Religious Exemption Fraud

Posted on July 5, 2014 by wellsdc

Think of it this way: the U.S. Supreme Court basically just created a way for people and/or corporations to get out of following laws with which they disagree based on religion. There is considerable concern among many in this country, justified or not, that people are voting, obtaining government assistance, and engaging in other activities fraudulently.

The proposed remedies for these alleged acts of fraud tend to involve paperwork, photo IDs, and large amounts of red tape. Why should the invocation of religious faith to obtain exemptions from laws that apply to everyone else be any different?

I fully expect American conservatives to take a firm stand against religious exemption fraud any minute now.

What I’m Reading, July 1, 2014

Posted on July 1, 2014 by wellsdc

“For Me, Not For Thee”, jurassicpork, Brilliant at Breakfast, June 28, 2014

I guess free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment isn’t good enough. You have to be able to lay your hands on these women, scream in their faces what murderers they are and to strip them of their last vestige of dignity, safety and privacy (which is what Roe vs Wade was all about) and to even threaten their lives in their insane quest for the sanctity of life. Of course, they pushed before the court a sweet-looking grandmotherly type who bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t spread like milk and honey her message of love.

Sex, Gender, and the Familiar Fight Over Religious Exemptions, Katherine Franke, interviewed by Nina Martin, ProPublica, March 12, 2014 Continue reading →

Bodily Autonomy

Posted on June 30, 2014 by wellsdc

THIS:

There’s a concept called bodily autonomy. It’s generally considered a human right. Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. It’s why you can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs. Even if you’re dead. Even if you’d save or improve 20 lives. It’s why someone can’t touch you, have sex with you,or use your body in any way without your continuous consent. A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a person’s continuous consent. If they deny or withdraw consent, the pregnant person has a right to remove them from that moment. A fetus is equal in this regard because if I need someone else’s body parts to live, they also can legally deny me their use. By saying a fetus has a right to someone’s body parts until it’s born, despite the pregnant person’s wishes, you’re doing two things. 1) Granting a fetus more rights to other people’s bodies than any born person. 2) Awarding a pregnant person less right’s to their body than a corpse.

Click to embiggen.

I’m not here to start an argument. I am here, however, to ask how you expect a fetus to exercise its rights if a woman doesn’t allow it to happen. Your statement doesn’t make any sense. What can the child do for itself at that point?

There’s a concept called bodily autonomy. It’s generally considered a human right. Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. It’s why you can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs. Even if you’re dead. Even if you’d save or improve 20 lives. It’s why someone can’t touch you, have sex with you,or use your body in any way without your continuous consent.

A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a person’s continuous consent. If they deny or withdraw consent, the pregnant person has a right to remove them from that moment. A fetus is equal in this regard because if I need someone else’s body parts to live, they also can legally deny me their use.

By saying a fetus has a right to someone’s body parts until it’s born, despite the pregnant person’s wishes, you’re doing two things.

1) Granting a fetus more rights to other people’s bodies than any born person.
2) Awarding a pregnant person less right’s to their body than a corpse.

(Original post)

(See also)

What I’m Reading, June 16, 2014

Posted on June 16, 2014 by wellsdc

Women Are Hard To Animate. Thoughts on Representation of Women in Movies, Television and Games, Echidne, Echidne of the Snakes, June 12, 2014

My point is that these stories are picked from a certain angle, an angle of traditionally male heroism, and even when that is not the case most of us are lulled into believing that a handful of women in a large list of participants is a mixed gender setting in a movie or television series. Just think of the Noah’s Ark (which also consisted of all white characters). Probably a fifty-fifty distribution of men and women in some movie reads as a chick flick to many viewers.

One reason for all this is that we tend to see women portray womanhood in their roles, not play roles of individuals who have different temperaments, characters and so on. That’s why having a handful of women in a movie looks like inclusion, even if they all play the role “women,” because that role might be subconsciously compared to the number of dentists or gamblers or whatever in the same movie, never mind that most of the rest of that list are played by men.

Who Owns Your Womb? Women Can Get Murder Charge for Refusing C-Sections, Michelle Goodwin, AlterNet, June 13, 2014

Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, May 23, 2014

Posted on May 23, 2014 by wellsdc

By User Magnus Manske on en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Anti-Choicers Desperately Insist You See Things That Are Clearly Not There, Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check, May 12, 2014

To hear the lurid descriptions of what anti-choicers imagine abortion to be, it seems that they imagine someone killing an actual baby. Upending that narrative and reminding people, through incontrovertible visual proof, that during a first-trimester abortion the embryo is so small as to barely register as a potential baby, much less an actual baby, might be the most threatening part of the Letts video. Her stomach is flat. The abortion is quite obviously a quick gynecological procedure. If she had stayed pregnant, eventually there would be a baby. But it’s clear as could be, watching the video, that only fantasists have the ability to see “baby” where realists see nothing more than the beginning of a long process known as “pregnancy.” It’s no more a baby than a seed is a tree.

While the debate over abortion is really about sexuality and women’s rights, the official line from anti-choicers is that they’re against killing “babies,” and so this probably is pretty embarrassing for them, because it reveals that their cover story is perhaps even sillier than their fears about female sexuality. So, their effort to save face involves multiple variations of “Don’t believe your lying eyes! Just because you can’t see a baby doesn’t mean there isn’t a baby there!”

The Myth Of White, Heterosexual Christian Entitlement, Manny Schewitz, Forward Progressives, May 12, 2014 Continue reading →

Signal Boost: “Conscientious Objectors” in Health Care

Posted on May 16, 2014 by wellsdc

From “Why We Need to Ban ‘Conscientious Objection’ in Reproductive Health Care,” by Joyce Arthur, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, and Christian Fiala, Gynmed Clinic for Abortion and Family Planning. Published at RH Reality Check, May 14, 2014:

Do health-care professionals have the right to refuse to provide abortions or contraception based on their “conscientious objection” to these services? Many pro-choice activists would retort, “No way! If you can’t do your job, quit and find another career!” We agree with them, and have detailed why in our new paper, “‘Dishonourable Disobedience’: Why Refusal to Treat In Reproductive Healthcare Is Not Conscientious Objection.”

Reproductive health care is the only field in medicine where freedom of conscience is accepted as an argument to limit a patient‘s right to a legal medical treatment. It is the only example where the otherwise accepted standard of evidence-based medicine is overruled by faith-based actions. We argue in our paper that the exercise of conscientious objection (CO) is a violation of medical ethics because it allows health-care professionals to abuse their position of trust and authority by imposing their personal beliefs on patients. Physicians have a monopoly on the practice of medicine, with patients completely reliant on them for essential health care. Moreover, doctors have chosen a profession that fulfills a public trust, making them duty-bound to provide care without discrimination. This makes CO an arrogant paternalism, with doctors exerting power over their dependent patients—a throwback to the obsolete era of “doctor knows best.”

Denial of care inevitably creates at least some degree of harm to patients, ranging from inconvenience, humiliation, and psychological stress to delays in care, unwanted pregnancy, increased medical risks, and death. Since reproductive health care is largely delivered to women, CO rises to the level of discrimination, undermining women’s self-determination and liberty. CO against providing abortions, in particular, is based on a denial of the overwhelming evidence and historical experience that have proven the harms of legal and other restrictions, a rejection of the human rights ethic that justifies the provision of safe and legal abortion to women, and a refusal to respect democratically decided laws. Allowing CO for abortion also ignores the global realities of poor access to services, pervasive stigma, and restrictive laws. It just restricts access even further, adding to the already serious abrogation of patients’ rights.

(Emphasis added.)

When the Baby Kicks

Posted on May 7, 2014 by wellsdc

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has been in the news for his interesting take on freedom of religion under the First Amendment:

Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.

“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”

Thomas Gainsborough [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Yes, 21st-century America should totally take all of its cues from this cat.

He said something else interesting, though, that seems to have been largely overlooked:

Chief Justice Moore later defined “life” via Blackstone’s Law — a book that American lawyers have “sadly forgotten” — as beginning when “the baby kicks.” “Today,” he said, “our courts say it’s not alive ’til the head comes out.”

He is referring to the Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone, first published in 1766. I figured I’d see what Blackstone actually said about the issue, because that’s how I roll. In Book 1 (The Rights of Persons), Chapter 1 (Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals), Blackstone writes on pages 125-26: Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, April 23, 2014

Posted on April 23, 2014 by wellsdc

David Jackmanson [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)], via Flickr Apparently, We Need To Remind People That Pro-Choice Women Are Allowed To Have Babies, Samantha Lachman, Huffington Post, April 17, 2014

Chelsea Clinton is pregnant, and some anti-abortion activists responded to the news Thursday by showing they don’t understand what being “pro-choice” means: being able to choose to have a baby, or not.

White Supremacist’s Genocidal Paranoia: Inside the Mind of the White Man March Founder, Toby McCasker, AlterNet, April 19, 2014

Masked ethnic nationalism had been enjoying a nice stay as a dot-point in the “dark enlightenment” of the so-called neo-reactionary movement, but bigotry is never content to be itemized. Say hi to nuwe racism, and the composite ire-ony of using the Afrikaans for “new” here seems so complexly black and white as to transcend meta. Hyper-aware there is less and less room on earth for old hate, nuwe racists dress their prejudice in conspiracy and pseudoscience and call it “pride.” Pride is a much more appealing sin than wrath, and allows them to, heinously, plead victimhood just as they pursue a policy of victimization. It is like punching someone and getting angry at them for hurting your fist.

Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, April 18, 2014

Posted on April 18, 2014 by wellsdc

"MEGAMAN X STAGE 1" by fanboy-supermegaman [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)], via deviantART The angry fanboys, Ophelia Benson, Butterflies & Wheels, April 14, 2014

Feminism isn’t going away. Also? The last thing that would make it go away is condescending assholes calling it feminazi bullshit and threatening to rape all the feminists. All that does is show how desperately it’s needed.

Ron Paul Wants Tax-Exempt Status, But Doesn’t Want To Obey The Rules, karoli, Crooks and Liars, April 16, 2014

I just love the way conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. Ron Paul’s organization, Campaign for Liberty, is being fined by the IRS because they insist on filing incomplete reports, but if you listen to him whine on Fox News, you’d think he was being persecuted, and horribly so. Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, April 14, 2014

Posted on April 14, 2014 by wellsdc

Not credited. May be work of U.S. Public Health Service (1918 ad) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Dear Parents, You are Being Lied to By Living Whole, Avicenna, A Million Gods, April 11, 2014

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to make the same mistakes. I predicted that an anti-vax backlash would occur when the anti-vax got so successful that they destroyed the herd immunity of a western nation to the point that common diseases could return. If you won’t learn by the carrot then unfortunately it is the stick. The price of Andrew Wakefield and the likes of Sherri Tenpenny, Mercola, Adams was increased disease. We are seeing record increases in common diseases that we were on the verge of eliminating.

How to Talk to Vaccine-Hesitant Parents, Keith Kloor, Discover, April 8, 2014

The smart folks at ThinkProgress seem to have missed all the media coverage of this recent study, which found that, for those already suspicious or concerned about vaccines, images of sick children and dramatic, cautionary narratives “actually increased beliefs in serious vaccine side effects.” This is a known as the “backfire effect,” a phenomena defined concisely here:

When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Jenny McCarthy, Who Still Promotes Misinformation About Vaccines, Now Says “I Am Not ‘Anti-Vaccine,'” Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, April 13, 2014

McCarthy rejects the science — and thinks she deserves credit for just asking questions. Even though those questions were answered a long time ago and she just wasn’t happy with the responses. If Jenny McCarthy is not “anti-vaccine,” then Ken Ham must be the greatest advocate of evolution we’ve ever seen. In the meantime, the Jenny McCarthy Body Count will continue to rise until she comes to her senses and rejects the harmful beliefs that she still holds.

GOP Lawmaker Compares Abortion To Buying A Car, Laura Bassett, Huffington Post, April 9, 2014

A Republican state lawmaker in Missouri defended his controversial bill forcing women to have ultrasounds before abortions by comparing abortion to purchasing a new vehicle. “In making a decision to buy a car, I put research in there to find out what to do,” state Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger (R) told colleagues at a hearing on the bill Tuesday. *** The major problem with Gatschenberger’s analogy, of course, is that people are not required by state law to do research before buying a car. State Rep. Stacey Newman (D) told Gatschenberger that his car analogy was “extremely offensive to every single woman sitting in here.”

Photo credit: Not credited. May be work of U.S. Public Health Service (1918 ad via [1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Category Archives: Reproductive Rights