The choice is thrust into your hands when your wife, bleedy relentlessly, is deemed unable to legally consent to a surgery to save her life and end that of her nine-week-old fetus.

You don’t have time to think.

You aren’t prepared to make this choice.

What do you do?

Nothing is stopping the bleeding. There seems to be nothing they can do. They talk about trying some drugs, but then they decide things are going too fast to give time to let them work. So that leaves only surgery as a possibility. Surgery means hosing her out. It means killing the baby. So obviously, we look into other options. Only now, my wife is so out of it, from blood loss, from the painkillers, that the doctor said she is no longer able to legally consent. Now I’m handed a clipboard. On it is consent to basically give my wife an abortion and kill our future child. And it is all on me, my decision, mine alone. Something I never thought I’d ever face, ever have to deal with. Made worse by being a decision of either kill the baby or potentially watch both my wife and the baby die. The doctors did not say at this point that it was absolutely necessary. Maybe more blood could be transfused in. Maybe she wasn’t dilated - they hadn’t figured it out yet. Still too much blood. So then there I was, facing the sort of choice that you usually see only in hypotheticals in ethics and philosophy classes. Only it was real. It was my wife. And I didn’t have exactly a lot of time to think about it. It was just me and the clipboard. An empty line there, marked for my signature. My wife bleeding right next to me. The ultrasound of my baby, and its heartbeat, fresh in my mind from minutes before. I cannot begin to describe how I felt at that moment. One cannot know until you are in it. I won’t even try. I hope I never feel that way again.

Read the full story.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Virginia Tech massacre victims and their families. I can’t imagine how difficult a time this is to so many people.

Some people just have no hearts (from pandagon):

WBC to Preach at Funerals of Virginia Tech Dead
WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror — yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is ‘horrified’ by it all. You know nothing of horror — yet. Your true horror is coming. “They shall also gird themselves with sackloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads” (Eze. 7:18).

Why did this happen, you ask? It’s simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.

The newest and shiniest excuse to chain women to their kitchen sinks is here: a Swedish study has found that gender equality in a household increases the risk of illness and disability.

Yes, we feminists are skeptical:

The British newspapers that ran this as a news story (”Why feminism ‘could be bad for your health”‘, was the Daily Mail headline) didn’t provide any statistics to support this theory, which had me pondering just what “a strong link” (as The Independent put it) actually is. How much more likely is one to be disabled, for instance, if one hails from an equal household? Is equality a prime factor here, or is it simply that people with managerial jobs - male and female - work harder and drink more and go to bed later than people without? Sadly, the only number provided in most of the coverage was that the study was conducted “across Sweden’s 290 municipalities”. Gosh, that’s a lot of municipalities, I guess we’re supposed to think. They must be right, having studied as many as all that.

I don’t usually put much stock in studies that can’t provide any solid evidence for their conclusions - but let’s humor it a bit:

The scientists, from the Swedish National Institute of Public Health, said a possible explanation for the link between equality and illness is that men’s health may be adversely affected by a loss of what had been seen as traditional male privileges.

Look, if your testicles shrivel up and drop off the second society starts to question male privelege, you’re not really doing very well at making the case that men are naturally superior. Real men can accept that respecting women as equals doesn’t somehow adversely affect their manhood. The differences between the sexes aren’t something to be ashamed of, but making assumptions about them in order to promote a skewed hierarchy is just bullshit.

They suggested that women’s health could be damaged by greater opportunities for risky behaviour as a result of increased income combined with the stress of longer working hours.

Yes, if your money supply isn’t under the complete control of another individual, it’s probably easier to get your hands on a few packs of cigarettes or a six-pack. But women aren’t children, and their husbands have no right to dictate what they can and can’t do to their own bodies. Discussions and compromises are one thing; authoritarian control is another.

And child-rearing, while rewarding for many parents, is no easy job. Different jobs are associated with different stressors, and I remain unconvinced that stay-at-home parenting is inherently less stressful than every other line of work. If anything, this theory exacerbates the myth that parenting is an inferior choice - it’s not!

This isn’t the first attempt to charge feminism with numerous social ills. Zoe demonstrates:

For ages now, for instance, the argument has been bandied around that feminism gives you cancer. Sounds unlikely? Well, let me walk you through the theory. Having children later - which is what happens if you are a feminist and you work - makes you more likely to get breast cancer. Not having children at all - which is what happens if you are a feminist and it’s all about you rather than nurturing - makes you more likely to get breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Drinking and smoking - which is what happens if you are a feminist and you are financially independent, and you don’t do what you’re told - gives you throat and mouth cancer; smoking, of course, also gives you lung cancer. Just about the only cancer feminism doesn’t give you is prostate cancer, and I wouldn’t put it past us feminists to start stealing prostates the way we’ve already stolen managerial positions and bar stools, would you?

So, there you have it. Feminism causes cancer. According to American journalist, Naomi Schaefer Riley, it also makes you more likely to be raped and murdered because feminists go out in the evenings and drink more than we should. (And, laughably, we think that whatever we wear and wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no. Idiots.)

Feminism will not cause the end of Western Civilization as we know it. It really won’t. It didn’t cause the plague, it wasn’t behind Katrina, it didn’t result in the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, and it doesn’t act as a new sort of chemical castration method.

In the not-so-distant future, it may be possible for lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters.

Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.

Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman’s bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.

The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.

But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer.

To rational people, this might seem like nothing more than an interesting (and possibly helpful) new development - but for the fundies, it is a sign of the masculine apocalypse:

Let’s see, now that the lesbians can reproduce free of “evil” men, I wonder how long it will be before one of them gets the idea to create Neo-Amazonia and purge all who possess the Y chromosome?

They’d have to get past Islam to do it.

Once the homosexuals succeed in destroying what’s left of Western Civilization, there will be nothing to protect them.

I new this day was soon approaching. The next step is the gender-specific virus.
I think there were a number of sci-fi episodes and even movies based on such concepts.

The Revolution will be swift; the Neo-Amazonians will soon have the entire planet in their rule. The newly-created man-killing virus will be unleashed into the water supply, and the few remaining men will become enslaved workers in the diamond mines. Witchcraft will be declared the New World’s official theology, and having abortions will become something of a national pastime. Buahaha!

Or, you know, not.

Nope, not kidding:

If sex bonds two people, then sexual pleasure without a partner will still powerfully bond you, but the bonding will be to whatever sights and thoughts are present at the time. For some people, the bonding will be to the sight of their own body. If so, it will be this – and possibly the sight of their own gender – that will begin to dominate their passions.

Likewise, looking at yourself in the mirror the wrong way is bound to turn you homo. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “damn, I look sexy,” you have already begun the transformation. You have been warned!

It gets better:

Then there are those who try to convince themselves they are being godly by masturbating while focusing on spiritual things. If Jesus walked this planet today, would you try to have sex with him? Sexual bonding is exclusively for a husband and wife. Anything else is a perversion. Sexual bonding must not be used to join a person to a relative or a friend or an animal or an object or to the Holy Lord.

And I thought my mind was in the gutter. I can honestly say that I have never, ever fantasized about taking Jesus to bed. Ever.

Recently, Disney decided to start allowing homosexual couples to purchase Fairy Tale Wedding packages. Disney had previously allowed gays and lesbians to take part in its vow renewal program, and Disneyland held commitment ceremonies - but gays were still barred from the far more luxurious wedding packages. As Pam at Pandagon noted:

Its problem was that it treated them like second-class citizens — homos got shuttled off to a Disney banquet hall or ballroom, not the Rose Court Garden where weddings with licenses are performed.

So Disney took their money and shoved them under the rug - but when Disney’s policies came under fire, the company finally chose to change them.

“We are not in the business of making judgments about the lifestyle of our guests. We are in the hospitality business and our parks and resorts are open to everyone.”
- Donn Walker, Disney Parks and Resorts spokesman

Here’s what some of the particularly nutty fundamentalists had to say about it when the story was reposted at FreeRepublic.com yesterday:

Let the homosexuals have Disney theme parks and cruises. Disney has proven time and time again that families are not in their corporate interest.

Homosexuals and their sycophants want to be inclusive and permit prancing about in front of a phony ‘minister’ all the while ogling our children.

“Humans’ who put their pee-pees and faces into another’s poo-poo are just plain sick and unworthy of mingling with normal families.

Translation: Perverts welcome at kiddie park.

Just what every child who visits disneyland needs to see. A couple of pervert homo’s being wed.

Close the place up for the public’s own good.

It’s simple. You teach your kids at a young that being a homo is simply wrong and in the same league as being a drug addict or a prostitute.

Being a ‘practicing’ (apparently they can’t get it right) homosexual is worse than being a drug addict or a prostitute.

Many homosexuals sodomize children and sometimes kill them. Others after sodomizing their victims eat them, or sometimes bury them under the house.

That would make them a form of life lower than most animals.

A portion of the pro-life crowd has a big problem with oral contraceptives: if they don’t stop ovulation, block the sperm, or prevent conception, they may prevent implantation. Research neither confirms nor denies this claim, but it’s certainly possible since they do cause changes in the uterine lining.

And so these pro-lifers go on the war path, decrying artificial contraception and chanting slogans about babies and murder. Those who become pharmacists may refuse to fill some prescriptions (particularily emergency contraception, which works much like the pill). Sexually active women and even rape victims are turned away (40% of them in Connecticut). And while these women are left without any options, the anti-birth control crowd happily pats its own back.

Here’s the kicker: oral contraceptives almost always work by preventing ovulation, which will obviously prevent an egg from being fertilized. When an egg does become fertilized and an embryo does form, there’s about a 50% chance that it will never implant - and this is without any form of contraception whatsoever.

So which is more likely to result in an embryonic death? A person using oral contraceptives carefully, or a person having unprotected sex because they view birth control as immoral?

Of course, you might say, that’s why many of them stick to natural family planning (NFP).

Most of them probably don’t know that NFP may very well also prevent implantation (or create weak embryos), and that there are “numerous indications” that this is the case:

Natural family planning is the more widely used, contemporary term for the broad range of techniques aimed at helping women to predict fertile days so they can avoid having sex then. These techniques may rely on cues like the presence of cervical mucus or small changes in body temperature, which occur around the time of ovulation. Dr. Bovens notes that some couples choose this approach because they worry that other forms of contraception, like birth control pills, may act in part by preventing an early embryo from implanting in the womb.

However, if a fertilized egg produced on the fringe of the fertile window is less likely to develop and implant, he writes, “the same logic that turned pro-lifers away from morning after pills, I.U.D.’s and pill usage should make them nervous about the rhythm method.”

All in all, the reality is that we birth control-using heathens are probably killing just about the same - if not fewer - embryos than the people who claim to love them oh-so much. And while pro-lifers rant on that contraception companies “lie” about their products, you’ll find that each of them acknowledges that they may have an effect on implantation right on their websites. Try finding an NFP site that does that.

Now, you may genuinely care about embryos and want to dedicate your life to never having one die inside you. That’s your decision. The only way you can ever be sure to accomplish that is to practice abstinence - not until marriage, but forever. Good luck with that.

I, on the other hand, will continue to not give a shit about embryos.

The emergency contraceptive (or “morning-after pill”) known as Plan B does not induce abortions. It prevents pregnancy if taken up to 72 hours after sex, but it will have no effect on an existing pregnancy and will not harm a fetus.

However, a New York Times writer recently wrote that the morning-after pill is “abortion-inducing”:

As a result, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, a socialist, late last year sanctioned the free distribution of abortion-inducing “morning-after” contraception pills at government-run hospitals.

Misinformation like this puts women at risk - please join me in requesting a correction! Go to the article and click the author’s name (Tim Padgett) in the byline to send your comment.

Via Feministing.

Evolution can’t be correct, ’cause giraffes would be really hard to make. Now that’s science.

You know what the problem is with American women these days? Somewhere along the line they got to thinking that they were, you know, people. Equals, even. They started acknowledging their own desires and setting their own standards; they began to direct their own lives and choose who would be a part of them.

Clearly, we’ve been spoiled.

One company offers a “solution”: mail-order brides who are beautiful, significantly younger, educated [and] unspoiled by feminism.

That’s what a real man wants; a woman who:
- is perdy
- is wrinkle-free
- has an Eastern European education
- thinks of herself as a second-class citizen, and
- wants a one-way ticket out of her country - and is willing to marry herself off to get it.

Ladies, you can have him.

The real tragedy in all this is that these women live in a world in which they feel their best option is to be plucked off a website and shipped away to a foreign country to marry a complete stranger - someone who’s probably paying a few grand for a good-looking wife who will clean the dishes with a smile on her face and do as she’s told.

And all this is marketed as “true love.”

Ugh.