Archives for 2011

Yesterday in my gym’s female locker room, I noticed a blue Plan B poster depicting a sperm entering an egg hanging where there are usually posters promoting Breast Cancer awareness or ALS awareness. I looked around and saw 4 others. Obviously, I lodged a complaint (I’m very popular now, I’m sure).

Since the posters are new, I wondered if Plan B was planning a new ad campaign with their shiny new posters. The website certainly looks updated, and once you get past the options to download their new “sperm font” and sperm screensaver, you’ll find claims like this one:

IS PLAN B AN ABORTION PILL?

Absolutely not. It may be comforting to know that plan B does not work if you are already pregnant (a fertilized egg has attached to the wall of the uterus). So if you take plan B, you will not be terminating a pregnancy. However, if you already have a confirmed pregnancy, you should not use plan B because it will not be effective.

So why does Plan B want to provide this kind of “comfort”? Well, because as Jeanne Monahan, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, so eloquently said, “The difference between preventing life and destroying life is hugely significant to many women. Women deserve to know the difference.”

According to Plan B’s claims, pregnancy only occurs once a fertilized egg has attached to the uterine wall. This generally occurs 7 days after conception. That’s right, 7 days, a week, after fertilization. Was a women not pregnant for that week? Not according to the Princeton WordNet,

Noun

S: (n) pregnancy, gestation, maternity (the state of being pregnant; the period from conception to birth when a woman carries a developing fetus in her uterus)

Other dictionaries’ definition of pregnancy vary from edition to edition, sometimes contradicting themselves in the same edition. But whatever the printed page says, women DO deserve to know the difference and determine that definition for themselves, rather than have a pharmaceutical company define it for them. Plan B, as they stated on their site, prevents a fertilized egg, already starting to grow, from staying in the uterus. For many people, that is terminating a pregnancy.

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Andrea asks: I’m wondering a) How you phrased your complaint? and b) How the gym responded?

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Jennifer replies: As the gym I am a member of happens to be my employer, I felt comfortable leaving my co-worker, the marketing supervisor, a voicemail (since she was unavailable on the Sunday). I stated that 1) The posters were present where employees under the age of consent have access (under the age of 16) and 2) I have ethical issues working in an environment that advertises PlanB, which I consider to be an abortifacient. I asked her to get back to me and said I could write a formal complaint if need be. We’ll see what happens!

An update on this horrible and upsetting story we mentioned a few days ago.

“His entire practice showed nothing but a callous disdain for the lives of his patients,” said the nearly 300-page grand jury report, released Wednesday.

The panel also had scathing criticism for Pennsylvania state health and medical regulators, saying they had numerous opportunities to shut Gosnell down over the years but ignored complaint after complaint about filthy conditions and illegal operations.

In all, prosecutors said, state officials failed to inspect the clinic despite repeated complaints from 1993 until January 2010, when a federal drug raid investigating heavy painkiller distribution at the clinic shut it down.

Repeated complaints about safety standards at an abortion clinic are not enough for the authorites to bother with. But illicit painkiller distribution can shut down that clinic in no time flat.

Somebody’s got their priorities in the wrong order.

Should police officers really be using sex as a weapon?

Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of “promiscuity” with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years.

The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.

Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence.

[…]

“When you are using the tool of sex to maintain your cover or maybe to glean more intelligence – because they certainly talk a lot more, pillow talk – you would be ready to move on if you felt an attachment growing.

“The best way of stopping any liaison getting too heavy was to shag somebody else. It’s amazing how women don’t like you going to bed with someone else,” said the officer, whose undercover deployment infiltrating anti-racist groups lasted from 1993 to 1997.

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Andrea adds: Apparently, not always super effective:

The officer added that undercover police were strictly encouraged not to form a bond with women they were sleeping with and said that he knew Jim Boyling, the undercover officer who married an activist he was supposed to be spying upon.

So “keeping emotional distance” from people you are sleeping with doesn’t always work? Who knew? Yeesh.

I didn’t know anything about him before breakfast this morning, but the more I learn about Herman Cain, the more I like. The former CEO of Godfather Pizza is thinking of running for U.S. President and among the many reasons why I like this idea very much is this:

In a new interview, Cain tells American Family Radio’s “Focal Point” program that he is pro-life and opposes the agenda of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion business.

“I absolutely would defund Planned Parenthood — not because I don’t believe in planning parenthood, [but because] Planned Parenthood as an organization is an absolute farce on the American people,” he said.

Cain, who is African-American, accused the abortion business of engaging in a racist agenda.

“People who know the history of Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, they know that the intention was not to help young women who get pregnant to plan their parenthood. No — it was a sham to be able to kill black babies,” he added.

He told the program that proof of the agenda is seen in the fact that  “75 percent of all Planned Parenthood facilities are located in black neighborhoods.”

In the UK, Tory MP Nadine Dorries is making headlines in this article from the New Statesman.

Anti-abortionists are feeling emboldened and they have adopted a new tactic. In both the United States and Britain, campaigning groups no longer implicitly state that they are against abortion, but claim instead that they are offering women “real choices”.

[…]

Her intention is to introduce “fully informed consent” for women seeking abortion, she says, rather than to campaign for a return to illegality. “There are 1,300 couples in this country wanting to adopt, but women are rarely told of that option. They feel railroaded into a cattle-market process and end up in clinic with 60 or so other women every day who are not treated with particular kindness.”

It’s a lengthy read with many issues crowding in for their share of the soapbox, but the general idea is that the pro-life movement worldwide is leaning toward a PWPL style mission. A world without abortion. By choice.

Maybe it’s the realization that laws aren’t enough, or that laws aren’t always enforced, or maybe it’s that this kind of mission does offer real choice (or maybe it’s that PWPL is highly popular and extremely influential). Pregnant, need help? Need housing? Need money? Need support? Need adoption advice? A large and ever growing network of organizations and volunteers are getting those bases covered. And if there is one thing that pro-abortion feminists (because not ALL feminists are in fact pro-abortion) hate, it’s other people offering women choices.

The invaluable folks at Mashable.com produced a handy list of parent-friendly social networks. How to find advice, parents who’ve been through what you’re now going (seems to be a lot of 2-year-olds refusing to eat out there…), or simply to find new friends who are up to their ears in crayons and diapers just like you.

Wow.

“Smart, fair-minded, hard-working good men make all sorts of mistakes in divorce. Executives and professors and doctors make the same mistakes as plumbers and truck drivers,” according to Joseph Cordell in The 10 Stupidest Mistakes Men Make When Facing Divorce. The lawyer and his wife run a bustling St. Louis law practice specializing in men’s divorce. “You can’t make a mistake we haven’t seen,” he writes.

Apparently, one of the worst mistakes is not censoring what your new girlfriend writes on Facebook.

When men ask his firm, “What can my girlfriend put up on Facebook about me and our relationship?” Cordell says their answer is: “Nothing. Not a word. Not a single photo. Nothing.” He goes further, telling men to buy a new computer at the first sign of marital discord. “The cost of a new computer is cheap compared with the cost of an incriminating browsing history.”

Sigh. I suppose “trying to work out a way to save the marriage together” would be too boring and simple.

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Véronique agrees: I always thought that if people spent half as much time and energy working on their marriage as they spend working-out their divorce, the divorce rate would be significantly reduced.

Yes, marriage can be challenging. And yes, everybody has a good reason why everybody else should have worked on their marriage but they couldn’t. Marriage is like riding a bike: you have to keep it going or you fall. And it takes two to tango: it takes two people to make a marriage work and it takes two to ruin it. But people are fooling themselves thinking that the end of the marriage will mean the end of their problems, especially when children are involved. Divorce with children means that you will be in almost daily contact with your ex-spouse over child-rearing and finances, the two leading causes of divorce. So why not seek help and learn to make it work?

From the Herald Sun,

So determined are the couple to have a girl that they recently terminated twin boys conceived through IVF.

[…]

The woman, who is consumed by grief over the daughter who died soon after birth, admits she has become obsessed with having a daughter and it has become vital to her psychological health.

Victoria’s Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 bans sex selection unless it is necessary to avoid the risk of transmission of a genetic abnormality or genetic disease to a child.

All IVF clinics in Australia must stay within National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines that say sex selection should not be done except to reduce the transmission of a serious genetic condition.

Australian IVF pioneer Gab Kovacs – not involved in the case – said he could not understand why the couple should be banned from having a girl.

“I can’t see how it could harm anyone,” he said.

“Who is this going to harm if this couple have their desire fulfilled?”

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Brigitte bites: “I can’t see how it could harm anyone”, he said. Gee whiz, I don’t know. I suppose this works if we decide that the twin boys summarily dispatched just don’t count.

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Véronique adds: Harm anyone? How about the poor girl who will eventually be conceived? I can’t see any harmful psychological baggage here (shaking my head in disbelief). When “having a daughter (…) has become vital to her psychological health” it makes you wonder how fit to parent the mother is. Children, girl or boy, don’t fit neatly in the little moulds their parents want to fit them into.

I am slightly ticked off by this piece (just so you know: if you follow all the links some of them will show girls in bikinis). I get it to some extent (i.e. men do not want their girls to look like men – fair enough; I don’t want my men to look like girls). But to come down so hard on the Miss America contestants for having toned physiques is perhaps a touch exaggerated. We can’t all look like this…

True, I am biased. I’ve always exercised, and I’ve always enjoyed being fit and as much on the slim side as I can manage. I’m coming up to ten years in the same dojo (traditional karate). I don’t have Ms. Holloway’s hips but honestly I don’t want them either. I prefer to have curves that are more discreet but decent muscle underneath. Because you know what? After a while (not that I’m looking at any calendar in particular), without exercise, those nice curves just kinda fall apart on you. Also? Being trained in some kind of martial arts means you’re equipped to wallop the first clown who shows up behind you intending to whack your pretty little head with a hammer. It also helps you handle more, ah, serious weapons. Not much point being armed if you’re not strong enough to control the thing.

So. By all means let’s try to keep looking like girls. No, it’s not necessary to look like you’re headed for the body building competition. But come on. Abs on a girl are not necessarily ugly.

[h/t]

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Véronique adds: I don’t do karate, I run. I run two half marathons a year. (If one-and-a-half years makes a habit.) Last week, as I was leaving work to go for a run, my darling co-worker printed out the sketch of the “hammer dude” so I could get familiar with his face. Maybe I could outrun him, if it was at the beginning of my run and he was drunk. Running will get you some nice legs and burn some fat (assuming you don’t reward yourself with a Starbuck’s Trenta with a cup of whip on top). But it won’t help you wallop clowns.
Recently at home was our annual “Vero starts the generator day” to make sure I can survive when my husband is away. And sure enough, I have great running legs and cardio-pulmonary capacity but not enough raw power to crank-up the genny. So if looking like a guy means that you can survive hammer attacks and crippling blizzards, I say “bring it on”.

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Andrea adds: There must be something wrong with me. I looked at the links above and whether said blogger was criticizing or applauding, all I saw was beautiful woman after beautiful woman. I have issues with bikinis and high heels though. It’s just not practical.

Thailand has something of a tarnished track record when it comes to enforcing legislation. Prostitution, you may be surprised to know, is actually illegal in the country, regardless of how many women and children are trafficked in and out each year for the sex trade. Considered a “sex tourism” hot spot, it is not far fetched to think that abortions, also illegal, occur within its borders.

This article from Times LIVE discusses the finding of 2,000 tiny aborted bodies in a Bangkok temple in November of last year, a finding that has the Thai government threatening to “ban sex with girls under 20”. The article uses a 17 year old unidentified girl as its primary source, while at the same time stating that only 12 to 15 percent of all abortions in the country are performed on teenagers. It seems our reaction in the West, as well as that of the Thai government, is misdirected towards the smallest percentage of women affected. However, given the country’s habit of making unenforced laws to placate a voting public, whatever the legislative outcome may be, it may directly not affect the lives of the Thai people and their unfortunately high abortion rates.