Random recommended reading

Brittany Mann from Critic magazine spent some time with the Dunedin antichoice protest thugs.  Quote of the day:

I asked him what Voice for Life does, apart from protesting abortions. “Not a lot,” said Les, unabashed. “It used to be called SPUC – Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. But it got mocked.”

Truly, sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night about the fact they’re not called SPUC any more.  The memes write themselves.

Must-read – with trigger warnings for sexual abuse – on Elizabeth Smart’s campaign against judgey abstinence-only sex “education”.

Mexican archbishop admits that he thinks abortion is a worse crime than priests raping children.  It’s one of those, “I’m not really surprised you think this, I’m surprised you’re bullish enough to admit it” things.

Charles Ramsey is a hero, and yet he shouldn’t be, because society shouldn’t make it so normal to ignore [what looks on the surface like] domestic violence.  But of course he’s a man of colour speaking a type of English which gets coded as unintelligent and mock-worthy, so of course he’s been reduced to a meme.  Thanks, racism!

Top 10 best things about Family First’s deregistration notice

Family First have helpfully posted online the full text of the letter and decisions informing Bob McCoskrie of his deregistration as a charity.  I’m not sure why he thought this would be a good idea – maybe he just copy-pastes things on autopilot these days – but we should all be thankful for the lulz.

Note:  IANAL.  The following is based on my own reading of the linked document and I am happy to be corrected in matters of fact.

10.  One of the precedent cases cited by the Charities Commission is Draco. (properly In re Draco Foundation (NZ) Charitable Trust HC WN CIV 2010-485-1275)

This makes sentences like “Draco also approved comments in the guidelines published by the Charities Commission” just really funny in a post-Harry Potter age.

9.  Copy-pasta strikes again!

“But, but we educate people!”  Family First cried, and indeed, educational purposes are a fantastic ground for charitable status.  Unfortunately – and this one gets three numbers all to itself because it’s so awesome – the Charities Registration Board doesn’t think much of the “education” offered by their website:

… the Board considers that, viewed holistically, the Trust’s publications to its website are predominantly opinion pieces intended to promote the Trust’s point of view on controversial social issues.  The Board considers that this description is apt for the news items and media releases.

8.  Your book reports suck

Research!  Family First does research, right?  Wrong:

Thirdly, the Board considers that the research papers commissioned by the Trust do not advance an educational purpose and do constitute propaganda

…

The papers do not represent original research.  With the exception of The Value of Family … the reports (i) do not … provide a balanced and rigorous analysis of the empirical evidence for conclusions reported; and (ii) do contain emotive language and calls to action, and engagement with alternative points of view that is fairly polemical.

7.  Whatever you paid Curia, it was too much

Specifically, the Board considers that the Trust’s activities in commissioning polls do not advance research but rather canvas support for political outcomes advocated by the Trust

Ooops!  Who’d'a thunk it?

6.  If Family First actually gave a fuck about real families, they’d have done better.

A big issue in the consideration of whether an organisation counts as charitable, when it’s saying political things, is the self-evident public good as a matter of law.  The example they use is that saying you promote peace through disarmament doesn’t count, because disarmament-for-disarmament’s-sake isn’t really a matter of law.  Promoting peace through eliminating weapons of mass destruction does count because WMDs are obviously something our law recognises as bad, mmkay.

Unfortunately for Family First:

In particular, the Board rejects the submission that the Trust’s point of view accords with New Zealand’s international and domestic law recognising the rights of the child and support for families.  Neither New Zealand’s international law obligations nor New Zealand’s domestic law favour “the natural family” over other forms of family

Yep.  Promoting one narrow-minded view of the family doesn’t align with our domestic and international laws.  Maybe if Family First actually bothered to advocate on behalf of all families they’d have done better.

5.  That’s just, like, your opinion, maaaaaaaaan

Family First have copy-pasted an “affirmation” from the “World Congress of [limited definitions of] Families” to describe their views.  The whole point of calling it an “affirmation”, of course, is that saying “I affirm the sky is green” sounds a lot more forceful and definitive than “I believe the sky is green.”

Unfortunately,

The Board considers that the Trust’s perspective on family can be fairly described as an opinion on what is best for families and civil society.

…

The Board also considers that the Trust’s perspective on family is one that is controversial in the relevant sense, i.e. that its benefit to the public is not self-evident as a matter of law.

4.  You must be deregistered for the greater good of all charities

After summing up how Family First doesn’t meet the requirements of a charitable organisation:

Accordingly, the Board considers that it is in the public interest to remove the Trust from the register as this will maintain public trust and confidence in the charitable sector.

Yep.  I know, I know, it’s just formulaic legalese, but by Satan and all his little wizards I love the idea that the public of New Zealand will have less faith in / respect for charitable organisations if Family First remains one.

3.  Three strikes and you’re out

This is not simply a matter of Family First forgetting to do some paperwork.  They have been deregistered for failing all three tests the Board has put to them:

• Their purpose is to promote a point of view
• They aren’t promoting religion nor education
• They are trying to “procure governmental actions”, i.e. make policy changes, in line with their views

Not even a couple of sausage sizzles for the orphans could have saved them.

2.  The fact that Family First deliberately avoids mentioning the fundamentalist Judeo-Christian basis of their beliefs is part of their undoing.  

Because while it looks way better to J Public to pretend that you’re just defending “tradition” instead of “extremist teachings which conflict with pretty much everything Jesus had to say about anything”, unfortunately when you’re trying to avoid paying taxes by claiming you’re a religious outfit, it kinda damages your case to never have mentioned religion anywhere in your many many websites.

1.  Bob McCoskrie apparently has no idea how much he’s undermined himself by publishing this document.

Seriously.  Anyone with high-school graduate literacy can read the entire thing, and – barring the technical legal jargon – understand absolutely why Family First was deregistered.  Because they don’t promote education.  Because they’re a political lobby group without even a smattering of charitable deeds to their name.  Because their views are not actually as mainstream as they constantly insist they are.

Thanks, Bob.

 

Abortion and mental health research not as clear-cut as reported; no surprises there

In a previous post I questioned recent research which was widely reported as “proving” that there’s no positive mental health benefit associated with abortion – thus basically “disproving” the idea that abortions are being legitimately permitted on mental health grounds in NZ.

Via some helpful pixies, I was able to obtain a copy of the full article, and … yeah.  No surprises here.

The fact is, it’s a literature review, which revisits the results of previous studies which had pretty inconclusive results regarding the abortion-mental health link, usually because:

• they didn’t distinguish between unwanted and unintended pregnancy
• they didn’t compare people granted abortion against people denied abortion (it’s a lot easier to come to terms with things when you have no other option)
• some of the studies were carried out by people with explicitly antichoice views

So … yeah, pretty much what we already knew.

Here’s the rub, though:

It may also be suggested that the studies reviewed contain multiple problems research design, analysis and interpretation that prevent any clear conclusions from being drawn. In comparison to the ideal of testing the mental benefits of abortion using a randomized controlled trial, it is clear that existing observational studies provide only limited and potentially flawed evidence on the mental health consequences of abortion. However, this observation does not impugn the validity of the conclusion that: at the present time there is no credible scientific evidence demonstrating that abortion has mental health benefits.

So sure, you might say that some/many/all of the studies we looked at were flawed/biased/unscientific, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are no studies which prove the opposite.

Oh, except that:

In addition, it could be suggested that the comparisons made in the study between those having abortion and those having unwanted or unintended pregnancy do not provide an appropriate test of the mental health effects of abortion. A better comparison would be between those having abortion and those refused abortion.

In addressing the research question, we have taken the approach used by the majority of the reviews of the mental health consequences of abortion (Bradshaw and Slade, 2003; Charles et al., 2008; American Psychological Association, 2008; National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, 2011) by comparing those having abortion with those coming to term with unwanted or unintended pregnancy. Further, to our knowledge, the only study that has compared those having abortion with those refused abortion is the re-analysis of Gilchrist et al. (1995), conducted by the AMRC review.

This re-analysis found that, for a number of outcomes (psychotic illness, non-psychotic illness, self harm), those refused abortion fared worse than those provided with abortion, with this difference being statistically significant (p<0.01) for psychotic illness. This evidence suggests the possibility that further studies making such comparisons could demonstrate positive benefits for abortion.

However, at the present time the evidence is far too limited to conclude that abortion reduces any mental health risks of unwanted or unintended pregnancy.

[Emphasis and paragraph breaks mine.]

Sure, you might raise the totally valid point that unplanned =/= unwanted and this might muddy the results, but fuck you, that’s what everyone else does.  And anyway, there’s a small amount of research which does actually suggest that if we compared apples with apples we’d get different [more accurate] results than when comparing apples and tractors, but fuck you, because there’s not much of that so go away.

And here’s the Bonus Rub Cookie:

A NEW ZEALAND professor whose work has been used by pro-life groups to contend that abortion holds no mental health benefits for pregnant women has said that his research is too limited to make any definitive conclusions.

… are you fucking kidding me.

Look, apparently Dr David Fergusson considers himself prochoice.  Which is great.  And no one wants to be the big scary feminist meany-head who scares off the gentle, placid, well-meaning allies.

But what the fuck is with a supposedly pro-choice researcher putting out research which is too limited to make any definitive conclusions when anyone with half a fucking ounce of awareness would understand exactly how said limited research will be twisted to fuck with the lives of pregnant people?

Is there some kind of “papers published” quota researchers have to meet?  With no other important KPIs like “papers must be actual good research” or anything?

Why the fuck didn’t I go into academia?

Another issue with the original research:  here’s the five “mental health outcomes” measured, which were then equated with a general picture of “mental health”:

anxiety, depression, alcohol misuse, illicit drug use/
misuse, and suicidal behaviour.

… all of which are pretty complex things.  I mean, are we really going to equate a once–pregnant person who smokes the occasional joint among friends with a once-pregnant person who starts huffing paint thinner to get through the day?  Is post-partum depression – common even in pregnant people who are happy and enthusiastic about having a baby – being included and thus compared with other types of depression which might exist regardless of birth status?  Do we ignore the fact that suicidality might be affected by the gigantic social pressure on new parents not to “abandon” their infants?

Sure, some of these questions may merely highlight my own lack of clinical psychological training, but come on.  Even the dude who wrote the damn article thinks it doesn’t pass muster.

~

H/T Alison McCulloch and the magic pixies.

New rule: The Onion

This was originally going to be a random recommended reading link, but then I got ranty.

The Onion is now officially covered by the Jezebel Rule, because there’s nothing satirical about fantasizing about the violent death of a black woman.  And since they fired the person who called Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt, they’re also covered by the Hell Pizza rule, i.e. “if you have multiple employees who will make these kind of fuckups, you don’t get to keep playing the “just one employee fucked up” card”.

Also:  personally, I really really hate people equating shit like this to A Modest Proposal.  When Swift uses utterly dehumanizing language and tone towards the Irish babies he proposes to farm for eating, it’s because he’s satirizing the language and tone other people use towards Irish families.  He’s writing shitty things to highlight shitty things.  Also, dude was Anglo-Irish.

For The Onion’s latest vile piece to be equivalent, The Onion would have to be satirizing the callous and fetishistic way media discuss violence against women of colour.  (Compare with how The Civilian manages near-perfect mimicry of the standard NZ media tone.)  Which they’re clearly not, because then they might have written something like “TMZ.com wins 2012 Pulitzer for groundbreaking uploading of graphic imagery.  Judges commended the website’s lack of ethical fibre in a fearless pursuit of pageviews at the expense of people’s privacy and safety.”

What The Onion appears to be trying to satirize – if we grant that the article is meant to be satire – is Chris Brown’s continuing lack of ownership over his own violence.  But instead of saying something like, “Tearful Chris Brown finally admits to Barbara Walters that he’s never done anything wrong ever”, the article is all about Rihanna.  All about committing acts of violence towards Rihanna.  All about Chris-Brown-as-perpetual-violent-abuser and Rihanna-as-perpetual-victim.

Which brings up the topic of The Onion’s apparent indifference to the violence of white male celebrities.  Their most recent articles on Charlie Sheen – who’s cropped up as a counter-example on Twitter a few times – include

Responsible, Thoughtful Nation Decides To Ignore Charlie Sheen Situation

… which delivers a serious poke at the everyday people who continue to prop up the gossip industry while simultaneously decrying its lack of ethics, and

A Troubled Sheen

… which includes a timeline of his fall from grace and pointedly criticises TV networks’ ongoing deference to him:

2010: CBS implores Sheen to keep doing whatever the hell he wants, but with at least the tiniest goddamn bit of discretion

Neither article mentions his history of domestic violence – which could be read as problematic in that it erases his serious crimes in favour of buying into the “wacky Charlie Sheen is wacky” narrative – but I’m really quite happy for The Onion to err, however unintentionally, on the side of basic decency with that one.  

Chris Brown’s violence, on the other hand?  Hi-larious.

There was a time, I’m sure, when The Onion was brilliant and edgy and breathtakingly funny.  But if y’all didn’t get the hint that they’d turned to the dark side after the whole paywall thing, let this be your final straw.

(And no, I’m not linking to The Onion, because that’s their entire fucking plan.)

Review: Fighting to Choose by Alison McCulloch

I struggle to find a properly punchy intro to this review.  Because all I really want to say is, if you have an interest in the history of the reproductive rights struggle in New Zealand, read this book.

If you don’t have an interest in the history of the reproductive rights struggle in New Zealand, also read this book.  Because you’ll develop one.

Abortion has a long and dramatic history in NZ, but it’s not a history we talk about, or remember.  And remembering that history is vital to our continuing push for reproductive rights today.  We need to know how we’ve gotten into this bizarre situation, with a law passed in 1977 which makes pregnant people jump through hoops but functions just well enough that most people carry on under the misapprehension that we have abortion on demand.

Just check out Jami-Lee Ross’ speech on the third reading of the marriage equality bill, when he referred to abortion being legalised.  It isn’t.

Why it isn’t, and who decided it wouldn’t be, and how activists fought hard for it to be, is what this book’s about.  Alison McCulloch, Pulitzer-winning journo and general badass, lays it all out, plain and simple, and being pretty damn even-handed towards the antichoice movement in the process.

This book was a joy to read … and it made me angry.  Angry at chickenshit politicians who folded at the first threat of Catholic voters’ ire.  Angry at a Royal Commission who dared to produce an incoherent, inconsistent report which controls people’s lives to this day, who let antichoicers derail an important moment in our societal debate on reproductive rights.  Angry at the condescension shown toward New Zealand people, particularly women, to this day.

Angry that we still have to fight for this.

But you know, it’s a good anger.  A motivating anger.

And now I’ve added “release helium balloons into the House of Representatives” to my bucket list.

Overall rating: five out of five speculums.

Fighting to Choose is available online from the Victoria University Press.

An abridged excerpt from Chapter Four, covering the opening of the Auckland Medical Aid Trust clinic in 1974, is up on Werewolf.

Prochoicing on the Prochoice Highway

Alison McCulloch is taking the book on tour.  Follow the Prochoice Highway for more information.

Videos from the launch, via the ALRANZ blog.

Well, I got that one wrong: Family First charity edition

I’m sure you can all imagine my glee at the news that Family Fist has been threatened with de-registration as a charity.

The thing is, I totally called this the other way, when I was assessing Right To Forced Pregnancy’s threats against Women’s Health Action and Family Planning, to lobby to get them de-registered on the grounds of being political advocacy groups, not charities.

Mea culpa, chaps.

Because I was chiefly focused on whether political advocacy in of itself was a reason for de-registering, I didn’t actually look at what constitutes “charitable purposes”.  Because while you can do some political lobbying if it’s aligned with your charitable works, you still have to have sufficient charitable purposes in the first place.

These are outlined on the Charity Commission’s website, and – just so we’re clear that attacking women- and reproductive-focused organisations is still pointless – includes:

• promoting public health (such as providing education, counselling, and rehabilitation services)

Unfortunately, “getting Bob McCoskrie’s name in the paper a lot” doesn’t seem to fall under any of the actual categories of charitable purposes.  Boo fucking hoo.

Related reading:  The Little Pakeha; r0b at The Standard

Random recommended reading

The only black kid in class?  Here’s how it happens.

Steve Gray brings the pain on Brian Edwards, by which I mean, “quotes Brian Edwards being a douchebag again“.

British magazine The Week depicts the Boston bomb suspects as pretty damn brown.

“Sickening” is exactly the word to describe the situation when victims of domestic violence are punished for reporting the attacks against them.

GayNZ has a great comprehensive piece on the Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill – originally placed in the ballot by Labour MP George Hawkins, now under the mandate of Labour MP H V Ross Robertson, FYI.  H/T Tits and Sass.

Iowa’s Supreme Court has ruled that both same-sex parents may be listed on a baby’s birth certificate.  Woo!

I don’t know if this TEDx talk on violence against women will really “turn every man who sees it feminist”, but it’s pretty damn good.

Mansplaining encapsulated

Ah, Twitter.  I knew exactly what I was getting into when I posted links to the most excellent Mansplained Tumblr, but this one is just so perfect.

Because @otherdavidsmith, after seeing a retweet on this post – which involves an individual telling a personal story of a single incident which happened to them – just had to explain something to myself and the retweeter:

@GuardianJessica @qot_nz Far too easy and convenient. It sounds more anecdotal than truthful.

So, just to be clear, that’s (a) dismissing women’s stated experiences because it just doesn’t sound right to him, and (b) explaining what “anecdotal” means … although he doesn’t actually understand that anecdotes can, in fact, be truthful.

I mean, hello, entire concept of mansplaining with side order of dismissing the power of talking about our experience openly.  It’s 2nd Wave / internet feminism fusion cuisine night tonight!

This was, ahem, pointed out to him, which of course he took with good grace, taking some time to think about how he might have presented himself and whether in a social context of male privilege he might rethink his approach to inserting himself into feminist conversation in future.

Wait, no, the other thing:

@qot_nz @GuardianJessica I didn’t patronize you, I offered an opinion. If you put something in the public space you need to expect those.

I really have a deep and abiding love for this argument: the idea that I (as a silly little woman who doesn’t know how things work, obviously) just don’t understand that tweets are public, and that people have the capacity to reply to them.

Thank fuck for the mansplainers of Twitter or I might have gone on blissfully unaware of these complex 21st century interaction concepts.

The thing is, though … this always comes up after the guy in question has inserted himself into a conversation with no actual regard for the conversation.  With nothing to actually add, merely to make it clear that He Has Important Views On Something which We Must Listen To.

And to top it all off, he insists that it’s his OPINION and he’s ENTITLED TO IT … after dismissing a post on a Tumblr with literally hundreds of similar stories because OMG it’s too anecdotal.

Treating a neckbeard’s opinion as sovereign while denigrating the testimony of women: not mansplaining at all there.

I swear, the only thing that gets me through the complete lack of self awareness from these guys is the fact that, instead of making me question my feminist rage, they just reinforce it.

And because – did you realise? – Twitter is public, they do it for the whole world to see.

~

ETA: after writing up this post, the saga continued, with @otherdavidsmith insisting that he wasn’t implying that the original poster was untrustworthy, it’s just that the post sounded anecdotal to him.  (Which, you know, he already said, but being a man it strengthens his position to just repeat himself).  Like a script.  Which might have something to do with the fact it’s in script format, like many of these kinds of social-network relay-your-experience platforms.

He then links to a freedictionary definition of “anecdotal” to back himself up … which makes no sense in the context, because the specific Tumblr post is an anecdote but not anecdotal in the sense of containing multiple anecdotes, but men don’t need no stinking context when they’re undermining women’s experiences.

And then … then he asks me about a local sports team.

Did I just get mansplain-negged?

Mythbusters team charged with multiple felonies after video evidence comes to light

In shocking news today, the crew of the smash hit Discovery Channel show Mythbusters were arrested in Polk County, Florida, after over 200 hours of graphic video footage was seized by the Sheriff’s office.

This footage is reported to show the team – who have previously passed themselves off as fun-loving larrikins promoting scientific knowledge to a broad audience by scientifically testing myths and urban legends – setting off a series of increasingly devastating explosions, with the estimated damage to property and pig carcasses totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars.  In one video, they appear to test the effectiveness of store-bought ammunition against commuter aircraft.

The Sheriff’s department has also released provocative images of one team member constructing what appears to be a long-range assault cannon using a popular diet soda and candy.

A spokesman said, “We have a zero-tolerance approach to people using chemical reactions to learn more about the wonders of our physical universe.  The Mythbusters’ interest in the rapid expansion of matter, sudden releases of chemical energy, and demonstrating the laws of physics using frozen chickens poses a clear and present threat to the citizens of Polk County.”

~

Except of course that’s not what happened.  What happened was a sixteen-year-old high school student mixed some stuff together in a water bottle to see what would happen.  As hundreds of thousands of sixteen-year-old high school students have done over the course of centuries – that is, those who didn’t tire of such childish things and graduate to making their own fireworks or pipe bombs, or throwing handfuls of potassium into the school pool.

(Best.  Chemistry class.  EVER.)

But this time, when there was a “pop” and the top came off the water bottle, Kiera Wilmot was expelled and arrested on felony weapons charges.

Kiera Wilmot just happens to be a young woman of colour, unlike 90% of the people you see on YouTube making things go “pop” in a similar fashion.

@graceishuman has Storifyed the coverage.  Read it, read up on the school-to-prison pipeline.  Get angry.

Antichoicer lies 2

Last time we talked about a quote which purported to prove that Margaret Sanger – and thus all prochoicers, because we’re the side in this debate which has no original thoughts – was all about the unrestrained sexy times.

I will pause momentarily so the Sanger scholars can pick themselves up off the floor.  Seriously, I’ve done all of an hour’s reading of her work, and … ahahahahahaha.

Now, the second quote, which is far more interesting for what antichoicers want to pretend it implies, and for the actual context it appears to be lifted from.

Quote 2: We <3 Baby Murder

The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.

As with quote #1, this is usually cited as:

The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

Sources: one, two, three, etc etc etc

… because apparently antichoicers only have the one issue of The Woman Rebel and aren’t too creative when making shit up.

But does the quote exist?

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahkinda.  It does not appear in The Woman Rebel Volume 1, Number 1, but the original quote appears in chapter 5 of Woman and the New Race.  And we all know context is everything:

• Chapter V is entitled The wickedness of creating large families.
• It outlines the steadily rising mortality rates of children under 1 year old based on the number of children in their family.
• It notes that these mortality rates are in fact not the full story, because of course a number of children who make it to age 1 don’t make it to age 5. 

And thus Sanger concludes:

The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover, the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty further contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor, so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitution and malnutrition have been accounted for.

Bold mine.

Sanger is obviously not saying – as the antichoice quote purports – that killing babies is always a totally cool thing to do.  She’s talking about babies who might have a less-than-50% chance of living out a year.  She’s talking about babies born into poverty and overcrowding and poor medical care.

She has a particularly nasty view – as disclaimed in my earlier post – about children born into such environments who have disabilities, and also notes somewhat dispassionately that older children forced into work to support younger siblings will unfortunately drag down their father’s wages.  It’s not all sunshine and prochoice lollipops, but it’s also not what RTL and antichoicers across the internet want to pretend it is:  murdering babies for funsies.

Because Margaret Sanger was against infanticide.  In fact, she was against abortion in principle, and seems to have had a utopian view of a world where no one needed to have abortions because contraception was available and foolproof.  But she couldn’t ignore the facts that a lot of children were living in dire poverty and being killed after-birth anyway, and that control over reproduction was vital to women’s liberation.

That’s prochoicers for you.  Comprehending the realities of life and understanding that babies aren’t always exactly what Hallmark gift cards crack them up to be.

Of note

There is an article in The Rebel Woman Volume 1, Number 1 which also deals with infanticide.  It is Benita Locke’s Mothers’ Pensions: The Latest Capitalist Trap which argues, similarly, that poor families may be killing infants (or, to use a classic antichoice loophole, “letting them die”) because conditions are so unsustainable.

The plain truth is that among the children of the poor, the birth of a child is a misfortune, while its death is a blessing, not even in disguise.  Parents often deliberately remove their children from the world rather than that their little ones should be condemned to the veritable hell on earth which they feel they would be obliged to endure, if allowed to live.

Locke’s main argument though is that state benefits provided to poor families (mothers in particular) to encourage them to keep their babies is basically a capitalist trap, designed to ensure more workers are produced for the economic machine while not actually providing sufficient means to raise the babies in question happily and healthily.

But of course for antichoicers to acknowledge the absolutely horrible conditions which some ~precious unborn babies~ must live in after birth, and the lack of comprehensive social support for them, would involve some actual compassion and logical consistency on their part.

And they’re far too busy making up lies to actually give a fuck about born babies, who are no more use in their campaign to control pregnant people’s bodies.

Let’s also note

The extra lying cherry on top of the lying pie in RTL’s original media release is that not only are the two “quotations” presented as fact, they’re joined with an ellipsis, implying they’re part of the same piece of text.

The same piece of made-up antichoice lying text, maybe.