It's fascinating how opposition to science correlates with other positions on various issues. There's a reason why we call them IDiots.
Canada is in the midst of a debate on abortion. Right now there are no laws in Canada that prohibit abortion. We are a pro-choice country.
The current Conservative government under King Harper wants to change that but they're going about it in a very underhanded way. The first step is to refuse funding to foreign aid programs that permit abortion. The second step seems to be to refuse federal funding to a number of women's groups that are pro-choice.
What has this got to do with correlations? Denyse O'Leary, that's what. Denyse is a well-known anti-science writer who support just about any cockamainy idea from Intelligent Design Creationists. Now she's weighed in on the abortion issue. Here's her open letter to the Prime Minister [Off topic: Advice to the government re abortion funding]. Judge for yourself whether her views on this issue are any more coherent than her anti-science views.
Mr. Prime Minister and excellent minister Bev Oda:Did I mention that Denyse is a Roman Catholic? Do you think it's relevant?
Please stand firm against the people who will get money from aborting babies in other countries, if you cave in.
This is for a number of non-religious reasons:
1. There is NO reason to believe abortion will even be voluntary. And what can we do if it isn't? It is better if we Canadians just do not fund it. (If people in other countries want to force women to be aborted, to meet grant-based population reduction quotas, we cannot stop them. But at least we had nothing to do with it, right? It's not like the cheque is stamped 'From a grateful CANADA'. Surely, there are some shames we cannot stoop to.)
2. Contrary to population whackos, most of the world is in steep demographic decline. This is bad news for business, pension plans, etc. Why add to the problem? Right now, YOUR government is advertising for healthy young workers from abroad. So we should kill their successors?
3. Abortion clinics are run by people who do not mind killing babies for a living. Even if you didn't agree that that is a problem, a number of other evils result, including: Teachers molest underage girls and ship them to clinics for discreet abortions, unbeknown to their parents. Abortion clinics may also function on the adoption black market. = Would you keep it for a while instead of killing it, if we get you some money?
4. No one should believe anything an abortion clinic operator says about not killing viable babies. If he really cared about stuff like that, he would not likely do what he does now. So you can assume, for practical purposes, it is unreliable.
5. Some babies may be sold for research that should never be done on a human being, but remember that they do not technically exist.
Stand firm! Most of the criticism I hear about your government comes from NOT standing up for traditional Canadian values. Most of the praise I hear is for doing so.
And REPEAL Section 13 and FIRE Jennifer Lynch. Quit fooling around about that too. People are really angry.
Traditional values and civil rights are important to the people who would re-elect you.
I'm sure Stephen Harper will be so proud to have the support of an intellectual like Denyse O'Leary.
I'd say "Welcome to my (American) world" ... but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
ReplyDeleteWas she born like that or did she suffer severe brain damage at some point in her life?
ReplyDeleteShe's really outdone herself this time -- reached new heights of incoherence. This is from a published author and journalist? I'd expect a screed like that on the Letters page of the paper, as part of the customary "crank" quota.
ReplyDeleteLike Eamon, I am amazed that she is considered a "writer." When she does a book, she must needs pay her editor overtime just to fix her grammar.
ReplyDeleteYes, she is stupid. She thinks that women are "being forced to be aborted." I wonder if even Harper had a belly laugh from that one.
This correlation is one of the major reasons why we should be aiming for complete eradication of religion. Because the truth is that population and reproductive rights are one of those issues where even the softest version of religion is so detached from reality that it is preventing us from even discussing what is the most important problem we have to solve.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly entertaining to know that all the whackjobs don't reside south of the 49th parallel. Fortunately for our northern neighbors, schmucks like Ms. O'Leary are in rather shorter supply there then here.
ReplyDelete"Teachers molest underage girls and ship them to clinics for discreet abortions, unbeknown to their parents. Abortion clinics may also function on the adoption black market. = Would you keep it for a while instead of killing it, if we get you some money?"
ReplyDeleteThat third slice of pepperoni pizza was a mistake.
"traditional Canadian values"
ReplyDeleteI see now that American religious whackos aren't the only ones who employ this kind of rhetoric.
The question is: are your politicians smart enough to see what an IDiot she is or do they actually think like that?
ReplyDeleteIn the UK we have Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, for example, whose views are just as nutty but who's a little more articulate so, at first glance, she doesn't seem to be as bad.
"Teachers molest underage girls and ship them to clinics for discreet abortions, unbeknown to their parents."
ReplyDeleteTeachers? I thought it was priests. Oh, wait, that was Archbishops and Cardinals discreetly shipping off priests who molest underage girls and boys to other parishes, unbeknownst to the childrens' parents.
"traditional Canadian values"
ReplyDeleteI see now that American religious whackos aren't the only ones who employ this kind of rhetoric.
Like many Canadian right-wingers she's regurgitating boilerplate American RW rhetoric with little more than a search-and replace of "Canadian" for "American".
More than a decade ago I read an article in a RW Canadian journal that did this with "states' rights" arguments, with the result that it was one long rant about how Canada was founded as a loose association of independent provinces but had drifted with time towards overweening centralism, even though any Canadian schoolchild would know this was literally the exact opposite of the actual historical progression of Canadian federalism. To them it simply didn't matter, so long as they were faithfully parroting the talking points of the American RW mothership.