Trump appoints an anti-abortion activist, who does not believe that birth control works, to head up a federal family planning program for low income Americans.

Teresa Manning.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Manning, a former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee and legislative analyst for the conservative Family Research Council, will serve as deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. The Office of Population Affairs administers the Title X program, which subsidizes contraception, Pap smears and other preventive health care services for 4 million low-income Americans, roughly half of whom are uninsured. 

Manning has said she opposes federal family planning funding, and she has a long history of making false claims about birth control and women’s health. 

“Of course, contraception doesn’t work,” she said in a 2003 NPR interview. “Its efficacy is very low especially when you consider over years, which you know a lot of contraception health advocates want, to start women in their adolescent years when they’re extremely fertile, incidentally. And continue for 10, 20, 30 years, over that span of time the prospect that contraception would always prevent the conception of a child is preposterous.” 

Manning has referred to abortion as “legalized crime” and mistakenly argued that emergency contraception, which can prevent pregnancy for up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, is “the destruction of a human life already conceived.” (It’s not.) She has also claimed that the link between abortion and breast cancer is “undisputed,” when there is actually no evidence of a causal relationship between the two. 

Just another example of Trump putting people in charge of programs so that they can undermine them or outright destroy them.

A woman who does not believe in contraception heading a family planning program, it is like an Onion article come to life.

Parents file lawsuit against California school for teaching abstinence only sex education classes, and they win!

Courtesy of HuffPo:

A judge in Fresno County, California, has ruled against an abstinence-only sex education program, saying a school district violated state law by failing to provide adequate instruction on sexual health and HIV prevention. 

Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald Black said a lawsuit against Clovis Unified School District was justified because the district failed to offer "comprehensive, medically accurate, objective and bias-free" education, in violation of the California Comprehensive Sexual Health & HIV/AIDS Prevention Act, adopted in 2003. The law requires public schools to "provide a pupil with the knowledge and skills necessary to protect his or her sexual and reproductive health from unintended pregnancy and STDs." 

"Given the high social cost of teen pregnancy and similar toll on society of HIV/ADIS [sic] and other sexually transmitted diseases, the rights vindicated by this suit, access to medically, and socially appropriate sexual education, is an important public right," Black wrote.

I have to admit that I was both shocked, and amazed by this ruling.

You mean there is a state in this country that is so reasonable that it is against the law to teach sex education courses to children which slut shames teenage girls and attacks contraceptive products as ineffective?

What madness is this?

You know I would say that this makes California the perfect place for liberals to raise your children if it wasn't for the fact that the state is always on fire and dry as a bone.

I only hope that this is going to set a precedent, and that other states will soon start suing schools that provide misinformation about contraception and lies to kids about sex.

Arizona school board member complains that Biology textbook violates her "religious rights." Decides to cut out offending pages. A little thing we call "censorship."

Courtesy of The New York Times:  

The textbook, the one with the wide-eyed lemur peering off the cover, has been handed out for years to students in honors biology classes at the high schools here, offering lessons on bread-and-butter subjects like mitosis and meiosis, photosynthesis and anatomy. 

But now, the school board in this suburb of Phoenix has voted to excise or redact two pages deep inside the book — 544 and 545 — because they discuss sexually transmitted diseases and contraception, including mifepristone, a drug that can be used to prevent or halt a pregnancy. 

A law passed two years ago in Arizona requires schools to teach “preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption” over abortion, and the school board decided that those pages were in violation of this law — even though the Arizona Education Department, which examined the book for compliance, found that they were not. 

The controversy has turned into a referendum on the 2012 law, with supporters saying the textbook content cannot be removed fast enough and opponents crying foul for any number of reasons: technical, ethical, pedagogical. But the Gilbert school board is moving forward, trying to figure out how to remove the material in question — by way of black markers or scissors, if need be — despite resistance from parents, residents, the American Civil Liberties Union and even the district’s superintendent. 

“It comes down to, it’s the law, and we need to be in compliance with the law,” said Julie Smith, a member of the Gilbert Public Schools governing board and also a parent who raised concerns about the book. “If people don’t like the law, they need to take it up with their state legislator. I don’t write the law. It’s my job to uphold it.”

The offending pages.

By the way that Julie Smith woman is apparently the driving force behind this censorship.

And here are her reasons why:

Ms. Smith, the school board member and parent, said she had been driving her family home from church back in January when her son told her about what was in the textbook. “I almost drove off the road,” she said. 

“I’m Catholic; we do not contracept,” Ms. Smith said. “It is a grave sin.” By including those pages in the curriculum, she added, “you have violated my religious rights.”

"We do not contracept?"  Well considering this woman's heavy handed parenting style that's probably too bad.

As for violating her religions rights? Well nobody's religious rights should have any impact whatsoever on what is taught in a public school classroom.

And in my opinion if science classes are taught in a factual manner than they should violate somebody's religious beliefs almost daily.

By the way you know that removing these pages, or using a sharpie to black them out, is going to do NOTHING to stop students from accessing them. It's called the internet folks, and if the kids want to read them (And after this you they all will.), then by gosh they will do exactly that.

Hey do you know how Fundamentalists always say that life begins at conception? The Mayo Clinic would like to politely disagree with that.

So for decades now the anti-abortion movement has been telling anybody who will listen, and many who are actively trying to run out of earshot, that life begins at conception.

They use this argument to not only fight against abortion, but to argue against emergency contraception pills, like Plan B.

However most people with even a rudimentary understanding of biology recognizes that a fertilized human egg is really not viable at conception, and in fact multiple billions of them never make it past the fertilization stage.

If you do not believe me, then here let the Mayo Clinic explain it better:

Weeks 1 and 2: Getting ready 

It might seem strange, but you're not actually pregnant the first week or two of the time allotted to your pregnancy. Yes, you read that correctly! 

Conception typically occurs about two weeks after your last period begins. To calculate your due date, your health care provider will count ahead 40 weeks from the start of your last period. This means your period is counted as part of your pregnancy — even though you weren't pregnant at the time. 

Week 3: Fertilization 

The sperm and egg unite in one of your fallopian tubes to form a one-celled entity called a zygote. If more than one egg is released and fertilized, you might have multiple zygotes. 

The zygote typically has 46 chromosomes — 23 from you and 23 from the father. These chromosomes help determine your baby's sex, traits such as eye and hair color, and, to some extent, personality and intelligence. 

Soon after fertilization, the zygote travels down the fallopian tube toward the uterus. At the same time, it will begin dividing to form a cluster of cells resembling a tiny raspberry — a morula.

Week 4: Implantation 

By the time it reaches the uterus, the rapidly dividing ball of cells — now known as a blastocyst — has separated into two sections. 

The inner group of cells will become the embryo. The outer group will become the cells that nourish and protect it. On contact, the blastocyst will burrow into the uterine wall for nourishment. This process is called implantation. 

The placenta, which will nourish your baby throughout the pregnancy, also begins to form.

Week 5: The embryonic period begins 

The fifth week of pregnancy, or the third week after conception, marks the beginning of the embryonic period. 

This is when the baby's brain, spinal cord, heart and other organs begin to form.

Kind of makes a difference when you recognize just how long it takes before a zygote even begins to look like an actual baby, don't you think?

The anti-abortion movement likes to use truly horrific images to upset people, but the facts are that the majority of abortions happen during the first trimester when the zygote/fetus is really one or two inches long, and it still quite undeveloped.

And if a woman takes an emergency contraception medication the chances are extremely good that the fertilized egg has not even attached itself to the uterine wall yet. And therefore is not yet, by medical standards, a viable pregnancy.

You would think that knowing that, anti-abortion activists would be all for contraception, both preventative and emergency, but they are not.

And the reason they are not is because this has nothing to do with saving potential human beings, and everything to do with oppressing women and making sure that there is a cost to any recreational sex that does not abide by the rules dictated in their morality.

Don't forget bitchez, today is #HobbyLobbyLoveDay! Update!

I actually tried to put this whole ridiculous thing out of my mind, but fucking Wonkette wouldn't let me: 

We know that the Hobby Lobby decision is dangerous and terrible for the nation, but for filthy liberal bloggers, it is for sure going to be the gift that keeps on giving, mostly because there is so much post-decision derp from the Hobby Lobbyists. We should have known that Bristol Palin, queen of being best at not using birth control, would weigh in with some extra-special stupid about how to celebrate the fact that now all ladies can be saddled with an unwanted unmarried teen pregnancy, which is what freedom is all about. Bristol’s plan? Shopping selfies, of course. 

July 3! You guys, that’s today! Get excited!! It even has a cool hashtag: #HobbyLobbyLove. 

Holy god, Bristol Palin, you are even dumber than your mother if you think that the entirety of Twitter isn’t going to hijack the fuck out of that hashtag and fill your supporters’ timelines with dick pics to show how they hobby and lobby and love. Bristol was also kind enough to give the world her email address so that you can send pix directly to her. 

Okay that's pretty good so maybe I will forgive Wonkette for making me remember that Sarah Palin's loser offspring continues to chase relevance by having her ghostwriter create blogposts that make it seem she can both read and understand current events.

So I traipsed on over to Brancy's blog to read how the campaign is going thus far.

And thus far there is nothing happening at all, as the most recent post is from yesterday.

 So as you can see things are going just as they usually go when the Palin's try to start some kind of socially relevant protest.

But have no fear, apparently Brancy's blog also has a twitter account. (Okay seriously how come I did not know that?)

Let's take a peek at the raging activism shall we??

@BristolsBlog @RuthMalhotra @HobbyLobbyStore On my way! Will stop and get a milkshake at Chick-fil-a too!
— Mrs.Prim (@PrimMrs) July 3, 2014

Wow a day of buying sparkly glue and adding a few extra pounds, sounds like heaven.

July 3, 2014 --->> #HobbyLobbyLove day!! Go buy something in a store or online. 💵💸💰
— Mamaholzhauer (@Jensavedbygrace) July 2, 2014

Not to nitpick, but since the idea is to take selfies of yourself while shopping at a Hobby Lobby store, how would shopping online help accomplish that objective? I'm over thinking this aren't I?

@Jensavedbygrace @NancyAFrench Just about my favorite store! I love the tranquility that is ever present there.
— toni (@lorent5709) July 3, 2014

Okay does anybody else think that "toni" sounds suspiciously like a certain half term governor turned Facebook troll?

Well it is still early so perhaps eventually one of Bristol's fans will actually be able to find a Hobby Lobby store and  take a picture of themselves protesting the right of women to have access to certain birth control that the Bible clearly states were manufactured by Satan.

I mean anything's possible. 

Update: Okay well since I wrote this post Brancy finally got off her ass and updated the blog.

And there has been some response:

Yes the courage to deny women birth control is so admirable.

Some could not be bothered to go in, but they participated as well.

You know kind of.

However the REAL fun is happening over at the #HobbyLobbyLove Twitter page.

Feeling the #HobbyLobbyLove, tying my wife's tubes has never been easier! Thanks #DrHobbyLobby pic.twitter.com/kEt5ryhFhX
— Scott Wooledge (@Clarknt67) July 3, 2014

Dear, #DrHobbyLobby, I indulged in a little #HobbyLobbyLove. And now it burns when I pee. Should I sacrifice a lamb or will a goat do?
— Scott Wooledge (@Clarknt67) July 3, 2014

Best way to show #HobbyLobbyLove is to go in fill up your shopping cart and just before you finish pull out
— King k Damon (@kingkdamon) July 3, 2014

A lovely Hobby Lobby visitor snapped this today... Sharing the #HobbyLobbyLove pic.twitter.com/75IOqiQb2k
— Brett Dewey (@BrettDewey) July 3, 2014

Me thinks that certain people are having WAY too much fun with this.

But hey, it's at the expense of a Palin so who could blame them?

My new go to guy for explaining Right Wing politics, John Oliver, explains the Hobby Lobby lawsuit. Update!

Yes I realize that this aired the night BEFORE the decision, however it is still the best take on it that I have seen thus far.

Oh, and it's freaking hysterical too.

Update: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have now weighed in on this decision as well. As you can imagine they are very displeased.

Just a reminder that Hobby Lobby may have abandoned women, but they have no problem providing for men. Update!

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Hobby Lobby -- now free to drop emergency "morning after" pills and intrauterine devices from its workers' health insurance plans -- has given no indication that it plans to stop helping its male employees obtain erectile dysfunction treatments. 

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the craft store chain, owned by evangelical Christians, doesn't have to pay for health care coverage of contraceptives prohibited by its owners' religion. 

But pills and pumps that help a man stiffen his penis in preparation for sex are perfectly acceptable.

Yes that's right ladies, Hobby Lobby is all about helping your man get a boner, but if that throbbing scepter of conception fertilizes one of those slutty eggs of yours they do not want anything to do with the fact that you may be saddled with an eighteen year commitment that will seriously hijack your life.

You know it dawned on me today that the ratio of men to women that come into a Hobby Lobby store must be about one or two for every hundred. I mean I looked through their online store and I quickly realized that this is the kind of store that most men would only enter if their wife was dragging them in by their hair.

And, though I have never been to one, I have to imagine that the number of women working in the store must outnumber the men by similar margins.

No, I'm sure there are SOME men working there. You know in a managerial capacity, because though the ladies look nice and are great at selling fabric they simply don't have the intellect for maintaining inventory or handling the money.

Right Mr. green?

And after considering all that I had only one question.

This is an organization that relies almost one hundred percent on female clientele and yet they went to the Supreme Court in order to be excluded from providing to their female employees the kind of health insurance that virtually every other company in the country MUST provide to them, and yet found nothing objectionable about providing males employees (All six of them) health insurance that helps to pay for a pump which allows them to get an erection anytime they want.

And if that were not enough hypocrisy for you do not forget that Hobby Lobby's retirement plan invests quite heavily in contraception manufacturers.

And yes that includes the emergency contraception medications that they seem so adamantly against providing to their employees.

Update: Just when you thought all of this could not be more galling, it also seems that before Hobby Lobby was against providing access to emergency contraception on their health care plans they were for it. 

Arizona pastor claims birth control "promotes whoredom."

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Arizona Pastor Steven Anderson warned his congregation recently that birth control was not only turn women into “whores,” it was also destroying the country. 

In a sermon posted online this week, the Faithful Word Baptist Church leader explained that contraception was “not something Christians should be practicing,” even though he acknowledged that 99 percent of Christians believed it was acceptable. 

Anderson pointed out that God, in the book of Genesis, had made childbearing painful to punish women for their Original Sin, adding that the husband “shall rule over thee.” 

He argued that feminism had “given women the power” to decide when to have children for themselves, allowing them to have careers and follow other interests. 

“It used to be a young women, she gets married, she has children, and that’s her job,” he lamented. “They literally count my wife as unemployed! She’s not unemployed, she doesn’t want to be employed. I mean, she’s a wife, she’s a mother.”

Yeah, you know whether she wants to be employed or not, if she does not draw a salary then she is in fact unemployed. What a moron!

But Pastor Dumbass was not done showing his ignorance yet.

“Not only does birth control do damage to women, it hurts their body if they’re using the pills. And it also affects their character, causing them to be an idle, tattler, gossip, turning aside after Satan,” he insisted. 

Women would “get into sin” if they were not “busy” raising children, Anderson said.

After mocking actress Annette Funicello for once promoting birth control in the 50's, Anderson followed it up with this little gem.  

“It promotes promiscuity, it promotes whoredom!” he advised, reading from the Bible: “Do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to be a whore, lest the land fall to whoredom and the land become full of wickedness!” 

“A land can call to whoredom!” he exclaimed. “And the United States today, fits that bill. If anybody has ever fit that bill, it’s the United States of America.”

And that my friends is why you do not take advice about sex, marriage, and relationships from a book that was written when people still considered women property, and did not really understand human reproduction.

I was going to call this guy a caveman, but I really think that would be an insult to cavemen.

Hard to believe that somebody this anti-woman managed to find some poor female to marry him.

Christian radio broadcaster James Dobson wins temporary injunction against requirement to provide access to emergency contraception to female emplyees.

Courtesy of ABC 7 in Denver: 

Christian radio broadcaster James Dobson has won a temporary injunction preventing the federal government from requiring his ministry to include the morning-after pill and other emergency contraception in its health insurance. 

A federal judge in Denver issued the injunction. 

Dobson sued in December, saying the Affordable Care Act mandate to provide the contraception violates the religious beliefs of his Colorado Springs-based ministry, called Family Talk.

Good news for employees of Dobson's Family Talk radio show with a uterus. You no longer have to struggle with that  painful decision of what to do in the case of an unplanned pregnancy.

James Dobson has made that decision for you.

You have to keep it, and of course if you terminate it using your own money, then it is very likely, considering Dobson's draconian views on abortion, that you will lose not only a potential child, but also a very real job.

Isn't religion great?

The pro-life movement around the world thinks it is saving lives. But in fact it is helping to end them.

Courtesy of the Thomas Reuters Foundation:  

Unsafe abortion kills nearly 50,000 women a year, making it one of the major preventable causes of maternal mortality, yet many countries, including the United States and Spain, are trying to impose tighter legal restrictions on abortion, according to Ipas, a global NGO that works to advance women’s sexual and reproductive rights. 

There are an estimated 22 million unsafe abortions around the world every year, mainly in developing countries, and over the past 20 years unsafe abortions have killed more than 1 million women and girls globally and injured 100 million, Ipas president and CEO Elizabeth Maguire said. 

At present, “47,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions - the equivalent of 200 jumbo jet planes crashing with no survivors every year,” Maguire said. “It’s intolerable that these deaths and injuries continue to occur in the 21st century.”

In many of these countries religious groups actively discourage, and even outlaw abortion, forcing desperate women to seek a solution to their "problem" elsewhere.

Without access to regulated medical facilities many of these women wind up mutilated, rendered sterile, or dead.

And where abortions are legally permitted, the number of procedures do not go up, they go down.

“Where abortion laws are liberalised, the number of people having abortions is lower,” said Zane Dangor, special adviser to South Africa’s social development minister and a member of that country’s delegation to the ICPD. 

The frightening thing is that, especially in America, the very organizations which work to reduce unwanted pregnancies, like Planned Parenthood, are vilified and driven out of business all in the name of preserving a potential life, while often jeopardizing an already viable, and productive life instead.

Not only that but many of the women seeking an abortion are already mothers, who are unable, or unwilling, to care for another child.

Their death not only affect them, it affects the children left behind.

Outlawing abortion, or making it more difficult to attain, does NOT end abortion. It only increases the chances that when an abortion is performed it will end not one life, but two.

Hobby Lobby hypocrisy alert.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k). 

Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby's retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby's health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.

Seriously?

These assholes are making money off of the companies which manufacture these medications while also suing so that their female employees don't get access to them through the company health plan?

And just when I thought I had seen it all.

Senator Elizabeth Warren weighs in on the Supreme Court's upcoming Hobby Lobby decision and her prognosis is not good.

Courtesy of Elizabeth Warren's blog: 

Hobby Lobby doesn't want to cover its employees' birth control on company insurance plans. In fact, they're so outraged about women having access to birth control that they've taken the issue all the way to the Supreme Court. 

I cannot believe that we live in a world where we would even consider letting some big corporation deny the women who work for it access to the basic medical tests, treatments or prescriptions that they need based on vague moral objections. 

But here's the scary thing: With the judges we've got on the Supreme Court, Hobby Lobby might actually win. 

The current Supreme Court has headed in a very scary direction. 

Recently, three well-respected legal scholars examined almost 20,000 Supreme Court cases from the last 65 years. They found that the five conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are in the top 10 most pro-corporate justices in more than half a century. 

And Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts? They were number one and number two. 

Take a look at the win rate of the national Chamber of Commerce cases before the Supreme Court. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, the Chamber was winning 43% of the cases in participated in during the later years of the Burger Court, but that shifted to a 56% win-rate under the Rehnquist Court, and then a 70% win-rate with the Roberts Court. 

Follow these pro-corporate trends to their logical conclusion, and pretty soon you'll have a Supreme Court that is a wholly owned subsidiary of big business.

Warren goes on to warn that this could just be the beginning and that future rulings could be even worse. You know because I was not already freaked out enough.

And she's right.

This court was packed with conservative big business sycophants, who seem to care less about the law then they do political ideology. And isn't it always the OTHER side complaining about "activist judges?"

I hate to wish for any ill to come to anybody, but perhaps the best thing for the future of this country is for Justice Scalia or Justice Thomas to choke to death on a chicken bone so that President Obama, or President Hillary, can put some young whippersnapper with a strong heart and a progressive outlook to take their place.

As it is there really is a fairly reasonable chance that this decision might actually come down on the side of Hobby Lobby. Which in my opinion should remove any doubt that the Supreme court is now a subsidiary of big business and religious zealots.

Why the Supreme Court hearing the Hobby Lobby case next week should concern all of us.

Courtesy of Slate:

Most of the coverage of the case has focused on Hobby Lobby's objection to the contraception itself and how, if the business prevails, its employees will have to pay out of pocket for things like birth control pills or IUDs. But, as Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress explained on Wednesday, Hobby Lobby and their co-plaintiff, Conestoga Wood Specialties, are also objecting to insurance plans covering "related education and counseling" for contraception. In other words, these for-profit businesses aren't just asking their female employees to pay for their own contraception, even though they are already paying for their own contraception by paying for their insurance coverage. These companies want to elbow their way into doctor's offices and call the shots on what doctors can and cannot say to Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood employees. 

"Essentially, if Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood are successful, they’ll win the right to refuse to extend coverage for doctor’s visits that include discussion about certain forms of contraception, like IUDs or the morning after pill," Culp-Ressler writes. That would probably be something insurance companies could deal with if there was such thing as a specialized doctor's appointment to only discuss contraception. In the real world, however, most women receive their contraception counseling at general gynecological appointments or annual checkups. You go in, get your blood taken, get a Pap smear, get your breasts squeezed, and then your doctor asks what you use for contraception, and you walk out with a prescription in hand. If Hobby Lobby has its way, by merely acknowledging the birth control pill during that appointment, your doctor would render your entire visit ineligible for coverage by your health care plan. 

"This isn't something that generally is billed separately from a health care visit," Adam Sonfield, a senior public policy associate for the Guttmacher Institute, explained to me over the phone. "As far as we can tell, the only way to implement this objection would be to say that if your visit is going to be reimbursed by your health care plan, then your doctor can't talk to you about certain topics your employer objects to." 

 It's unclear if the plaintiffs just haven't considered how unworkable their ask is, or if marginalizing contraception consultation by making it too fraught to be discussed during a standard doctor's appointment is the intention here. 

No I think that was DEFINITELY the intention here. 

These Fundamentalists believe that their faith gives them the responsibility to enforce their version of morality wherever they see fit.

So if this ruling goes in Hobby Lobby's favor then even a discussion with your doctor about contraception during a visit would mean you could not bill it to your company's insurance policy.

To be clear that means that an employer could, in some ways, dictate what takes place in an employee's bedroom. Married or not.

I cannot help but think this is the employer's version of purity balls.

New coalition of American religious leaders are speaking up in favor of abortions rights, contraception, and sexual education. Yeah, you heard that right!

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

On Wednesday, several religious leaders are launching a new campaign to reorient the conversation around religion and sexuality. Specifically, the coalition of faith groups is interested in speaking up in favor of abortion rights, contraception access, and comprehensive sex ed. They’re encouraging their fellow religious Americans to join them. 

At a press conference on Wednesday morning, representatives from several faith traditions will join with advocates from secular reproductive justice groups to kick off “It’s Time To Talk,” an effort to model a new way forward on these issues. 

A religious call for reproductive rights may seem like a contradiction. Many Americans assume that these issues are always in conflict with faith, particularly when it comes to Christianity. But Rev. Harry Knox, the president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), doesn’t think that’s true. 

“Part of the conversation is not getting out there in this country,” Knox explained in an interview with ThinkProgress. “For too long, the extreme Religious Right has dominated the public conversation about religion and sexuality. But the truth is that most people of faith, like the majority of Americans overall, support access to contraception, comprehensive sexuality education, and reproductive health care — including abortion.” 

Indeed, the majority of religious groups don’t actually support overturning Roe v. Wade. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, many religious Americans are able to separate their own beliefs from other women’s bodily autonomy — so even though they’re personally opposed to abortion, they don’t want to make the medical procedure unavailable. Some faith traditions officially recognize a woman’s right to choose. And some churches even teach sex ed on Sunday mornings. 

Okay what just happened here?

Are Christians in America REALLY going to buck the trend and start speaking out for the rights of women, and access to education about sex and birth control? Is that even possible?

Oh I can hardly wait until Fox News gets wind of this!

New Pope says that problem with the Roman Catholic Church is its obsession with abortion, homosexuality, and contraception. Wait, what did I just read?

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Pope Francis, in the first extensive interview of his six-month-old papacy, said that the Roman Catholic Church had grown “obsessed” with preaching about abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he has chosen not to speak of those issues despite recriminations from some critics. 

In remarkably blunt language, Francis sought to set a new tone for the church, saying it should be a “home for all” and not a “small chapel” focused on doctrine, orthodoxy and a limited agenda of moral teachings. “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” the pope told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a fellow Jesuit and editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal whose content is routinely approved by the Vatican. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. 

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.” 

The interview was conducted in Italian during three meetings in August in the pope’s spartan quarters in Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guesthouse, and translated into English by a team of translators. Francis has chosen to live at Casa Santa Marta rather than in what he said were more isolated quarters at the Apostolic Palace, home to many of his predecessors.

Holy, Holy, HOLY shit!

Hang on, let me get my bearings here.

Is this Pope actually recognizing that the church's homophobia, aggressive anti-contraception, and fanatic anti-abortion stances, are helping to usher in its demise?

Because if he is that would be huge!

 If this keeps up I may actually start to like this guy. And that would be virtually unprecedented. Though I have to admit I did have some grudging respect for Pope John Paul.

And if this keeps up the Catholic Church just might be able to evolve enough to survive in America and European countries where there has been a steady decline in those identifying themselves as "Catholics."

Hmm, I am not sure if I think this is good news, or bad news. I think I will reserve judgement for now.

Since when do corporations have "religious rights?" Well, apparently since now.

Courtesy of RH Reality Check: 

After hearing arguments Friday, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued an order temporarily exempting Hobby Lobby from complying with the contraception benefit in the Affordable Care Act, which requires it to offer insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar birth control or face steep fines. The ruling moves the national fight over the constitutionality of the contraception benefit a significant step closer to the Supreme Court, but also shows a deep divide within the federal judiciary over whether or not corporations have constitutional religious rights. 

The terse, four-page order is the first to flatly bar the federal government from enforcing any part of the contraceptive benefit in the federal health-care law. Judge Heaton, who earlier had turned down an identical request by Hobby Lobby to delay enforcement (his request was overturned by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals), took the opportunity to jab back at the court of appeals, holding that Hobby Lobby had “newly recognized religious rights” that drove much of the conclusion to block enforcement, despite his earlier order refusing to do so. These “newly recognized religious rights,” Heaton’s order makes clear, stem from the Tenth Circuit’s ruling that business firms can take on the religious views of their owners and then exercise those rights on their own in the way they conduct their business operations. 

Judge Heaton made clear that, thanks to the Tenth Circuit’s ruling, he had very little choice other than to grant Hobby Lobby’s request to block the benefit.

Damn do I find THIS troubling. 

So if, as the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals contends, business firms can take on the religious views of their owners what stops a business owned by Muslims to demand that all of their female employees wear Hijabs or even cover themselves completely?

What stops a Jehovah's Witness business owner from mandating that there be no mention, or celebrating of birthdays or Christmas on the premises due to their belief that they are pagan customs?

Or for that matter if a business is to be an extension of the owner's religious faith, what stops them from discriminating against those of other faiths?

I guess Mitt Romney was right, "Corporations are people my friend."

Like I said, troubling.

Perhaps the BEST letter ever written by an elected Republican politician.

His name is Rep. Doug Cox and he represents District 5 in Oklahoma. That's right OKLAHOMA!

Here is what rep. Cox wrote in a letter to the Oklahoman:  

All of the new Oklahoma laws aimed at limiting abortion and contraception are great for the Republican family that lives in a gingerbread house with a two-car garage, two planned kids and a dog. In the real world, they are less than perfect. 

As a practicing physician (who never has or will perform an abortion), I deal with the real world. In the real world, 15- and 16-year-olds get pregnant (sadly, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds do also). In the real world, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who give birth are unmarried. And in the world I work and live in, an unplanned pregnancy can throw up a real roadblock on a woman's path to escaping the shackles of poverty. 

Yet I cannot convince my Republican colleagues that one of the best ways to eliminate abortions is to ensure access to contraception. A recent attempt by my fellow lawmakers to prevent Medicaid dollars from covering the “morning after” pill is a case in point. Denying access to this important contraceptive is a sure way to increase legal and back-alley abortions. Moreover, such a law would discriminate against low-income women who depend on Medicaid for their health care. 

But wait, some lawmakers want to go even further and limit everyone's access to birth control by allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraception. 

What happened to the Republican Party that I joined? The party where conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater felt women should have the right to control their own destiny? The party where President Ronald Reagan said a poor person showing up in the emergency room deserved needed treatment regardless of ability to pay? What happened to the Republican Party that felt government should not overregulate people until (as we say in Oklahoma) “you have walked a mile in their moccasins”? 

Is my thinking too clouded by my experiences in the real world? Experiences like having a preacher, in the privacy of an exam room say, “Doc, you have heard me preach against abortion but now my 15-year-old daughter is pregnant, where can I send her?” Or maybe it was that 17-year-old foreign exchange student who said, “I really made a mistake last night. Can you prescribe a morning-after pill for me? If I return to my home country pregnant, life as I know it will be over.” 

What happened to the Republican Party that felt that the government has no business being in an exam room, standing between me and my patient? Where did the party go that felt some decisions in a woman's life should be made not by legislators and government, but rather by the women, her conscience, her doctor and her God?

By the way Rep. Cox is also doctor who has delivered more than 800 babies. So he kind of knows what he's talking about.

Is this guy SURE he's in the right party?

Hopes that the new Pope might usher in a newer kinder Catholicism crushed as he reenforces crackdown on "feminist" nuns.

Courtesy of Time: 

The Vatican says Pope Francis supports the Holy See’s crackdown on the largest umbrella group of U.S. nuns, who were faulted for focusing too much on social justice instead of issues such as abortion. 

American sisters had expressed hope that Francis, a Jesuit whose emphasis on the poor mirrored their social outreach, would take a different approach than his predecessor. 

The Vatican last year imposed a reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious after determining the sisters took positions undermining Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting “radical feminist themes.” 

And what caused this rift and resulted in the nun being referred to as "radical feminists?"

Obamacare of course.

This from Slate:

The organization speaks out on policy issues, especially those pertaining to social justice and provides leadership training to the approximately 57,000 nuns it represents. The original religious disagreement between the Vatican and the LCWR focused largely on the end-of-life and abortion debates in the U.S., especially in the context of President Obama's health care reform law.

So essentially the Pope simply cannot tolerate the American nuns recognizing the importance of women being allowed to have a say over their own reproductive system, and continues to demand that they submit to the will of the men instead. 

So much for progress within the Catholic church.

You know might be a good time to remind everybody exactly WHY the Catholic church remains so adamant against abortion and birth control.

Here is hint, it has NOTHING to do with babies and EVERYTHING to do with perceived infallibility.

In anti-abortion zeal Texas Republicans cut funds to family planning clinics, now scrambling to replace funding with realization those cuts may result in 24,000 additional births at a cost to taxpayers of 273 million.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

The fight to restore family-planning financing that was cut from the Texas budget in the last legislative session has taken a turn toward primary care. Republican state senators have proposed adding $100 million to a state-run primary care program specifically for women’s health services, an effort that could help avoid a political fight over subsidizing specialty family-planning clinics. 

“It’s a much better way to treat the women because they don’t just have family-planning issues,” said Senator Robert Deuell, Republican of Greenville, a family physician who has advocated an increase in primary-care services for women. 

Using taxpayer dollars to finance family-planning services has become politically thorny in Texas, largely because of Republican lawmakers’ assertions that the women’s health clinics providing that care are affiliated with abortion providers. In the fiscal crunch of 2011, the Legislature cut the state’s family-planning budget by two-thirds, with some lawmakers claiming that they were defunding the “abortion industry.” Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, found that more than 50 family-planning clinics had closed statewide as a result. 

Now, amid estimates that the cuts could lead to 24,000 additional 2014-15 births at a cost to taxpayers of $273 million, lawmakers are seeking a way to restore financing without ruffling feathers.

Oops, I guess perhaps Texas Republicans did not realize that the cost of allowing every possible human life to be born was so damn costly.

“There’s an advantage to guiding that money to the family planning, that preventive care piece, because that’s where the cost savings occur,” said Janet Realini, leader of the Texas Women’s Healthcare Coalition.

Yeah no kidding.

Of course Planned Parenthood could have told them that, except Texas cut funding to them, which is essentially what drove many of these clinics out of business.

Thankfully there may be some help coming to Texas through Obamacare. That will provide funding for family planning services and access to contraception, which clearly Texas is in dire need of receiving.

What's that you say? The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has rejected the Affordable Care Act?

Well fuck Texas then. Ya'll are just reaping what you done sowed.

Gee I wonder how many of those 24,000 births are to people whose skin might be less than lily white, and who are predisposed to vote Democratic? It is quite possible that decisions like this might hasten Texas's emergence as a solidly blue state much earlier than previously predicted.

Good job shit kickers!

Pastor claims that women who use the pill have "tiny fetuses embedded in their wombs" and serve as "graveyards for lots of little babies."

From Americans Against the Tea Party:

TEApublican radio host Pastor Kevin Swanson is certainly no scientist. On his radio show he claimed that upon examination by “certain doctors and certain scientists” that “there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb…Those wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.”

I almost don't even know where to begin with this one.

This idiot's lack of knowledge about how women's bodies work, what the pill actually does, and how babies are made is beyond comprehension.

The insane part is that there are people listening to his radio show who believe that, simply due to his credentials as a minister, he has some revealed knowledge that they need to accept as fact.

Of course there are NO doctors or scientists that have "done research on women's wombs" and discovered tiny fetuses embedded in them, that is simply something this idiot made up and expects others to accept without questions.

And the sad thing is that due to being undereducated, home schooled, or educated in a Christian school, there are a number of people who will simply buy into these statements without any further research.

Sometimes there is just so much stupid in this country that it is exhausting.