Brilliant new plan in campaign to convince everyone everywhere that abortion is terrible and forbidden: distribute little rubber fetus dolls to high school students.

What could possibly go wrong?

Many students pulled the dolls apart, tearing the heads off and using them as rubber balls or sticking them on pencil tops. Others threw dolls and doll parts at the “popcorn” ceilings so they became stuck. Dolls were used to plug toilets. Several students covered the dolls in hand sanitizer and lit them on fire. One or more male students removed the dolls’ heads, inverted the bodies to make them resemble penises, and hung them on the outside of their pants’ zippers.

Oh.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

You know how every now and then I do a post about some article by Brendan O’Neill because it’s so offensively perverse and illiberal and ass-backward that I can’t just ignore it?

He was on a panel at QED a couple of hours ago (so that would make it 3 p.m. in Manchester), and apparently got his head handed to him by an incandescent with fury Robin Ince. Check out #QEDcon on Twitter if you want a good laugh. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss were in the audience, and RD asked a question. How I wish I’d been there!

Update: I can add some illustrations, because someone posted a bunch of photos and said help yourselves.

That’s Brendan O’Neill, and next to him is Geoff Whelan, one of the QED dudes, who is moderating, and next to him is Rick Owen, another one of the QED dudes. The QED dudes are great.

O’Neill getting rabbit-punched by Robin Ince. Yesssssss!

Go, Robin!

More photos.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Well done CFI Canada.

On April 4, CFI Canada Board Chair Kevin Smith and National Director Michael Payton met with Andrew Bennett, the Ambassador for Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom. At the meeting CFI got a  commitment from the Ambassador that the ORF will support and protect the rights of all people to question, change and even leave their religion. Today, concerned about the fate of atheist bloggers in Bangladesh, CFI sent the following letter to Ambassador Bennett urging him to send a formal protest to the Bangladeshi government on behalf of the persecuted bloggers:

Dear Ambassador Bennett:

Thank you for the very productive meeting last week. CFI is pleased to be working with the Office of Religious Freedom as it addresses the issues affecting religious and non-religious people around the world.

During our meeting on April 4, we discussed the increasing tensions in Bangladesh affecting atheist bloggers. In January 2013, a 29 year old blogger, Asif Mohiuddin, was stabbed to death in Bangladesh. In February, a second blogger, 35 year old Ahmed Rajib, was attacked and brutally killed. The violence against atheist bloggers continues. In March, Islamists continued to threaten prominent bloggers and have called for the “execution of 84 atheist bloggers for insulting religion.” Rather than defend freedom of expression, religion and belief, the Bangladeshi government has arrested several bloggers for “hurting religious sentiments,” under Section 295A of the Bangladesh Penal Code. Home Minister M.K. Alamgir recently announced that the government has a list of seven more bloggers who will also soon be targeted. On April 11, a newspaper editor was arrested for printing quotations from the targeted bloggers.

Read the rest at Veronica’s blog.

Maryam has a rallying call and a suggested petition to sign.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

And what an ignorant description. She seems to have liberalism confused with Randian libertarianism.

Fighting sexism can only be powerful while operating coherently in its cultural context. Tunisian women often take to the streets in large numbers to protest against what they see as curtailing of their freedom by the government. In Egypt, the group Tahrir Bodyguards, comprised of men and women, was formed to offer women free self-defence classes against sexual harassment and to patrol the streets in order to help protect women against assault in the face of an indifferent government.

Yes, and? Governments do curtain freedoms; groups other than Tahrir Bodyguards assaulted women. In other words, no “cultural context” is monolithic; any “cultural context” includes disagreement and conflict, so what is her point? She dislikes and disagrees with Femen, fine, but it doesn’t follow that she’s any more clued in about the “cultural context” in question than they are.

This would matter to Femen if they were genuinely interested in helping to improve the situation for women in countries like Tunisia, where female employment is low, laws and norms restrict women’s access to employment and mobility, and domestic violence is common. But despite all of Femen’s attention-seeking claims, it is abundantly clear that their outrage is not about feminism. It is certainly not about women’s advancement in the Middle East. This is prejudice, racism and imperialism, dressed up in the apparently scant clothing of women’s rights.

And that’s where she gets just plain vicious. How the hell does she know that? Imperialism? On the basis of what? She sounds unpleasantly similar to the anti-abortion fanatics who have been flooding the discussion of the Savita Halippanavar inquest on Twitter with endless dark accusations of not giving a shit about Savita but simply wanting abortion, for its own sake.

Moreover, it is apparent that Femen’s outrage isn’t even about Amina. For all the scrawling of “Free Amina” on their adamantly bared breasts and the fulminating against threats of stoning and incarceration in a psychiatric asylum, little of this is based in reality. Amina’s lawyer, herself a Tunisian women’s rights activist, has confirmed that Amina was never in a mental institution (she was being kept at home with her family), she was not charged with any offence, and even if Amina were to be charged, the maximum sentence would be six months in jail for public indecency, not stoning.

So that’s all right then? Six months in jail? For nothing?

So, if not for Amina, or women in the Middle East, who is this protest for? In truth, it is just a convenient vehicle for organisations like Femen to reveal their true, Islamophobic colours. This was about the arrogant belief that a certain breed of feminism is the ultimate goal and that anyone who disagrees is to be aggressively condemned, dismissed and scorned – including the very Muslim women who work day after day against sexism in countries like Tunisia.

Says Susan Carland, revealing her true, liberalismophobic colors. It’s not “arrogant” to think that a particular way of doing things is better than others; Carland herself is arguing just that. She’s chosen the wrong one, that’s all.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

Oh haha, it’s all so funny, such a weary joke. Why is that then? Why are we supposed to simply take it for granted that criticism of religion and theism is wrongheaded and adolescent? No really, why? It’s not as if religion makes nothing happen! It’s not as if it’s just obviously defanged and harmless, let alone obviously beneficial and without bad side effects.

And as for adolescent, how cheap is that stupid cheap shot in the last sentence?

Today, when I hear snide comments from atheists – who often assume I too am an unbeliever because my knuckles do not drag the ground – I spontaneously slip into Defender of the Faith mode. I wait patiently while he (for it is almost always a he) rants about the Inquisition, the trial of Galileo, the pedophile priest scandals, the pope’s silence during the Holocaust, and a thousand years of Jewish pogroms.

Well that’s enormously big of him, isn’t it. Note the same assumption, made slightly more explicit – all that is so passé, so uncool to talk about. Why? Why would it be?

And by the way no it’s not almost always a he. Hello “it’s more of a guy thing” yet again.

He admits all that, he says generously, but there’s more to it.

How, for instance, can one overlook the role faith communities have played in health care? In my city nearly all the hospitals are run by religious organizations like the St. Louis-based Franciscan Sisters of Mary, who operate 18 nonprofit hospitals in four states, partner with more than 40 rural hospitals, and run two nursing homes. The Mercy Health Ministry, also headquartered here, operates 28 hospitals throughout Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. (Fly-over states. Who cares, right?) Franciscan nuns also founded nearby St. Anthony’s Hospital, while the Jesuits run a local medical school whose doctors treat mostly inner-city patients.

Oh jeezis that’s a terrifying fact, and he doesn’t even realize it. He doesn’t even realize that this is not benevolence or charity but a takeover, and a way to impose religious rules on helpless captive people. This is the only way the Catholic church can force its stinking theocratic anti-human rules on unwilling people: by grabbing up all the hospitals. It’s horrifying that Orlet is ignorant enough of the consequences that he boasts of the completeness of the takeover. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt in assuming it’s ignorance as opposed to deliberate indifference.

Perhaps the largest provider of social service programs in our area is Catholic Charities. What do they do? What don’t they do? Their programs provide shelter, counseling, and education to battered women, as well as treatment to women with addictions and mental illness. Their professional counseling agencies offer education and mental health services. There is day and residential treatment for troubled youth, including diagnosis, treatment, education, and healthcare. For families, Catholic Charities provides expectant parent counseling, and foster care, adoption, and residential services.

All of it Catholic. Notice that it apparently doesn’t even cross his mind that Catholic “counseling and education” to battered women might have some flaws, as might all the rest of the services he lists.

I am still waiting for a single atheist group to open a hospital or school, offer free health clinics, beds for the homeless, food for the hungry, or transportation for the elderly. I have yet to see worshipers of the flying spaghetti monster establish a prison ministry or send their members overseas to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

The issue isn’t atheist groups, it’s secular groups, and of course there are secular groups that do all those things. Apparently Orlet prefers his charities to have theistic strings attached.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

We need an even simpler rule. “Don’t be shitty” – something like that. When in doubt, don’t be shitty. If you blurt something out in a heated moment, take it back or apologize or at the very least stop there. Don’t draw targets on people and then follow them around forever after.

Reteah’s death comes on the heels of Steubenville, Ohio and months after British Columbia’s tragic Amanda Todd case — the Canadian teenager who tragically took her own life last October. This repetitive tale is exhaustingly familiar: young guys do something terrible to a teenage girl, in person and cyber-bullying ensues, then the guys get away with it unscathed (unless Anonymous and/or the Ohio courts get involved).

Yeh that’s not a good pattern.

Then there’s the fact Rehtaeh’s bullying is considered a “community issue” by Nova Scotia’s justice minister. According to him: “As a community, we need to have more dialogue with our young people about respect and about support to educate our young boys and our young girls about what’s appropriate behaviour, what’s not appropriate behaviour.”

This begs a second question, since when is young boys taking a picture of a rape of a 15-year-old girl and then distributing it considered an issue for the community to handle?

Should be raises a second question, but never mind – yes what? Rape and then passing around photos of the rape – that’s more than bullying. It’s not something to have a “dialogue” about.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

Ahhh isn’t that sweet – an interfaith dude who opposes same-sex marriage and gets praise from Ratzinger. And plagiarizes.

Last month a blogger accused him of copying a 1996 text by the late French post-modernist philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard for use in his book Forty Jewish Meditations, published in 2011. After initially denying the report, Bernheim later admitted that Lyotard had written the disputed passage.

I deny it! I say the passage was written by Derrida.

Last week another blogger accused Bernheim of plagiarism in an earlier book, published in 2002, and L’Express magazine revealed that Bernheim had not earned the prestigious title of philosophy professor that was often attached to his name.

Ok but he really authentically does oppose same-sex marriage.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s good that someone is paying attention. The European Court of Human Rights is.

A  report from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Committee of Ministers published yesterday has called on the [Irish] Government to implement legislation to deal with abortion.

So that women won’t be refused medically indicated abortions because doctors and hospitals are afraid of prosecution.

In its sixth annual report, Supervision of theExecution of Judgments and Decisions of the ECHR, the committee of ministers urged the Government to “expedite” the implementation of the A, B and C judgment on abortion, delivered by the ECHR in 2010.

The judgment is included in a list of cases requiring “enhanced supervision” to ensure implementation.

The A, B and C judgment found the absence of any implementing legislative or regulatory regime which provided an “accessible and effective procedure” to establish the “possibilities for a lawful abortion where there is a risk to the mother’s life” was in breach of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Let’s hope Ireland’s government is listening.

The committee said “the general prohibition on abortion in criminal law constitutes a significant chilling factor for women and doctors due to the risk of criminal conviction and imprisonment”. It “invited the Irish authorities to take all necessary measures”, to implement the judgment.

As Dr Astbury has just been confirming.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

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.

It seemed that many other Muslim women across the world agreed with my stance and what followed was a defiant and vocal rejection of Femen’s invitation. Instead of ‘getting naked’ Muslim women from across the world tweeted and uploaded pictures of themselves to Facebook in their hijabs, niqabs, and western attire. They held up signs telling the world why they were proud of their identities and did not need racist Islamophobic women to dictate to them on how they should dress.

Instead they needed a made-up god and a long-dead “prophet” and a bunch of male clerics to dictate to them on how they should dress. Is that it?

Oh, is that racist Islamophobic of me? No, it fucking isn’t. I don’t despise all these bullying rules about women and veils and bags and tents, haram and halal and go back inside, because they’re racial, I despise them because they’re bad in themselves.

In our open letter to Femen we referred to them as ‘colonial feminists’ to describe Femen’s activities.  I believe it is the most apt term to describe their particular brand of feminism. From Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, to the pretext of female liberation surrounding the invasion of Afghanistan, women have always been used as pawns by men as an excuse to wage war. Femen are just the latest chapter in the long history of gender imperialists that manufacture consent and provide ideological foregrounding to justify going to war. By dismissing the role of western countries in the oppression of Muslim women and focusing solely on Muslim men they are only working to demonise Islam, not liberate Muslim women.

That’s pathetic. She would have at least a semblance of a case if she said Femen are playing into the hands of people who want to justify going to war (but who the hell is keen to go to war right now?), but to say they’re doing that themselves? Please.

She’s swallowed a keg of jargon and that’s all she’s got – the familiar phrases come out one after the other.

Femen’s reliance on the overused media tropes of the modern western values versus traditional Muslim values is creating a dichotomous representation of the ‘self’ (West) and ‘other’ (Muslims)…Frantz Fanon…The hyper-sexualisation of Femen’s campaign and the insistence on Muslim women to strip naked as a gesture of emancipation is  a tell-tale symptom of Orientalist fantasies…Femen’s universal imposition of the neocolonial agenda… Femen have continued to display a flagrant disregard for our agency and have consistently tried to downplay the legitimacy of our collective voices. Femen have tried to dismiss our campaign using conspiracy and conjecture…

Conspiracy and conjecture! Look again at your first paragraph before you accuse other people of that.

The Ex-Muslims forum on Twitter are arguing with Muslimah Pride a good deal.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Ex-Muslims Forum on Twitter @CEMB_forum

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More on Jackie Nanyonjo and what was done to her.

Jackie was a fighter for herself and for others: a lesbian who escaped from anti-gay persecution and a brutal forced marriage, and a member of the Movement for Justice. In Britain she had been able for the first time to live and love openly as a lesbian; she was much-loved by a wide circle of friends who kept in touch with her after she was deported and who miss her deeply.

I suppose I should say trigger warning at this point. What happened to her is not comfortable reading.

With all the limited avenues of Britain’s racist immigration laws closed to her and facing deportation to a country where it is a crime to be gay and where the political and religious leaders have whipped up a murderous anti-gay witch-hunt, Jackie’s only option was physical resistance. On 10th January, on Qatar Airways Flight QR76, Jackie fought bravely for her freedom with all the strength she could gather against four Reliance guards. She continued fighting when the guards drew curtains round their end of the plane to hide their crimes. She struggled for as long as she could until, beaten up, half strangled and bent double, she was overcome by the pain in her chest and neck and was unable to breathe.

When Jackie arrived at Entebbe Airport the ‘escort’ party handed her over to the Ugandan authorities, who held her for many more hours without any medical attention. When family members finally met her, long after the flight had landed, Jackie was in terrible pain and vomiting blood; they rushed her to a clinic, but in a country with widespread poverty and limited medical facilities they were unable to get the medical attention Jackie needed. Since Jackie was in hiding as a known lesbian, protected by relatives, every trip to a doctor or hospital involved a risk to her life and to the safety of her family. They were condemned to watch the agonising decline of Jackie’s health and strength over the next two months.

I’m not an expert on asylum, but deporting gay people to Uganda does seem like an unfortunate policy…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’ve said this before, but it needs saying often. People don’t realize that it’s not just Ireland. It can happen here too, and it does. The National Women’s Law Center did a report on it two years ago.

A serious but little known problem is putting women’s health and lives at risk: because of their religious beliefs, certain health care providers do not give appropriate treatment to women experiencing serious pregnancy complications. A recent study by Ibis Reproductive Health entitled “Assessing hospital polices & practices regarding ectopic pregnancy & miscarriage management”  [1]  adds to the growing evidence that the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services have been applied to deny women experiencing both ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages the treatment and information to which they are legally entitled.

Like Savita, you see. Not just Ireland, you see.

Catholic-affiliated hospitals are governed by the Directives, which provide guidance. Most individuals and even many health providers presume that the Directives’ prohibition on the provision of a range of abortion services applies only to non-emergency pregnancy terminations of otherwise viable pregnancies. But the Study is consistent with anecdotal accounts that provide strong evidence that some hospitals and health care providers have interpreted the Directives to prohibit prompt, medically-indicated treatment of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, placing women’s lives and health at additional and unnecessary risk, and violating the laws intended to protect patients from such serious lapses in care.

And oh look – how very familiar.

In some of the miscarriage cases described in the Ibis Study, the standard of care requires immediate treatment. Yet doctors practicing at Catholic-affiliated hospitals were forced to delay treatment while performing medically unnecessary tests. Even though these miscarriages were inevitable and no medical treatment was available to save the fetus, some patients were transferred because doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat or required to wait until there was no longer a fetal heartbeat to provide the needed medical care.

You see? That’s Savita. It’s that simple. It happens here, too.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Mo is annoyed about the western colonial feminists.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Paul Krugman thinks it’s not particularly reasonable to make comments on the internet while pretending to be Paul Krugman.

I do think that it’s kind of curious that I’ve had repeated incidents in which people pretend to be me, usually in an attempt to make trouble. Is my real output so hard to criticize that people looking for a way to discredit me have to make stuff up?

And for that matter doesn’t making stuff up kind of defeat the purpose?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This is a terrible thing.

Very sad news tonight that a member of Movement for Justice, Jackie Nanyonjo, has died in Uganda last friday due to injuries she sustained during deportation from Yarl’s Wood 2 months ago.

This is another one of those stories that are under the radar.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)