Thanks to Jesse Galef over at the Friendly Atheist blog for bringing this to our attention. This is the stuff that doesn’t seem to make it to the forefront of the news media. The Secular Coalition for America has sent out letters “to members of the Senate Finance Committee urging them to oppose two proposed amendments to the healthcare reform bill” says Galef.

The Secular Coalition for America states:

Senator Orrin Hatch has submitted amendment #C10 requesting that funding for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage be restored. Senator Michael Enzi has submitted amendment #C15 to ensure that conscience protections are applied in the healthcare reform bill. Please oppose these two amendments. Both of these amendments privilege religious values over patients’ and students’ rights to ethical treatment and medically-accurate information.

Galef at Friendly Atheist writes:

President Obama’s proposed budget earlier this year removed funding for abstinence-only education, mostly because studies shown they hadn’t worked — some studies even found that the programs made things worse, discouraging contraception without actually reducing sex. And Senator Hatch wants to spend $50 million a year on these programs.

I thought that Rethuglicans were against “evil socialist programs”?

There was public outcry over a so-called ‘conscience protection’ clause the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was pushing right before Bush’s term ended. When Obama took office, he prevented it from taking effect. And now Senator Enzi wants to slip a similar clause into the healthcare reform bill.

It never ends with these sneaky fundie bastards. Gotta keep our eyes and ears on them every minute.

While there’s some debate on how to view the recent murder of an anti-abortion protester, the guy’s son actually had some interesting things to say about him:

“It will be impossible for some to believe, but my dad really didn’t care about abortion. He did this to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone. After my mom finally left him and he lost his favorite punching bag the violence and abuse that was always contained within our 4 walls was unleased on the people of Owosso. My dad used the pro-life movement and 1st Amendments foundations to defend him, support him, and enable him. He fooled them all. He was at the high school because my niece was there, and female family members were always his favorite targets. Again, my dad didn’t care about abortion. He wanted to hurt people, upset people. He enjoyed making people suffer. His goal was to be shot on a sidewalk. His goal was to make someone so angry, to make them feel so terrorized, to make them feel the only way they could make him stop was to kill him. His pro-life stance was the most perfect crime I personally know of. He hid behind the 1st Amendment and was allowed to stalk, terrorise, harass, be obsene, ect. These things are crimes. Offending people isn’t a crime, and having different political views isn’t a crime, but he committed several crimes over the last 20 years and got away with it. Yes I really am his oldest son. Owosso is now rid of a mad man.”

Even though the paper confirmed the source, it could still be the case that his son is lying, or has a beef with him pertaining to something else. But if he’s telling the truth — man! — what a fucking misogynist.

Xianity can lead to misogyny? What are the odds?…

Here’s a story I ran across on LiveScience.com

Teen Birth Rates Higher in Highly Religious States

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

And while the religious might point out that the study didn’t take into account those evil young women having abortions, the article states that the study did consider abortion rates:

They found a strong correlation between statewide conservative religiousness and statewide teen birth rate even when they accounted for income and abortion rates.

For instance, the results showed more abortions among teenagers in the less religious states, which would skew the findings since fewer teens in these states would have births. But even after accounting for the abortions, the study team still found a state’s level of religiosity could predict their teen birth rate. The higher the religiosity, the higher was the teen birth rate on average.

I would agree that high teen pregnancy rates may be due to separate factors like poverty, or poor education. However, when a young girl is taught that her godly purpose in life is to have children and raise a family, combined with lack of sex education and discouraged contraceptive practices, these higher numbers are going to be the result.

Usually shit rolls downhill, and took awhile to come out but finally cases of sexual abuse by priests in the Pope’s own backyard are now emerging “in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago.”

Italy grapples with priest sex abuse accusations

A yearlong Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by Web sites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.

One man’s disturbing personal account:

VERONA, Italy – It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest’s bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.

When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel “as if I were dead.” This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: They went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.

For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country’s most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican’s backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.

It’s about time. The Catholic church must be held accountable (any other organization would be shut down for this sort of organized crime). The “culture of silence” must end.

Full sickening story here

H/T to ChuckA once again…

Anti-abortion group wants to make birth-control illegal in Florida

TALLAHASSEE — A nationwide anti-abortion group launched an effort in Florida Friday to outlaw all abortions and certain types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and the morning-after pill. The religion-infused movement, called “Personhood Florida,” would define conception in Florida’s constitution at the “biological beginnings,” supporters said — when the sperm meets the egg. The group filed its amendment today but the exact ballot language is still being worked out, said Secretary of State Spokeswoman Jennifer Krell-Davis. The amendment seeks to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Also criminalized: the morning-after pill and oral contraceptives taken by women, known as the pill. “There are some (birth control) methods that kill a child,” said Pat McEwan, who is leading the Personhood Florida group. [...] At a press conference in Tallahassee, speakers blamed abortion for the financial insolvency of Social Security and the bankruptcy of American auto manufacturers, citing the millions of terminated pregnancies since Roe. v. Wade as costing the nation citizens and customers. They also said that a fetus is a person and should be given protections of law. “It is obvious in our ultrasounds that that little baby, even at just eight weeks old, is a person,” said Brenda MacMenamin, a Personhood Florida organizer. “Their rights our self-evident and they are inalienable. We want to give the voters of the state of Florida the right to vote on personhood.”

Wow…social security, the automobile industry, both negatively impacted through abortion. What else can we blame on abortion?

And it’s obvious at eight weeks that it’s a person? Are you high?

Oh, that’s right, you’re a xian — of course you’re high…

Arkansas family prepares for baby No. 19

Yes, I know this is getting old…and we knew it was going to happen since this woman obviously has a serious mental illness that makes her keep getting preggers and collecting children as if they were Cabbage Patch dolls! Seems this family is trying to create their own little town of Duggarville where everyone is related and everyone can inbreed, keeping out those evil-utionists and pro-choicers and they can all praise Jeebus together for blessing them with strong sperm, uteruses and vaginas.

Sorry folks if that is a bit crude, but this is totally absurd when we are talking about over-population which puts a strain on the environment and all the freebies and tax breaks they get that everyone else has to pay for.

Wow, it almost seems like Scott should be classified as a “Xian Terrorist”…

Accused Killer of Abortion Doctor Could Be Down By Law With a Kansas Jury

As he prepares for a court hearing tomorrow, Scott Roeder, the man accused of shooting Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church in June, says he’s full of “relief and joy” over the murder of the Wichita abortion provider. In interviews with the Kansas City Star, Roeder, who is in a Sedgwick County, Kansas, lockup, said he’d been thinking about killing abortion doctors since 1992. He praised Paul Hill, who shot and killed an abortion provider in Pensacola, Florida, in 1994 and was executed in for the murder in 2003, and he described several visits to Shelley Shannon, the woman who shot and wounded Tiller back in 1993 and is currently serving 20 years for a series of abortion clinic bombings and arsons. Roeder believes that these acts qualify as justifiable homicide, explaining to Star reporter Judy Thomas: “When a policeman shoots somebody on the street, for example, and stops somebody from taking the life of innocent people, that’s violence, and everybody’s fine with that,” he said. Since the murder of Dr. Tiller, he said, “I’ve heard that three women have actually changed their minds and had their babies because there’s no availability here,” he said. “Wichita has been abortion-free since that time.” He added, “That’s total elation.” Scott Roeder stops short of stating that he is the man responsible for what he considers the heroic act of killing Dr. Tiller, instead saying that “For the man accused of this, things fell together for that day,” and the shooting “would have been earlier if things had panned out.” Such almost coyly circumspect statements can hardly help Roeder’s case, and his attorney, Steve Osburn, would make no comment on his client’s defense strategy. But Roeder himself raised the possibility of introducing “jury nullification,” which holds that if a jury concludes the law is wrong, it can take matters into its own hands, overriding instructions from the judge, to deliver its own version of justice.

Bill Would Require Man’s OK For Abortion

COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio lawmaker has introduced a bill that would prevent a woman from having an abortion unless she gets written consent from the biological father. The proposal by State Rep. John Adams, R-Sidney, has stirred up controversy across the nation, 10TV’s Kevin Landers reported. “What does the father have to say in the abortion of his child? He has nothing to say (under current law),” Adams told 10TV News. In the case where the father isn’t known, House Bill 252 would compel the woman to provide a list of names of people who may be the father in an effort to determine paternity. The bill also would make it a crime for women to lie about who the father is, and make it illegal for doctors to perform abortions without the father’s consent. The bill would force a woman to have a child if the father does not agree to an abortion. “That child should be born, not killed,” Adams said.

Oh yes, making the male responsible for the female’s body — the more things change, the more they stay the same…

“Hey, but it’s his child, too“…

“Child,” eh?…

You stay classy, Ohio…

Guys can be such fucking morons…