No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The dumb leading the blind

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act was introduced by [Senator Sam] Brownback and would require women who were seeking an abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy be notified of possible pain an abortion might cause to the fetus.

It would also require women be offered an anesthetic for the fetus. (Link)

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis is a staunch Roman Catholic, used to give communion to her patients and says she strongly opposes abortion.

So The Journal of the American Medical Association's editor-in-chief says she had to take a walk around the block after receiving dozens of "horrible, vindictive" e-mails condemning her for publishing an article that says fetuses likely don't feel pain until late pregnancy. (Link)

I've had it with the anti-choice brigade (ACB). They have zero credibility as far as I'm concerned. For all their pious mouthing about the emotional bond they feel with the contents of a stranger's uterus, it's pretty clear what their real agenda is - control. Control over women mostly, but also control over people they resent for being smarter and better educated than them - doctors. And women doctors - that's like a red flag to a bull!

Not long ago it was "partial-birth abortion" - a term with no medical meaning whatever - which got politicized by the ACB. Now fetal pain has suddenly become their rallying cry. In addition to Brownback's bill, several states are in the process of passing bills requiring doctors to tell pregnant women that fetuses feel pain from the earliest stages of development - a highly controversial assertion, to say the least - and offering them anesthetics for the fetus, which have very dubious utility and may cause medical problems for the woman. Are these people really saying that it's okay to murder unborn children, yada yada yada, as long as you give them anesthesia? Does anything more need to be said about their dishonesty and hypocrisy?

The lunatic right is making it increasingly difficult to provide health care in the US. Doctors are being saddled with more and more mandates to feed their patients false and often harmful information, for example the baseless claim that abortion causes breast cancer. Culture of life, my arse - the bully boys of the ACB want to scare and intimidate women out of exercising control over their own bodies and choosing legal medical procedures. Their message: just lie back and think of Jesus, and be a good little incubator!

In a civilized country, public policy - especially on health care - would be based on the best available science, and on empathy for the people involved, while recognizing their autonomy as adults. Instead we get ideological idiots ranting away in blissful ignorance, setting policy based on their primitive superstitious dogma, and using force and fraud to shove it down our throats.

"Intelligent Design" is only one weapon of these backward theocrats in imposing their will on us. They want control over every aspect of our lives, and they want to drag us down to their level of know-nothingism. We need to fight back. Their ignorant, anti-science and anti-human rights crusade must be aborted!