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

You see, these aren’t people who believe in equal rights, not by a long shot. In fact, they believe that because of their lucky place in the white, conservative, heterosexual Christian entitlement club that they deserve superior rights. They believe they are entitled to not be offended while being able to offend anyone else, because you know… white, conservative, heterosexual Christian privilege trumps everyone else. Across the South, as well as the rest of the country, there are still people who think based solely off the color of their skin or the religion that they practice that they were automatically handed a VIP card to carry through life – and out of all of the people in the world, God loves them the most.

Creationists grow increasingly desperate in feud with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dan Arel, Salon, May 14, 2014

Creationists want religion out of Cosmos, unless of course it favors them. Each week Neil deGrasse Tyson has been attacked by creationists and the religious right for anything he says that makes religion look bad. In this week’s episode about electricity, Tyson discussed a Christian scientist, brushing off the importance of religious belief while engaging in scientific inquiry. Naturally, creationists don’t like that.

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Tyson has brought up religion a handful of times, to counter its stance against evolution, call out the claims that earthquakes are caused by moral issues, and remind everyone that in the past the church has gone so far as to kill those who used science to speak out against the Bible. However, Tyson and the writers at Cosmos have not made it a point to mention every scientist’s religious beliefs if they had no impact on the story at hand.

The Discovery Institute is simply embarrassed, as it was weeks before when its worldview was deconstructed on national television. In retort it stoops to ad hominem attacks of Tyson, MacFarlane and the writing team at Cosmos, who are telling a beautiful lesson week after week.

Photo credit: By User Magnus Manske on en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.