Tagged: ken orr-ful

Aggressively promoting an ideology of lustful sexual licence

In the words of Atheist Pinko Sluts Monthly, where do I sign up?

Right to Annex Your Uterus Life is at it again, now badgering poor Tony Ryall in an effort to stop Family Planning from getting their satanic hands on your precious, sanctified taxpayer dollars.

Their primary reason, as always, is that Family Planning commits the iniquitous crime of helping pregnant people who don’t want to be pregnant stop being pregnant.

But then there’s sex education.  The winning quote:

The NZFPA is part of the sex education lobby that is systematically undermining traditional morality and is aggressively promoting an ideology of lustful sexual licence while pretending to be concerned only with the health and safety of young people.

Remember, if Family Planning really cared about the “health and safety of young people” they would be ignoring all reason, research and reality, and telling them “don’t have sex, it’s bad!   If you ever have sex except in the ways Ken Orr has approved of, you DIE!!!!”

Because that approach has historically ensured there is no sex out of wedlock, no unplanned pregnancies, and no abortion, EVER.

But Right to Burn You At The Stake Life has done their homework this time.  They’ve uncovered Family Planning’s real agenda:  forcing women into same-sex sexual relationships which degrade them.

Trufax.

It’s all encoded in a secret Family Planning document, entitled Keeping it safe, which expert symbologists will instantly recognise as an archaic slogan of the Illuminati used on documentation which is of the highest importance to the plans of our lizard-people overlords.

Ken Orr has valiantly risked his own sanity, nay his own life, to read this vile, blasphemous tome of eldritch cunnilinguistic lore, and he warns the Minister of Health thusly:

The guide is amoral, and promotes unnatural and degrading sexual practices that denigrate the dignity of women.

Now I, as a rampant slut, may read the dread words of Family Planning at a whim, and I can confirm Ken Orr’s statements.  Keeping it safe contains noisome statements of utter perversion such as:

Talking about sex can be embarrassing for many women, but it’s essential in checking out what is safe and comfortable, physically and emotionally.

…

Be clear about what you want, and how far you want to go with any activity and value yourself enough to stick to that. The only way to know for sure if someone has given consent is if they tell you. Check out what your sexual partner wants. Be aware of her body language. Include checking if she is comfortable as part of your sex talk – a whispered “Is this ok?” or “Do you want to go further?” – can be very sexy. Stop if she says it’s not ok.

…

There are some things you can do to make your sex safer and to ensure that you care for your own and your partner’s health and well being.

Woe betide the dignity of women whose innocent eyes should pass over such wretched text!

Oh, fine.  They do also talk about fisting.  Slow, gentle, consensual fisting.

helen-lovejoy

… Seriously, though.  Don’t you feel so sorry for the poor admin person in Tony Ryall’s office who has to open this crap?  “Any mail today?”  “No, sir, just another screed from Ken Orr.”  “Any laughs in it?”  “Oh, culture of death, something about lesbians.  I filed it in the circular bin.”  “You’re doing fine work.  Take an early break if you need to.”

H/T @badtom

Related reading:  AlisonM at The Hand Mirror

Right to Life attacks health charities – and its own allies?

Via Nikki on Twitter, the Red Queen on GayNZ reports that Right to Foetal Global Domination Life NZ are attacking Family Planning and Women’s Health Action’s status as charitable organisations.

If  Right to Life wants to ‘go nuclear’ against Womens Health Action and Family Planning and attack and endanger access to womens and reproductive health over WHAT and FPA’s involvement in pro-choice decriminalisation of abortion concerns, then I suggest someone on the side of progressive social reform should retaliate in kind and draft a complaint to the Charities Commission about the activities of the aforementioned groups in the context of their opposition to marriage equality.

I like the idea, but from a quick reading of the Charities Commission website, I don’t think either effort would have a real chance of success:

Activities that are unlikely to affect charitable status

Undertaking the following activities is unlikely to adversely affect an entity’s charitable status:

  • supporting or opposing legislation directly related to the entity’s charitable purpose

For the goodies, I think it’s pretty obviously good news:  abortion and reproductive healthcare are pretty much the definition of “directly related to the … charitable purpose”.

For the villains, it’s probably also good news:  because organisations like Family First have completely distorted the true meaning of “family” and “social welfare” and “promoting community” to cover everything from street-based sex work to gambling locations to bail laws and the drinking age, all their obvious political activity seems related to their “charitable purpose” as outlined in the Charity Rules posted on their page on the Commission’s website.

The thing is, I don’t really believe that Ken Orr is this stupid.  He probably knows full well that this strike against organisations which actually give a toss about real, born, living breathing thinking human beings is doomed to fail.

But it’s like a trope from every plucky-class-action-lawsuit movie ever:  the forces of evil just try to drown the heroes in paperwork.  It doesn’t matter that Right to Control Your Uterus Life won’t succeed in getting WHA and FPA deregistered, because the goal is to take resources away from promoting health and providing education and potentially saving lives.  The goal is to stop even one person from accessing healthcare information which might involve them gaining some control over their own reproduction.

If one unplanned pregnancy results from this charade, Ken Orr thinks it’s a victory.  If that pregnant person then cannot access safe early abortion because of the hard work he’s put in to making it incredibly difficult to do so, Ken Orr gives himself a gold star.  If that pregnant person or their baby dies because of insufficient education or pre-natal care, Ken Orr doesn’t give a fuck, because he’s all about life oppressing people with uteri and limiting their healthcare options.

The only pity of the matter is that Right to Patriarchy Life isn’t itself a charitable organisation.  Because then it might just be worth spending my own time to waste some of Ken’s in exactly this way.

Right to Life supports … censoring their own extreme rhetoric?

Imagine my delight to see the following headline pop up on my Google Reader:

Right To Life Supports Southlanders Opposing Killing Centre

Imagine my disappointment to click the link for more delicious antichoice hate-speech, only to be disappointed with this sight:

“This story has been removed.”

Fear not, though, it’s still up at the Right to Life website – possibly indicating that it was the choice of Scoop’s editors to remove it, though that would be an interesting tale – so you too can enjoy the woman-hatred on display today.

Right to Life is privileged to support Southlanders for Life in seeking to protect the lives of unborn children at the Southland Hospital. The group of concerned citizens opposes the proposal of the Southern District Health Board, [Southern DHB]to establish a killing centre for Southland unborn  children  at the Southland Hospital.

The proposed killing centre is opposed by many of the staff of the Southland Hospital and they are to be applauded for their commitment to the Hippocratic tradition of respect for the right to life of unborn children.

After that it’s back to the usual madlibbed stuff, but this is a highlight:

It is a travesty to call the killing of an innocent and defenceless child in the womb as care. How do we provide care for a vulnerable woman by killing her baby and then call it a service?

Isn’t it, well, a little bit cute?  How do we “provide care” for a vulnerable woman … by giving her the medical attention she may need to save her life?  By helping her out of a potentially negative life-altering situation?  By, in many cases, preventing her from having to deliver a wanted, planned baby which is already dead or dying and poisoning her bloodstream to boot?

Yeah, that’s not care.  Forcing women – and any other pregnant people who don’t fit Ken Orr’s fundy gender binary – to go through pregnancy is totally caring.  Ignoring the very real, very serious physical, psychological, and economic realities and risks of pregnancy is totally caring.

It’s also really, truly caring to publish the name of the specific staff person at Southland Hospital in whose name the licence to provide abortions has been given.  I’m sure she will find it very caring for being targeted by hateful, judgemental wankers just because she was doing her job and probably just a victim of basic paperwork (presumably the licence has to be in someone’s name.)

Anyway, there’s little in there that hasn’t been utterly refuted before – Hippocratic Oath, breast cancer, “no child is unwanted” (which is why there are no children currently in our system awaiting adoption.  None at all.)

But when they start using terms like “killing centre” – and when either they or a third party feels the need to pull their statements from Scoop – it’s nice to see the true, hatey face of the antichoice movement poking through the “but we just love babies!” mask.

 

Abortion is a real issue, right now

Right to Life Enslave People With Uteri continues their unholy crusade to make whatever dents they can in people’s already-shitty access to abortion in New Zealand.

ALRANZ’s blog has the details and background of what was to be heard in the Supreme Court today:

As it stands, that part of the case is essentially focused on whether or not the ASC should be reviewing (second-guessing) certifying consultants’ decisions regarding the lawfulness of abortions they approve.

But as Idiot/Savant notes, ultimately this is about whether the vast majority of pregnant people can access abortion at all.  Because what it’s really about is stopping certifying consultants from approving abortions based on the “mental health” ground – under which most legal abortions in NZ are performed.

There’s a bunch of issues which warrant discussion on that – some people don’t like that pregnant people have to declare themselves mentally ill, others point out that there’s ableism in treating that declaration as a huge indignity.  As far as I’m concerned, being pregnant when you don’t want to be, having your body in the thrall of another being against your will (not to mention the vast amount of crap heaped on pregnant people, even the enthusiastic ones) is quite sufficiently damaging to one’s mental health to warrant approval.

Anyone who has a problem with that better be prepared to present a dissertation on why infestation and bodily possession are such popular themes in sci fi and horror (my counter argument:  the entire Alien series, and especially that scene in AvP: Requiem which we do not speak of) and how this doesn’t have anything to do with the loss of identity and autonomy involved.

I/S gets to the point:  we need abortion law for the 21st century.  We need an unequivocal statement that bodily autonomy is everyone’s right, and that people like Ken Orr and his ilk seriously need to be ridiculed when they imply that us offering choice is “imposing our morals on people” but them taking choice away is okay because Jesus was all about telling wimminz what to do.

It is no longer good enough to say, as many have said to me over the years, that abortion “isn’t an issue” and “the current law is working fine”.  It’s obviously an issue.  It’s obviously not working fine.  Let’s get it done.

Saying don’t make it so: Right to Foetal Control edition

You have to give this to Right to Zygote Life, they are persistent little misogynists.  And now they’re taking their case, with the sole purpose of making it harder for women to freely choose the fate of their own damn bodies, to the Supreme Court – but, thank Satan and all his little wizards, will not be allowed to argue the interminable fucking point about biologically-dependent cell clumps’ “right” to some poorly-defined notion of “life”.

In a classic madlibbed press release, Right to Fuck Over Women proclaim this a total injustice, because it takes away their ability to confuse pretty clear issues of legislation and medical authority with emotive bullshit ignores the hugest most awful abuse of human rights eveeeeeeeer!!!!

Cue the usual spiel:

The humanity of the unborn child is an inconvenient truth, for acceptance of the humanity of the unborn child would be an impediment to the killing of innocent human beings.

Nup.  I will continue to say this as long as I have breath:  no airy-fairy “humanity of the undead unborn” notion would, in fact, stand in the way of abortion.  Bear with me for the next bit because it’s part of the same bollocks:

The High Court found that “The rule according human rights only at birth is founded on convenience rather than medical or moral grounds.” “A legal right to life would be incongruous in such a law, for it would treat the unborn child as a separate legal person, possessing a status fundamentally incompatible with induced abortion, far from modifying the born alive rule. The abortion law rests on it.”

You know why it’s “convenient”, guys?  Hint:  it’s not because evil slutty women just want to be able to kill babies for the glory of the Dark Lord.  It’s because once you get your way, and get some vague notion of “life” as it pertains to individual human beings’ existences set into law … you still don’t get to ban abortion.

Because then you get to have the really inconvenient argument which will, happily for us sluts, reveal your basic anti-uterus-havers (“women” to you small-minded binary-lovers) stance.  And yes, I’m disagreeing with the High Court here:  recognising the foetus as a separate legal person would not, in fact, be “incompatible” with induced abortion.

Because no born human being’s “right to life “allows them to unilaterally seize control of someone else’s body.

No born human being gets to subpoena another’s kidneys.

No born human being gets to demand to be hooked up to another’s lungs and force the other to breathe for them.

Not even if you’re dying.  Not even if you’re dying and the person whose kidney could save you is the person who stabbed you in the kidney.  Not even if you’re in a coma unable to breathe on your own accord.

The “right to life”, as you pretend it to be, doesn’t even apply now to supposedly-endowed-with-it born people.  Why the fuck do you assume it would apply to da widdle feeeetuses?

And every single time a prochoicer raises this argument, the response (if they bother to engage) comes straight out of the “but you had sex and are therefore a filthy whore who must suffer for it”* playbook.

And that’s a bit inconvenient.

Antichoicers probably don’t actually comprehend this, though.  Because when your argument is basically entirely derived from a worldview which treats women/uterus-havers as walking incubators whose life is only really necessary to produce the next divinely-mandated generation, it’s probably pretty easy to forget that they’re human beings too, and they have a right to life too. Which, as shown above, doesn’t cover being forced to loan their organs to someone else.

And while your softly-softly societally-acceptable sex-shaming and irresponsible-teen-slut-fear-mongering and Aren’t We Reasonable approach might help get moderate types, people who never have to think about this kind of stuff, people who just “feel” that abortion is “icky” on your side … I have this feeling it’s going to be a lot harder to convince them that they also believe that other human beings have the right to take over their bodies and fuck up their health and irrevocably alter their lives for the sake of consistency.

The idea that “life begins at birth”,** at least with regards to abortion, isn’t convenient for our sakes, Right to Steal People’s Autonomy.  It’s convenient for yours.  My prochoice views remain entirely consistent whether I acknowledge conception*** as some momentous event in the course of human life.  My belief in people’s bodily autonomy is not threatened by the idea of ensoulment or a heartbeat or widdle fingers and toesies.

Your arguments, on the other hand, being entirely pulled out of your asses to justify imposing/maintaining a world in which women are lesser, in which women have no agency, in which uterus-havers must all be women because uterus = incubator = tool to propagate society aka “woman”, would find it daaaaaamn inconvenient to have an actual discussion about a world which recognises the “right to life” you pretend to give a shit about.

But please.  Take your arguments to Parliament.  Force our MPs to actually confront the reality of abortion laws in NZ and the hateful controlling world you want to bring about.  I assure you, I am the very opposite of afraid.

~

*And if you want to come and argue that being forced to gestate a pregnancy which is unwanted isn’t suffering, you are invited to sit down for an Alien marathon and come back to me when you’ve figured out why it’s relevant.

**Specifically, first breath.  References?  Oh, only the Bible.

***Insert traditional “which makes God the world’s biggest abortionist” statement here.

Ken Orr is such a sweetheart

I’m honestly touched by this tribute, people.

we pay tribute to the love and often heroic sacrifice that Mothers make in nurturing new life especially those mothers who rejected abortion and choose life for their unborn child in the face of abandonment by the father, these are truly heroic women.

Do you see that, people?

Ken Orr thinks my mum is truly heroic.

You see, my mum was abandoned by my douchefuck bio-donor (in Orr-speak, “father”) and despite that, and a bunch of fun societal pressure* to not be an evil bludging solo mum, she chose to keep her pregnancy and the resulting me.

And then she was supported by the now-scrapped Training Incentive Allowance to get a university education and build a career** and basically be able to raise the ridiculously awesome baby she chose to keep.

That was pretty heroic, in a nation where pissant little basement-dwellers constantly get media attention bleating about the downfall of Traditional Family Values, all right.

So my hat is off to Ken, for acknowledging the struggles of women like my mum, for being so freaking truly heroic in a society where shitbags like him are continually trying to blame all the evils and abuses and disadvantages on the world on them, and on the 364 days of the year when it’s not politic to praise them, basically calling them evil sluts, because they were given a choice and they chose.

Because that’s what Ken doesn’t really want us to focus on too much.  It is fucking heroic to choose to continue your pregnancy in the face of all the shit you’ll get from people like him.

But being a mother becomes a lot less fucking heroic when there is no choice, when the whole fucking path to giving birth, from choosing when to have sex and with whom and choosing whether and how to use contraception and choosing whether or not to continue or terminate a resulting pregnancy is completely taken out of your fucking hands.

When people like Ken Orr win, the only heroism to be found is in just getting through your fucking life without spiralling into despair at the utter lack of autonomy or basic fucking dignity you are permitted, all on the basis of what some arrogant fucktard says God has condemned you to thanks to the configuration of your gonads.

Because here’s the thing, Ken:

What on God’s earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother.

Just one thing, mate:  to CHOOSE to be a mother.***

~

*Which I’m sure Ken knows absolutely nothing about.

**Aided by having a stroppy feminist’s lack of compunction about telling little white lies to douchebag employers who ask kinda-illegal questions about whether she had children

***And end questions with question marks.

Well maybe God should pay child support

Well this nearly made me throw the computer out the window.  Couldn’t quite figure out why at first.  Was it the incredibly fake “appreciation” expressed toward kickass activist veteran Dr Dame Margaret Sparrow?*  Was it the gobsmacking pretence that antichoicers and prochoicers just disagree in principle?**

Nah, it was almost certainly this sentence:

The commitment of this Society is founded on a deep respect for the inherent dignity of women who are invited by our Creator to share with him in bringing new life into the world.

GO.

FUCK.

YOURSELVES.

But also, grazie, for really just illustrating how little you fucking care for women.  They’re not mistresses of their own destiny, even when they plan and initiate and undergo pregnancy, they’re just helping God out with his greater plan for the species.

The rest is the usual utter pack of fucking lies.  Women never really want to terminate pregnancies!  (Oops.)  Implication that prochoicers don’t care about coerced abortion!  (Oops.)  Baldfaced twisting of Dr Sparrow’s words to pretend that even the standing-down President of ALRANZ secretly agrees with them!  Our laws were totally passed by people who cared about women and weren’t just throwing them a heavily-qualified bone to shut the bitches up!***

All definite signs of a movement driven by sincere ethical concerns, wouldn’t you agree?

~

*And how much do you reckon it pisses the antichoicers off that we’ve got a freaking Dame onside?

**Hint: one side is known for hacking websites, calling the other murderers, and killing their opponents.  Probably not just an objective difference of opinion going on.

***Which is of course why our current fairly-accessible system is only working because of doctors willing to bend the letter of the law, of course.  Which Right to Foetus Life want to stop.

Analogy fail: abortion and slavery

I came across this utter fucking gem while googling prochoice images for potential future shit-stirring:

Black text: “EVERYONE who supported slavery was free. EVERYONE who supports abortion was born.  That’s how oppression works.  “They’re not really people” – We’ve heard that before! info@smileyourmomchoselife.org

And let me tell you, people, I just spent a good five minutes staring at it in wonder.  Like, really?  This is really an analogy we’re going to make?  Ickle babby embwyos are an oppressed class of human being completely and fully analogous to [of course African-American because everyone on the internet is American, you know] slaves?

I mean, I know I just snarked Ken Orr making basically that argument a few days ago, but to have it there in wonderfully stark text bluntly stating that being born is equivalent to supporting slavery in the US … I think it broke something in my brain.

One thing is pretty fucking certain though:  the people who conceived of* and made this image?  Yeah, probably white.**

Me too.  So here’s where I shut up.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:  The Unbearable Whiteness of Pro-Lifers and Pundits and Personhood

scatx:  Equating Slavery and Abortion:  Where are the Women in this Story?

~

*And were lucky enough to have safe implantation and hassle-free gestation, OH SNAP

**And using the handle “Emissary”, which now means half my brain is occupied fantasizing about locking them in a room with Avery Brooks.  And Michael Dorn.

Letters from a New Zealand basement: opposing opposition to opposers

Bob McCoskrie needs to give fellow basement-dweller Ken Orr some lessons in media release structure.  But his latest one is such a perfect example of antichoice bullshit it’s hard to pass up (even if it gets downright offensive at the end).

Right to Life supports legislation that recognises the humanity and personhood of the unborn child as a member of the human family that is endowed with an inalienable right to life and is deserving of respect and protection.

Firstly, dude, employ some fucking commas.  Is the unborn babby the thing which is endowed (phwoar) or the “human family”, whatever the fuck that means?

Second, foetus =/= person.*  And even if it were, no person has the right to occupy another’s body and live off their organs.**  No actual “right to life” codified in any law I know of actually permits enslaving other people via biological hookup.

Right to Life believes that the majority of New Zealanders support protecting the right to life of unborn children.

I believe in fairies.

The killing of unborn children the weakest and most defenceless members of the human family in the womb, is a violation of the human rights of unborn children.

That would be those rights we’ve established no human, born or undead unborn, have, right?  But let’s never let the facts get in the way of trying to play people’s emotions with a string of irrelevant adjectives – after all, if you have to remind people that ickle babby feeetusses are Vulnerable and Weak and Helpless, you may have just acknowledged you’re on the losing side of this battle.

It is also a violation of the human rights of women who deserve respect and protection for their child in the womb.

Let’s take this to its logical conclusion, folks:  women deserve respect so much that we have to take away their ability to choose to undergo a medical procedure.  And Right to Life Ken Orr and his boner respect women so much they think stubby-limbed fish-beings pweshus babbies take precedence over those women’s lives and desires and bodies.

The” right to choose” is a cruel lie,there is no human right that permits us to choose to kill another human being.

Except … that pregnancy can and does kill women.  Pregnancy is in fact nine times more likely to kill a woman in New Zealand than an abortion.  But because Ken respects incubators women so much he thinks they should die in order that stubby fish-beings might live.

So … Ken thinks “unborn children” do have a right to life which necessitates killing living, breathing, thinking human people.  I mean, ambulatory uteri.

You might think that’s a bit extreme, surely the antichoice movement understands that sometimes pregnancy can be really dangerous to women’s health, even fatal.   Surely they’re reasonable enough to allow that some abortions are necessary to save women’s lives.

Oops, no.  Mind you, that was a Catholic case, they’re a totes minor voice in the antichoice movement.

ALRANZ, the spokesman for a culture of death, with a national membership of less than 200, does not represent the views of women and ordinary New Zealanders, its proposal to decriminalise abortion is a threat to the wellbeing of women.

Lessons learnt:

  1. ALRANZ is a person (specifically, a man)*** with a really cool single name, like Cher or Prince
  2. Ken Orr can’t convince anyone to come down to his basement to proofread his press releases
  3. “Women” and “ordinary New Zealanders” are distinct, separate groups in Right to Life’s world.

ALRANZ knows that before we can decriminalise abortion we must first deny the humanity of unborn children.

Wait for it …

The decriminalising of abortion would be a denial of the humanity and personhood of the unborn child.

Wait for it ….

The denial of the humanity of Negroes gave us slavery.

That’s just the appetizer …

The denial of the humanity of Jews gave us the Holocaust.

BOOM!  Godwinned it!

Yep, the all-time classic Abortion Is Just Like The Holocaust argument.  Which for a start ignores some pretty complex political and social considerations around the situation in 1930s Germany/Western Europe (hint: Hitler was not the only person who wasn’t too keen on Semitic folk) but also just reveals the basic weakness of the antichoice side:  they have to resort to absurd emotive “arguments” designed to make people flinch and say “oh no that’s terrible!” instead of actually relying on fact, or logic, or, well, anything.

It’s also kind of hilariously ironic that Judaism is pretty down with the abortion rights, given that whole “first breath” test for personhood.  Hilarious that is if Right to Bonerlife weren’t exploiting genocide to shock people into not thinking.

See, when you have to actually rely on the horrors of the Holocaust to win people over, because the actual reality of abortion isn’t good enough … you and your boner are pretty screwed, right?

Let’s not forget the slippery slope argument for good measure:

If today we allow the denial of the human rights of unborn children by the decriminalisation of abortion, which vulnerable section of our community will be next?

I’m thinking hipsters, or maybe people who still subscribe to the Sunday Star-Times.  Oh, wait, except they’re all born, autonomous beings who aren’t using a woman’s breath, blood and organs to survive.  Damn.

~

*It’s a guppy!

*Any antichoicers who want to prove this is all about controlling women by commenting about how “women bring it on themselves when they have sex” should feel absolutely welcome to do so.

**And doesn’t that just tell you plenty about Right to Bodysnatch’s worldview?