The ACLU has an article (which it shared on Facebook) by a clinic escort on why abortion rights matter.

Last week, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, upending 50 years of legal precedent and sparking protests across the country. It’s easy to think Roe fell with the stroke of Justice Samuel Alito’s pen, a legal battle lost in a courtroom. But as a clinic escort for the last decade, I’ve watched the fight for abortion access play out in real time on the sidewalks in front of abortion clinics in Missouri and Illinois.

As a volunteer clinic escort, it’s my job to help patients get from their car door to the clinic door safely; to provide a

… Read the rest

NASA has released the first image from the Hubble telescope.

On Monday, July 11, President Joe Biden released one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. NASA, in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), will release the full set of Webb’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a televised broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Learn more about how to watch.

This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as

… Read the rest

Mole at the door has the sarcastic version.

https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1546552742600212481… Read the rest

Jill Suttie posted an article a few days ago on how access to abortion improves women’s well-being.

Though people may argue over whether this ruling is sound or not, it likely spells disaster for women’s health and well-being. That’s because research suggests women who have the right to choose whether or not to give birth are happier, healthier, and more economically stable than those who don’t. And their children benefit, too, by having a mother who can afford to nurture and provide for them better.

What a surprise, eh, that women who get to have some control over their lives are better off than women who don’t?

Item one is better mental health.

Many women are made to feel

… Read the rest

This guy (who has half a million followers) –

Respectfully — and I sincerely mean respectfully — you need to fall back and support men like Matt Walsh. You're not built for this conflict. The failure and cowardice of men got us into this mess. Matt is standing up. You need to support him. Men have to fix this. https://t.co/czKT2RHqKq

— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) July 10, 2022

There is nothing even slightly “respectful” about telling a woman to “fall back” and let the men take over. (There’s also nothing respectful about telling women to support men like Matt Walsh – who is a conservative Catholic who opposes abortion rights.) It’s all the more insulting when the woman in question is … Read the rest

From The Telegraph:

The Church of England has said that there is “no official definition” of a woman.

Did it say anything about an official definition of a man?

Senior bishops have insisted that until recently, the answer to questions such as what constitutes a woman “were thought to be self-evident”. However, now “additional care” is needed.

Let’s talk about more official definitions. What’s the official definition of “God”? How about “soul”? Sin? Faith? Prayer? Miracle? Magic? Voodoo?

The stance comes as the institution struggles to remain relevant and progressive amid declining congregant numbers and in an increasingly secular society.

So they try to be progressive by telling women that men are also women?

Rev Angela Berners-Wilson, who became

… Read the rest

And we’re back! WordPress tripped over its own feet but sainted webmaster fixed the problem.

Pink News tells us:

A gay couple are suing a California fertility clinic after they requested a male embryo but ended up having a baby girl.

Well they didn’t “have” a baby girl did they. Having a baby=giving birth. They didn’t do that; someone else did it for them. They paid a woman to gestate the baby and push it out.

According to CBSNews, Albert and Anthony Saniger were determined to be fathers to two sons. Before the couple wed in 2013 they had already chosen the names of their future kids and even created Gmail accounts for them.

The HRC Fertility clinic and

… Read the rest

Let’s play will he won’t he again.

Steve Bannon, the onetime strategist to Donald Trump who was involved in the former president’s efforts to invalidate his defeat in the 2020 election, has opened discussions with the House January 6 select committee about testifying to the inquiry into the Capitol attack.

I don’t see why he gets to open discussions. I don’t see why they don’t just tell him to bring his ass in for questioning.

Bannon signalled in an email to the select committee, first obtained by the Guardian, that he was prepared to initiate discussions about a time and place for an interview, after Trump said in a letter he would waive executive privilege if he reached an

… Read the rest

As Julie Bindel points out, this is a series of three men cheerily shrugging off women’s rights.

Absolutely agree. Cut out the divisive nonsense. https://t.co/G0zLuO9zZj

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) July 10, 2022

“Let people live their lives”=Let men claim to be women and steal everything women have fought for and treat women as the domineering entitled privileged sex.… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Councillor Homophobe.

How is it that these “feelings” are not only given a pass, but are enthusiastically supported, and defended with bullying, threats, intimidation and emotional blackmail?

It’s actually much worse than this. It’s not just a matter of celebration and valourization. It’s also about recruitment. How many other disorders or delusions are promulgated by the power of state institutions and backed up by the force of law? The idea that you’ve been “born in the wrong body” is not just introduced to a wider audience than it would have othewise. It is promoted to children and teens who might not have considered this until it was offered, or … Read the rest

The World Health Organization has updated its “gender mainstreaming manual,” whatever tf that is.

The first edition of the manual dates from 2011, and WHO is now updating it in light of new scientific evidence and conceptual progress on gender, health and development.

Conceptual progress? More like regress.

The review and update process will build on the extensive work already featured in the manual. It will focus on:

1. Updating key concepts around gender;

…

3. Going beyond non-binary approaches to gender and health to recognize gender and sexual diversity, or the concepts that gender identity exists on a continuum and that sex is not limited to male or female.

4. Introducing new gender, equity and human rights frameworks

… Read the rest

Historian Catherine Allgor explains “coverture”:

Coverture is a long-standing legal practice that is part of our colonial heritage. Though Spanish and French versions of coverture existed in the new world, United States coverture is based in English law. Coverture held that no female person had a legal identity. At birth, a female baby was covered by her father’s identity, and then, when she married, by her husband’s. The husband and wife became one–and that one was the husband. As a symbol of this subsuming of identity, women took the last names of their husbands. They were “feme coverts,” covered women. Because they did not legally exist, married women could not make contracts or be sued, so they could not

… Read the rest

More homophobia from the LibDems:

https://twitter.com/HannahPerkin/status/1545468549052960771

She’s a councillor in Faversham (Kent).

https://twitter.com/HannahPerkin/status/1545734160031031298

She doesn’t welcome conversation with the peasants who replied to her “Absolutely not” though.

Boo lesbians and gays, hooray for men in womanface. How did we get here?… Read the rest

Arwa Mahdawi on the conservatism of the Dems:

Some top establishment Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have been very busy throwing their weight behind Henry Cuellar, the last anti-choice House Democrat, in the primary for Texas’s 28th congressional district. I’m not sure exactly what makes the gun-loving, abortion-hating Cuellar a Democrat, because he seems to have basically all the same policy positions as a Republican, but he has a (D) next to his name. Even when they knew Roe was on the verge of being overturned, top House Democrats chose to help Cuellar – the incumbent – fend off a challenge from Jessica Cisneros, a pro-choice progressive. In the end Cuellar won by just 289 votes. The Democrats have

… Read the rest

Freelance sex education is a thing in UK schools. The results are what you’d expect.

Providers of sex education in schools are teaching children that prostitution is a “rewarding job” and failed to advise a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 16-year-old boy that it was illegal.

Outside organisations teaching children about sex also promote “kinks” such as being locked in a cage, flogged, caned, beaten and slapped in the face, The Times has found.

One organisation encouraged pupils to demonstrate where they like to touch themselves sexually, in a practise criticised as “sex abuse” by campaigners.

And everyone else with a functioning brain.

Relationship and sex education (RSE) became compulsory in English secondary schools in 2020, with many

… Read the rest

Oh ffs. Not MORE of this crap.

I saw this

What meanings can you think of for the phrase “administrative error” to explain why an agreement is first confirmed and then …

— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) July 8, 2022

So I hastened to Google for enlightenment, and Google obliged with

https://twitter.com/mikedixn/status/1545468040711651329

Sorry, he says flippantly and dismissively and rudely. “No you’re wrong you’re not invited, I checked and somebody fucked up so it sucks to be you, sorry for any blah blah, just kidding about the sorry part.”

Absolutely disgusting.… Read the rest

Bari Weiss shared this essay by UCLA Anthropology Professor Joseph Manson as another item on the long list of woke students running amok list. I think the story isn’t quite as stark as she and Manson think it is.

I’m a 62-year-old professor—by academic standards, still young. But I am retiring this summer because the woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life. “Another one?” you ask. “What does this guy have to say that hasn’t already been said by Jordan Peterson, Peter Boghossian, Joshua Katz, or Bo Winegard?”

Well, for one thing, how about items of interest to women? There’s actually quite a lot of conflict among feminist women and trans-obsessed students in academia right now, … Read the rest

Rats fleeing sinking ship?

Former President Donald Trump left the board of his social media firm, Truth Social, weeks before it was served with a federal subpoena, records show. 

According to a June 8 filing with the Florida Department of State’s Division of Corporations, Trump was removed from his position as chairman of the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).

He needed to devote all his time to learning to read.

TMTG is the parent company of Truth Social, the social-media platform Trump launched after he was banned from mainstream social media following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. 

Truth Social says it’s all a misunderstanding; Business Insider doesn’t believe them.… Read the rest

Enjoy.… Read the rest

Chipping away at voting rights.

Wisconsin Supreme Court outlaws ballot drop boxes for elections

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the use of ballot drop boxes, which increased substantially across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, is illegal under state law.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority also said voters cannot have other people return their completed ballots in person to a clerk’s office, though it declined to rule on whether anyone other than a voter can send in ballots by mail.

In other words the court made voting more difficult for people in Wisconsin. What does making voting more difficult accomplish? It reduces voting by poor people, non-white people, disabled people…aka people likely to … Read the rest