Paul Ryan’s new Old Spice ad

I’m doing an overnight tonight for work. Yes, tonight. Saturday night into Sunday morning. When I should be adjusting the time on my various clocks and catching up on sleep. Lucky me.

So, click this image to behold what a Paul Ryan Old Spice ad might look like. Via the Mansplaining Ryan tumblr.

"Hello, ladies. Look at your abortion rights. Now, look at me. Look back at your abortion rights. Your abortion rights are now beans. Look down. Now I'm Jack Kennedy.
Ryan Spice turns your abortion rights into a hill of beans. I’m on a horse.

It’d be funny if it weren’t so true.

Paul Ryan’s new Old Spice ad
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The context that fails to justify “some girls rape easy”

Trigger warning for rape culture justification, gaslighting, and bitches be lyin’.

Paul Ryan has really picked a winner to back in Wisconsin, where State Rep Roger Rivard (R, natch) has been strongly criticized for having claimed that his father told him that “some girls rape easy” — a stern warning from father to son that women who get pregnant after premarital sex will turn around and claim to be raped. He was upset that he was taken out of context, so he provided more context to make it all better.

On Wednesday, Rivard told the Journal Sentinel the article did not provide full context of his comments and that his father’s exact words had been slightly different from how they appeared in the Chetek Alert.

He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.

“He also told me one thing, ‘If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,’ ” Rivard said. “Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.’ All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, ‘Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,’ he said, ‘they rape so easy.’

Continue reading “The context that fails to justify “some girls rape easy””

The context that fails to justify “some girls rape easy”

Free contraception has prophylactic effect against abortions

I’m shocked. Are you shocked? I’m definitely shocked. Shocked is what I am. Find the crayon that most resembles “shocked”, and color me with it.

MotherJones posts about a new study that shows that when women have free access to contraceptives, there are fewer abortions. Meaning, people who don’t want or can’t have kids, for whatever reason, don’t have to use abortion as their last resort as often.

That’s according to a new study published on Thursday by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis. The project gave free birth control to more than 9,000 local women and girls, many of whom were poor or uninsured, and tracked them for two years. There were 6.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in the study group, compared to the 2010 national rate of 34 per 1,000. As for abortions, there were fewer than eight per 1,000 women in the study, compared with the almost 20 per 1,000 nationally.

Continue reading “Free contraception has prophylactic effect against abortions”

Free contraception has prophylactic effect against abortions

A little perspective on the troll cry of “witch-hunts”

Jacqueline S. Homan, who blogs at godlessfeminist.wordpress.com, posted a comment on my post about why I’m not being nice to DJ Grothe, that really deserves to be its own top-level post. That’s just exactly how violently I agree with every word.

It never ceases to amaze me how all the MRA’s/PUA’s whose voices seem to dominate and drive the agendas and discussions in the atheist movement are screeching hysterically about “feminazis”, “false accusations”, blaming women for being the problem because of our “special interest” issues and instigating a “witch hunt”, when they’ve been the ones that relentlessly threatened and harassed Rebecca Watson for nearly a year for the “crime” of saying “guys, please don’t do that” (i.e. speaking up for her rights when Living While Female) and leveled some pretty ugly threats and insults at Greta Christina as well. Jason’s edit: and Ophelia Benson, and now to a staggering degree Stephanie Zvan.

And they claim that THEY are the targets of a “witch hunt?” Perspective, please.

Continue reading “A little perspective on the troll cry of “witch-hunts””

A little perspective on the troll cry of “witch-hunts”

MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion

The question in question is, “if a woman is raped, do you support her right to an abortion?”

Woodworth’s the guy that’s trying to reopen the abortion debate as a private member proposal despite Harper’s campaign promise that the present abortion laws would not be revisited yet again. So, with tacit approval from his party — who, while they aren’t backing him explicitly, certainly are more than willing to allow the debate to happen, and with their steamroller house numbers would almost certainly win if they voted in lockstep with their party — here we go again. Expect no engagement on the topic in parliament, since that’s well out of fashion these days. But expect at the same time some heavy trolling on the internet to make it seem like there’s popular support. Not that the populace brought this forward, or are encouraging it.

Oh sure, he’ll engage personally with people like Steve Thoms (SomeCndnSkeptic) on Twitter for weeks on end, getting science wrong, getting the law wrong, getting simple words wrong, and smearing opponents as being like Bashar al-Assad, dictator of Syria.

Continue reading “MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion”

MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion

Ontario judge (maybe) to anti-choice activist: “You’re wrong and your God’s wrong”

Hat tip to Ibis3 for pointing this story out to me.

Apparently, according to “pro-life” news aggregator LifeSiteNews.com, Justice S. Ford Clements dispensed approbation judiciously to an anti-choice protester by the name of Mary Wagner who’s been harassing abortion clinic patients in violation of her probation. Dammit Janet reports:

[Wagner] was charged with mischief and two counts of failing to comply with probation orders (indicating previous brushes with the law, yes?).

She’d been harassing patients and workers at the Bloor West Village Women’s Clinic. But she’s not content to stand on the sidewalk with gory pictures; she enters the clinic with flowers, brochures, and counselling in-person harassment.

Continue reading “Ontario judge (maybe) to anti-choice activist: “You’re wrong and your God’s wrong””

Ontario judge (maybe) to anti-choice activist: “You’re wrong and your God’s wrong”

Matt Barber Godwins the whole abortion debate

And the shameless application of icing on the nonsense cake: pro-lifers are like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He actually thinks that abortion of a blastocyst is exactly like killing an adult human being for religious reasons. A woman’s right to bodily autonomy is exactly like the Holocaust. Unbelievable. How do you reason with people like him, exactly?

Via Right Wing Watch.

Matt Barber Godwins the whole abortion debate

Here we go again. Tory to reopen abortion debate in Canada

Despite Harper’s campaign promise that the abortion debate would not be reopened yet again, one of the bare few line items on his agenda I actually agree with, it looks like those “values” politicians in his extreme-right party just can’t leave well enough alone. Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth is attempting to get Parliament to take up debate on the topic by calling into question the legal definition of “human being” — and he may just get away with it, because he’s exercising his power as a private member to make his proposal, leading to debate and a vote. All this without sullying the Harper government’s reputation, such as it is, for following through on all its campaign promises.

Woodworth wants Parliament to create a committee of politicians whose task it will be to review a law that says unborn children are not legally considered human beings. If parliamentarians agree to Woodworth’s request, a special committee would review Section 223 of the Criminal Code that says a child becomes a human being only after its complete birth and not while it is still a fetus.

Continue reading “Here we go again. Tory to reopen abortion debate in Canada”

Here we go again. Tory to reopen abortion debate in Canada

Karen Handel: Komen defunding Planned Parenthood was a premeditated attack

… by Planned Parenthood.

That’s right, we’re now in full-on Bizarro World. Also, something something shakedown. Blah blah.

Does this strike anyone else as projection? I mean seriously, what exactly did Planned Parenthood do to “premeditatively attack” Komen? This is like saying Greedo shot first!
Continue reading “Karen Handel: Komen defunding Planned Parenthood was a premeditated attack”

Karen Handel: Komen defunding Planned Parenthood was a premeditated attack