A precedent

More from the Austin Statesman story last December.

University officials said Friday they didn’t know of another public medical school whose primary teaching hospital is Catholic.

So, setting a precedent. A very bad precedent.

Central Health, a public entity, along with the women it serves and doctors it works with, already has had to jump through hoops to accommodate the church, said Meghan Smith, domestic program associate for Catholics for Choice, which supports women’s access to contraception and abortion.

Ian Smith, a lawyer with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said future doctors will have to jump through similar hoops. [Read more…]

“So long as it does not contradict Catholic principles”

Ok new item to contemplate in slack-jawed horror and then shout the place down about. A Twitter friend alerted me to the fact that the University of Texas at Austin medical school recently partnered with a Catholic hospital group, Seton, and the students were told they have to comply with the ERD.

I can barely get my head around it. It’s a state school. And the ERD tells hospital and medical staff that they may not perform abortions ever.

A publicly funded university is ordering its med students to comply with church rules. In the United States, in 2013. [Read more…]

Finally – WOMAN SUES US CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS

Yesssssssssss. It’s about fucking time.

USA Today: Woman sues over Catholic hospitals’ abortion rule

DETROIT — A Michigan woman is taking on the nation’s Catholic hospitals in federal court, alleging they are forcing pregnant women in crisis into having painful miscarriages rather than terminate the pregnancy — and not giving them any options.

The Muskegon woman, who developed an infection and miscarried 18 weeks into her pregnancy, sued the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Monday, alleging the group’s anti-abortion directive denies proper medical care to women like herself.

In her case, the lawsuit said, the directive contributed to a painful miscarriage and offered her no options.

In other words, a potential Savita Halappanavar, with the difference being that she survived. [Read more…]

We need to REMIND them about the way of things

Damn, I’m beating the dead horse of Elan to death here, but I got around to reading his triumphant post-flight post about what a great job he did of teaching people to be nice and I just couldn’t not say anything. So here’s Elan Gale on teaching everyone to be nice:

A lot of people have been really nice to me and called me a hero today. It’s really fun to hear but it’s not true.

Our troops are heroes. Fire fighters and policemen are heroes. Doctors and teachers are heroes. Flight attendants and pilots and waiters and baristas… These are the people that make things work in this crazy world.

What I did today was just point out something we all know: Be nice. It’s Thanksgiving. Be nice.  [Read more…]

The dancer from the dance

Jason figured out something about the “rage blogging” trope.

The really interesting thing is, the people complaining about “rage bloggers” and “drama” are doing the exact same thing as the bloggers they complain about, by pointing to things they disagree with and disagreeing with them. Publicly. Calling them out on things they disagree with, even while they themselves decry the “call-out culture” of disagreeing with people publicly.

Well yes. [Read more…]

Contemptibly rude versus wildly irritating

More Elan-commentary.

Ken White at Popehat:

Mr. Gale serves to teach us two lessons about social media and the internet — and more broadly, about life.

Lesson One:  Douchebaggery Is Not A Zero-Sum Game

The first lesson is that boorish behavior is not binary.  People are complex, life is complex, and despite our hunger to see the world in simple terms of white hats versus black hats, sometimes all participants in a social media melee are assholes.

In this instance, it’s perfectly possible to recognize that (1) that “Diane” — if she exists — was contemptibly rude and entitled towards airline staff who have no control over when a plane leaves and who are simply doing their jobs under trying circumstances, and (2) also recognize that Elan Gale is contemptibly self-involved for seeing Diane’s rudeness as an opportunity to confront and torment her for his own amusement and self-promotion.  [Read more…]

Decades after we decided as a society

Even the Telegraph has a blog post about the heroic adventures in schooling women of Elan Gale.

Look, joking aside, and God knows Elan is a risible clown who deserves all the pointing-and-laughing one can mete out, there’s something profoundly depressing about the fact that, decades after we decided as a society that using sexual threats and demands as a means of shutting women up was unacceptable, young men like Elan are still using them on strange women in public spaces and other young men are cheering them on. [Read more…]

Something annoys you? Blame feminism!

That seems to be Christina Hoff Sommers’s policy at least.

chs

Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers

Wow! Some Brits organize an event to raise awareness on men’s health. PC feminist freaks out. Not a parody!  http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/11/why-movember-isnt-all-its-cracked-be …

Yes but that’s not what happened. I posted about that article on Saturday, so you’ll all know that’s not what happened, because you read everything I post here and remember every word of it. No but seriously – here again is a sample of that absurd New Statesman article:

So what message does Movember convey to those whose moustaches are more-or-less permanent features? With large numbers of minority-ethnic men—for instance Kurds, Indians, Mexicans—sporting moustaches as a cultural or religious signifier, Movember reinforces the “othering” of “foreigners” by the generally clean-shaven, white majority. Imagine a charity event that required its participants to wear dreadlocks or a sari for one month to raise funds—it would rightly be seen as unforgivably racist. What is the difference here? [Read more…]