It’s not “Western”

Sometimes it’s hard not to diagnose self-hating [whatever] when reading the more vicious reactions to Femen’s protest about Amina Tyler. There’s one by Susan Carland on the ABC’s Religion and Ethics site, for example.

It is admittedly difficult for people who have bought into Western liberalism, with its elevation of individual freedom to the pinnacle of human moral evolution, to regard the Muslim world with anything other than baffled contempt.

Oh yes those crazy deluded people who have “bought into” liberalism. (Calling it “Western” liberalism is itself an insult to all non-Westerners. It’s not “Western.” See Amartya Sen for more on this, or Kwame Anthony Appiah, or any human rights activists in non-Western countries ffs.) It’s a pity more people haven’t “bought into” liberalism, because if they had then abuses of human rights wouldn’t be such a commonplace. [Read more…]

“In my city nearly all the hospitals are run by religious organizations”

I’m not sure the best way to start an opinion piece is announcing your own longstanding boredom with the subject, and yet how often one sees that very thing – as in Chris Orlet’s sparkling-fresh commentary on (groan) the new atheists in the American Spectator.

I long ago lost interest in the God Wars, the bombastic clashes between Christians and the New Atheists over whether the Man Upstairs exists, whether He is good or evil, whether Judeo-Christianity has been a blessing or a curse. Put simply, whether Christopher Hitchens is resting in peace or roasting on a spit. [Read more…]

About what’s appropriate behaviour

Then there’s Rehtaeh Parsons.

Why do teenage rapists post pictures of themselves raping someone on the internet? Just because they can?

Well, that, plus the fact that their brains haven’t finished developing yet, and the frontal cortex is where you get impulse control and all that.

But even so. All this random meanness and cruelty floating around…it’s the worst thing about the internet, and it’s just fucking toxic. [Read more…]

The consequences can be serious for patients

Merger Watch is on it.

The MergerWatch Project

We believe that in medical care, the patient’s rights must come first.

Across the United States, community hospitals are merging with other hospitals or health systems to relieve financial stress. When the merger is with a religiously-sponsored health system that uses doctrine to restrict care, the consequences can be serious for patients.

That’s for damn sure.

What they do is repair work though. I want to work on the “this is totally unacceptable” part. I want to get religion the fuck out of health care, period.

Busted for refusing to leave his ill partner’s bedside

Sigh. Another win for being mean.

A gay man was arrested this week at a Missouri hospital after refusing to the leave bedside of his sick partner.

Roger Gorley went to Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., on Tuesday to visit Allen, his partner of five years. But when he got there, a member of Allen’s family asked him to leave, according to Kansas City Fox station WDAF. When Gorley refused, hospital security allegedly handcuffed him and forcefully removed him from the premises. Now he cannot visit Allen at all because of a restraining order filed against him.

Whoever that member of Allen’s family was – boooo to you. That’s horribly mean. Don’t do that.

Wait until the woman is on the edge of death

Let’s look at a little more…

Some Catholic hospitals, contrary to the opinion of leading Catholic ethicists and theologians, apply the Directives to prohibit doctors from providing any treatment to a woman having a miscarriage if there are still fetal heart tones, even when a doctor has determined that nothing can be done to save the pregnancy and the woman’s health is placed at risk by delaying immediate treatment. These hospitals will require that doctors withhold treatment until there are no fetal heart tones, or there are specific indications that a woman’s life is at risk, such as the onset of a serious infection.

You see? Or there are specific indications that a woman’s life is at risk, such as the onset of a serious infection. That’s what happened in Savita’s case. There were specific indications, and by that time it was too god damn late. [Read more…]

Another leader topples

Pausing for a touch of levity…a postmodernist plagiarist reactionary chief rabbi. That’s what I call covering all the bases!

The chief rabbi of France has resigned after admitting to plagiarism in two books and to deception about his academic credentials.

The Paris Central Consistory, the top Jewish religious organisation in France, announced Gilles Bernheim’s resignation but gave no further details.

Bernheim, 60, a modern Orthodox Jew who was elected to the seven-year post in 2008, was respected by other religious leaders as an active participant in interfaith dialogue. His booklet opposing the government’s plan to legalise same-sex marriage won praise from the former pope Benedict. [Read more…]

Not later but now

To repeat: it can happen here. Already, now. We don’t have to wait for “personhood” laws; it can happen now.

If it is determined that nothing can be done that would allow the woman to continue her pregnancy, the established standard of care for unstable patients who are miscarrying is an immediate surgical uterine evacuation. In the case of such a patient, immediate uterine evacuation reduces the patient’s risk of complications, including blood loss, hemorrhage, infection, and the loss of future fertility. A delay in treatment may subject a woman to unnecessary blood transfusions, risk of infection, hysterectomy or even death.

That’s clear enough, I think.

Some Catholic hospitals, contrary to the opinion of leading Catholic ethicists and theologians, apply the Directives to prohibit doctors from providing any treatment to a woman having a miscarriage if there are still fetal heart tones, even when a doctor has determined that nothing can be done to save the pregnancy and the woman’s health is placed at risk by delaying immediate treatment.

And so is that.

This is now. It’s not the future, it’s not hypothetical; it’s now, and it happens.

“Muslimah Pride”

Sofia Ahmed of “Muslimah Pride” does not like Femen. She has reasons.

What Femen are doing is highly counterproductive and detrimental to Muslim women across the world.  For me and hundreds of other women who have got in touch with me over the past few days, their tactics are a part of the ideological war that is going on between neo-colonial elements in the West and Islamic societies. Their aim is not to emancipate us from our presumed slavery, but instead reinforce Western imperialism and generate consent for the ongoing wars against Muslim countries.

That “for me and hundreds of other women” is interesting, since it’s followed by a factual claim as opposed to an interpretation. “For me,” she says, the aim of Femen is to reinforce Western imperialism and generate consent for the ongoing wars against Muslim countries.”

You know what? I don’t believe a word of that. I don’t believe that is Femen’s aim. [Read more…]