Feministe has an excellent list of pro-choice charities. Want to do something to infuriate the women-hating anti-choicers and do something positive in honor of Tiller’s work? Donate!
While we’re all feeling a bit shocked at the horrible event in Kansas, we can all turn to the Reagan legacy. Mike Reagan is giving away free copies of a book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, written by (or more likely, ghost-written for) his father, Ronald Reagan. The title is wonderfully ironic, since these people clearly don’t have much of a conscience. Everyone order a copy, they’re free; suck the money away from these enablers of killers, and put another copy of their trash into the trash.
These are the people who fuel the kind of self-righteous ignorance that encourages people to picket reproductive health clinics, treat ob-gyns as public criminals, and incite murder. The heroes are the doctors who sacrifice so much — privacy, security, and in this case, their life — to provide essential services to women, the women in whom Reaganites find so little value, unless they are pregnant. One of the tragedies of this recent killing and the conservative tradition is that it will be increasingly difficult to find heroes brave enough to step into this role…exactly as these narrow-minded, puritanical enemies of human liberty want.
Dr George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who has long provided abortion services (including late-term abortions) was gunned down this morning. He has been the target of anti-choice fanatics for years: his clinic has been vandalized, he was shot and wounded by one of these monsters years ago, and there has been ongoing legal harassment to shut him down.
One of these self-righteous and hypocritical creatures apparently shot him to death…as he was attending church services, ironically enough.
The culprit has not been caught, but probably will be soon. I’m sure whoever it is is very proud of him or herself.
(via ema; also note that you can get breaking updates via twitter)
I’m impressed. It’s a highly critical article about Oprah’s peddling of quackery, and it’s about time one of the big media players pointed out that she is promoting dangerous fake therapies…all with a happy smile, of course, and a message of positive self-esteem for women. It’s still credulous glop, though.
It also summarizes why she’s successful.
At some point, it would seem, people will stop looking to Oprah for this kind of guidance. This will never happen. Oprah’s audience admires her as much for her failings as her successes. In real life, she has almost nothing in common with most of her viewers. She is an unapproachable billionaire with a private jet and homes around the country who hangs out with movie stars. She is not married and has no children. But television Oprah is a different person. She somehow manages to make herself believable as a down-to-earth everywoman. She is your girlfriend who struggles to control her weight and balance her work and personal life, just like you. When she recently related the story of how humiliated she felt when she arrived for a photo shoot to find that she couldn’t fit into the clothes she was supposed to wear, she knew she had every member of the audience in her hand. Oprah’s show is all about second and third and fourth chances to fix your life, and the promise that the next new thing to come along will be the one that finally works.
And then it goes on to talk about how she touted “The Secret”.
This comment thread, which has been going on since February — I close them when they climb up to around a thousand comments, open a fresh one, and then you guys fill it up again. I threatened to close it off permanently, but participants told me not to…and if I did, I’m sure it would just erupt somewhere else.
So here it is, again. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to open up a “bride of the thread that will not die” and “son of the thread that will not die” and “second cousin’s boyfriend’s brother-in-law’s thread that will not die” someday. I am resigned to it.
Today at 9am Central time (short notice—you’ve got one hour to get to the internet! Oh, you’re already there) the crew at Atheists Talk radio will be discussing the work of Bart Ehrman.
This is really low, and I’m already ashamed of myself…but I couldn’t resist, either. Behold the cuteness.
(via Chris Clarke)
You must listen to this ghastly interview with Bill Donohue on the Irish Catholic scandal. He is calmly taken apart by one of the victims of priestly rape — his views are characterized as “obscene”.
What a nasty little man.
I know it’s a teaching cliche that there is no such thing as a stupid question…but it’s not true. There really are stupid questions.
So moms are everywhere in nature. Females often go to great lengths to feed, save, and protect their young. Many construct homes and shelters…(all without knowing/understanding she’s even pregnant) and do so with great care and attention to detail.
So I’ve got two questions about this:
1) What is the evolutionary advantage of mothers doing everything they can to feed/protect their young? And remember, mothers often give food to their young that they might otherwise eat. And going out into the world to look for food is often dangerous — she could be killed looking for food. Wouldn’t there be an advantage to her personally just to forget about the kid and go about her own business of eating and finding a mate? Why the unnecessary risk? Why go to the trouble of building a nest to protect the young? Wouldn’t it be easier just to skip all that? I thought evolution was all about being selfish……….so why do so many animals put others’ needs before themselves? What’s the advantage to that?
2) Why wouldn’t it be an evolutionary advantage for mothers to eat their young? I know it sometimes happens in nature…..but not as a general rule. As a general rule, mothers and fathers very rarely eat their young…even when they’re hungry. But wouldn’t an animal be more likely to breed if it didn’t starve? Mothers should be consuming their offspring everywhere in nature — afterall, it would advantageous getting that extra nourishment.
How do the evolutionists here get around this? Where does this “love” or devotion for child come from? Got a gene you can show me? What’s the evolutionary advantage for all this? And remember — evolution cannot plan ahead.
I showed you another eexample of a self-refuting creationist question earlier today, but this one is even better. Wouldn’t an animal be more likely to breed if it ate its own babies?
New Hampshire is working on legalizing gay marriage, and has a bill pending…unfortunately, it is being compromised.
The new version, which is expected to come up for a vote Wednesday, adds a sentence specifying that all religious organizations, associations or societies have exclusive control over their religious doctrines, policies, teachings and beliefs on marriage. It also clarifies that church-related organizations that serve charitable or educational purposes are exempt from having to provide insurance and other benefits to same sex spouses of employees.
Lovely. The first part is fair — I don’t think churches should be compelled to endorse gay marriage — but the last part is odious. It’s basically a loophole that says religious groups can be as bigoted as they want to be. In another decade or so, when gay civil rights are accepted as matter-of-fact and we look back on these years with the same disbelief and disgust that we look back on the days of racial segregation in the 50s now, remember that religion actively lobbied for the right to cling to discrimination and the denial of civil rights to a segment of society.
