Worst argument against marriage equality EVER

I think we should file this under the “You can’t make this up” category (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON — Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, “substantial advance planning is required,” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans.

This unusual defense of traditional marriage was set out last week in a pair of opening legal briefs in the two gay marriage cases to be decided by the Supreme Court this spring.

This argument from shotgun wedding pretty much shows how opponents of marriage have no real arguments. That’s why they’ve come up with an argument that actually comes up with a reason to support same–sex marriage. Also juxtapose how many of those who oppose marriage equality also attack Planned Parenthood and seek to restrict access to abortion and contraception.

The apparently disturbing thing about this argument is that it has been used before and apparently accepted by some US court.

Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Blog for Choice 2013

Today is Blog for Choice Day 2013. The topic for this year is “Why are you pro–choice?”

I am pro–choice because reproductive freedom is an essential prerequisite for women’s rights. Societies where abortion is illegal are among the worst places to be a woman. Societies where opponents of abortion and reproductive freedom get their laws kill women. Reproductive freedom saves lives. Reproductive freedom is one of the most powerful ways to lift women out of poverty.

And with today being the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the need for reproductive freedom is more essential than ever. Recent times have seen record numbers of attempts in the US at chipping away at reproductive rights.

Blog for Choice mini-roundup:

• Five myths about Roe v. Wade debunked.
• What American women owe to abortion rights.
• Remembering a Country Without Roe.
• And an old Blog for Choice classic, the best post on any blog anywhere on any topic.

When anti–choice policies rule

Anti–choice policies claim another victim:

Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist, presented with back pain at the hospital on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying, and died of septicaemia a week later.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar (34), an engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway, says she asked several times over a three-day period that the pregnancy be terminated. He says that, having been told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.

This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

Anti–woman policies killed a woman. Thank a pro–lifer today.

Via RH Reality Check, DAMMIT JANET!, and a lot of other places.

Study about contraception and abortion shows nothing new

A new peer–reviewed study* published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology has shown that free birth control substantially reduces the abortion rate. This is of course nothing new to rational people. The driver of the abortion rate is the unintended pregnancy rate, and with nearly half of American pregnancies being unintended, this study provides more evidence of the best way to reduce it.

When cost was not a factor, women generally chose the most effective contraception methods available, known as Long–Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC). Examples of those include IUDs and implants. This resulted in a substantial reduction in the abortion rate in the study group. Providing free birth control to all women could prevent 62–78% of all abortions each year.

It’s not like we needed more evidence that anti–choicers would, if they really were concerned with reducing the abortion rate (by more than half), would push for more birth control access and use. I mean, if you truly believed abortion was killing someone, how could paying for birth control possibly be too high a cost or more than halving the rate be too ineffective? But know I anti–choicers won’t.

* The study can be downloaded and read as a PDF here. It’s title is “Preventing Unintended Pregnancies by Providing No-Cost Contraception.

Edited to remove a superfluous link.

Pro-lifers aren’t

I first saw this video from the Guttmacher Institute at ThinkProgress. It shows how each year, around 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions.

Transcript here.

If all those anti–choicers truly cared about reducing the abortion rate and saving lives, they’d be pushing birth control endlessly. But since they don’t, it’s obvious that the abortion debate isn’t really about abortion. Rather, it’s about controlling women and punishing them for having sex.

Link farm – seed planting edition

In no particular order:

• Why people believe conspiracy theories (via Rebekka K. Steg).
• If nothing turns around, British Columbia perverse “tradition” of putting women in charge of political parties in ruins will continue. It seems pretty obvious that what happened to Johnston, Campbell, MacPhail, and James is also happening to Clark.
  • It’s a bit of shame, as I still lean against supporting Dix.
• Since I’ve basically run out of X Random Stuff names, I’ve decided to rename these sorts of posts Link farm – X. I hope you don’t mind.
• Mission accomplished, haters. You just drove Jen McCreight away. All of you haters/bullies/misogynists: Fuck you.
• There is a complicated legal situation regarding inheritance of digital property (via). What I think should be done is that these should be treated as just as willable as any other sort of intangible asset (copyrights, patents, etc). However, I’m sure that big business will probably resist such a move, because they want to be able to keep selling you the same thing over and over again.
• A post from Libby Anne on the virtual merger(in the United States) of Evangelical Christianity and the Republican Party.
  • Recall Andrew Sullivan’s thesis that this is causing an increase in atheism in the United States.
• Debunking anti–choice junk science.
• Are you really being oppressed, or just mad you can’t oppress others? (via)
  • The religious right wrong would inevitably say that being unable to oppress others (especially women and gays) is oppressing them. Talk about theocratic Orwellianism.
• This is a cult, and a really creepy misogynistic one at that (via).

Birth control saves lives

According to a study in The Lancet, widespread availability of contraception in developing countries could prevent an additional 104,000 maternal deaths yearly. Furthermore, in places where contraception is already available, 272,040 maternal deaths were prevented. (More specifically, perhaps as few as 127,937 or as many as 407,134 maternal deaths were prevented.)

You see that? Birth control saves lives. No one in their right mind could possibly be opposed to saving 200,000 lives each year. This therefore means that those so–called pro–lifers will be all in favour of more widespread contraception availability in developing countries, right? (Crickets chirping….)