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Dead at 31 many thanks, Catholic Church.
I needed some time to digest this story… Sorry folks but that is a lie. I needed some time to come back to a (relatively) coherent state before I could write reasonably about what went down with Savita Halappanavar.
A post filled with nothing but white-hot rage and invective against the pustulant ass-pimples known as pro-lifers (anti-choicers, for the sake of veracity) and their equally pustulant,delusion friends, the Catholic Church would serve little purpose other than giving the other side ammunition about how nasty I am (Humourless Feminist, Too Sensitive, Crazy Socialist, Militant Atheist etc…the list is long ). No, my ninnyhammerd-half-witted friends won’t get the pleasure because in Savita’s case there is nothing for me to add, the absolute horror and immorality of their position is chillingly clear – and a young woman had to die because of it (and women are dying of it here in North America too).
Let’s just look at how our pro-life catholic friends “helped” Savita Halappanavar – Analysis from Dr. Jen Gunter (I’m referencing Jen’s post to make my point, she does not hold the same opinion as I). [ed. bold text mine]
This is what is known. Savita Halappanavar was 31 years old and happy to be pregnant with her first child. Then, at 17 weeks, tragedy struck and she was “found to be miscarrying.” Her husband reports that she was in “severe pain” for three days at the hospital and a termination was requested. He says this request was denied because Ireland is “a Catholic country.” He and his late wife were led to believe that the law would only allow her to be delivered when there was no fetal heartbeat.
What does the standard of medical care say about this treatment? Without access to the chart, “miscarrying” at 17 weeks can only mean one of three things”
A) Ruptured membranes
B) Advanced cervical dilation
C) Labor (this is unlikely, although it is possible that she had preterm labor that arrested and left her with scenario B, advanced cervical dilation).
All three of these scenarios have a dismal prognosis, none of which should involve the death of the mother.
Okay, ground rules set. There were no mysteries here, the medical playbook is straight forward.
The standard of care with ruptured membranes (scenario A) is to offer termination or, if there is no evidence of infection and the pregnancy is desired, the option of observing for a few days to see if the leak seals over and more fluid accumulates. If no fluid accumulates and by some chance the pregnancy manages to go beyond 24 weeks (the vast majority of pregnancies with ruptured membranes delivery within a week), survival is unlikely given the lungs require amniotic fluid to develop. I have seen the rare case where a woman with no infection (and no fluid) elects conservative management in the hopes that might make it to at least 24 weeks in the pregnancy, however, I have never heard of a baby surviving in this scenario. Regardless, if at any point infection is suspected the treatment is antibiotics and delivery not antibiotics alone.
The standard of care with scenario B involves offering delivery or possibly a rescue cerclage (a stitch around the cervix to try to prevent further dilation and thus delivery) depending on the situation. Inducing delivery (or a D and E) is offered because a cervix that has dilated significantly often leads to labor or an infection as the membranes are now exposed to the vaginal flora. Many women do not want wait for infection. A rescue cerclage is not without risks and is contraindicated with ruptured membranes or any sign of infection. Rescue cerclage is a very case by case intervention and well beyond the scope of this post. These decisions are difficult and the mark of good medical care is that all scenarios are discussed, all interventions that are technically possible offered, and then the patient makes an informed decision. All with the understanding that if infection develops, delivery is indicated.
Medically speaking, Dr.Gunter explains the outcomes of what these religiously addled doctors did, or more specifically did not do.
As there is no medically acceptable scenario at 17 weeks where a woman is miscarrying AND is denied a termination, there can only be three plausible explanations for Ms. Hapappanavar’s “medical care” :
1) Irish law does indeed treat pregnant women as second class citizens and denies them appropriate medical care. The medical team was following the law to avoid criminal prosecution.
2) Irish law does not deny women the care they need; however, a zealous individual doctor or hospital administrator interpreted Catholic doctrine in such a way that a pregnant woman’s medical care was somehow irrelevant and superceded by heart tones of a 17 weeks fetus that could never be viable.
3) Irish law allows abortions for women when medically necessary, but the doctors involved were negligent in that they could not diagnose infection when it was so obviously present, did not know the treatment, or were not competent enough to carry out the treatment.
What we do know is that a young, pregnant, woman who presented to the hospital in a first world country died for want of appropriate medical care. Whether it’s Irish Catholic law or malpractice, only time will tell; however, no answer could possibly ease the pain and suffering of Ms. Halappanavar’s loved ones.
This is what we get when we allow insipid religious prevarication into important parts of our society. Mythology and magic have no place in secular institutions, not now and not ever. Yet we still allow the bullshite in despite the injuries, deaths and pain it causes. Religion poisons everything and everyone it touches and yet Religion is 
just one head of the hydra that conspired to end Savita’s life. By now the ironically named “Pro-life” band of fetus fetishists need to take their bows and unsuccessfully try to wipe their bloody hands of this uncomfortable case.
Savita’s death is on their hands because this is what you get when you don’t value women as people and see them only as incubators. Savita and other women are dying because of the batshite-insane anti-choice nuttery that goes on that somehow makes it okay to take women out of the pregnancy equation and deny her rights. So have your prayer vigils, your fetus-porn, your 40 days of fuckwittery – all so you can feel fucking morally superior(?) when a women like Savita Halappanarvar dies? Your fetid morality is repugnant and has no place in a civilized society… none whatsoever.
You know what the best tell is from these anti-woman fetus worshipping zealots is? The absolute fucking silence from the pro-life side of things when details of Savita’s death rang around the world. The author(s) over at Reasonable Conversation nailed it with this post which I excerpt here. [ed. bold text mine]
The fact of the matter is, these people can only thrive when the deaths are anonymous. The moment we had a name for one of the victims of their horrible and irrational beliefs, they needed to shut up and hide so nobody could ask them if Savita Halappanavar should have died, if it was god’s will, if they should have allowed her to be treated. They can’t answer these questions because the answers they would give would make them look like monsters if they were honest and undermine their message if they lied.
This. A thousand times just this.
This is why we fight for the rights of women because the regressive religiously addled view women as second class citizens not worthy of human rights or treatment. Your 
torpid bronze age shenanigans have gone on for much too long and hurt too many people. Where is the apology from the pope? Where is the outcry from the anti-choicers? There is none because they cannot or will not see the monstrous evil of their positions, better to whip up some more fetus porn or get some more red duct tape and pray to your imaginary sky-daddy.
When the consequences of your bullshite come to light the religiously anti-choice zealots scurry away from the light of reason(rule one in the nutter playbook), when the unnamed become named and the travesty of your rotten ethics is bared to light you offer no defense, because there is no defense for your untenable immoral position.
We’ll see if we can make it short and quick for today’s Disservice. God has a lot of people who claim to speak for him and his will (see the mentally ill). It’s like certain people happen to have a holy transceiver installed and others, like myself most decidedly do not. I mean when I talk like my imaginary friend is watching over me – my friends make that “keep the freaky-delusional guy happy smile” while someone covertly calls for the nice men in white coats to come get me.
But if you’re wired for God it’s fine:
“Simply put, we did not come up with the idea of God. He came up with the idea of us.
God created you, and me, and all that the eye can see. According to this verse in Jeremiah, He knew us before we ever knew Him. He knew who we were, before our mother’s knew who we were. And depending on your interpretation of this verse and many others in the Bible, it might just be the case that God knows how our lives will pan out long before we know it. He may know the decisions we make before we make them. He may know that we’re going to be “a prophet to the nations.” He may know what our next job will be. Shoot, He may even know what our calling in life is.
Think about it…so many of us are trying to figure out our lives–where to go next, what to do next, who will be in our lives and the like. Maybe, God knows these things all along. And maybe, He wants to tell us that we’re set apart, […]”
Like really, really? – This is some grade A, finely ground, delusional crap being finger-painted on the walls over there and it is *okay*? This isn’t reasoned argument, deep introspection or anything resembling rational thought. This is verbal wanking for jesus why it scares the piss out of me is because is soooooo chillingly prevalent in the blogosphere. Admittedly, it (the jebus-babble) serves as a excellent tell highlighting where the reality challenged are and delineating the rationality free zones, a meagre comfort in he towering shadow of blissfully ignorant religious stupidity.
I’m getting to the topic at hand soon, gentle readers, I just need to point out the crazy as I see it to in order to frame what the title of this post hints at namely, the neat concept of Eternal Sin (ba ba buuuuuuum!).
Jesus saves! Hold and accept jebus in your heart and you will enter heaven… blah blah blah…. Oh wait… you there the atheist looking type, you get to burn in hell *forever* why?? Here’s why :
- Mark 3:28-30: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven all their sins and all the blasphemies they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin. He said this because they [the Pharisees] were saying, ‘He has an evil spirit’.”
- Matthew 12:30-32: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy. But the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
- Luke 12:8-10: “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
Oh shit, there I go, now I’ve done it. You see kind readers, I’ve been a bad atheist. No, I mean it, a really bad atheist. My irredeemable crime? – here it comes… *holds breath….tension so thick you can cut it with a bad cliche.*
I have said (and shall reiterate here) and meant the following statement:
“The holy ghost is fictional character at best and is a big poopy-head”
Whoa there, that wins me eternal damnation. Don’t you feel the kindness and the loving of the christian god? I know I do. What kind of horrible fucking being demands blind devotion or else its a permanent lake of fire vacation for you? Him and his brand of “Justice”” can go frack themselves sideways, thank you very much.
Eternal damnation is immoral in any case, especially when you hand get out hell free cards for everything else. Mass murderer? Repent and accept jebus, go to heaven. Serial rapist and child molester? Repent and accept jebus, go to heaven. Torture cats for fun? Repent and accept jebus, go to heaven.
Frack heaven and frack the despicable “morality” that supposedly gets you there. It’s topsy-turvy bullshit at its very best; I get to burn forever for calling a ghost “poopy” and Ted Bundy after finishing gnoshing on somone’s liver, once saved, is in heaven with his 72 and half virgins (or raisins, depending on translation).
This notion of eternal damnation, lets lump it into the correct category and call it religious morality, is fractally stupid. To the rational mind religious morality is bug-fuck nutz. It is also a maddening splinter punched into my cerebral-cortex as I witness the deluded start dropping these religious bags of spoor into a conversation not realizing the implications of their delusional shit-festooned beliefs.
And thus endeth the sermon. Have a good week folks.
Ah, the prefect moral being and originator of all things good and holy is at it once again, this time condemning people to death for daring to defy his will. Objectively moral my ass.
Ethics are what make people stand against tyranny. Saying “no” to the crowd is one of the most difficult challenges we face as social animals. Bradley Manning had the courage to make an ethical stand, we all possess similar characteristics, we just choose to dismiss these ethical impulses. When we do so, our the moral fabric of our society degrades.
“Washington, DC – Private Bradley Manning was just 22 years old when he allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables and video evidence of war crimes to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. For that act of courage that revealed to the world the true face of the American empire, he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.”
Making an ethical stand always has consequences; I’m surprised Mr.Manning has not been executed yet for his actions. The international media, not heard in the US of course, is picking up the story and telling a significantly different narrative than what the White House would like you to believe.
“All one needs to know about American justice is that if he had murdered civilians and desecrated their corpses – if he had the moral capacity to commit war crimes, not the audacity to expose them – he’d be better off today.”
Not exactly good for the recruiting posters.
“Indeed, if Manning had merely murdered the nameless, faceless “other”, as his Army colleagues on the notorious Afghan “Kill Team” did, he would not have had his right to a speedy trial blatantly violated. If Manning had intentionally killed unarmed civilians, posed for pictures with their dead bodies and slashed their fingers off as souvenirs, he would not have had his guilt publicly pronounced by his own commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama, months before he so much as saw the inside of a military court. If he had killed poor foreigners instead of exposing their deaths, he might even stand a chance of getting out of prison while still a young man.”
War brings a different set of rules to the table, but we in the West would like to think that we possess some noble spirit that sets us apart from the rest. Yo-ho, it is they who are savages, the brutes who kill indiscriminately. What bullocks.
“This isn’t really a head-scratching development. While killing unarmed civilians for sport may not be officially sanctioned policy, it doesn’t threaten the functioning of the war machine as much as a soldier standing up and refusing to be complicit in mass murder. From the perspective of a Washington establishment much more concerned with maintaining hegemony than its humanity, the former – murder – is much less troubling a precedent than the latter.
And so the US government is making an example of Manning, lest any other cogs in the machine start thinking about listening to their consciences instead of their commanders.”
The mirroring of foreign policy onto this case bears further investigation. The bullshite you here about the domino theory and the various red-scares starts with the implicit assumption that the “threat of a good-example” must be quashed at all costs. The illegal terrorist war waged by the United States on Nicaragua is a prime example of a country using resources for its people instead of the multinationals. Raises the poor a few steps out of abject poverty is the “good example” that must be utterly destroyed so “stability” can be restored. Stability being shorthand for globalized corporate control. Focusing on the individual case of Mr.Manning we can observe the same pattern.
Manning’s actions speak of a human conscience, a sense that what was going on was horribly wrong and it needed to stop. Acting on his conscience as a decent human being, Manning took action. Having people empathically relate to official enemies is a big no no in the armed forces, you might start questioning the rational, as such, of what you’re doing there and that, gentle readers, is not allowed.
“Had Manning – instead of exposing the crime – been the one pulling the trigger in the US Apache helicopter that in 2007 murdered at least a dozen unarmed people in Baghdad, he wouldn’t be facing any legal consequences for his actions. Had Manning authorised a 2009 missile strike in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children, instead of releasing the State Department cable that acknowledges responsibility for the killings, we wouldn’t even know his name.
But Manning didn’t kill anybody. Rather, he was outraged by the killing he saw all around him and angered at the complicity of his higher-ups who weren’t prepared to do a damn thing about. So, the system having failed to ensure accountability, Manning took it upon himself to share the inconvenient facts his government was withholding from the world.
“I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy”, he explained in a chat with hacker-turned-informant Adrian Lamo. As an Army intelligence analyst, Manning witnessed firsthand the American empire in action – and it changed him. “I don’t believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore”, he lamented, “only a plethora of states acting in self-interest”.
Transparency, accountability, responsibility are all hallmarks of a functioning democracy. The people of a democracy have the right to know what is being done in their name.
“Confronted with the reality of institutional evil, Manning risked his career – and his freedom – in order to expose everything from mass murder and child rape in Afghanistan to US support for brutal dictators across North Africa and the Middle East. His actions were heroic, and Amnesty International has even credited them as the spark for with jump-starting the Arab Spring. And yet a president who proclaims his commitment to transparency while on the campaign trail is determined to go down as the one whose administration mentally tortured, prosecuted and jailed the most famous whistle-blower in half-a-century.”
Officially we want heroes from war, but what we really get are ‘made-men’ who, with the consent of the state, parrot the institutional truths back to the public to keep them in the dark. Outside of the borders of the USA, the notion of ‘defending freedom’ has a much different definition, one much closer to the harsh truth that Bradly Manning chose to share.
Manning said,”I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy”. – Perhaps if the American public could share a similar sentiment democracy might begin to flourish once again in the USA.
Distribute freely my pretties! Spread the word. :)
It amazes me how sometimes, when I criticize something in religion, the defence that theists supply are just as bad or worse than my original criticism. For instance, I have often said that the sermon on the mount promotes the idea of thought crime. Thinking hateful things is the same as murder and thinking sexy things is the same as adultery. If anything could show Christian dogma to be one of totalitarian fascism rather than of love, its the idea that you can be guilty just by thinking something.
When I point this out, I often get told that the message that I OUGHT to be getting from that passage is that, in the eyes of god, a sin is a sin. Sins are all equal under god’s divine judgment.
The first time I heard this, I did a double take. Even someone who’s had their intelligence ebbed by the retarding forces of religion should be able to see the horrible consequences of that little gem. Alas, once again, my optimism and charity were quickly deflated. That person was serious. So were the great number of believers who have told me the same thing since.
So, for them, and any who happen to think along the same lines, I would like to explain why it is so horrible. By saying a sin is a sin is a sin, and they are all morally equivalent in the eyes of god, the theist is equating the suffering a shop owner feels when someone steals a piece of gum from his store to the suffering felt by a rape victim. Indeed, if two people each steal a piece of gum, the shop owner has suffered from twice as many sins against him than the rape victim, so the shopkeeper has, by Christian math, been wronged more.
While I could go on at length why this is horrendous in the worst kind of way, I think if you can’t figure it for yourself, you are beyond any help that my postings can ever hope to give. But, to my amazement, the believers aren’t stumped by this. They say ‘oh, of course, to us humans one is much worse than the other, but I’m talking about in GOD’S eyes, not ours’.
They don’t seem to realize that their answer still doesn’t make anything better. They say that their god is perfectly good and just. If that is so, any difference between humans perception and that of their god would mean a deficiency on our part. That means, according to this abhorrent little bit Christian philosophy, rape victims are WRONG when they feel worse than the robbed shopkeeper. And our justice system is WRONG to treat the rapist more severely than it treats the gum thief. For if they were a bit more like Jesus, they would see that a sin is a sin and the right thing to do is to treat them equally.
If it’s morally reprehensible that a human take a certain view (like candy burglary is as bad as rape) then it would be just as revolting if a sky faerie took that view. So, not only does this sermon on the mount establish the ground rules for thought crime, it also, thanks to the defence posited by Christians, shows their god to be a despicable and morally bankrupt entity that belittles the suffering those who have endured the worst of crimes.
I am continually astounded by Christian claims to moral supremacy, that they somehow have access to a pinnacle of ethics that non-believers just don’t share.
When I point out that non-believers do a great deal of good in the world, I find myself mostly ignored by theists. Apparently atheist acts of love and charity don’t count. So I tried another angle. If the good-deed doing Christians were to suddenly give up their faith, would they cease their acts of good will? Not a chance. If they actually cared about their fellow humans (which, in most cases, I believe they do) then the belief in some external sky faerie would have no bearing on their desire to help out their brothers and sisters. Again, my point is most frequently met with avoidance. And so, as I cannot get anywhere by promoting the morality of the faithless, I will now try lighting the candle of enlightenment from the other end. In this post I intend to debunk the validity of Christianity’s cornerstone of ‘ethics’: the ten commandments.
When defending the morality of their faith, Christians claim that all a society needs is wholesome and is found in the commandments. Further (as discussed above) the Bible is the only place to find these teachings. The most often cited are commandments five through nine, so I will start with those. Honour your parents, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, and don’t lie. Christians will go on and on about how good these rules are and to how bad things get when they are not obeyed. Surely, they must be divinely ordained and we ought to worship the supernatural being that delivered these rules to us. You catch that? Attribute an obvious truth to your deity and suddenly its THE god. That just doesn’t work.
Let me explain.
Don’t murder and don’t steal are not revelations in morality. Indeed, these have been laws for every human society for as long as there have been laws (and in case you’re not sure, the existence of laws does in fact predate Christianity). Further, these same laws have been observed in societies within the animal kingdom. Same with honouring parents. It’s an evolutionary strength found in a multitude of species. The young simply have a better chance at survival if they are close to their parents. What about that adultery one? Animals don’t get married, so that commandment is homo-sapien specific. Right? Oh wait. Marriage is just an extension of the ‘mate for life’ behaviour which IS displayed by a number of animal species (most at higher rates than us) including pigeons and termites. That’s right. Commandment number seven has been mastered by termites. Not really your typical image of absolute moral authority, is it? Not lying is a similar case. No society has every promoted duplicity between its members. These rules just aren’t that difficult for people to come up with on their own, and they certainly do not require some god to teach them.
So far the commandments are irrelevant to societal morality, as any society is perfectly capable of deriving these rules themselves. I will call this irrelevance “best case scenario”. To see how the commandments can fall short of this, we must look to the ones not yet mentioned. The first three are basically the same while the fourth is an extension of those three.
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