grandma was a suffragette

Against donuts? Don't have one!

I keep trying to make a coherent post about this story, but I think that American Life League's press statement says it all. Needless to say, the sarcastic comments in purple are my own.

Labels: reproductive rights, right-wing batshittery

posted by Kaite @ 4:42 PM 4 comments

Fears that the forthcoming draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill will be hijacked by the pro-life brigade have been reported in the press today, with concerns that it will be used to call a vote on bringing the time limit for abortion in the UK down from the current 24 weeks to 21 or 20. More on this if Widdecombe et al make good on their threats.

Labels: politics, reproductive rights

posted by Kaite @ 10:32 AM 0 comments

not the church, not the state - doctors, apparently, have the right to choose our fate

[Following yesterday's post, Polly Toynbee has an excellent piece on single parent families here]

The Royal College of Obsetricians and Gynocologists has warned that Britain is facing a shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions. Note that the looming abortion crisis isn't because of changes in the law, or because of increased campaigning from the pseudo-morality peddlers who hang around outside clinics with their photoshopped foetuses and dubious scientific facts. It's because some doctors feel that their personal opinions should stop them doing their job. The buzzword being bandied about the press this week is "the dinner party test" - would you talk about being an abortion provider in a social context? Yes, that's right - people with power over our bodies are dictating what operations we can or cannot undergo based on what the neighbours might think. Forgive me if I'm not overwhelmed with confidence in the principles of the British medical profession. Libby Purves, in what is otherwise a pretty offensive piece, points out that "[i]f there is to be a shortage of abortionists there will be ever longer waiting lists, thus ever more late abortions". This is a can of worms we do not need to open.

In The Independent, one doctor is quoted as saying "I had made my mind up on abortion before entering the medical profession. I am a Roman Catholic and my religious beliefs do form my moral point of view." Well maybe - just maybe, Dr Gerrard - you should have chosen another damn job. Being a doctor doesn't always mean making the comfortable decisions, or the decisions that you'd make for yourself. It doesn't mean imposing your beliefs on other people. He then goes on to say "I think people understand it is a personal choice and respect that." What a pity he can't offer the same courtesy. Bear in mind, he's a GP - he isn't going to be performing the procedure himself, merely referring the woman in question to a hospital where the decision will be taken out of his hands. He does say that he would ask her to speak to another doctor - but out of the six GPs working at his practice, only three of them are pro-choice. I'm guessing he won't be telling her which ones.

The issue here is a tricky one, because the inevitable cry of 'it's discriminating against Christians' will be heard. Honestly? I don't care. I'm not asking my doctors (or my nurses, teachers, politicians) to check their personality at the door, but I don't want their personal superstitions interfering with my life. Because of cuts in junior doctor's hours, their training is no longer comprehensive and increasingly few are choosing to experience a the thankless and unpopular world. I don't want my doctor judging me, but it seems that this is exactly what a lot of them are doing - there is a sense that they are tidying up the mess made by selfish, irresponsible, promiscuous women. Newsflash - contraception doesn't always work.

Personally speaking, if someone I met told me they were involved in the practical side of abortion rights, I'd buy them a drink.


Abortion Rights UK are calling for abortion to be included on the medical student core curriculum. Find out more here.

Labels: religion, reproductive rights

posted by Kaite @ 12:00 PM 13 comments

Papa don't preach

Silly fears about lesbian dads are an irrelevance today, and may never amount to more than science fiction.

- Mark Henderson, The Times

In an article in the Times, a columnist reassures his readership that “the End of Men” is merely mass hysteria with no foundation in scientific fact, and that “the dawn of an Amazonian dystopia” is not, in fact, nigh. What it amounts to, of course, is a backlash to the very hazy potential of two women biologically creating a child by terrified heterosexual men – “[t]he indignant railing against Nature usurped, of course, conveniently forgets that most women are not lesbians and will always find it more fun to breed the old-fashioned way.” God forbid that any woman should enjoy making love (or, for that matter, babies) without the presence of a man. It is a castration complex with parenting as the [supposedly envied] phallus.

By “silly fears about lesbian dads”, Henderson really means that the very idea of a woman taking on a traditionally male role – in this case, co-parent of a child – is at best ridiculous, and at worst unnatural. If my partner and I choose to have kids, there won’t be a father involved, regardless of the genetic make-up of the child. It may have my DNA, it may have hers, it may have neither. It may, due to some wonderful scientific advance, have both. But that child will have two mothers and, in all probability, no father. The use of gendered language to describe the non-foetus-carrying partner is deceptive – and designed to highlight the supposedly unnatural nature of same-sex parenting. It also rams home the idea of a binary gender system, one in which there is only biological male and biological female, with no room for the grey areas between the sexes, for someone to define as one gender but inhabit the body commonly attributed to the other.

It is equally an argument about that old bugbear of the Daily Mail, single mothers. Whilst a positive male role model in child’s life is something to be encouraged – I’d be the first to state that I benefitted enormously by one – it doesn’t have to be the father. Families can exist without the presence of a father, and that existance can be a happy one when the father figure would otherwise be a poor influence or have a detrimental effect on the family. Obviously the gender roles here can be reversed – women are no more natural parents than men are – and whilst no-one would argue that being a single parent is easy, it is often the lesser of two evils. Better to be in a stable and loving environment, no matter how many parents of either sex one has, than to be brought up in an attitude of either violence or indifference.

Labels: LGBT, parenting, reproductive rights, science

posted by Kaite @ 2:53 PM 3 comments