No yogurt was thrown.
Possible Betty Cracker Sighting in Florida StarbucksPost + Comments (36)
by John Cole| 36 Comments
This post is in: The War On Women
No yogurt was thrown.
Possible Betty Cracker Sighting in Florida StarbucksPost + Comments (36)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 78 Comments
This post is in: The War On Women
Catholic hospitals in Michigan are so afraid of miscarriage that they are risking women’s lives because a bunch of old, pedophile-shielding Bishops are calling the shots:
The report, by a former Muskegon County health official, Faith Groesbeck, accuses Mercy Health Partners of forcing five women between August 2009 and December 2010 to undergo dangerous miscarriages by giving them no other option.
All five women, the report says, had symptoms indicating that it would be safest for them to deliver immediately. But instead of informing the women of their options, the report says, or offering to transfer them to a different hospital, doctors – apparently out of deference to the Mercy Health Partners’ strict ban on abortion – unilaterally decided to subject the women to prolonged miscarriages.
As a result, the report claims, several of the women suffered infection or emotional trauma, or had to undergo unnecessary surgery. None of the women were pregnant beyond 24 weeks, when an infant can survive outside the womb.
[…] The report squarely links these events to Mercy Health Partners’ Catholic sponsorship. In the US, hospitals that advertise themselves as Catholic must follow a set of medical directives written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. All doctors working at the hospital must follow church teachings, regardless of their personal beliefs, and the hospital is responsible for instructing its staff on the directives.
God is the world’s greatest abortionist, terminating almost 1/3 of all pregnancies spontaneously. Why are these Bishops so god-damned eager to get in His way?
This post is in: Hillary Clinton 2016, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights
Reading Ann Laurie’s post reminded me of the obvious: being aware of the experience of others takes constant effort. And, (as I wrote about one example here), the failure to do so amidst white male self-assumed universality leads to harm in just about any domain — more for those dismissed, but non-zero for the presumed pre-MOTUs as well.
With that as pre-amble, check out this from CNN Money:
All virtual assistants have to deal with inappropriate comments and questions. From seasoned vets like Siri and Google Now, to the rash of new specialists with names like Amy, Molly, Mia and Robin.
When Microsoft launched Cortana in 2014, a good chunk of early queries were about her sex life, according to Microsoft’s Deborah Harrison.
It turns out people feel very comfortable talking freely with text and voice assistants. Humanizing the bots with names, faked emotions, personalities and genders (mostly female) helps build trust with users.
Microsoft has its corporate head in the right place, at least on this one:
Cortana is clearly identified as a woman. She has a female avatar and is voiced by human woman Jen Taylor. But the writers are conscious about avoiding female-assistant stereotypes. Cortana isn’t self-deprecating and avoids saying sorry.
“We wanted to be very careful that she didn’t feel subservient in any way … or that we would set up a dynamic we didn’t want to perpetuate socially,” said Harrison.
But the ‘bros and any MRA/PUA trogs need not worry. The market will make sure that their all too familiar sex/power fantasies will find their representation in our brave new era.
Not all assistants will take the same firm approach. Robin Labs, which makes a voice-assistant for drivers, thinks there might be a market customizing personalities. CEO Ilya Eckstein says there is a high demand for an assistant personality that’s “more intimate-slash-submissive with sexual undertones.”
All of which to say is that it’s easy to call out, say, Chris Christie, when he talks of beating Hilary Clinton’s rear end. As all here know, it’s far harder to combat the influence of the jabs and gestures that pervade daily life, well below the level of explicit speech, up to and including the robot in your GPS.
How this post may be read in the context of Hilary Clinton’s candidacy and (some of) its discontents? You make the call.
Image: Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Wedding, 1434.
A Grace Note To Ann Laurie’s Post BelowPost + Comments (104)
by John Cole| 84 Comments
This post is in: The War On Women
Mike Huckabee has decided to end his presidential campaign but I think he should be forced to carry it to full term.
— Bryan Donaldson (@TheNardvark) February 3, 2016
Researchers studied reproductive health choices in Texas after the attacks on Planned Parenthood, and the outcomes are not good (unless forced birth is your kind of thang):
Defunding Planned Parenthood clinics leaves some poor women unable to access the most effective forms of birth control, according to a new study from Texas-based researchers.
Experts from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, a multi-year research project that’s tracking reproductive health outcomes in the Lone Star State, examined data from women who rely on Medicaid after GOP legislators stripped funds from Planned Parenthood in 2013.
Among women in the public health program, there was a 35 percent decline in claims for IUDs and implants — and a dramatic 27 percent spike in births — after Planned Parenthood was kicked out of Texas’ family planning network. Those numbers suggest that disadvantaged women are struggling to get the contraceptive services they need and are instead going on to give birth.
“The U.S. continues to have higher rates of unintended pregnancies than most rich nations, and we know that U.S. and Texas women face barriers as they try to access preventative services,” Amanda Jean Stevenson, one of the lead authors of the study and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas of Austin, said in a statement accompanying the study results. “It’s a public health issue that Texas women struggle to achieve their reproductive goals.”
Previous research examining Planned Parenthood’s patient base has confirmed that pulling support for the national women’s health organization disproportionately harms low-income Americans who don’t have anywhere else to go for affordable contraceptive services. In a recent survey of Texas patients themselves, more than half of them said they’ve faced at least one barrier to getting the reproductive health services they need in the years since politicians made changes to the publicly funded family planning network.
Whether it is Clinton or Sanders, we simply can not lose on the national level and we have GOT to get our asses in gear on the local and state level.
This post is in: The War On Women, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell
A grand jury has indicted David Daleiden and another videographer:
A Harris County grand jury today decided not to take any action against Planned Parenthood in Houston. But two people who used undercover videos accusing the group of selling fetal tissue have been indicted.
The sting videos recorded last April alleged that Planned Parenthood illegally profited from donations of fetal tissue. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office investigated those allegations for more than two months, along with the Texas Rangers and the Houston Police Department.
In the end, a grand jury has cleared Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast of breaking the law.
“It affirms 100% what we have said from the very beginning, and that is that Planned Parenthood follows local, state and federals laws and extremely high medical standards, and our first priority is patient care,” said Rochelle Tafolla, with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. “These individuals broke the law and committed fraud in order to spread lies about Planned Parenthood and today they’re going to be held accountable for breaking those laws.”
Both David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt have been indicted for Tampering with a Governmental Record, which is a felony. Daleidan was also indicted for Prohibition of the Purchase and Sale of Human Organs, meaning he illegally offered to purchase human organs in the video recording. A violation of this section is a Class A misdemeanor.
“We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” said Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson. “As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case.”
In Texas, no less.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 151 Comments
This post is in: The War On Women
UCSF researchers are studying women turned away from abortions due to state restrictions. Their first effort showed that more of them end up in poverty:
In its first analysis of turnaway data published two years ago, the team found that women seek out abortions for complicated reasons, with the most common being a feeling of financial unpreparedness. This earlier analysis also showed that 86 percent of turnaways chose to keep their children, and 67 percent of them wound up below the poverty line a year later. By comparison, 56 percent of women granted abortions in the study were below the poverty line a year later. […]
Their latest effort looks at hope for the future:
Of all the goals measured, 47 percent were achieved. There was little difference between turnaways and women who had abortions when it came to achieving their goals. However, as the researchers write in their paper, women who received abortions “were significantly more likely to have both an aspirational plan and to have achieved it” than turnaways who kept their children. Upadhyay was quick to point out that overall, most of the women’s goals were aspirational. “They all had high hopes,” she said. But Turnaways “were much more likely to have negative goals.”
What this latest phase in the Turnaway study reveals is that not having access to abortion can negatively impact women’s lives. As Upadhyay and her colleagues put it in their paper, “Whether or not a person has aspirational plans is indicative of her hope for the future. Without such plans or hopes, she misses out on opportunities to achieve milestones in life.”
Put bluntly, the Turnaways had fewer hopes, so they had fewer reasons to push themselves toward what they defined as better lives.
It’s not surprising that an unplanned and unwanted child is more likely to make you poor and hopeless – this study just puts a number on the poverty and hopelessness.
by John Cole| 86 Comments
This post is in: The War On Women, Assholes
Well, well, well:
Recordings secretly made by an anti-abortion group at meetings of abortion providers do not show criminal activity and could put the providers at risk, a federal judge said Friday, citing the recent shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick made the comments during a hearing over the National Abortion Federation’s request for a preliminary injunction that would continue to block the release of the recordings. Orrick did not immediately issue a ruling. He previously issued a temporary restraining order blocking the recordings pending the outcome of the preliminary injunction hearing.
The Center for Medical Progress has released several secretly recorded videos that it says show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal tissue for profit, which is illegal. Planned Parenthood has said it abides by a law that allows providers to be reimbursed for the costs of processing tissue donated by women who have had abortions.
Alright, legal eagles. Does this mean that David Daleiden and the sociopaths at the “Center for Medical Progress” are in danger of facing criminal and/or other charges?