Comments on Hello? Straight People?

Does swallowing kill babies? I just want to have a clear conscience.

The Pope's condemnation of the Pill saved me from a childhood of Sunday masses, Catechism classes, Catholic school and mean nuns, because my Irish Catholic Mom parted ways with the church at that point. Yay!

Do you really think enough people will take them seriously for this to change anything? This seems silly to me.

After this it would be tyin' the tubes. La la la. You can't do that. God is bliss. Pray. Repent. Hate your life like we do. You have to be miserable like us. Rama rama ding dong.

You know, I could almost understand the pro-life side if they would simply stick to protesting the physical act of abortion in favor of an adoption alternative, but that would never happen with nuts like these.

Yeah, Ziggity, actually, it does. You're basically dumping billions of little bitty babies into the roiling acid bath that is your stomach. Feel like a jerk much?

;)

I like how they've combined the happy, Martha Stewart-esque lime colour there with the "Xtreme" font. I don't know, maybe they thought that green was evocative of the nausea and general ickiness of killing tiny little eggs I MEAN babies.

fight back in what way, dan? other than knowing those people are wackos, of course.

"The pill kills babies", while hysterically exaggerated, does have some truth to it. Certain types of pills don't work by restricting ovulation so much as they work by restricting the passage of sperm into the uterus. When that fails (which it often does), they restrict implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

Wow. Someone needs to take a biology class.

This isn't silly or frivolous. One of my male students asked in class recently, "Is the Pill considered abortion?" This was from a freshman at a private but non-denominational university. Rather than answer him myself, a number of women in the class patiently explained why it's not. My initial alarm was replaced by a sigh of relief, but still, it shows you how pervasive the religious right's propaganda is when otherwise intelligent (if naive and impressionable) students can be confused by this issue.

Wait for a Bush-like "Teach the controversy!" tactic (borrowed from evolution vs. "intelligent" design) to further undermine reproductive rights.

Of course, that type of pill is pretty ineffective and most people don't use it, but as somewhat of a pro-life sympathizer I do have to cede that point.

The girl in the picture looks very "edgy" and "indy", so the pill really must kill.

Moralism aside, I am convinced - and have been convinced since I was a kid, and Roe vs Wade became law - that a good chunk of the "Pro-Life" crowd are people who don't want to see a woman "get away" with having had sex. It's the whole puritan thing.

how do we fight back? i'm actually scared for my rights as a woman... my friend trying to get the morning after pill went through hell going to so many different pharmacies before she finally found one that would give it to her. on the third day... (ok so she wasted the first day but still)

seriously i'm actually worried.

Yeah, this is stupid. The question we can all engage in is, "When DO reproductive right go to far?" Those are the frontiers we're approaching. It's not about abortion or prophylactics anymore, it's cloning and genetic selection. Will there be a moral common ground, or will everyone shit on me when I impart multipliers of my "extremely good-looking" gene into my children with some sort of futuristic atomizer-injector? That's the question.

When you go to this org's website, you learn that one of their sponsors is Pro-Life Wisconsin. On July 28, 2007, Pro-Life WI supported a reenactment of the 1994 murder of Florida abortion provider Dr. John Britton on the streets of Milwaukee. That's not a just a commemoration or even an effing celebration, but an actual REENACTMENT of his murder by "pro-life" extremists. The initial story in the Milwaukee alt-weekly The Shepherd Express is no longer available on their site - crappy archives - but it is widely referenced in the blogosphere and my partner and I kept a hard copy. Note that Pro-Life Wisconsin denies their involvement, but that folks have pictures of their van and video of their executive director at the event.

Good to know that only the classiest of organizations are behind The Pill Kills!

w7ngman@ 8: "Certain types of pills don't work by restricting ovulation so much as they work by restricting the passage of sperm into the uterus."

what? how does a PILL do that? that's a barrier method's job. seeing as how i already have children and fertility issues no longer personally concern me, i might not be up on the latest...but this sounds erroneous to me.

If a couple has sex and doesn't tell anyone,
will a fundie still get pissed?

Years ago I saw George Carlin in concert in top form poking fun at the arguments these ridiculous pro-life anti-birth control extremists insist on inflicting on us. He took their arguments to their logical extreme and pointed out that if we are going to define life from the very very beginning, like they insist we should, that technically every time a woman is fertile and DOESN'T take the opportunity to become impregnated, everytime she gets her period, it is evidence of her obliterating another life. She is flushing lives down the toilet. Literally. Carlin concludes that must means all us women not actively seeking pregnancy every month of our lives during the entire length of our child bearing years are.....MASS MURDERERS!!!

What next, mass demonstrations of pissed off pro-lifers singing "Every Sperm is Sacred" and waving candles?

Your army is ready for orders General Dan.

Does that mean heaven is littered with tiny little four-celled *babies*? It must be slippery in heaven, cause it's simply not possible for a four celled angel to have wings.
Maybe they have a separate corner of heaven though.
Or maybe just maybe god likes to bathe in a vat of them. It would keep his skin looking young, and he'd have more children touching his genitals than the most Catholic of priests, but then again he's god.

@19 - That would be a wonderful counterprotest, especially if people dressed up for it.

Pills do not restrict sperm from entering the cervix/uterus - that is the job of barrier methods. Some pills do change the consistency of vaginal mucous making it more thick and thus more of a physical barrier to sperm passage.

Good thing I already got an IUD. They'll have to pry that copper tube from my cold, dead uterus.

That's hot.

My mother and aunts remember the bad old days when UN-married women were refused the pill, because sex out of wedlock is slutty and sinful. I thought those days were over but a buddy told me that her previous OB/GYN went fundie (a female doctor yet!) and now refuses to dispense birth control of any kind to anyone.

Periods kill millions of half-babies every month.

Spread the word: the pill saves the unborn! ...just make sure you don't take the sugar pill at the end of the month.

I am fully pro-choice, and am fully in favor of all kinds of birth control.... so does that make me weird if I actually want one of these shirts anyway.

unpaid blogger makes a very good reductio ad absurdem point here: the pill keeps you from releasing eggs to be wasted and flushed--it keeps them in your bod. so, by the nutshells' logic, it actually saves "babies." someone should tell them, quick, so they can take b.c. pills off their list of murderers. and off their t-shirts, too. hah.

#27 is right.

Just a normal ole period flushes more fertilized eggs than any 'birth-control' method. Seems like even God didn't want a woman pregnant every month.

The pro-lifers should sue GOD!!

This is why I want Senator Clinton to be on the US Supreme Court.

Besides, even if @12 is the most insightful, it's not like two-thirds of all preganancies end by God aborting the baby.

"Spontaneous" ... yeah sure, it's God. He's telling the Pope to damn him ...

Read "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Republican politicians don't want to outlaw contraception any more than they want to outlaw abortion. It would be the worst thing in the world for the Republican party if the Supreme Court fully overturned Roe v Wade and congress enacted a national abortion ban.

Here's how it works: blowdried Republican candidate X gets on the stump and rails about homersexuals and abortionists. Mouthbreathers applaud. X goes to Washington, spends all his time getting tax breaks for the rich. Goes back to East Bumfuck in two years and says "I tried to fix the system, but the liberal media and the hollywood elites are just too powerful. But this year we're gonna do it!" Repeat ad infinitum.

This has worked for them for almost twenty years.

Half of all fertilized eggs fail to implant in a woman's uterus. If anything, since the pill mostly prevents ovulation, fewer precious wittle baybees are killed when women are on the pill.

No, the Pill does not cause abortions.

No, it doesn't.

Just no.

Seriously. Not even one.

All of that bullshit comes from the advertising propaganda some of the pharm companies use, which claims that oral contraceptives work by "inhibiting sperm passage, preventing eggs from ripening, and preventing implantation in the case of fertilization."

The first claim is doubtful at best and kind of irrelevant, and subsequent medical research has shown the third to be FALSE.

It is this third claim - that the Pill inhibits implantation - that the fundies are using to call oral contraceptives abortificients. And they are lying. No study has ever been able to show that oral contraceptives (normal or Emergency) lead to the failure to implant of an otherwise viable fetus.

People repeat this lie constantly and it makes me crazy.

from their site:
Ways in which the pill destroys relationships:

* It easily opens the door for marital infidelity;

* it especially opens the door for temptation to youth;

* “a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and… reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.”

wow.... scary! (if it were true)

Holy crap. This is insane.

The only thing "outlawing" contraceptives or abortions would do is clean up the statistics. There'd be a marked increase in poor guys punching their girlfriends in the stomach to get rid of "the problem" and middle-class and wealthy women flying to Europe for "a procedure", but no one keeps track of that, so that's OK.

Perfect for the Republicans.

But they'll never get rid of abortion. It's too much of a guaranteed vote getter. Without abortion, the Catholic vote would probably go Democractic, as would the fundies.

This seems like a desprate hail mary pass. The fundies are losing ground in the culture wars and they hope that overturning the Griswold decision takes down privacy rights across the board. The scary thing is that the current Supreme Court might do just that.

@21: Y'know what the worst thing about all of this is? That heaven ISN'T littered with four-celled babies. Because now that God has revealed to the Church that Limbo doesn't actually exist, where are all the innocent pre-born babies to go? Bet you didn't think THAT one out, Benedict XVI! Ha!

"The pill doesn't kill babies. I kill babies."

"Baby. It's what's for dinner."

"Save diapers for the elderly; eat a baby."

"The best way to stop abortions is self-sterilization. Here, use my coathanger."

Just a few bumper sticker ideas I had to help fight the war against pro-lifers. It should help, y'know, before I become world dictator and have all these excessive breeders chemically sterilized.

It's not that these points of view are widespread. What's so terrifying is that these kooks can take the reigns of government because most of us can't be bothered to pay attention.

#16, read #23. That's what I was talking about.

#35, so you're saying the Physician's Desk Reference is wrong? If you're going to make claims that everyone is lying and full of bullshit, maybe you could cite your "subsequent medical research" as to avoid looking like you're making shit up?

Days like this I miss living in Canada where all this pretty much ended about 30 years ago.

What do you suggest we do to fight back?

@ 42: Amen! I second that emotion.

This is on the same level of batshit-insanity as the Westboro Baptist Church and Scientology.

"Ever notice that most pro-lifers are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?"
-George Carlin

@36: I donno about "scary". Maybe I want a man to see me as "a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires."

...good thing I'm on the pill.

Here's what that site says about Planned Parenthood:

“Planned Parenthood is an organization that exploits young people in order to make a profit, by recruiting them as customers.”

Um. No it doesn’t. It’s a non-profit.

GOD I hate liars.

Griswold overturned? I don't see what we have to worry about, I mean, how many loony tune right-wing Catholics are there on the Supreme Court, anyway? Oh...

Voting. It's important.