Quick hit: one jesus for liberals, another for conservatives

No surprises here.The GOP has been manipulating Christianity and its teaching for its own ends for years. (See also Cameron et al.)

Love thy neighbour, so long as he is not an illegal immigrant. Blessed are the poor, so long as they are deserving. And, though it may be harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than to pass through the eye of a needle, multimillionaires should have no problem passing through the door of the Oval Office.

Religion and politics have always made uneasy bedfellows; yet how can Christians from all shades of the political spectrum reconcile their diverse views with the teachings of a single man?

A study led by Lee Ross of Stanford University in California has found that the Jesus of liberal Christians is very different from the one envisaged by conservatives. The researchers asked respondents to imagine what Jesus would have thought about contemporary issues such as taxation, immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion. Perhaps not surprisingly, Christian Republicans imagined a Jesus who tended to be against wealth redistribution, illegal immigrants, abortion and same-sex marriage; whereas the Jesus of Democrat-voting Christians would have had far more liberal opinions. The Bible may claim that God created man in his own image, but the study suggests man creates God in his own image.

[guardian]

That wedding happened, and didn’t we all know it!

In most countries in the world, parents can tell their kids that if they work hard and do everything right, they could grow up to be the head of state and the symbol of their nation. Not us. Our head of state is decided by one factor, and one factor alone: did he pass through the womb of one particular aristocratic Windsor woman living in a golden palace? The American head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride?

- Johann Hari

If ever the problem with the monarchy can be summed up, it’s in that quote. Elitism, privilege, and a spurious claim to power indeed. Incidentally, Johann Hari makes a very good case for a republic in the remainder of that piece. This country doesn’t “need” a monarchy (despite the claims that the tourism industry would fold if it were disbanded) and I, for one, am tired of my tax dollars keeping it in an ostentatious lifestyle.

Praise the gods one journalist was able to keep her head screwed on about the royal nonsense while all the others fawned, bleated and generally disgraced themselves when they allowed their critical faculties to escape them for the day. Laurie Penny rather wonderfully (as always) discussed in a number of pieces in the New Statesman how the reality  of life in the country continued abound while we were all subjected to the royal celebration. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m sure Wills and Kate are very much in love and I don’t begrudge them that. But the country spending yet more money on unnecessary whimsy,  and it being the sole focus of most of the news for days if not weeks while 1000s in this country continue to lose their jobs, their homes, and, quite possibly, their minds, is very troublesome. The Wedding of Mass Distraction indeed. (Incidentally, the best hidden news of the day came courtesy of the BBC at approximately 11.30, around about the time they said their vows, most likely. The regulator of NHS foundation trusts in England has warned hospitals they must make even bigger efficiency savings than previously thought. Nice work, Beeb.) Penny also points out the affront of this debacle to democracy and liberty. Protestors were told that they could not protest at the event and pre-emptive arrests of potential dissenters were made. Since when did we live in a nation where we arrest people before the fact (said “fact” being subject to definition if and when a definition is required)? Since about two weeks ago, is when.

It’ll all blow over, of course, and we’ll be talking about something else come Wednesday but I intend to remain bitter about the whole sorry situation for quite a time to come. And so should you. The next time you hear of a governmental cut to something as important as the Poppy Project (links 1, 2, 3), ask yourself if it could possibly have been avoided had the royal couple decided to get married in a village church in Berkshire. Answer: yeah, probably.

And come on, we might as well be honest in any case. What has most of the chatter around the royal wedding been about anyway? That’s right. Babies. Our Kate better be able to spit out the babies or she’s not going to be of any use to her new husband. He might not be king yet but he needs an ‘eir nonetheless. Just as her father “gave her away”, and she is the only one of the newly-entangled duo to wear a wedding ring, she is now a possession of the royal house. And, as she should know from her betters before her, she needs to procreate and she probably needs to do it fast. THAT, the great British public, is her role now. And, although they’re going to start discussing the Law of Primogeniture (where a younger brother can accede to the throne before his older sisters), she still better hope it’s a boy.

Some may feel that my concentration on the sexual hinterland of the royal bride is a little prurient, but let’s get this perfectly straight: this royal wedding, like all other royal weddings that involve the line of succession, is all about sex and nothing else. I say sex but what I really mean is procreation – I say procreation but what I really mean is breeding, although not “breeding” in the sense used by old-fashioned snobs, but breeding as practised selectively by members of the Kennel Club, or, indeed, adherents of a satanic cult that uses a so-called “broodmare” in its rituals.

Too right Mr Self. Too right.

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In case you missed it: Charlie Brooker’s précis of the day.

What I’ve been reading – bad mothers, and more NYT victim-blaming

Just two pieces today for I feel rather sick about both of them.

• Sweet mother of all that is good and holy, the Daily Fail may just have surpassed itself with this one. Think your man doesn’t pull his weight at home? Maybe it’s YOUR fault. Yes, you can do a double-take. The wimmin are too precious about the babies, apparently, and the poor menz don’t get a look in. And they’re all hurt and stuff. Never mind that, by default, most mothers simply have to be solely responsible for feeding and, until recently, were not able to share early months leave from work with their partners; they still only have themselves to blame for having it all to do. Their fault! Trying to balance childcare with any sort of work, study, social life has always been a minefield for women. (A close friend of mine has just had her second child. Her doctorate is, once again, on the back burner. Her husband, on the other hand, has just got a brand spanking new job. I don’t resent him for him – and neither does she – but he’s done that because he can.) The Daily Fail will find any excuse to deride women. The fact that they get frustrated about their lot in this world sometimes is always the kind of thing they can really get into.

• And, once again, the NYT blames someone for her own rape (msmagazine). Only a month ago, the NYT’s report the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in Texas contained several inferences that the victim was culpable  for what happened to her. For example:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

Because if she hadn’t worn make-up and hung out with boys, she wouldn’t have been raped, amirite? That’s certainly what the NYT and the folks in the neighbourhood thought. The paper has since [sort of] apologised for that piece but it seems that it has a short memory. This week in its coverage of a rape trial, it’s blaming the victim again. Its opening line is about how drunk the victim was on the night of the rape:

There were certain things that she remembered from that night, and some things that she did not.

This was followed this up with a in-depth description of just what a state she was in.

She recalled dancing and drinking at a bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn, celebrating a job promotion with friends, but even that was a bit hazy. Her next recollection, she testified in the rape trial of two New York City police officers, was waking up in the back of a taxicab outside her apartment building in the East Village, lying on her side and vomiting.Then she remembered tugging herself up the red handrail of her apartment building’s staircase, escorted by two men in navy blue suits with radios crackling.

What happened to this woman – rape – isn’t even mentioned until the fifth paragraph. By that time, the scene is well and truly set. She was wasted, she was hammered, she couldn’t even walk, she was puking gawdammit!! What do you expect!? Immediately, the reader is drawn into questioning the victim’s credibility. Many things will be running through his or her mind. Is she lying? Is she misremembering? If she was that drunk, unconscious, did she actually refuse or struggle? And if not, it probably wasn’t really rape, right. Yes, all of the above. These are the very questions that she is going to be asked in court by the prosecution, and it’s unbelievable that they’re being asked by the media too. Trial by media indeed. I used to really respect the NYT but these recent pieces have made me sick.

What I’ve been reading – Willets, “virginity tests”, acid violence, and slut-shaming

If only I could spend all day online reading blogs, I would. I can’t, so I can only give you what I see. Recently:

• David Willets: feminism has held back working class men (thetelegraph). This is from weeks ago, of course, but never let it be said I’m in fashion. Willets (our Universities Minister for our sins) declared recently that feminism has led to the ruination of working class men. (For those of you who don’t know what feminism is, it’s all about them women who want to wear trousers, answer their own front doors, and belch in public.) On what planet Willets resides, I do not know but let’s mention the one very glaring incongruity. Women and working class men are not, and have never been, on the opposite ends of any sociological or economic spectrum so the reason for his putting them there was lost on just about everyone.  So his argument was flawed from the start. If Willets had his way, women would be relegated to the reserve workforce again and only called upon in times of extreme need. If I ever see him, I’ll run up to him and tell him what I think of him. I’ll be able to run as I’ll be wearing trousers, you see.

• “Virginity Tests” Forced On Egyptian Women Protesters (msmagazine). Another relatively old piece but important nonetheless. One wonders where to start with all of this. How could one’s virginity or otherwise be relevant to anything? Well it’s not, of course, and it was never intended to be. The only purpose of these “tests” has been to inflict humiliation. The women protesting in Egypt were subjected to verbal, physical and sexual abuse on many occasions and we can’t, of course,  forget about the CBS reporter who was raped during the protests.

Amnesty International is now condemning the treatment of at least 18 women who were held in military detention after being arrested during a protest on March 9 (a month after Mubarak stepped down).  The women told Amnesty International that they were beaten, given electric shocks, and subjected to strip searches while being photographed.  They were then forced to submit to “virginity tests” and told that if they were “found not to be virgins,” they could be charged with prostitution.

• The Effort to End Acid Violence (msmagazine). This is another one that is not for the faint-hearted. If women in Bangladesh, India and Cambodia don’t do as their told, and deviate from their “expected behaviours”, they risk being attacked with acid. (Though don’t be fooled that it can’t happen elsewhere too.) The physical and health ramifications of these attacks are boundless. These women often lose their jobs, their homes (because they lose the “support” of their spouses), and fade into exclusion and poverty. While these crimes might not, apparently, be as entrenched as honour killings or public stonings, they’re still as problematic.

“This is a form of gender terrorism,” says Sital Kalantry, director of Cornell Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. “If we [women] deviate from what’s expected of us, this is the punishment that we receive.” …The report found that women were most often attacked for refusing marriage proposals or sexual advances. The attackers believe that if they can’t “have” the victim, then no one should. Thus, they seek to “destroy what society considers to be one of the most valuable traits of a woman–her beauty.” Acid is also thrown at women for transgressing the boundaries of expected behavior, or for exercising seemingly any modicum of independence. Women have been attacked for initiating divorce proceedings or attempting to keep wages they’ve earned at a job.

• Conservatives are encouraging parents to divert their kids from thoughts of college (friendlyatheist). Apparently it might give them “ideas” (you know what I mean: critical thought, mind of their own, that sort of thing). I’ll say no more.

• Slut Shame: Attacking Women for Their Sex Lives (alternet). We’re still calling women sluts and we still don’t like it when they choose to have sex with whomever they please. Why? There’s a variety of reasons. One is that women’s bodies should be reserved for procreation and having sex for any other reason is some sort of crime against nature. Another is that a woman doesn’t have any right to make her own sexual choices (or any choices about what she does with her body), and that being sexual in any way is not natural or expected behaviour for women anyway. Ultimately, the piece hits the nail on the head when it says that the term “slut” is meant to put women back in their place (with their legs firmly closed), and make them ashamed of their own desires and pleasures. We wouldn’t want them enjoying themselves now, would we? All hell might break loose.

• On a related note, abstinence-only sex education results? 150 pregnancies since august (edenfantasys). Well, if ever you needed some evidence that abstinence-only education (wherein you’re told just that you shouldn’t be at it) does. not. work. you can look to this Texas school board which, despite its commitment to such education, has had to report 150 student pregnancies since the start of the school year. Ooops! One word: contraception. Or at least make a flipping stab at it.

• On another related note, contraception use is the norm among religious women (feministe). See, God can’t hate the non-procreation sex that much, can he? Or are they all damned to the burning fires of hell too?

More later.

What I’ve been reading – French ads, men against rape, condoms in Uganda, and Nigerian traffickers

Where to start. It’s been a busy week in the blogoshere. There’s been a lot to talk about.

In no particular order:

• The iconography of French advertising (theillusionists). This is a discussion of the very obvious objectification of women on Parisian billboards and the effect that that may have on the pervasive sexism on Paris’ streets (and, presumably, behind its doors). It may, the author admits, be a simple correlation but it’s a noteworthy one nonetheless. These ads “confirm”  the sexual availability of women for our happy sexists (with one going so far as to claim that “Everything is allowed”) in a culture which is all too ready to take that on board.

• Men speak out about the sexist coverage of rape (msmagazine). And this is a call to action where men (for a refreshing change) ask that coverage of rape moves away from its frequent demonisation of victims to focus on the men who perpetrate these rapes and the culture which not only produces them but insists on apologising for them and condoning their actions afterwards.

For too many young men, communal rituals of sexism perpetuate negative notions of manhood. Most of us are rightly horrified when we read about gang rape. But group sexual assault is best understood as being at the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors that normalize men’s sexist treatment of women. What about college guys hiring strippers for private parties and openly calling those women “bitches and hoes”? And let’s not forget–an entire genre in pornography is devoted to simulated scenes of gang rape, which in many quarters is considered socially acceptable entertainment for men, who sometimes watch it in groups.

• The sisterhood of “the pole” (jezebel). We may not like it (and I, for one, object to jezebel’s title) but the sex trade exists though God knows I wish it didn’t. This piece looks at a side of the sex trade we don’t hear about very often and discusses the strong bonds that are often developed between sex workers in their daily lives. It might not mean much to you but it might help to remind you that these women are, indeed, human beings after all.

• 83% of women in rural Uganda have never used a condom (newvision). The piece is entitled 83% rural women shun condom use which is a somewhat misleading title. Further reading indicates that this issue is not about “shunning” condom use but is rather more about these women not being able to insist on condom use because to do so is (1) not “normal behaviour for women”, and (2) not possible given the lesser place and power of women in Ugandan society which makes it difficult for them to enforce condom use with men. The figures on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases speak for themselves.

• Finally, for now, Nigerian traffickers use black magic to trap 1000s of women to send to Italy for sex trade (theindependent). This one is not for the faint-hearted. Nigerian traffickers are reportedly terrifying the living hell out of trafficked women by using a West African religion (“juju” ) to ensure that these women are fiercely loyal to their traffickers. Let the following excerpts tell you what you need to know:

Nigeria’s human traffickers are using black magic to trap thousands of women like Rita into a life of sex slavery in Europe. Eastern European gangs use violence to coerce the women they transport, but the “madams” at the top of the Nigerian trafficking chain don’t need muscle – they have juju on their side. It is a form of ritualised extortion that allows Nigerian women to be both perpetrators and victims of the exploitation.

… Rita says she has no choice but to carry on working. Before she left Nigeria, she swore an oath of loyalty to her traffickers in a traditional religious ritual, a practice I was investigating for Channel 4′s Unreported World programme. She promised to pay back the cost of her transportation to Europe and offered up her soul as collateral for the debt. When she arrived in Italy, she was told she owed her traffickers €50,000 (£44,000), as well as extortionate living costs, including €300 a month in “rent” for the right to solicit from her particular patch. “I can’t escape this unless I pay,” she says. “Africans have very strong charms that can destroy someone in the twinkle of an eye.”

… The condom-strewn lay-by near Bergamo where Rita picks up clients is a far cry from the Europe she imagined five years ago when traffickers approached her in Edo. “I was happy that I was going to Europe to feed my family,” explains Rita, 27. “I didn’t know it would turn out to be like this.” She now sleeps with about 10 men a day, seven days a week, for €20 (£17.50) a time. She will work even if she feels ill, even if she has her period, even though she has been badly beaten in the past.

Keep your eyes peeled people. There’s a lot going on in the world.

In brief: yer all savages

I’m not one to defend the general British public (see forthcoming entry on culture when it, erm, forthcomes) but I feel that I should get my spake in, albeit briefly, about this.

BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has described the British public as “barbarians” who are too busy working to find time to appreciate art.

I’m not a huge fan of Paxman’s, it has to be said, for I find him more much more offensive and condescending than I do challenging and interesting, and the above strikes me as a typical statement of his.

Here are a few simple sums for you Mr. Paxman: earnings of £XX,000 per year, X children, £XXX,000 mortgage, and £XX,000 in car loans/ student loans/ credit card and other debts don’t leave many of us with whole lot of Xs to play around with. We work all the time, just to make our ends meet. And you wonder why we plebeians spend all of our time working and little of our time perusing art galleries? We’re flipping exhausted!

I would have thought it was f-ing obvious, even to a snob like you who makes considerably more Xs than the rest of us put together, and who doesn’t have to worry at all about where his next paycheck comes from or goes to.

Ungrateful women and their feminisms

I always listen to Radio 4 in the mornings on my way to work. I’m in that demographic now, don’t you know. I’m nearly always leaving as ‘Thought for the Day‘ begins. For those of you unfamiliar with Thought for the Day it is, as the link says, ‘reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news’. I think it would be more accurately described as patronising and sanctimonious reflections from God-bothers full of their own self-importance, but anyway. I find it insufferable.

This morning the Reverend Doctor Middle Class and Vaguely Disgruntled was doing his piece. He started off by recounting a tale of how he tried to help a young lady with her suitcase onto the bus. She declined his offer, and brushed his hand away when he offered again. This reaction, he blamed, on women’s constant quest for equality. If it wasn’t for the equality gained so far, he implied, women wouldn’t think twice about accepting help from a man. He tried to redeem himself, of course, by talking then about the disparities in earnings of men and women – and in doing so ‘approved’ of our pesky feminism – and then came back to the quandary of women not allowing men to help them when they clearly need it.

Seriously, Reverend Doctor Middle Class and Vaguely Disgruntled? Really? If I give you the benefit of the doubt for a moment, and believe that you genuinely thought that telling a story about a woman ‘in need’ would be a good introduction to a discussion about equal pay rights, I have to tell you that you’re a little naive. I know a lot of women – and I’m one myself – and I’m pretty sure that most of us don’t spend our time declining offers of help from men because we’re obsessed with equality. If you really need to know, I rather think that we women feel that it’s intrusive to be approached by strange men offering help (or anything else), that it can often be intimidating to be approached in such a manner, and that we decline because we feel uncomfortable and we would rather not have you near us or our suitcases. Is that unfortunate? Of course it is. In an ideal world, we would all be helping each other carry our butterflies and rainbows around; in a realistic world, we react as we do because we’re conditioned to do so by what we see around us. It’s got nothing to do with equality, or its lack.

But I’m not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I think that for all your talk of equal pay for the sexes and of narrowing the employment gap, you think we women have got too much equality already. You gave your game away when you mentioned that ungrateful young woman twice in three minutes. You’re thinking, I’m sure, that she should have been happy to take help from you, the Big Man, instead of trying to assert her independence when she was so clearly in need. But the world, thankfully, doesn’t work your way any more. Perhaps the next time you pipe up on Thought for the Day, you’ll remember that it’s not all about you, and that women don’t spend  their waking moments trying to figure out how to get their equality points higher at the expense of people like you.

Moments of madness

Radio 4 recently reported an interesting story about new Internet billing software which disables your machine by issuing so many pop-up reminders about your outstanding payments that your computer becomes unusable. It’s currently being tried by the developers, MBS, and is used mostly on, unsurprisingly, porn sites. From what I can gather – I don’t remember all the details – it asks you to check a box indicating that you would like a free trial period on the site, but in doing so, you agree to the terms and conditions that you will receive the pop-ups. Of course, that clause is on page 20 of the terms and conditions which no one ever reads anyway. And these pop-ups aren’t those we were all too familiar with in the pre-Firefox days, either; they’re the type, apparently, that you can’t close and that are so memory intensive, your computer can’t function. Until you agree to pay, that is. My thoughts on this are predictable – that such things really should be more closely regulated – but they are not the point of this post.

The point is this: one lady interviewed by Radio 4 was complaining about this software because it had disabled her husband’s computer. She and he were obviously very upset by what had happened, but I was both embarrassed and amused by the way she told her story. Her husband had had a five minute moment of madness, apparently, when he decided that he would like to seek out some pictures of ‘nude women’ on the internet. He went to this site in what really must have been a moment of madness (she repeated), and checked the text box agreeing to the terms and conditions. She just doesn’t know what he was thinking! (I do!) He was plagued by pop-ups and eventually had to come clean to both his wife and his employer (he was using his work computer). Bless!

Now seriously! In what world does Mrs. Moment of Madness think that this is the first time that Mr. Moment of Madness has looked at porn. It’s not! It’s the first time he’s been ‘caught’ by you, but it is not the first time he’s accessed porn. I would stake my life, and yours, on this. It was so obvious from her voice that she absolutely wanted to believe what she was saying, and that she wanted the listener to believe it too, but her doubt was evident. She’s hurt, angry and probably a little humiliated at what she’s discovered, and I’m sure that she wants to believe her husband was possessed by something shocking at the time, but we all know that’s not true. I feel bad for her, but she’s not fooling anyone, including herself.

The moral of the tale: Middle England ain’t ready for porn. And it certainly ain’t ready for an MBS billing system. (Oh, and always read the terms and conditions!)

I do hope that Mr. and Mrs. Moment of Madness get through this, but I dare say he’s in the spare room for now. Possibly along with his laptop.

More racism in Big Brother – housemate evicted this time

Hooray for sense prevailing.

Emily Parr has been removed from the Big Brother house for using a racially offensive word to another housemate.

The 19-year-old from Bristol was taken out of the compound at 0330 BST and was forbidden from having any further contact with the 11 other contestants.

This week’s eviction vote has been suspended, in which Emily was nominated along with Shabnam Paryani.

A spokeswoman for Channel 4 said that the decision had been taken because “such behaviour won’t be tolerated”.

Emily said: “Are you pushing it out, you nigger?” to Charley Uchea, while they were dancing in the living room on Wednesday evening.

Good Lord! I’m actually in shock. First, this Ms Parr is from Bristol, a multi-cultural city; and, second, she’s a student at age 19, so we can assume that’s she fairly well educated. Yet she still thinks it’s acceptable to use such words? Officemate and I were discussing it and we wondered if it just ‘slipped out’ because they were fooling around, or if she uses the word ‘nigger’ habitually. Or, indeed, if it just ‘slipped out’ on national television because it is a common word in her lexicon. Regardless, her behaviour is shameful.

The post of my post, however, was to note my appreciation of Channel 4’s quick thinking to evict the offending housemate immediately. This is a contrast to their decision in Celebrity Big Brother, where they allowed racist behaviour to continue over a period of days. I’m trying to believe that Channel 4 and the production company, Endemol, are genuine in their claim that they won’t tolerate such behaviour, but I’m inclined to think that they’re rather more concerned with preserving their ‘reputation’ and not losing their sponsorship again.

We’ll probably never know, and it’s largely academic anyway. And in whatever case, it’s a result for common sense and sensibilities and for that I’m grateful. I’ll bet the Respect task Force think all their Christmases have come at once!

Abortion case in Ireland

There’s a very serious and interesting appeal case going on in Ireland at the moment. A girl, Miss D, who is age 17, wants to travel to England for an abortion, but is being prohibited from doing so by the courts. Abortion is still illegal in the Republic of Ireland unless there is a risk to the life of the mother, but many women travel to England or Wales each year to have terminations, and they do so legally.

The current case involves a a young girl who is in the care of the Health Service Executive, and who is carrying a foetus which, apparently, will not be able to survive outside the womb. Logic would suggest that this is an open and shut case – what is the point, after all, in continuing with the pregnancy? – but not so in Catholic Ireland. The elements of her case are threefold:

1. She is challenging the court order placing her in care, because it restricts her leaving the country.
2. She is challenging the Health Service Executive’s decision instructing the gardaí (police) to stop her leaving the country.
3. She is challenging the Health Service Executive’s decision to refuse to let her travel to terminate the pregnancy unless there’s a risk she’ll commit suicide.

I understand that the main impediment to her termination is simply that she’s in care and that the Health Service Executive has been granted a court order against her travelling for an abortion. In any other circumstances, she would have been allowed to go without question; it seems that the Health Service Executive is really just trying to protect itself by stopping her. As if she doesn’t have enough to contend with…

The case has gripped all of Ireland, unsurprisingly, and could have many political ramifications because the Taoiseach (prime minister) recently called for a general election. I’m not sure that the abortion laws will ever change in Ireland, but it’s high time they were revisited. Perhaps now they will be.

In any case, the appeal is being heard tomorrow, and I’ll be keeping a keen eye. And, as it happens, I’m going to be in Ireland so I’ll be able to hear a lot more about it than I would here. Naturally, Irish pro-lifers are protesting the appeal with all their might, but I’m hopeful they’ll make little difference. And, unless I just haven’t noticed, the Church is being suspiciously quiet on this.

I’m vehemently pro-choice in case you hadn’t noticed. In fact, I don’t even stop at ‘pro-choice’: I’m say I’m pro-abortion and be done with it. Because I am.

Fingers crossed.

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[Edit: Thankfully, it seems that she’ll win her appeal. I hope so]