’s apparent that this anti abortion activist is an outlier, desperate to be relevant.

On the national scene, Fox News host and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR), believing that Satan is in our public schools, said: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools, Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” Not satisfied with the God comment, he later linked the shootings to “tax-funded abortion pills” and society calling “sinful” acts “normal.” I guess he forgot about Ft Hood and the Colorado theater shootings.ProlifeHateGuns

And in one of those God-will-judge-America themes, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, said the shootings happened because American turned its back on God by removing prayer in school, allowing marriage equality and allowing women to have abortions.

In yet another shameless attempt at sounding relevant by politicizing a senseless act, Bryan Fisher, a conservative Christian known for his anti-gay rhetoric and vitriolic tirades, claims “God did not protect the victims of the Connecticut shooting because prayer has been prohibited from the public school system.” Again, explain Ft. Hood and the Colorad theater.

The former Saturday Night Live comic and current outspoken Obama-hating ultra conservative Victoria Jackson posted on her Facebook:

Obama dramatically wiped a tear as he said, “The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids … They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own…”

YEAH OBAMA. SAME AS THE MILLION BABIES YOU HAD ABORTED THIS YEAR.

ARE YOU CRYING FOR THEM?!”

The Westboro Baptist Church, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America,” known to be anti gay and anti abortion, stated that “God sent the shooter” to execute his judgment on America.”

DollFaceYolkJeffrey Lord, a former Reagan White House political director, connects mass shootings to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood. He writes that there has been “wholesale discarding of human life” and a perpetuation of a culture of violence in a society that has turned the protection of the most vulnerable — babies — into the unmentionable.” I’m guessing he’s not counting the thousands of men, women and children our military kills in other countries or the children killed in our inner cities. I’m guessing they don’t count?
Comments such as the above are irrelevant for certain. Dobson, Lord, Phelps, Huckabee and the scrappy streetside anti abortion activists are not truly interested in the welfare of children as much as they are desperate to be heard. So they take senseless acts of violence and connect them to their own personal obsessions. I have no doubt that when these whackadoodles crack an egg, they  think of abortion. When they see road kill, they think of abortion. And when the news media shines a light on any disaster, they connect it to God and abortion. Extreme? Yes, they are. Relevant? No, they are not.

 

December 13, 2012

In the Anti Abortion Wikipedia: A Judgment on Women

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Information, Abortion lies, Abortion MisInformation, Abortion Rates, Abortion Stigma, Abortion Terrorism, Abortion Violence, Pro Life Lies
[10] Comments 

GodJudgeGaysABIt’s instructive for those who eschew their history lessons (or conveniently forget their history lessons), because they are condemned to repeat it. The prediction that God will judge America over abortion (and homosexuality) is pitiful because it ignores past God-will-get-you predictions from past religionists. Let’s not forget that the Shakers thought the world would be over in 1792, while the Jehovah’s Witnesses pegged various years between 1914 and 1994 as an end date. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, who told church leaders in 1835 that his conversation with God revealed that Jesus would return within the next 56 years to begin the End Times. Or in 1980, televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson telling his 700 Club TV show “I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world.” What these doomsday predictions have in common is fear-mongering foisted upon the gullible.

 This recent God-will-get-you prediction also ignores America’s history of exploitation, pillaging, maiming and killing native Americans and their land, the enslaving, maiming, and killing of millions of Africans, the support of foreign regimes that raped and killed millions, and the corrupt leaders in our own government and military who killed their own, who notoriously engaged in medical experiments on our poor black brothers and nuclear experiments on unknowing populations and who neglected the millions who are needy, oppressed, hungry, poor, sick, and homeless. And, guess what? God did not judge America. It’s still open for business. It remains fully immersed in the basic constitutional principles of freedom, individualism and unobstructed commerce, principles embraced by God-fearing, family-values oriented Republicans.Screen Shot 2012-12-13 at 6.57.54 AM

So when antiabortion crusaders post their dire prediction about God judging America, it’s an opportunity to remember yet another history lesson. Since biblical times, the prophecy of Armageddon, where it was alleged that God would destroy the armies of the Antichrist, is as ordinary as dirt, as quotidian as germs and as dangerous as cold oatmeal.

To get to the root of such a dystopian perspective, one need only open religious tracts to understand the machinations of (mostly) men with a proclivity toward the dramatic, men who are positioned as thought leaders in the prolife culture. Take Fr. Frank Pavone who cherry picks from old and new testaments to push his Priests for Life celebrity life. From his web site, in a section titled “Life is Victorious over Death,” (an anti-science statement if there ever was one), Pavone explains, “Abortion is death. Christ came to conquer death, and therefore abortion.” Note that his fractured syllogism does not cite any biblical text because there is no mention of abortion anywhere in the bible. But to authenticate his logic, he attaches a random biblical citation “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10) as if this adds clarity and confirmation of its righteousness.

Visit Flip Benham’s tracts (Operation Save America) for an even more dramaturgical response to abortion. Like Pavone, Benham “unashamedly takes up the cause of the preborn” using the “Cross of Christ” as their strategy (whatever the Hell that means). But rather than proclaim that God will judge America, Flip and his followers believe they ARE the heart and voice of God to solve the problem of abortion through “The Cross of Christ.” Knowing how literal these folks can be, it’s worrisome to imagine that the crucifixion is better theater than Pavone’s blather.

Joe Scheidler’s Pro-Life Action League shares Flip Benham’s affinity for the theatricality of public demonstrations in his Culture of Death performances. Recalling the twisted, disfigured and bloody body of Christ hung on a cross or the depraved killings in which bodies were stacked like cordwood during the Holocaust as teachable moments, Scheidler translates these two grotesque moments in time using images of mangled fetuses hung on signs and posters in his Face the Truth shows. And, quite naturally, their signs create opportunities for them to be on camera wherever they set up their traveling circus.

Calling abortion a national atrocity, as Scheidler does, ignores the sanctity of women’s lives and the choices they make. Calling the 9-11 tragedy God’s judgment and revenge for America’s slaughter of 45 million children, as Benham does, ignores the agency of the men who flew the planes into the buildings, those who supported them and all associated global politics including the Bush administration. Benham’s comments also ignore the rights and wishes of women. And in stating that a when a prisoner is put to death, he is afforded more dignity than the dignity a fetus deserves, Pavone is absolutely discounting the dignity of the woman who is carrying the fetus.

Recall, for a moment, the absurd expression that guns don’t kill people—people using guns kill people. Most rational citizens understand this about guns. Most understand that life and death by guns is more complicated than some bumper sticker expression. So when antiabortion crusaders like Benham, Scheidler and Pavone (and their followers) fabricate such prophecies about abortion and about God’s judgment, aren’t they really saying something more complicated like railing against women and their providers? Like the inert quality of a gun, abortion is a procedure without agency. Abortion cannot be accomplished without human agency. So to say God will judge America for abortion makes no sense unless we unpack what these crusaders most likely mean.GodYouHateImage

In an anti abortion Wikipedia under the “Condemnations and Predictions” category, the entry might read: “God will judge America over Abortion” is a slogan adopted by pro life conservative, evangelical Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, as an abbreviated dystopian version of reality and an alternative to the longer version: “We God-fearing Christians, who don’t believe in the evils of contraception or abortion or unruly American women, want you to know that God will judge abortion-minded women and all abortion providers. It is from our faith that we must inform you that you are the incarnation of evil and that you are condemned to eternity in Hell if you are in any way affiliated with the sins of murdering unborn children.”

Bottom line: It’s not God’s judgment. It’s the anti abortion folks’ judgment on women.

 

December 5, 2012

As Transparent as a Zygote

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Information | Tags: |
[49] Comments 

Slide1Some of the most gullible people in the world are found in the antiabortion subculture. They demonstrate their gullibility, for example, when the make signs that read “Trust God” or offer public statements like “Don’ abort your baby because God will provide.” All any rational person need do is look at the poverty, crime, homelessness and illness in the world to realize that God does not provide for all. Fools pray for relief from their poverty, for a shelter for their children, for a job to feed their family or for war to end in their country. But their prayers are not answered. It’s not that they don’t pray hard enough or that these poor souls are unworthy. Not at all. The majority of the ills of the world are caused by human actions, a confluence of unfortunate consequences, bad decisions, personal greed, colonialism, ignorance, magical thinking and hegemony. While I am not in any way discounting the existence of a higher power, a universal voice or an entity that many call God, I am arguing that God will not provide in the simplistic way that the antis claim.  God will not provide jobs, good health, a comfortable home, a congenial family life. God will not make bad circumstances in women’s lives good again. Hell, even the ‘family values’ GOP doesn’t make that happen. In fact, those who stand on the family values platform also stand on the necks of women, suffocating them with their self-righteousness and draconian legislation. But, I digress. It suffices to say I argue that God will not make this world a rosy place through our prayer and supplication. We must individually work to the best of our given and learned abilities and collectively for the greater good of our human community to be all that it can be. But stuff happens.

The sentimental notions that God is omniscient and omnipresent, notions embraced by the clueless, are  saccharine sentimentality. From a scientific or archeological perspective, the Christian bible stories provide a Slide1lens through which to understand the gullibility of these anti abortion types (and others). Obviously, God did not create the world in 6 days 6,000 years ago. There was never a worldwide flood that covered Mt. Everest. Jonah did not live inside a fish’s stomach for three days. God did not create Adam from a handful of dust or woman from Adam’s rib. Let’s face the realities. God does not dole out paychecks, provide keys to homes, gas for our cars, food for all the starving children, or brains for all the ignorance in this world. So we need to think more critically.
MondaksCrossThe warning “When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” seems appropriate for so many of the anti abortion folks, as well as their GOP family-values troglodytes.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Antiabortion protesters don’t trust God. It’s “do as I say” and not “do as I do.” They don’t trust that God can or will guide young women with unplanned pregnancies to carry to term. It seems to me that if they really trusted God, they would leave things to God. But they don’t. They want things to happen their way and on their schedule. Their actions are evidence that they do not trust their God. A prominent Catholic nun, Sister Kathy Sherman of LaGrange Illinois, states that hope, peace and love are all names for God. But for the protesters, who offer no real hope, no peace and no love toward women clients, who invoke the name of God or Jesus, they become nothing more than noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Every day they lurk on sidewalks or right-of-ways outside abortion clinics, they announce to the world their own superiority to God. They’re outside abortion clinics because they don’t trust the very God that they’re asking others to trust.

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All the bible-clutching, Hell-fire breathing evangelists and the rosary bead-kissing Catholics demonstrate they don’t trust in God. Their rationales are numerous, humorous and ludicrous. They fabricate excuses and rationalizations about why God doesn’t answer prayers, about why God doesn’t stop wars, or about why all their assumed horrors of abortion continue. They might say the words “God is in control” but their actions say otherwise. They make every effort to interrupt a woman’s path to an abortion clinic including posting unethical images that disrespect humanity, endorsing their religion on the unwilling and revealing their misinformation about reproductive medical science. The reality is that most of those folks lurking outside abortion clinics from Allen Texas to Hebron North Carolina and from North Aurora Illinois to Allentown PA don’t trust their God. For them to ask strangers to trust God, and by implication to trust them, is creepy because they are as transparent, dare I say Godless, as the zygotes that they so desperately wish to save.

 

November 29, 2012

Maternal Instinct: Prolife Pulp Fiction

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Information, Abortion Stigma
[23] Comments 

Fairy tales, familiar stories to the human family, introduce a world of the marvelous and magical as well as the capricious and the cruel. A princess cannot sleep because of the discomfort of a pea. A boy may become a bird. Even objects can become enchanted like talking mirrors or carriages made from pumpkins. A typical story line includes the idealization of a character, full of fantasy with moral and religious overtones. It is from the subculture of antiabortionists, who euphemistically call themselves prolife, that the fairy tale about motherhood originates. In this fairy tale, their idealization of motherhood is both a feeling of love and hate. While the hate is ignored and kept from consciousness, the love is unrealistic, illusory and distorted. Drawing on work from psychoanalysts, idealization of motherhood is a defense against the consequences of recognizing the antiabortionists’ own ambivalences and failures. So how is this fairy tale realized in the quotidian sidewalk battles of the antiabortionists?

Moving from the position of idealized motherhood, antiabortionists are fond of telling young women that their baby loves them or their baby wants to live. I witnessed the perennial favorite of one protester blather on ad nauseum “You’ll have a beautiful baby who will love you.” While this is more a projection of their personal feelings about babies and the obvious dismissal that some babies are downright ugly, it is nonetheless a consequence of the fabrications inherent in the mindset of these folks. Regardless of gestation, no fetus is capable of expressing emotions such as love or a will to live. I suspect that these sidewalk crusaders know this about a fetus but cannot help but anthropomorphize.

Another aspect of their fractured fairy tale comes from the unsubstantiated concept called maternal instinct. Ignoring science and rationality, typical of this subculture, these antiabortionists make ludicrous claims about abortion going against a woman’s instincts or about men instinctively protecting their women. If that doesn’t sound like a cave man intellect, I’m not sure what would. Sadly, these folks don’t know the difference from social acculturation of humans and instincts found in birds, insects and reptiles. It doesn’t take much to realize that maternal instinct is nothing more than an idealized, Hallmark card version of a world they desire. Women have been abandoning and continue to abandon their newborns across the globe. Newborns, dead and alive, are discovered in streets, garbage containers, train stations and public bathrooms. Research demonstrates that abandonment occurs because the infant is unwanted, the wrong sex, is defective, a liability in a difficult relationship with the biological father or with the mother’s parents or is mental response of disassociation where the woman in unable to see the fetus as human.

Wet nurses provide another view to discredit maternal instinct. For centuries, women turned the care and feeding of their children to wet nurses, often sending them off to live until they were five or six years old. A French historian documented this practice from letters, diaries and health records. As a matter of practicality and not maternal instinct, infants were sent to live in the country, raised by wet nurses until they were capable of caring for themselves, more or less.

In the United States, the response to safe haven laws demonstrated how maternal instinct is a fairy tale. In nearly all states, safe have laws allowed mothers to leave unwanted children. In response, women (and men) left their unwanted, unruly, financially burdensome, socially disruptive, undesirable children ranging in age from newborn to age 17.

A recent British survey about parenting and regret found that one in ten regretted having children. While the good news is that the majority found happiness with parenthood, others did not. They cited financial hardships and negative impact on their careers and their relationship with their partners as key reasons.
I mentioned earlier that the antiabortionists fail to understand how humans are socialized. I can tell you that it’s not instinct. In their imaginary world, an amalgam of Father Knows Best saccharine idealization and Jesus Loves the Little Children church pulp, these folks concoct fairy tales about motherhood that never existed and never will. It’s the prolife version of pulp fiction.

 

November 1, 2012

Slipping into a theocracy

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion
[11] Comments 

A few years ago, I wrote about Adam Hamilton’s When Christians Get It Wrong. It seems especially important to talk about his book again in light of current political events and the election.

In a particularly lyrical passage, Hamilton writes “scientists act as God’s docents, whether they believe in God or not. By helping us understand God’s handiwork, they add to the majesty and glory of creation that, as a believer, leaves me with a greater sense of awe about the One who created all things.” Witnessing the behavior of self-proclaimed Christian legislators and candidates for public office, I have to say that they are not doing a very good job of telling the glory of God, not doing a good job at all sharing the majesty of human beings. In fact, I believe that the assaults on women’s reproductive health care demonstrate the ugly, depraved side of these so-called Christians.

Men like Richard Mourdock, John Koster, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, and by extension Mitt Romney, lacking any human empathy (Christian compassion?), believe that women who suffer unimaginable violence from rape and incest should be further victimized by taking away their freedom of choice. But one’s faith shouldn’t be an issue that voters need to be wary of when it comes to choosing a candidate to support. What a person believes personally and what is legal, what is constitutional, and frankly, what is fair and just, is how a politician needs to promise to govern.  But such a concept doesn’t exist within the Republican party of NO. Their attempts to cut off funds needed to implement Title X family planning funds, allows employers to opt-out of covering contraception or pretty much any other medical care are written on the basis of their religious beliefs or moral convictions.

Another point that Hamilton makes is about the new testament of the Bible, which was an attempt to correct “self-righteousness, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, spiritual pride, moral compromise and a host of other issues” through one simple concept called LOVE.  Yet, every time I hear an antiabortion protester invoke the name of Jesus, I cringe. There’s nothing Christ-like in that invocation, particularly because it lacks love and is full of rage and contempt for any woman who enters an abortion clinic. Every time I hear the arrogant Paul Ryan’s conservative Catholic, staunch antiabortion mouth open about ending abortion, I gasp at his hubris and worry that he could one day be sitting in the oval office. His views are not about love or compassion. They’re about his right to impose policies based on his religion to mandate policies that impact women.

This country was founded on a separation of church and state. But we’re slipping into a theocracy that does not bode well for women. Think carefully when you vote next week.

 

October 25, 2012

Poisoned Truth in the Media

Posted by DrK8 under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Information
[12] Comments 

Following the third presidential debate, I keep thinking about the word truth. It’s swirling around in my head like a single-ingredient word stew simmered in the propagandistic broth of politics. But this stew is not fit for human consumption as evidenced by the debate. No longer can the American diet stomach what is called truth in the media. The admixture of financial greed and political misogyny has poisoned truth.  From corporate greed, government’s corporate welfare programs especially for media conglomerates and corporate donations to politicians, there is little to no incentive to worry about truth. Idealistic journalists intent on investigating wrong doing find their interests ignored by editors who worry that the report will offend their viewers and their advertisers.

So, here are a few examples of what poisoned truth looks like in the corporate-owned, profit-driven, media.

  • When legislators, aligned with the anti abortion movement, pass targeted regulations of abortion providers (TRAP)laws, the news media will recast the story as a bill advocating for women’s health. For example, the recent spate of laws requiring abortion clinics to meet surgical suite standards does not apply to plastic surgeons, dermatologists, periodontists or family physicians who dabble in minor surgery.  TRAP laws are designed to make access to abortion difficult if not impossible. There’s no real truth in their desire to protect women.
  • Nearly two years ago, Republican Reps. John Boehner, Paul Ryan and tea party adherents took control of Congress, promising to fix the economy. Instead, they attacked women’s health and have continued to this day. Yet, the mainstream media promotes absurd sound bytes from radicals instead of speaking to the obvious truth about the war on women’s health. Those sound bytes about using aspirin between the knees as birth control or special hormones to prevent pregnancy during a violent rape help sell stories but they do absolutely nothing to speak the truth about overwhelmingly obvious religiously motivated battle against women and their reproductive rights.
  • Promiscuity police like Rick Santorum and others in the Republican party promote abstinence education programs in public schools, fearing any comprehensive sex education would only encourage sexual promiscuity. But the research proves otherwise. Studies about condom availability programs, designed to decrease unwanted pregnancy and HIV infections, found no increased rate of sexual activity. Sexuality education programs do not increase sexual behavior but, in fact, tend to delay initiation of sexual activity. But where is the hard-hitting news media when reports are released about the alarming teen STI infection rates where one out of four teens (50% among African Americans) have at least one infection?
  • The availability of emergency contraception, according to the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California San Francisco conducted a review of 16 studies on the impact of providing EC to adult and adolescent women. The review found no evidence that access increased sexual risk taking. It found that women did not abandon their regular method of contraception when they had access to EC; did not engage in increased sexual activity; and did not have increased incidences of STIs. Instead of reporting on the value of EC, the news media focuses on a myth about high schools who give out emergency contraception without the consent or even knowledge of the parents or stories about religiously affiliated pharmacists who believe that they have the right to refuse to administer EC to women.
  • And the ruckus created by the introduction of the HPV vaccine among sex-phobic parents and politicians, lead to comments about the vaccine encouraging young women to become sexually active. But the facts from research of medical records of young women under age 16 for indications of sexual activity found no difference between those who had been vaccinated and those who had not. This adds to an earlier study of young women ages 15 to 24, which also found no association between the HPV vaccine and risky sexual behavior. But when Governor Rick Perry (R)  demanded that young girls in Texas be required to have the vaccination at the parents’ expense, mainstream media failed the public. It failed to mention that Perry had a cozy financial relationship with the pharmaceutical company that makes the vaccine.

It’s evident that mainstream media loves sound bytes. Featuring gratuitous video of Todd Aiken speaking about rape or Joe Walsh  saying that abortion is unnecessary because the life of a mother is never at risk may be good for business but it’s not good for our democracy which depends on an informed citizenry. Promoting Republican poppycock makes a mockery of the myth of the liberal media. Women deserve facts based on medical evidence not drivel from God-deluded bishops.  Young women deserve age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education in schools and not shame-mongering tactics of abstinence only programs or blasts from shock jocks calling women sluts when all they want and deserve is contraception.

We count on the media to provide a well-reasoned voice against power and money but it’s nearly impossible when corporations who support politicians and influence government, own the media.

 

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