The Ultimate Pro-Life Argument (Doesn't Exist)

For as long as I can remember, the RCC has been the predominate peddler of the notion that life begins at birth, for some magical reason (soul enshrinement? Can't be. Aquinas is sometimes used to argue this, but that's only half the truth. And that's before we dive into the rampant misogyny of the whole thing - what do you expect from a man quoting Aristotle, who as from that bastion of feminism and gender equality known as Ancient Greece? And it fails biology, since the soul wouldn't technically be enshrined for males until 120 days, since we're all female at gestation and only become male once the extra testosterone triggers the development of certain chromosomes. Bad science aside - I'm not going to hold that against either man since they did the best with what they had at the time - the RCC's position here isn't based on any kind of strict reading of the Bible, either. After all, Leviticus gives slave prices for any person over 3 years old, but not under, and Exodus clearly declares that if a man kills a fetus he pays a fine, but it's not murder unless the woman is killed as well. God declares to Jeremiah that "I knew ye in the womb," but that's God talking to Jeremiah, not God talking to all of humanity. David declares that he was a sinner at conception, but that's David talking, not God, and that matches existing doctrine anyway without saying that life starts; the sin is there before the life starts, since the sin is present in the parents, not the fetus. Part of me wants to blame the RCC stance ultimately on the Romans, since the RCC is basically a 1,000-year-old reactionary movement against a culture that doesn't exist anymore, and since the Romans practiced contraception and abortion, the RCC might have branded those sinful because the Romans did them. They did it for bathing, though there's not a single Biblical reason for it). Regardless what the ultimate reason happens to be, they're still wrong, since there's no such thing as a soul to enshrine. But that's their belief, even if it is convoluted, backwards, and relies on several very pinpoint and almost cherry-picked readings - rest assured, dear reader, it's nowhere near as complicated as that Rapture/Second Coming garbage that American Evangelicals push.

So when something like this happens:

Lori Stodghill was 31-years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night, never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Stodghill’s husband Jeremy, a prison guard, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of himself and the couple’s then-two-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Staples should have made it to the hospital, his lawyers argued, or at least instructed the frantic emergency room staff to perform a caesarian-section. The procedure likely would not have saved the mother, a testifying expert said, but it may have saved the twins.

Being good pro-lifers, the Church hospital admitted to murder and offered to step up and do what was necessary to so help the family through this dark time, raising the moral standard for the anti-abortion side of the debate and set precedent that will strengthen those arguments legally:

Personhood Laws Are Anything But

First, an apology for the lack of updates. I've been busy lately (I cleaned my room. Don't look at me like that - this was a four day project to clean out seven years of dust, mildew, mold, and whatever the hell that funny smelling thing was in the corner; I haven't cleaned it this well since my depression first kicked in over 10 years ago, and it was my depression that kept me from cleaning it. This was actually a really big step for me.)

Anyway here I am and I'm back, and I'm bringing a heaping helping of stupid misogyny along with me. I love to pick on these people; they're so incredibly dense and self-righteous that they're easy targets. Think back to when you were a kid, and you saw your friend blowing bubbles. You couldn't resist popping them; it's like bubble wrap, with the exception that bubble wrap has more substance and is more useful to society.

With God As My Pilot...

I never get tired of hearing the Religious Right going after whatever it is this week that's rammed a bee up their ass. I never get tired of their victim posturing, I never get tired of their inane theology and vapid ideologies; I never get tried of it. After all, what would I have to blog on if they were normal, healthy, well adjusted individuals like me and you?

(/irony)

I swear if I read something else, by some other dumbass, that it's possible to "pray away the gay", I'm going to scream. I don't know why this myth persists. I also don't know why the Religious Right is so dead set on trying to undermine their own God's will. It could possibly be because they're Untermensch and they don't believe in a God but cling to that system because they benefit from it, but I only think that's true in a few scattered cases, not over all. Their whole theology and ideology is self-defeating, on every front, and they prove once again that they're their own worst enemies. They say they believe one thing, but their actions prove them to believe something totally different, that contradicts what they believe in. The word here is hypocrite. But, because I won't make up a claim without backing it up, allow me to demonstrate how this works:

Observations For the Day

Debunking the Genesis Creation Myth in four easy observations:

Observation 1:  It's all in God's hands. God is omniscient and omnipotent. He created the world in six days, and he created man by blowing into dirt (Genesis 2) or simply willing him and woman into existence at the same time (Genesis 1).

Observation 2: God plants a tree in the garden of Eden. This it the Tree of Knowledge, and it grows apples. Side observation: God apparently hates Avalon and King Arthur.

God Works in Mysterious Ways (Except When He Doesn't)

I'm still sick and angry about the post below. I'm still upset, and I still have more to vent about. The whole abortion argument is stupid. The whole thing is nothing more than a twisted, patriarchal argument to try and punish women for having sex. Maybe if you supported informed sex education, you'd have a point. Maybe then you'd have an argument. But as it is they don't. So they don't have argument.

Their primary claim is that it's murder. Apparently, killing something that looks like a blob of cells is murder. There's this bullshit about a "soul" but you know what? Tell God to get his ass down here and tell me that, because I won't believe you, you damn liar. You'd lie through your teeth to get what you wanted. There's nothing at all about abortion in the Bible; nothing. You have no Biblical leg to stand on. And before you throw rules at me about "not killing", how many times have you supported the death penalty in the past? You're not pro-life. You're anti-woman.

And while we're on this topic of the intersection of God and abortion, let's take a look. Care to take a guess at how many babies your God aborts each year? He's far more prolific than Planned Parent, considering Planned Parent spends more of their money on other services and less than 1% abortion service. And let's keep this angle up. God is all-powerful and all-knowing, right? Which means he knows that the woman was going to have an miscarriage. Which means that, by your words, "it's in his plan." Okay, cool. What the hell makes you think he doesn't know that a woman is going to get an abortion, too? He's all knowing, right? So he already knows. What makes you think that wasn't "in his plan," either? And in doing what you're doing, you're defying his plan? Or maybe you aren't, and maybe it's in Tzeentch's God's multiple of contradictory plans that make absolutely no sense? What if, and just if, you're full of raw bullshit in claiming it's "all part of God's plan" and you're just making it up as you go?

Of course, being a proud card-carrying member of the Coat-hanger Brigade means that you don't honestly care about God or religion. Strauss said it best, and he was only cribbing from Marx: you only care about controlling women, women's bodies, and teaching those nasty sluts that they shouldn't be having sex - God and religion's roles here are only for the purpose of controlling people.

Hang Her High

Her name is Rennie Gibbs. She's 15, and had a miscarriage at week 36 of her unborn child. Now, because she had a miscarriage, she's going to be charged with a "heart-deprived" murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence in the only state with more consonants than common sense.

Rage in 3... 2... 1... 

Here's this 15 year old girl. She's a drug addict, she had a miscarriage, and now she's going to be tried as a murderer and stands a chance at life sentence. Where is the outcry? Why is this not on the news? Why, why, why? What the Hell is happening to my country? A teenage girl gets pregnant, has a miscarriage, and now they're trying her with murder? And they're going to put her away for the rest of her life? I'm sick. I'm sick with despair, and I'm sick with anger and hatred. I'm sick with rage; that black hole that sits where part of my soul used to be wants nothing more than to see the prosecutor, and the people trying to punish this woman for having a goddamn miscarriage ripped to pieces and fed to wild dogs. But that would qualify as animal abuse, and the wild dogs didn't ask to be punished. Besides, the animals are smart enough to know not to touch meat tainted by evil.

Make no mistake. That's what this is - this is evil. Pure and simple, this is heartless, bottomless, bald-faced evil. These are wretched "human beings." They are evil. I tremble with barely restrained rage; only my better sense of self (that thing that comes with being a liberal) keeps me from doing something stupid that I know I'll regret, or saying something stupid that I know I'll regret.

I may be a rare liberal, but let it get said that we do know hate. I can think of no better word to describe what I'm feeling right now than true, bottomless hatred. My hate is a righteous hatred; the hate that's driven by knowing there's injustice in the world and that injustice must be rectified.

At the same time, it's the liberal in me that makes me care about this girl, that makes me want to believe that this whole thing is a grotesque, Kafkaesque parody of justice and that real humans couldn't do this to one another. Maybe these people aren't real humans. Maybe they're cockroaches in human suits. But I know it's not and I'm forced to admit that they aren't; I know this is real and they're humans as much as I loath to admit it, and I know that, unlike the Penal Colony, these men in suits aren't just shooting off their mouth about unimportant shit - they're shooting off their mouth about unimportant shit that is damaging to our country. And somehow, these wretched beings managed to get into power.

Of course, those self-righteous assholes are impervious to criticism. The collective density of their skulls will make quark stars turn green with envy. They'll strike a victim pose, and claim that they're only "saving unborn babies" and we're the evil doers for calling them for being the raging asshole misogynists that they are. I suppose this is following their twisted, evil, rotten and soulless "logic" to it's conclusion; after all, they can't save babies if they aren't punishing those evil sluts for having miscarriages, now can they? Of course not. The fact that this poor girl has a drug habit makes it even worse; she needs help, not jail. She requires the humane hand of people who honestly care, not a bunch of self-righteous, impervious to criticism, inhuman Evageliban Mississippians with Fatwa envy. She should be helped up from the hole she's in - for the love of fucking God she's only 15. And these sick assholes want to put her away for the rest of her natural life! There's not enough exclamation points to express my rage, there's not enough words, not enough names, not enough bolded or italicized text, not enough of anything that could ally that absolute anger and rage I'm feeling right know towards this rotten state, it's rotten inhabitants, and it's rotten asshole government.

So, strike your victim pose. Claim that you're being unjustly persecuted as you punish a 15 year old girl for a miscarriage she had because your stupid-ass state doesn't teach sex education, so she could've avoided it. Claim you're doing it for "God" or whatever the name of that hateful Demiurge is you worship and try to ram down everyone's throat. Claim you're right, and that this is a righteous action, when the only real blood here belongs on the hand of your divine abortionist. We've got a 15 year old girl here, she had a miscarriage, and she's a whore! It's time to hang her high!

Edit: And Ms. Gibbs isn't the only one. There are other women. Pregnant women are criminals waiting to be charged. Pregnancy is a crime in America. Being a woman is a crime in America.
I am so sick right now I can't put it into words.
These men are evil. These states are evil. And they need to be punished - at the polls. Do you enjoy your rights? Do you think that women should be treated like humans too, and that they shouldn't be charged because God aborted their baby? THEN VOTE, DAMN IT. VOTE.