I guess Jesus just needed a better lawyer...

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I have a question!

I was half watching Chris Hayes on MSNBC tonight and he was arguing with some anti choice guy about the Affordable Care Act provision which requires employers of a certain size to offer insurance coverage for contraceptives and other reproductive health services without a co-pay. I suppose this came up because the Supreme Court decided to take on Hobby Lobby's (and other for profit companies') objections to this provision.

Locally, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Diocese of Erie and several affiliated nonprofit groups have recently won an injunction against having to follow that same provision. Please note that the diocese themselves didn't need to follow that part of the act--only their nonprofit groups like Catholic Charities--you know, the ones that take taxpayer funding (and lots of it).

But Hayes, and no one else I see on my TV set asks the one question of the opponents of the provision that I want to hear. It goes something like this:

Sir/Madame: The Affordable Care Act requires larger companies and nonprofits to provide health insurance to people who work for them who, in turn, may or may not end up using it to cover contraception. The law requires companies and nonprofits to provide a paycheck to people who work for them who, in turn, may or may not end up using it to cover contraception. What is the fucking difference in terms of "morality"?

OK. For the sake of television they can leave out the "fucking" part of my question. But, seriously, what is the fucking difference? How are they not paying for contraceptives either way? In neither case are they actually being forced to purchase the contraceptives themselves and put it in the hands of their employees. In both cases they would be made to follow laws that everyone else must follow in terms of compensation to their employees. In both cases their employees end up getting birth control, and in neither case do they get to stone their employees to death (for the moment anyway) for being "immoral"--or for as Bishop Zubik and Cardinal Timothy Dolan have called it, "evil" and "facilitating scandal."

They are simply making it more expensive for their employees to get the birth control. If they really, really cared about the "morality" of their employees or being "pro life," shouldn't they fire their immoral workers? Of course they can't do that because they'd run out of employees as 62% of all women of reproductive age are currently using a contraceptive method.

And not having a ready pool of low paid women to exploit and impose your own religious beliefs on employ, my friends, would be bad for business.

Santorum 2013!

 

Santorum for Pope!

It will get him out of the U.S. and his policies only slightly more conservative than that of the current Vatican.

As Medieval As They Wanna Be

Rick Santorum was once called “one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century” in the pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is somewhat less retro, preferring the 16th century (but probably having some beefs with the Renaissance):


Separated at birth?
That's the hat he wore to President Obama's second inauguration yesterday. According to WalshLaw:

The hat is a custom-made replica of the hat depicted in Holbein’s famous portrait of St. Thomas More. It was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia. We presented it to him in November 2010 as a memento of his participation in our 27th annual Red Mass and dinner.

I'm sure Scalia likes to see himself as a defender of the faith too (even when acting less than saintly) and, no doubt sees no conflict in that. I'm also guessing that More would have had no problem with Scalia's views on women (or little else).

Call it a human sacrifice

Savita Halappanavar

"Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased, for example as a propitiatory offering, or as a retainer sacrifice when the King's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. "

- Wikipedia

Savita Halappanavar's life was sacrificed to comply with Catholic religious doctrine which demands that termination of a pregnancy never be permitted -- including to save the life of the woman. Via The Irish Times:

Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist, presented with back pain at the hospital on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying, and died of septicaemia a week later.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar (34), an engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway, says she asked several times over a three-day period that the pregnancy be terminated. He says that, having been told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.

This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.

Savita was neither Catholic or Irish. Think it can't happen here? Think again. This same view was espoused by the Republican Party Platform which offered no exceptions for abortions. Now, Ohio wants to put it into practice. Via Think Progress:

During this year’s lame duck session, Ohio legislators are planning to revive HB 125, a so-called “heartbeat” bill that would ban abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected — which can first occur as early as five or six weeks, before many women may even know they’re pregnant. The proposed legislation represents the most restrictive abortion ban in the United States. If HB 125 is passed, it would criminalize all abortions after the emergence of a fetal heartbeat without allowing even the narrowest exceptions in potential cases of rape, incest, or the mental health of the woman.

Even if Ohio’s bill includes some kind of provision that would allow women to seek abortions in life-threatening situations, Halappanavar’s death points to the fact that health risks aren’t always immediately apparent. A 1992 Supreme Court ruling in Ireland amended the country’s abortion ban to include an exception in cases where the woman’s life is in danger, but Irish hospitals don’t always know how far that medical exception can stretch. They are often reluctant to provide women with abortion services unless the situation is very clearly life-threatening — and for women like Halappanavar, that can already be too late.

And in cases where the fetus is not expected to survive — when women like Halappanavar are undergoing a miscarriage, or when doctors discover fatal fetal defects — anti-abortion legislation is often murky, even in this country. In Arizona, where a stringent abortion ban outlaws the procedure after just 20 weeks, women who discover fatal defects that will not allow their fetus to survive are forced to carry the fetus to term anyway.

In other words, a doctor would have to wait until a woman is literally dying before intervening. Has she lost enough blood? Is the infection so pervasive that she may not recover? Because . . . because . . . of a religious concept of a soul which presents itself at conception but is stained by sin because a woman talked to an evil serpent? Because . . . because . . . How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

This is what happens when religion is allowed to be the state. An intelligent, beautiful, young woman's life is sacrificed for the fetus who is already dying inside her.

Both are dead.

"With modern technology and science, you can't find one instance," Walsh said. "There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing."

- Republican Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.)

I was robocalled by The Catholic Association

Yesterday morning I received a recorded call by "Sue." "Sue" said she wasn't trying to tell me who to vote for, BUT instead of trying to get folks jobs, President Obama was spending his time trying to take away the religious freedoms of Catholics. Uh-huh. I'm not even sure the call mentioned birth control.

The recording said the call was paid for by The Catholic Association. I'm assuming that I got the call because I'm a super voter, registered Democrat in Western PA with a Catholic-sounding name(?). (What exactly would that computer algorithm look like anyway? First name "Maria"/"Angela"/"Carmela"/"Theresa" and last name ends in a vowel?)

I will repeat what I said back in February:

Let's get it straight. The Affordable Care Act requires health insurers to cover contraception without co-pays. It does not, however, require religions, churches, parishes, dioceses, archdioceses, etc. to cover contraception -- they are exempt (if you're a secretary working for a church you're shit out of luck). What we're talking about are public institutions like universities and hospitals -- non-profit businesses (much in the same way that UPMC, for example, is a "non-profit") -- who take government money and who take money from the public being required to follow the law to not discriminate against women when covering their health care costs.

That's it.

If the Catholic Church does not want to follow the law, they can stop taking federal funds or they can get out of the business of running businesses.

That's it.

That's their choice.

(Jesus' choice -- from all available evidence -- would seem to be to sell everything and give it to the poor. Just saying...)

But, now I'll add this from a Republican-appointed judge's ruling in federal court late last month who upheld the Obama Administration’s birth control coverage rules:

The burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [an employer's health] plan, subsidize someone else’s participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs’ religion. . . . [Federal religious freedom law] is a shield, not a sword. It protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one’s religion forbids, or forbids action one’s religion requires; it is not a means to force one’s religious practices upon others. [It] does not protect against the slight burden on religious exercise that arises when one’s money circuitously flows to support the conduct of other free-exercise-wielding individuals who hold religious beliefs that differ from one’s own. . . .

[T]he health care plan will offend plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an [] employee (or covered family member) makes an independent decision to use the plan to cover counseling related to or the purchase of contraceptives. Already, [plaintiffs] pay salaries to their employees—money the employees may use to purchase contraceptives or to contribute to a religious organization. By comparison, the contribution to a health care plan has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees.

Or as Think Progress explains it:

A key insight in this opinion is that salaries and health insurance can be used to buy birth control, so if religious employers really object to enabling their employees to buy birth control, they would have to not pay them money in addition to denying them comprehensive health insurance. An employer cannot assert a religious objection to how their employees choose to use their own benefits or their own money, because religious freedom is not a license to “force one’s religious practices upon others.”

Cause that would hardly be "small government" now would it?

Meet Tom Smith: GOP Senate Candidate & Father of the Year!

Via Think Progress:

MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?

SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.

SCOLFORO: Similar how?

SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.

SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?

SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.

 

Where to start?

Having your daughter have a child "out of wedlock" is only similar to having your daughter have a child from being raped if you are a father who believes that your daughter is a mere extension of yourself. A father who would compare the two is a father whose only concern is the fact that his unwed daughter is visibly not a virgin and that that somehow reflects poorly on him. It springs from the same attitude as those who believe in honor killings. It springs from the same Christian Bible as the one that commands that a rapist must marry his victim...and pay the father fifty pieces of silver. It springs from a total lack of concern and any empathy for a woman's own experience, feelings and well being. It spews from an inability to see a woman as a person in her own right.

Smith is not the only PA pol to go into detail about a daughter's own private business to make a point on abortion. PA State Rep. Harry A. Readshaw (D, PA-36) was only too happy to let a constituent know that abortion wasn't fair because his own daughter couldn't give him a grandbaby. If these men had a uterus, they could stop using their daughters in their arguments and speak from their own experience. But they have no experience of their own -- just the power to use their own prejudices and religion to make laws that all women will have to follow.

It makes me sick.

By the way, this being Pennsylvania, his Democratic opponent, Sen. Bob Casey, is also anti abortion (he was one of only three Democratic US Senators to vote against killing the Blunt Amendment). But Bobby, at least believes that abortion should be allowed if a woman is raped or dying. That's a progressive Catholic in these parts.

All hail the American Taliban!

Republican Senate Candidate Todd Akin: "Legitimate Rape" Victims Don't Get Pregnant

Via Talking Points Memo:

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy. 

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” 

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim. 

"Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Here's the video:


Depressing is the whole notion of "legitimate" rapes. You know, "rape rapes" as opposed to some slut asking for it. (Of course the FBI waited until just this year to redefine their 1927 definition of rape as more than just “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” So, for example, raping a drugged women, coercing a minor, raping someone with a foreign object, or any rape of boys or men have never entered into their statistics for over 80 years now...)

Disgusting is the fact that Akin, who believes in some sort of magic vagina venom (thank you Martha Plimpton), serves on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. (Petition to have him removed from that committee here.)

Ironic is the possibility that this idiot who seems to have very little actual knowledge of basic biology when it comes to women may very well replace one of the few woman who now serves in the U.S. Senate -- Claire McCaskill -- whose reaction to his remarks is here (via Twitter).

And, chilling is the idea that Akin -- and men like him -- get to make laws about what women and girls can and can't do with their own bodies.

Speaking of rape and abortion, in 2005 Akin voted "against the creation of a national sex offender registry database that required those convicted of a sex crime to register before completing a prison term and increased mandatory sentences for those convicted of molesting children." And just last year, he 'joined with GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as two of the original co-sponsors of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill which, among other things, introduced the country to the bizarre term “forcible rape."'

The sad truth is that Akin is not alone in his belief in the magic vagina venom:

Via the San Francisco Chronicle:   

1995-04-21 04:00:00 PDT Raleigh, N.C. -- Women do not get pregnant when raped because "the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work" during an attack, a state lawmaker said yesterday.  

Republican Representative Henry Aldridge made the remarks to the House Appropriations Committee as it debated a proposal to eliminate a state abortion fund for poor women.  

"The facts show that people who are raped -- who are truly raped -- the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant," said Aldridge, a 71-year-old periodontist. "Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever."  

And, from philly.com:  

March 23, 1988|By JOHN M. BAER, Daily News Staff Writer  

HARRISBURG — The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are "one in millions and millions and millions," said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature's leading abortion foe.  

The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to "secrete a certain secretion" that tends to kill sperm.  

Two Philadelphia doctors specializing in human reproduction characterized Freind's contention as scientifically baseless.  

Freind made the statement on a central Pennsylvania radio interview program earlier this month.

Akin already has his defenders. From Politico reporter Dave Catanese:

(Undoubtedly there will be other defenders. I'm thinking Trump who recently proclaimed that women like Obama because they "don't get what's going on" and Geraldo who believes there's a “lesbian cabal” at the Department of Homeland Security and the guy who just wrote a Letter to the Editor at the local Observer-Reporter about how the women folk do not belong in the workplace would love to chime in with their support.)

And then there's the Catholic Church which is opposed to any and all abortions -- even those to save the life of the women...and girl. From RH Reality Check:

A pregnant 16-year-old in the Dominican Republic died from complications of leukemia, according to CNN. The young woman was forced to wait nearly three weeks to begin chemotherapy to treat her disease as hospital officials initially refused to treat her fearing it could terminate her pregnancy. In the end she lost her life and the pregnancy, and may have died because of the delay in her treatment.  

Under an amendment to the Dominican Republic's constitution which declares that "life begins at conception," abortion is banned, effectively for any reason. The girl's leukemia was diagnosed when she was just nine weeks pregnant.  

Dominican women's health advocates told RH Reality Check this afternoon that while the doctors and the state refused to allow the girl treatment for leukemia, they made her undergo "ultrasounds to show that the baby was healthy and for her to see it moving."  

Chemotherapy was begun after the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, at which time the girl began to bleed, yet still the doctors refused to interrupt the pregnancy. Advocates report that she subsequently miscarried the pregnancy and began to hemorrhage; the medical team was unable to contain the bleeding and she died.  

The girl's mother had pleaded with both doctors and authorities to give her daughter an abortion so she could begin chemotherapy immediately.

The Catholic Church certainly had a large role in banning abortions in the Dominican Republic which led to this teen's death.  And, they have certainly not been shy about using their influence on politicians in these United States. Pennsylvania women just recently escaped having ultrasounds forced upon them. If that law had passed, many would have ended up at a "crisis pregnancy" center like this one in Pittsburgh where Bishop David Zubik blessed their ultrasound machine (photo at link!). The name of the center? "Women's Choice Network."

"Choice." Uh-huh.

That's like calling pedophile priests "Altar Boy Protectors."

Some day, we might just start treating women like actual people -- not strange creatures with magic vagina venom.

But, I won't hold my breath for that day to come.

PA Congressman Mike Kelly Likens Birth Control Mandate to Pearl Harbor and 9/11

Rep. Mike Kelly in his natural habitat

US Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Butler, PA) commenting yesterday on the mandatory contraception coverage going into effect that day (via Talking Points Memo):

“I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that’s Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that’s the day of the terrorist attack,” Kelly said, according to NBC. “I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.”

Yes, requiring all businesses -- including those owned by religious institutions -- to have insurance which covers women's reproductive healthcare needs is exactly like Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

If Kelly truly believes this, he should think seriously about jumping off the upper floors of a very tall building -- the way people had to at the World Trade Towers when they were attacked. Otherwise, he should think seriously about shutting the fuck up.

Missa Eaton is running against this assclown. You should think seriously about throwing her some bucks.

Here's what the Affordable Care Act does for women (when its not busy raping churches):

A bad day for pedophiles and their enablers in PA

Via Twitter

While the survivors of their violence will have to deal with what happened to them for years to come, at least one serial predator and one serial enabler has met with some justice in Pennsylvannia:

Jerry Sandusky convicted on 45 of 48 counts. It should have come a lot sooner.

Monsignor William Lynn convicted of child endangerment -- becomes the first U.S. church official convicted of a crime for how he handled abuse claims.

Rick Santorum: "The Believer" says President has a "phony theology"

Back in 2005, the New York Times Magazine did a cover story on then Senator Santorum titled "The Believer." From that article:

Sean Reilly, a former aide to Santorum in the Senate and now a political consultant in Philadelphia, said that he has come to view his former boss in other than political terms. ''Rick Santorum is a Catholic missionary,'' he said. ''That's what he is. He's a Catholic missionary who happens to be in the Senate.''

[snip]

Santorum is not a reader of Scripture -- ''I've never read the Bible cover to cover; maybe I should have'' -- and has no passages he clings to when seeking spiritual guidance. ''I'm a Catholic, so I'm not a biblical scholar. I'm not someone who has verses he can pop out. That's not how I interact with the faith.''

However, despite his lack of Bible training, Lil Ricky feels perfectly comfortable in criticizing President Obama's understanding of scripture and theology:

The “president’s agenda” is “not about you,” he said. “It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job.

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology,” Santorum said to applause from the crowd. “Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.” [...]

Although Santorum criticizes the president daily on the campaign trail, this is the first time he has used this rhetoric or said the president has a “different theology.”

And, Uber Catholic Santorum doesn't just question Obama on theology, he questions all mainline Protestants. Here's Santorum in 2008:

We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. [...]

Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.

Santorum has since defended his remarks on Obama and claimed that he was not questioning Obama's faith or the legitimacy of his Christianity (unlike the Christianity of all mainline Protestants?). Meanwhile, Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign strategist and former White House press secretary, rightfully called Santorum's comments “well over the line.”

Perhaps it's time for Someone to remind Lil Ricky that this election will not be decided with a puff of white smoke and that he's running for President and not Pope.


Looks like it's time for me to update this graphic I made when he was running for the Senate:

The War on Women, Part II: What's Wrong With This Picture?

Here's a photograph of the witness table at yesterday's House hearing on contraceptives:


If you don't get what's wrong with it, I'll spell it out for you:




Via Think Progress:

This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.

[snip]

Issa also dismissed the Democrats’ woman witness as a “college student’ who does not “have the appropriate credentials” to testify before his committee.

So what was the appropriately credentialed remarks like? Here's the testimony of the Most Reverend William E. Lori, Bishop of Bridgeport, on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (Shorter version: women's va-jay-jays are the mandated ham salad sandwich at a kosher deli -- I kid you not!).

This is not about churches or religious freedom

Let's get it straight. The Affordable Care Act requires health insurers to cover contraception without co-pays. It does not, however, require religions, churches, parishes, dioceses, archdioceses, etc. to cover contraception -- they are exempt (if you're a secretary working for a church you're shit out of luck). What we're talking about are public institutions like universities and hospitals -- non-profit businesses (much in the same way that UPMC, for example, is a "non-profit") -- who take government money and who take money from the public being required to follow the law to not discriminate against women when covering their health care costs.

That's it.

If the Catholic Church does not want to follow the law, they can stop taking federal funds or they can get out of the business of running businesses.

That's it.

That's their choice.

(Jesus' choice -- from all available evidence -- would seem to be to sell everything and give it to the poor. Just saying...)

What The Frack? Catholic Cemeteries ♥ Gas Drilling!

Via The Trib:

A Monroeville drilling company could tap natural gas beneath 15 cemeteries in Allegheny and Washington counties under a lease signed by the Catholic Cemeteries Association of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the association's director said Tuesday.

The association leased nearly 1,060 acres of cemetery land in 2008 to Huntley & Huntley Inc., including the 200-acre Calvary Cemetery in Hazelwood, which City Councilman Doug Shields called "ground zero" in the debate over whether natural gas drilling should be permitted in Pittsburgh.

"You don't put oil and gas fields in urban areas," Shields said during a news conference about legislation he will propose next month to ban drilling in city limits. "There's too much that can go wrong."

According to the article, Bishop David Zubik could not be reached for comment. Which I guess means no one could ask exactly how deep the consecration of cemetery ground extends...six feet?...20 feet?...I guess less than a mile...Or mention anything about, oh, I don't know, Jesus and the money changers in the temple...

I will add that this story brings to mind any number of horror movie plots starting with this one. And, of course, doesn't Pittsburgh have enough zombie problems already without stirring up more trouble?

Seriously, the article even quotes "high-priced consultant to the gas industry, former Gov. Tom Ridge" having a problem with this. Unfortunately, the real problem with fracking is more for the living than the dead.

Sick, sick, sick.

UPDATE: I saw this on my Facebook New Feed the other day and didn't realize that the article was from last year until it was pointed out to me by Paz in the comments section here. That said, it still blows my mind.