Sex, lies, and abortion: More theocratic quackery from the Bush White House
By Michael J.W. Stickings
Jessica Valenti of Feministing reported yesterday that Bush has appointed Dr. Eric Keroack Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs (DASPA) at the Department of Health and Human Services. Which could mean one of two things: more hackocracy or more theocracy.
Well, it’s the latter.
Keroack, “currently the medical director of a Massachusetts pregnancy crisis center,” is “a well-known anti-choicer” and “a major proponent of abstinence-only education”. The “crisis center” in question is actually a chain of centers in eastern Massachusetts called A Woman’s Concern, where Keroack, according to “moiv” at AlterNet, “spreads all the usual lies about abortion, and uses ultrasound scans as a tool to influence the decisions of women who might be considering abortion.”
And that’s not all. He’s “on the Medical Advisory Council for the notorious Leslee Unruh’s National Abstinence Clearinghouse“. “And this is the guy,” in Jessica’s words, “who is going to have control over hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding meant to provide access to contraception and reproductive health information — specifically to low income Americans.”
Yes, that’s right. The Office of Population Affairs that he is about to head includes the Office of Family Planning and the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs. Given his career background, crazy theories, and theocratic leanings, it’s quite clear where his priorities will be: abstinence and (when that fails) absolutely no abortion. I suspect he doesn't much care for birth control either.
(Pharyngula and Majikthise have more.)
This story won’t get the attention it deserves, but it illustrates the continuing influence of the religious right on the Bush White House. (Where are you now, David Kuo? Or is this just an attempt to win the doubters back?) And it shows just how dangerous even Bush’s allegedly lame-duck presidency can be.
**********
UPDATE: See also the Post: "The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month's midterm elections... The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman's Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts."
Read the whole article for more reaction.
Jessica Valenti of Feministing reported yesterday that Bush has appointed Dr. Eric Keroack Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs (DASPA) at the Department of Health and Human Services. Which could mean one of two things: more hackocracy or more theocracy.
Well, it’s the latter.
Keroack, “currently the medical director of a Massachusetts pregnancy crisis center,” is “a well-known anti-choicer” and “a major proponent of abstinence-only education”. The “crisis center” in question is actually a chain of centers in eastern Massachusetts called A Woman’s Concern, where Keroack, according to “moiv” at AlterNet, “spreads all the usual lies about abortion, and uses ultrasound scans as a tool to influence the decisions of women who might be considering abortion.”
And that’s not all. He’s “on the Medical Advisory Council for the notorious Leslee Unruh’s National Abstinence Clearinghouse“. “And this is the guy,” in Jessica’s words, “who is going to have control over hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding meant to provide access to contraception and reproductive health information — specifically to low income Americans.”
Yes, that’s right. The Office of Population Affairs that he is about to head includes the Office of Family Planning and the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs. Given his career background, crazy theories, and theocratic leanings, it’s quite clear where his priorities will be: abstinence and (when that fails) absolutely no abortion. I suspect he doesn't much care for birth control either.
(Pharyngula and Majikthise have more.)
This story won’t get the attention it deserves, but it illustrates the continuing influence of the religious right on the Bush White House. (Where are you now, David Kuo? Or is this just an attempt to win the doubters back?) And it shows just how dangerous even Bush’s allegedly lame-duck presidency can be.
**********
UPDATE: See also the Post: "The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month's midterm elections... The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman's Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts."
Read the whole article for more reaction.
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
7:11 PM
4 Comments:
World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.
3,500 per day / 1.3 million per year in America alone.
50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame.
A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all.
And 2% had medical reasons.
That means a stagering 98% may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.
People have to stop using abortion as birth control.
I'd like to see effective birth control made available to all who can't afford it.
If conception is NOT when life begins,and a clump of cells is just that and not a living human being.
Then at least concider this-
Soon after you were conceived you were no more than a clump of cells.
This clump of cells was you at your earliest stage, you had plenty of growing to do but this clump of cells was you none the less. Think about it.
Aren't you glad you were left unhindered to develope further.
Safe inside your mother's womb until you were born.
By
Unknown, at 11:41 AM
Depends on the meaning of "becomes" and "was" What makes us human is not the molecular blueprint and a blueprint that needs the forces of nature in a woman's body to become anything like a human being.
What makes us human, what gives us self awareness, that essentially human attribute; what gives us the ability to think, to act, to be a sentient being - none of those things is present in a fertilized egg regardless of what it may someday be if the forces of nature are left alone.
Aren't you sad that you ate that chicken that in a billion years may have evolved into a whole race of superior beings? maybe if Pontius Pilate's mother had miscarried, you would have been a Mithraist or Zoroastrian - who knows? Just what level of what ifs and maybes do we have to reach before your argument is indistinguishable from any other farrago of fatuous fantasies?
And what about the infinite number of human beings that could have been born but who have not been? Shall we stare into empty space and ask it if it's sad for all of them who were not born not to have been born? Are we starting to smell the fallacy yet?
In absolute point of fact, the cloud of dust that formed the solar system was you at your earliest stage - shall we keep piling up the absurdities?
Anyway if you believe that souls can exist outside of bodies, which most people who argue as you do believe, why would you care whether any number of souls are exiled from heaven and inserted into the nucleus of an egg cell? If souls are immortal, your argument vaporizes - if there are no souls, you never had an argument in the first place.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 1:54 PM
I am a 98% pro-lifer, 2% Pro-choicer, who has no religious convictions at all . I didn't need the fear of god or anything else to come to my decision, just a good sense of what is right and wrong.
You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?
You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else. You would have been deprived of all your experiences and memories. In this day and age with terminations being so readily available and so many being carried out, if you make it to full term you can consider yourself lucky.
Lucky you had a mother that made the choice of life for you.
Don't you think they all deserve the same basic human right, LIFE?
At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existence. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.
Though it pains me to say it , there may always be a need for the 2% medical reasons and such, but that's all.
So how do we get the other 98% to be responsible...................
How do we get them to be honest with themselves, about when life begins.
egg+sperm = human being
Sadly many prefer an occasional abortion, over using birth control, they have all kinds of reasons, each of them selfish.
Then there's the christian impossition,(all a bit talibanish), and their men in high places.(church and state should never entwine) their stance against birth control has only added to the numbers.
Sanity must provale, abortions should remain available and safe to the 2% and such and the rest need to have a good look at themselves and get their act together.
People have got to stop using abortion as birth control.
I'd like to see effective birth control made available to all who can't afford it.
By
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