Fun with Anti-Science

Well, I’m a gay man, so I don’t know much about all these things, but I guess the CWA should welcome me with open arms since I have about less than 0% chance of causing a life to come into being. Where are the party invites?

Also you should have to go before a judge before being allowed to use tampons.

If we define life as the thing of which ninety percent is just showing up, then truancy is mostly, but not entirely, an abortifacient.

If, merrily, we define life as but a dream, then non-REM sleep is an abortifacient.

Common decency says that you shouldn’t hit on strangers on “Teh Interpr0ns” but I don’t want to be abortifacient. Fortunately, a judge has already given me this restraining order.

Ah, the Concern Trolls of America.

If we define life as Life Cereal, then milk is an arbortofacient. And Mikey’s an accessory.

Life begins with your first worry free sexual encounter. So anti-contraceptive scolds are an arbortofacient.

Life begins at the hop.

Similarly, if we define “some places get warmer and some get cooler” as “global warming”, everything is evidence of global warming.

And not one of those worried people mentions the dangerous nature of Tylenol. Far more women are killed each day by OTC Tylenol then will be killed by Plan B in the next decade. But saving existing lives doesn’t let you take on woman’s control of their bodies and participation in the economy.

In entirely unrelated news, Concerned Men of Saudi Arabia don’t want women behind the wheel lest that white dress lose its meaning.

For purpose of bewildered amusement or awildered bemusement, worth noting that this same Janice Crouse seems to have written about half the feature-length articles on the CWA website, notably including one entitled Pedophilia — Normal or Cause for Outrage?

She reports, you decide. It contains this, uh, observation:

Due to our human sensitivities and American values of fairness and equality, our nation has been duped into accepting the unacceptable, all because the lies have been packaged for us so nicely.

…?

…took me like ten minutes to realize OHHH she’s talking about TEH GAY MENACE. Ironically, consider which subpopulation is pretty much categorically guaranteed to not need/want/seek Plan B in the course of their normal sexual lives…

If we define life as “a nice knock-down argument” then Ms. Crouse’s screed is an abortifacient.

Impenetrability! That’s what I say.

forrest, that sure as hell isn’t what Plan B is for. But thanks for playing the false equivalency game.

I’m also concerned with the anti-science implications of the dramatic decline in new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and antibiotics approved annually by the FDA since the 1990’s.

With notably rare exceptions, life is for living.

I’ve heard that it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life. I think that’s relevant.

ps. (@37), “birth” is whatever you want it to be.

if life is a bowl of cherries, then losing yours is abortifacient?

If life’s not fair, hydrogen peroxide is an abortifacient.

Are we really talking about “Life” as some sort of criterion here? Is she really that stupid? Surely not – every time she washes her hands she’s commtting first-degree murder. Man, people have really gotten amazingly stupid since I was a kid. I think it’s no coincidence that the Republicans rose to social and political prominence as the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons were first eviscerated and then removed entirely from the air.

Whenever I read “concerned women of America” I imagine a group of middle-aged librarian-type women frowning. Am I alone in this? Is it strange? Should I be scared?

If life is In the Fast Lane, then Moving Over to the Slow Lane is an abortifacient.

46, 47: Indeed librarians are far and away the most left-leaning profession in America. CWA is probably mostly Michele Bachman types (i.e. obnoxious PTA moms who attend nutty, low-rent churches every Sunday).

“rendering all contraceptives that prevent implantation abortifacients”

Which, by the way, does not include the pill or Plan B, neither of which has been shown to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, despite what anti-contraceptive advocates say.

Unfortunately, Sebelius has sided with Concern Troll Women of America against her own FDA experts. Score another one for the “liberal” Obama Administration.

Since life is a terminal STD you catch from your parents, this post is abortifabulous.

And ‘an adult’ is the Mew of Felinofascism.

Sorry about that- thanks, ben w.

Has it been resolved that Plan B never acts against implantation?

There’s no evidence that it does, and some evidence that it doesn’t. It’s impossible to prove that it never does. But that’s true of all sorts of drugs, which we don’t ban as abortifacients. (The active ingredient in Plan B is just a hormone found in ordinary birth-control pills in a different dose. Many of the people who are convinced that Plan B is an abortifacient also believe this about the Pill.)

I am an actual biologist with a Ph.D and all (though no longer a practicing researcher), and I heartily second what Tedra just said. But then ‘an adult” is always full of… adult-ness.

Best to err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting the lives of womb babies. Ban breastfeeding by sexually active women.

Has it not been mentioned yet that Plan B is produced by the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical Ltd? I must say I find this opposition to its sale somewhat suspicious. It seems that Plan B is being singled out as somehow worse than all the other contraceptive methods.

“May” is very different from “has been shown to”. Seriously, if you look at the underlying research, there’s nothing demonstrating that effect — my understanding is that the drug company claimed it was possible, and it’s not really disprovable. The exaggerated claim, which had nothing to do with the anti-abortion movement, opened the door to the current anti-abortion hostility to Plan B, but the fact that the initial claim wasn’t their fault doesn’t mean there’s any basis for it in the research.

I totally mentioned Teva in the post itself

but crucially not the “Ltd” which (rather than “Inc”) is the badge of a firm with its roots in British company law (in this case, Mandate Palestine)

I seem to remember being on the wrong side of an argument with D2 once over whether or not we, as parents, would let our children’s teenage romantic partners sleep over when the time came….

I think the word “respective” needs to be in that sentence somewhere!

the Obama administration caving, while it pisses me off enormously, at least that’s clearly politics rather than some bullshit science claim

Except it’s bad politics–nobody so opposed to over-the-counter sales of Plan B that this might influence their vote is ever going to vote for Obama anyway.

Just reading the name “Chuck Norris” is an abortifacient.

imprisoned in the womb

This is some genius-level misogyny.

Dangermouse@82:

Yeah that’s what I see, too. But then I’m married to a middle aged librarian and they are way hotter and less uptight than the CWOA.

“If we define it as beginning with ovulation, then menstruation is an abortifacient! MENSTRUAL PADS MUST BE PRESCRIPTION ONLY.”

Love this. My grandmother (b. 1890’s — and who, btw, talked freely about her two (illegal) abortions in the 1920’a for pregnancies incurred (hah!) by her husband, my own very dear grandfather) sometimes talked about the pre-menstrual-pad days of her rural youth. Pain in the ass, periods were. Truly limiting, utterly limiting. (For those who don’t know, women had to use “rags” and hesitated to venture far on “heavy days” for very practical reasons.) I thought immediately of (my-by-then-dead) grandmother when there was a terrible menstrual-pad shortage in I think it was “Yugoslavia” (but maybe “Czechoslovakia”) as the Cold War became “over.” Women there were going nuts — their lives unexpectedly turned upside down by the shortage of menstrual pads! (Forget the added conveniences of the tampon.) How little we women appreciate the industrial revolution!

So, by conservative “logic” women’s bodies are natural abortifacients.

It’s often useful to carry this a step further, given whom we’re dealing with. Even women’s bodies were presumably designed by God. Therefore, by social conservative “logic” God is the biggest abortionist in the business. Maybe they go after Planned Parenthood because they don’t like the implied competition.

If we define life as having access to the Internet

Might be safer to define life as ‘what happens while not having access to the Internet.’

Therefore, by social conservative “logic” God is the biggest abortionist in the business.

Nope, it’s a consequence of apple-eating. The lines that get trotted out almost reflexively are from Exodus 23:

My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span. I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.

A sampling from a couple evangelical help-with-grief guides:

Miscarriages are usually caused by abnormal chromosome patterns in the fetus. When these abnormalities are detected, the growth is halted, and miscarriage is the result. … After thousands of years of sin, death and personal destruction, it should not surprise us that genetic disorders would eventually become commonplace.

Miscarriage most often occurs due to a sickness, disease or complication in the mother or baby, not because of the will of God. … It was as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve that sickness and disease entered the world and can now manifest in our lives. However, God’s nature and character has not changed, even though we live in a fallen world. … And I believe that He will never cause us to miscarry or bear sick children.

Sources and full quotes w/o ellipses findable by copy-pasting sentences into google; they don’t need my linkage. See also Empty Arms, a standard evangelical-recommended book.