Libbye Anne: How I lost faith in the Pro-life movement

Libbye Anne recounts her journey from ardent pro-lifer through her discovery of the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of the "Pro-life" movement: "How I lost faith in the Pro-life movement." First she did discovered that they were against birth control...

Keeping religion out of people's healthcare

Balloon Juice has the details in "I don't care about your invisible Jeebus."

Again, I’m not naturally inclined to be antagonistic towards religion. My parents are both religious and are definite believers. I like Sundays off, I like the Easter and Christmas break, I don’t care if we have to do silly things like pray before certain events (I can just think about other things while they babble), it doesn’t bother me that In God We Trust and other such statements are everywhere in public life, and so on. I’m not some crazed reactionary on the issue.
But from where I stand these days, the only thing I see religion doing in the public sector is gay bashing and telling women, mostly poor and desperate and in deplorable financial and personal situations, what to do with their bodies. I see busybodies deciding what drugs they can dispense to which customers, or deciding that they don’t have to issue a marriage license because of some petty deity that I don’t believe in told them to hate their fellow citizens and ignore the law. In a country in dire financial straits but still spending billions and billions of dollars on education, I see religious folks actively and openly working to make our schoolkids dumber. I see them shooting people who provided a medical procedure, and I see others rummaging through people’s personal lives to find out who hasn’t lived up the word of God. I see glassy-eyed fools running for President claiming that vaccines that save lives actually cause cancer, or that if you get raped and are pregnant, you should just lie back and think of Jeebus and make the best of a bad situation. In fact, everywhere you look these days, if Christianity or religion is getting a mention, it means something ugly is happening and someone somewhere is being victimized, marginalized, or otherwise abused. Go read some of the arguments against integration and you’ll see the same bible verses used today against homosexuals. Fifty years from now, they’ll be recycling them again to trash someone else they don’t like or who isn’t good enough for them.

How the anti-choice deal with pregnancy

Shades of "the only moral abortion is my abortion":

Since my boyfriend was a huge Catholic, I figured that a marriage proposal would immediately be offered. Shocker number two—This sweet Catholic boy, the mama’s boy who had spoken of white picket fences and lots of chubby-cheeked kids of which I would be the mother, went into full-on panic mode and said, “You HAVE to get rid of it!” He would hear nothing else.... He coughed up the money and swore he’d be there at the clinic with me, only to weasel out of it with a lame “I have to work” excuse.

Abortion in Nicaragua

I wrote this for Wikipedia, and I'm repeating it here:

A report on the effects of Nicaragua's church-inspired total abortion ban was filed by the Human Rights Watch in October 2007. Human Rights Watch reports the deaths of at least eighty Nicaraguan women in the eleven months following the ban. To compile the report, interviews were conducted with health officials, women in need of health services, doctors in public health, doctors in the private healthcare system, and family members of women who died as a result of the ban.

An unintended side effect has been a 'chilling" of other forms of obstetrical care for women. The report states, "While no doctors have been prosecuted for the crime of abortion, as far as we know, the mere possibility of facing criminal charges for providing lifesaving health services has had a deadly effect.... the Health Ministry does not monitor the full implementation of the protocols, does not systematize complaints received for the delay or denial of care, and so far has not studied the impact of the law on the lives and health of women." The report quotes an obstetrician as saying "since the law was signed, [public hospitals] don’t treat any hemorrhaging, not even post-menopausal hemorrhaging."

Nicaragua’s Health Ministry officials told Human Rights Watch that they did not have any official documentation of the effects of the blanket ban and no plans for gathering such documentation. Consequently, statements that the ban has not caused women's deaths can not be substantiated. By contrast, the report cites several case histories. News reports put the number of deaths at 82 after the law has been in effect less than a year.

The point of view of Human Rights Watch is that the law intentionally denies women access to health services essential to saving their lives, and is thus inconsistent with Nicaragua’s obligations under international human rights law to ensure women’s right to life. Their report is called, "Over Their Dead Bodies."

Dr. George Tiller has been murdered

Dr. George Tiller, one of three doctors in the U.S. who would do the heartbreaking task of aborting late-term fetuses when they were non-viable or threatened the life of a pregnant woman, has been shot down in church by a Christian terrorist. A man is in custody.

The New York Times notes that threats and other incidents of violence, including wounding, led up to this crime.

"In 1993, Rachelle Shannon, from rural Oregon, shot Dr. Tiller in both arms. Two years earlier, during Operation Rescue’s “Summer of Mercy” protests, thousands of anti-abortion protesters tried to block off the clinic, the site of a bombing in 1986.

"Friends of Dr. Tiller also described regular incidents of vandalism at the clinic, and a barrage of threats to him and his family — threats they say had concerned him deeply for years.

"Family members, including 4 children and 10 grandchildren, issued a statement through Dr. Tiller’s lawyer, which read in part: “George dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence. We ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere.”"

"Christian Persecution"

That's by Christians, not of Christians. They can dish it out but they can't take it.

Check out the cartoon at Atheist Eve.

Jesus wept...anti-abortion groups celebrate "Christian" terrorists

There's a blog called "archy" -- read his article. Protest to your local church and ask them to comment on this "religious" activity: Jesus wept.

Just when we think the vileness that people will commit in the name of God can't get any worse, we get this:

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

On July 29, 1994 Paul Hill, who sought to set a good example for Christian theocratic revolutionaries, assassinated abortion provider Dr. John Britton and James Barrett one of his escorts, and seriously wounding another, June Barrett, outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

...the "Paul Hill Days" stunt has a larger purpose than just to "honor" Hill or educate children about a "hero." The event also sends a message to abortion providers everywhere that there are still those who believe in terror lurking in the crowds and they could be next. The highlight of the "Paul Hill Days" stunt is a reenactment of the assassination.

Double standards

Blogger "Daylight Atheism" points out that parents who lobbied to have Christian propaganda pamphlets sent home with all schoolchildren are shocked and appalled to find that atheists and members of other religions want to use the same channels to distribute their information. Are they lying hypocrites or just blind in one eye and can't see out the other?

Evangelical teens in "Forbidden Fruit"

Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor, has written a book about how religious beliefs influence sexual behaviour - or don't, as the case may be. Rather deliciously, he has called it Forbidden Fruit. Read Slate's review of Forbidden Fruit by Hanna Rosin.

The most predictable conclusion is that, yes, church-going teens have sex, but they are less likely to be prepared for it with contraception and condoms.
(Thanks to Feministing for the link.)