Louisiana to become El Salvador, i.e., hell.

[CONTENT WARNING: child rape, teen suicide, fanatical hostility to bodily autonomy and consent, extreme misogyny, and probably some other shit I could be too triggered to recall.]

In In this December 2017 photo, Salvadoran Teodora Vasquez, found guilty of what the court said was an illegal abortion via a miscarriage, arrives in a courtroom to appeal her 30-year prison sentence.
(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

Perhaps you have heard about Louisiana’s latest bill classifying all abortions as homicides? Anyone found to help facilitate an abortion, from the person(s) performing it to the involuntary organ donor who wants or needs it will be charged with homicide, with the potential penalty of life in prison. There is no exception for rape, incest, or when fetuses are incompatible with life (e.g. anencephaly).

The bill, HB813, passed out of committee on a 7-2 vote; it now faces the full legislature, and if passed, will land on the desk of Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. But before you entertain visions of victorious vetoes dancing around in your head, you should know that Governor Edwards has been a hardcore advocate for involuntary organ donation (by other people) as a governor, and previously as a state lawmaker. He has already signed into law one of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the country, outlawing the procedure upon the detection of a heartbeat, which is about six weeks gestation and before many people know they are pregnant.

[Read more…]

THE ABATTOIR.

Welcome to the Abattoir!

Here, we perform extractions of lifesaving organs–whether people consent to them or not!

Don’t worry! The Abattoir does not harvest organs from just anyone, willy-nilly. That would be morally reprehensible, barbaric, and inhumane. You see, all of our involuntary organ donors meet one, and only one, very specific criteria: they would eagerly and happily force other people to donate lifesaving organs without the donor’s consent. And these donors do so with absolutely no regard for the harm this may cause, whether physically, psychologically or financially. Since all of The Abattoir’s donors feel so very strongly about this particular principle, it is only just and fair that they live by it!

There is no question that this mission will save untold thousands of human lives. In the United States alone, over 6,000 children, women and men die every year waiting in vain for a lifesaving organ transplant. As of this writing there are 106,025 people, from all demographics, on the nation’s transplant waiting lists.

Well friends, these numbers are about to change—and rapidly. No American should die for lack of a donor organ when there are so many people so passionate about forcing other people to donate their organs involuntarily. Why, the sheer numbers of politicians, judges and clergy who meet our criteria will put a hefty dent in these tragic statistics in short order.

Risks to the donor

It is true that organ extraction does involve some risks to the donor, just as any other major medical procedure does. And risks to donors will vary, depending upon which organs are harvested.

General risks to every involuntary donor include: pain, infection at the incision site(s), incisional hernia, pneumonia, blood clots, blood loss, the potential need for blood transfusion, medication side effects, abdominal hernia, and of course death. Potential psychological effects include feeling sad, anxious, angry, or resentful after surgery. Treatment for anxiety and depression can be lengthy, costly, and may include the use of medications which also have risks and unpleasant side effects.

Liver donors may also experience bile leakage, digestive tract blockage, narrowing of bowel duct, blockage or narrowing of the portal vein, pulmonary embolism, abdominal bleeding, inflammation of the pancreas, intestinal ulcers, kidney failure, ruptured bowel, and fluid on the lungs.

Kidney donors may also be subject to increased blood pressure, and kidney failure (of the remaining kidney).

But none of our involuntary donors could possibly object to any of that. Rest assured that we make every effort to mitigate adverse outcomes, and our surgical suites are state-of-the-art. It’s not like we’re performing illegal abortions here, people!

Extraction team in one of our many state-of-the-art surgical suites.

In light of these serious risks, we at the Abattoir would like to state that our donors’ right to informed consent is absolute. We really would like to state that. And the informed part is (mostly!) true. The consent part? Well, not so much. After all, our donors are openly hostile to the very notion of consent when it comes to the risks of serious harm to other people whose organs are being involuntarily donated, so we need not trouble ourselves with anything as trivial as obtaining permission. Pffft.

So in most cases, our donors will be informed of aaaallll the risks to their physical and mental health that organ donations pose. To that end, we may, at our sole discretion, choose to inform them via any of various methods, including but not limited to: public harassment, confrontation with graphic images depicting organ removal surgeries, yelling the risks to donors through loud bullhorns (along with some atheist indoctrination, for good measure!), and traumatic shaming and stigmatizing in response to any resistance or refusal to comply with the critical lifesaving mission of The Abattoir.

In some cases, however, we may instead choose to blatantly lie to our donors about the actual dangers of organ harvesting, for example by falsely claiming that organ donation carries an increased risk of various cancers. We may also purposefully deceive donors about whether or not The Abattoir is licensed as a medical facility at all, or indeed has any medically trained personnel on staff whatsoever!

Donor Ward No. 27b\6.

Because anesthesia may impair the functioning of a donor organ, it is used only in the rarest of cases. If donors are found to be circumventing this policy by using narcotics or any other organ-damaging substance, and the subsequent organ transplant is ultimately unsuccessful, donors will be subject to prosecution for murder and incarceration for life.

Finally, to satisfy ourselves that each donor is really and truly informed, he or she must undergo a transvaginal (or trans-anal/rectal) ultrasound, for the sole purpose of viewing and/or having described for them the very organ from which they will soon be involuntarily parted!

Now that is informed, motherfuckers.

“Inconvenience” donations

Certain candidates may be eligible to participate unwillingly in our Inconvenience Donation Program™. This protocol is applied exclusively to donors who claim that other peoples’ unwillingness to donate lifesaving organs is only because they wish to avoid a temporary and trivial “inconvenience.” While we expect to expand the scope of the program as medical technology advances, we are presently focused on causing donors such minor inconveniences as harvesting skin grafts for burn victims, and corneas for the blind. Temporary pain, no matter how excruciating, permanent scarring, or the loss of stereo vision and depth perception are exactly the kinds of inconvenient consequences for their actions and fervently held beliefs that donors should expect.

Priority donors

Due to the horrific legacies of racism, patriarchy, and unbridled capitalism in healthcare falling disproportionately on women and people of color, priority for involuntary organ donation at The Abattoir will naturally fall disproportionately on white men.

Post-op recovery room.

Financing

Readers may understandably be concerned about the enormous costs associated with running such a program. Capturing, restraining, monitoring and locking up a single involuntary donor can quickly run into tens of thousands of dollars.

Don’t worry about it! Until we secure the generous taxpayer financing for which we are so obviously deserving, our involuntary donors are held personally responsible for all fees and costs. That’s just taking “personal responsibility” for requiring that other people are not only involuntarily organ donors, but are also stuck with the massive bills.

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ORGAN DONORS
presently residing in the Abattoir

Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Justices. (qualifying criteria: leaked draft opinion overturning Roe and Casey: “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”)
The Republican Party in the United States. (qualifying criteria: current national platform.)
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 447 active and retired bishops. (qualifying criteria: “Abortion, the direct killing of an innocent human being, is always gravely immoral”…”life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception.”)
Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist author.
(qualifying criteria: claims to be “pro-choice precisely because (to the extent that) the fetus has no brain to be conscious with,” and thus it would be “murder most foul” to abort some hypothetical fetus that can write poetry. Yep: a pregnant person should be forced to donate organs to a poet-fetus.)

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HELP WANTED

We are presently seeking volunteers to nominate candidates for involuntary organ donation. (We can hardly keep up!) All that is required is a comment providing the name of a person (or group if all members qualify), and a link citation to evidence of their qualifying criteria. Remember, people are dying every day for lack of available donor organs.

Happy hunting!

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The Abattoir.

Once upon a time, I had another blog called Perry Street Palace™. It was (and still is imho) a wonderful place, with its own zoo, an extensive library, and of course a bar. But perhaps its most ambitious operation was The Abattoir.

The Abattoir has been sorely neglected since I joined FtB, and definitely needed some updating. Thus I am proud to announce the Grand Reopening of The Abattoir, in its sparkling new location, Freethought Blogs!

__________

Welcome to the Abattoir!

Here, we perform extractions of lifesaving organs–whether people consent to them or not!

[Read more…]

Happy International Women’s Day! Or, not!

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The day was first professed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the idea arising from women’s rights movements in industrializing nations around the turn of the last century. Its purpose is to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history, as well as engage in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

March is also Women’s History Month. <-That is a website curated by the U.S. Library of Congress that showcases women’s battles and triumphs with interesting and informative stories, audio, video and still images.

If you are a dude and still reading this post: here, have a cookie. (I baked them myself.) That’s for seeing the word “women’s” and not immediately deciding to GTFO.

However, if you are a dude blogger, social media influencer, or a Big Willie with a platform of any kind? [Read more…]

It’s Day 14 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Today, we get to listen to recording artist Stevie Wonder from back in 1973.

Stevie Wonder Innervisions
album cover art

As I’ve immersed myself in this Black History Month project, I’ve had some memories surface from long ago. I now view those experiences through a very different lens than I did at the time.

I was was a young child when Innervisions came out in 1973. As I got a little older and gained a musical awareness, singles from Innervisions were still in occasional rotation on the radio. They weren’t current top 40 hits by any stretch, but still, I knew these songs.

I remember one day finding Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions album in the stacks of my father’s records. I was not allowed to touch them – nor his turntable or tuner – but he was rarely ever around. All I had to do was wait until my mother was scarce, and I could pretty much have at it.

I played that record, both sides, straight through. And played it again. And again. I even dug out daddy’s 100% off-limits headphones so I could listen to it louder and with more clarity, alone inside my own head. Sure I was just a kid, but I got lost in that record. Musically and lyrically, Innervisions transported me to another world, one very different from my own. A Black world.

The music was positively bursting, full of struggle and pain, of power and pride, of musical exuberance and originality, of yearning and hope, of politics and poverty, and of characters and stories unlike anyone or anything I had known. And that was by design, by the way: I knew only a very insular, sheltered, and blindingly white world.

Innervisions gave me my first glimpse into Blackness. Now, looking back, I can see that was where my Black history lessons first began.

Of all the tracks on the album, Living for the City hit me the hardest, touched me the deepest. Here are two versions of it, plus a link to the album in its entirety. It changed me. I think it’s worth honoring and celebrating what is arguably Stevie Wonder’s finest work this Black History Month.

This is the radio edit (3:39):

Full-length version (7:22) from the album:

The whole album (nine tracks) can be played on YouTube here.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 (Emmett Till) is here.
Day 4 (A Tale of Two Citizens) is here.
Day 5 (Trayvon Martin) is here.
Day 6 (Franchesca Ramsey) is here.
Day 7 (National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and the Black Aids Institute) is here.
Day 8 (extreme racial disparities in marijuana arrests) is here.
Day 9 (Summer of Soul/1969 Harlem Cultural Festival) is here.
Day 10 (current and historic racist domestic terrorism, Steve Phillips/Democracy in Color) is here.
Day 11 (Gee’s Bend Quilters) is here.
Day 12 (egregious anti-Black (& anti LGBTQ+) behavior at a NY State high school is here.
Day 13 (Erin Jackson, 1st Black woman to win Olympic gold medal in speedskating) is here.

It’s Day 10 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

I’ve been noodling around with an idea for a post about the infamous 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 (and all the other Klan bombings of homes and churches in that city that garnered it the name “Bombingham”), in light of the recent spate of bomb threats against Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). No bombs have been found on these campuses (yet). But the history of 1960s Birmingham can teach us something important, and highly relevant today. Because we know what happens after bomb threats: bombs happen.

But then I got this email today from author, political leader and civil rights lawyer Steve Phillips, the founder of Democracy In Color:

Democracy in Color is a political media organization focused on political strategy and analysis at the intersection of race and politics.

We create and elevate content that influences public opinion and steers political behavior towards a more progressive and inclusive country. Using research and data-driven analysis, our multimedia content lifts up the voices and issues of the multiracial, progressive New American Majority and includes a podcast, articles, reports, and social campaigns.

I recommend signing up for their email newsletter, which is always informative and provides links to additional great content. Today’s newsletter is no exception, as you can see for yourself below. I’ve posted it in its entirety not just because it’s exceptional content – though it is that – but because Steve Phillips wrote that post I wanted to write, only far, far much better than I ever could:

[Read more…]

It’s Day 8 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

Any rational observer (which excludes conservatives, by definition) would conclude that the so-called “War on Drugs” is misleadingly named. Not the “war” part of the construct; that part’s accurate. From the extra-constitutional surveillance, “stop-&-frisk” policing, coercive consent searches and no-knock warrants to the military equipment provided to local law enforcement by the Department of Defense (including tanks… tanks!), the tactics and weapons deployed against U.S. citizens in the drug war are indistinguishable from those deployed by the U.S. on foreign battlefields in actual wars.

Likewise, our rational (non-conservative) observer would be dead-on accurate were he/she/they to rename the entire endeavor the “War on Black (and brown, and other, but mostly Black) People Who Use Drugs.”

That this is so cannot be disputed (in reality). For the facts of the matter, see the ACLU report A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform. In it, you will learn such facts as these:

Analysis conducted by the ACLU shows that due to racial profiling and bias in marijuana enforcement, Black people are 3.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, despite similar usage rates. This disparity has not improved over the last decade, and in fact, disparities have actually worsened in most states.

“3.6 times more likely” is a national average. On a state level, the Black/white racial disparities can get much worse: in Montana it’s 9.6 times more likely, Illinois 7.5, and in no state is it equal or less than even. Hell, it’s 1.5 times in Colorado, where weed has been legalized since 2012. At the county level, the disparities can get much, much worse. And this is before racialized sentencing disparities factor in.

Even so, a marijuana arrest is much more than an arrest. The ACLU report also addresses what it calls the “collateral damage” that often comes along with it, including:

Denial of public benefits based on use, arrests, or convictions for marijuana

Drug tests for benefit eligibility

Separation of families in the child welfare system

Loss of driver’s licenses

Deportation

Loss of federal financial aid

Bans on participation in the marijuana industry for those with drug arrests

Felony disenfranchisement [i.e. loss of voting rights]

Taken together, the “collateral damage” accrues to the individual, families and entire communities. And we’re not talking about violent traffickers and cartel kingpins here:

Nine out of 10 of marijuana arrests are for possession. While arrests for possession have decreased nationally since 2010, the rate of decline has stagnated and, in recent years, has even reversed upward despite popular reform movements.

For the whys, the hows and the history of the matter, see the The Last Prisoner Project’s extraordinarily comprehensive and beautifully written report Criminal Injustice: Cannabis & The Rise Of The Carceral State. It tracks the intertwined threads of politics, ideology and the perverse incentives that perpetuate the racist injustices of the weed war, and is worth a read for the highlighted quotations alone.

There are many who agree that the “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal failure by virtually every measure. (To hear the ACLU tell it, a majority of Americans agree.) The cost in blood and money lost in waging it is likely incalculable at this point, to say nothing of all that “collateral damage.”

But I disagree. By certain measures, the “War on Black (and brown, and other, but mostly Black) People Who Use Drugs” has been a spectacular success. It’s not exactly a secret that there are powerful factions in the country who are going to great lengths to disenfranchise Black voters. Take a look again at the ACLU’s list of “collateral damage,” and you’ll notice that for those same powerful factions, many of the harms listed are quite openly and enthusiastically touted as features, not bugs.

I’d say this war is working out very well indeed – for conservatives.

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It so happens that today, there’s something you can do about this, at least at the federal level. I received an email from RootsAction as I was writing this:

Here’s candidate Joe Biden: “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think everyone – anyone who has a record – should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.”

We couldn’t have said it any better. In fact, it was our public pressure that compelled him to say it.

Here’s what President Joe Biden has done: ______________. Nothing! He has not pardoned a single cannabis conviction.

Join a big coalition petition by signing your name here! Let’s make this happen.

Text of Petition:

While running for President, you committed to the American people that you would expunge marijuana convictions.

Yet more than one year into office, you have not taken a single action to provide relief to those still held back by a criminal conviction.

Millions of Americans have been subjected to a marijuana-related arrest and criminal conviction. Branding these individuals as lifelong criminals serves no legitimate society purpose and results in a litany of lost opportunities including the potential loss of employment, housing, voting rights, professional licensing, and student aid.

Further delay is completely unwarranted. The time for action is now.

In November of 2019, you said “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think everyone – anyone who has a record – should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.”

This action would be a meaningful step in moving our nation beyond the harms of the senseless and cruel policy of marijuana criminalization and prohibition. Furthermore, this would set a tremendous precedent for state and local leaders to follow in your footsteps and facilitate the expungement of millions of cannabis records that were assigned under state and local criminal codes.

Please, honor your promise and take action to pardon marijuana offenses now.

ADD YOUR NAME.

After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.

________

Please sign and share if you are able and inclined.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 of Black History Month 2022 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 of Black History Month 2022 (Emmett Till) is here.
Day 4 of Black History Month 2022 (A Tale of Two Citizens) is here.
Day 5 of Black History Month 2022 (Trayvon Martin) is here.
Day 6 of Black History Month 2022 (Franchesca Ramsey) is here.
Day 7 of Black History Month 2022 (National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and the Black Aids Institute) is here.

MLK Day 2022: A Different Voice.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, a federal holiday.

As longtime readers may recall, it has long been my tradition to post one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lesser-known speeches: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. He spoke these words at Manhattan’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated at the age of 39. If you are not familiar with it, you can read the speech here, along with some of my thoughts on why it is so important, and still very relevant today.

Go ahead. I’ll wait here…

Oh good! You’re back! (I love you people. ♥)

This year, I thought I’d do something different. I would like to post instead some of the words of Bernice Albertine King.

Bernice A. King, lawyer, minister, CEO of The King Center in Atlanta and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
She is pictured here reading a quote from her father before remarks by former President Bill Clinton, in Austin, Texas on April 9, 2014.
(Photo: Eric Draper, via LBJ Foundation under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

Bernice King is the youngest child of the Reverend Doctor and Coretta Scott King. She was 5 years old when her father was killed. Her activism has followed in the footsteps of both of her formidable.

Bernice King is a Christian minister, like her father. Also like her father, she tethers the religious ideas in her speeches to secular ideas of justice, compassion and love. And as I’ve noted before, this practice functions to bolster arguments for the religious-minded, but it neither negates nor replaces secular ones.

Speaking as a die-hard atheist, I believe without a doubt that I have more in common with the values of Beatrice King than I do with many prominent atheists. (If you’re a regular reader on this network, as especially if you’re a longtime fan of PZ’s, you know likely know exactly who I’m talking about. And if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.) I also believe in the critical importance of boosting Black voices, particularly Black women’s voices.

See if you don’t agree that Bernice King’s voice speaks as powerfully to the Social Justice Warrior in you as it does to me.

[Read more…]

Death to Squirrels

by Iris Vander Pluym

Can a passenger stop a self-driving car?

My unpleasant Christmas memory

funny video, birdwatching

How They Can Think That

New on OnlySky: Heading into the dark

Ancestral fragment?

Post-election discussion

Targeted Individuals Part I

Resist Gradualism

Please Stop Pretending Like You Care About Palestine

Louisiana to become El Salvador, i.e., hell.

THE ABATTOIR.

HELP WANTED

The Abattoir.

Happy International Women’s Day! Or, not!