Morning Roundup: Anti-abortion Group Disparaging Rep. Giffords

Earthquake that has not happened yet is pre-blamed on gay marriage, Lifesite.com wastes no time in calling Congresswoman Giffords a "pro-abort," male circumcision may reduce spread of HPV, teen pregnancy in DC, a "gay hot potato," and a beautiful tribute to the work of Planned Parenthood from an unlikely patient.

Earthquake that has not happened yet is pre-blamed on gay marriage, Lifesite.com wastes no time in calling Congresswoman Giffords a “pro-abort,” male circumcision may reduce spread of HPV, teen pregnancy in DC, a “gay hot potato,” and a beautiful tribute to the work of Planned Parenthood from an unlikely patient.

  • No need to look to seismologists to predict the next earthquake. (Science? Pish posh!) Christian “dominionists” are predicting an 8.0 earthquake for California because of Prop 8. This time it will apparently just be the fault of the gays, so the feminists, abortionists, pagans and ACLU (blamed for September 11 by Jerry Falwell) can take a step back.
  • Lifesite.com is using the tragic shooting rampage in Arizona as an opportunity to call Rep. Giffords a “pro-abort” and vilify the National Organization for Women, disparaging NOW’s president Terry O’Neill for the following e-mail to supporters, “conservatives cannot have it both ways, screaming sexist, racist and homophobic slurs at legislators as they vote for health care reform, putting legislators on a violence-inciting ‘Targets’ list, and then simply saying how sorry they are when someone explodes into murder.”
  • A new study is showing that male circumcision may reduce the transmission of HPV from male-to-female partners. HPV can lead to genital warts, cervical cancer, or reproductive health problems such as infertility. (And, in case you missed it in your calendar, January is cervical cancer awareness month.)
  • Washington Post columnist Colbert King discussed teen pregnancy in a recent column, quoting the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy as saying the condition is a “one-way ticket to persistent poverty.”
  • As a review of the issues facing the gay community in the new year, this is a great roundup, but I have to say that I chose it also for it’s fabulous title: New Year Brings Us The Same Ol’ Gay Hot Potato: Marriage.
  • In case you missed it, the New York Times printed a beautiful narrative of a Mormon woman’s trip to Planned Parenthood, a place she never thought she’d visit.

    Oddly, my trip to Planned Parenthood provided much that the church had not in recent years. During my exam, the clinician explained every move before she made it, asked permission to touch me during the most routine procedures. I was mystified: by her compassion, by the level of attention paid to my body — as if it were fragile, or sacred. Only then did it occur to me how many terrified and abused women Planned Parenthood must treat every day.

    And that brought me to tears, sorrowful for the ways in which we all suffer, in whatever ways we do, and grateful for the unlikely refuge of this place. Grateful also for the safety granted my own tears, prompted by the delicate weight of a hand on my shoulder, the warmth of her palm against my back.

    How unprepared I was to experience tenderness in the place I had been warned so vehemently against. How unprepared for the flood of relief, the bud of hope, after a life devoted to keeping myself separate from my body. Here was a path, an opening; here was empathy.

Jan 7