Former teacher wins 1.9 million is damages after Catholic Diocese fires her for using in vitro fertilization in an attempt to get pregnant.

Courtesy of The Journal Gazette: 

Almost every single thing for which Emily Herx asked the jury, she received. 

Nearly $2 million in damages, and vindication, after the jury ruled that the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend discriminated against the former language arts teacher at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School when they fired her for undergoing in vitro fertilization. 

The verdict came after about 51/2 hours of deliberation Friday afternoon, capping off a four-day jury trial before U.S. District Judge Robert Miller Jr. in the expansive federal courthouse just a few blocks from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the center of the diocese. 

As she waited for the jury to come in, Herx sat ramrod straight in her chair at the table next to her attorney, Kathleen DeLaney, her face anything but calm as she clearly tried to control her breathing and anxiety. 

Throughout the trial, she heard herself characterized by the defense as a potential drug abuser, an emotional basket case and as someone who committed a sin so grave and immoral that no circumstances could justify it. 

But after the verdict was read, she seemed to uncoil with relief, crying and holding onto DeLaney in a long and tearful embrace.

Whenever I hear people defending the church's anti-abortion stance it makes me shake my head.

The church is not so much interested in protecting unborn babies as they are in controlling women's reproductive organs.

All this woman was trying to do is exactly what the church claims to support. And that is to give birth to a child.

But because the woman, the married woman, could not conceive naturally, and turned to science instead of accepting God's will, she was not only condemned by the church but they took away her livelihood as well.

Republican lawmaker in Missouri is pushing a bill that would require women to get the father's consent before getting an abortion.

Courtesy of Mother Jones: 

A Missouri Republican is pushing a bill that would allow a man who gets a woman pregnant to stop her from having an abortion. The measure would force a woman who wants an abortion to obtain written permission from the father first—unless she was the victim of "legitimate rape." 

Rick Brattin, a state representative from outside Kansas City, filed the bill on December 3 for next year's legislative session. The proposed measure reads, "No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion."

Jesus, are they talking about "legitimate rape" again?

Rape is rape asshole!

And they say there is no conservative war on women.

Ann Coulter says that women claiming to have been raped are just looking for attention.

Ann Coulter showing off her Adam's apple.

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch: 

Ann Coulter appeared on “The Lars Larson Show” last week to discuss the discrepancies in Rolling Stone’s article on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, which Coulter called a “shocking fraud” that proves that “there is no rape crisis” on college campuses. 

Coulter also suggested that rapes only occur in physically violent circumstances, like “being hit on the head with a brick,” and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to get attention. 

“People know what a rape is, and to have girls trying to get attention from Lena Dunham to this poor psychotic at UVA, Lady Gaga claiming she was raped but she didn’t admit it to herself for five years. What major crime do people say, ‘I didn’t admit it to myself’?” she demanded.

The conservative commentator told Larson that growing concerns about how colleges are handling sexual assault incidents are “based on nothing” when there are only a “very few percentage of actual rapists” on campuses and those “are usually Clintons or Kennedys.” 

You know it's one thing for Ann Coulter to say such vile things because clearly she used to be a man, but the fact is that many other female conservatives are  nodding right along with her.

I have no idea how this became a partisan issue, since I have never heard of a rapist checking a victim's voter ID card, however it has become exactly that.

In the interview Coulter also claims not to know ANY victims of rape personally. A claim that I find almost impossible to fathom, as I can think of more than half a dozen friends of mine that were the victims of rape and I'm just a guy.

What a vile human being.

It was not only Democrats who lost big in the 2014 election, it was also women and their right to control their own bodies.

Courtesy of Politico:  

The big Republican gains in the November elections strengthened and enlarged the anti-abortion forces in the House and the Senate. But it’s the GOP victories in the statehouses and governor’s mansions that are priming the ground for another round of legal restrictions on abortion. 

Arkansas, for instance, already has strict anti-abortion laws. But with a Republican governor succeeding a Democrat who had vetoed two measures that would have banned most abortions beyond a certain stage of pregnancy, lawmakers plan to seek more restrictions — such as barring doctors from administering abortion drugs through telemedicine. Republican gains in the West Virginia Legislature will redouble pressure on Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to accept a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks, which he has previously deemed unconstitutional. And Tennessee voters approved a ballot initiative that removes a 15-year barrier to legislation limiting abortion legislation in that deeply conservative state.  

Abortion rights advocates have had setbacks in the states for several years, with a surge of legislative activity since 2011. Women seeking abortions may face mandatory waiting periods or ultrasound requirements. Clinics may face stricter building codes or hospital admitting privilege rules they can’t satisfy. Dozens of clinics have shut down in multiple states. Texas, for instance, has fewer than 10 abortion clinics now. A year ago, it had 40. 

Republicans now hold two-thirds of the state legislative bodies, after winning control of 11 more chambers. They completely control the legislature in more than half the states, adding Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia to that list earlier this month. And they gained two more governor’s seats, so they will hold 31 next year. 

You know a couple of years ago I used to scoff at the idea that the Republicans could find some way to  overturn Roe vs Wade. Well I am no longer scoffing.

In effect in many places around the country on the state level the conservatives have either made it impossible to get an abortion, or extremely difficult. And they are forcing women to travel longer distances and jump through more hoops than ever before.

And the sad thing is that in their furor to stop all abortion in this country, they are increasing the need for them by closing down clinics which helped women get birth control, sex education, and prenatal care.

Of course they care little about that. After all as we have discussed before they only use abortion as their rallying cry. What they really want is to control women's bodies and return them to their rightful place as breeding stock completely subservient to men.

Misogynistic quotes from Christian leaders throughout the ages.

Courtesy of Salon:

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. —Tertullian, the “father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225) 

Woman is a temple built over a sewer. —Tertullian 

The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes. —Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546) 

Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband….For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior. —John Dod, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603 

The second duty of the wife is constant obedience and subjection. —John Dod 

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. —Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader (1930–) 

The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands. —James Fowler, Women in the Church, 1999. 

Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture. —Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill nondenominational mega-church franchise. (1970-)

Salon lists twenty of these quotes in all, each one incredibly insulting and degrading towards women.

The Christian religion was never created to support women. It was created to subjugate them, render them mute, and to bend them to the will of man, using the ultimate male figure to frighten them into subservience. 

Which of course brings up the question which vexes me still. I understand why women of years past might have simply accepted their circumstances, since they had not way out of them at the time, but with all  that we know today, and the voice that women have found for themselves, why do so many continue to self identify as Christians?

Remember, it's not about protecting babies, it's about controlling women's sexuality.

Courtesy of Slate: 

During arguments for the recent Supreme Court case McCullen v. Coakley, which eventually led to the court striking down Massachusetts' buffer zone protecting abortion clinics from protesters crowding the door, it was revealed that many abortion clinic protesters think of themselves less as protesters and more as "sidewalk counselors." Jill Filipovic of Cosmopolitan decided to go to Massachusetts Planned Parenthood clinics to find out, exactly, what these protesters want to counsel women about. The answer turns out to be a little more complex than "don't get an abortion." 

"Men and women are made different," Father Andrew Beauregard explains on camera while protesting at a clinic, "in that women, as the church teaches, reach their full potential in motherhood." There's a tight if inhumane logic to this thinking: Women exist to give birth. Thus, if a woman is choosing not to give birth, she is not working as she is supposed to. Which means she must be broken and needs fixing. Ergo, "counseling." 

As Filipovic found, none of the self-described counselors she spoke to actually "had any educational background or credentials in psychology, therapy, counseling, or mental health," but they do sincerely believe that something is deeply wrong with women who want to exert control over their own fertility or who want to have sex on their own terms. And they felt absolutely free to share that point of view with Filipovic.

Did you hear that one lady?

"If women want careers and education and everything and they don't want children what are they doing having sex?"

Why does nobody ask men that same question?

But then I forgot that it was a woman those convinced Adam to eat that apple. Which is why God punished her,and all that followed, with a painful childbirth, and demanded that from that day forward females must subjugate themselves to the will of their husbands.

This is why the abortion debate cannot be ignored, and why people must understand that these people will not stop with outlawing abortion in this country. They want nothing less than to turn women into breeding stock and put them back under the control of men.

And towards that end they have no lack of useful idiots to help them achieve that goal.

The Republicans are not only systematically dismantling a woman's right to choose, they are destroying women's rights in general.

The New York Times has an article out bemoaning the outcome of this last election and what the increased numbers of Republicans in public office will mean for women in this country.

In the article it lists some of the most egregious results from the passage of "personhood" amendments around the country, and how it has turned innocent women into convicted criminals.

Take a look:

In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.” 

In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide. 

In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy. 

Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible. 

In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.” 

Anti-abortion reasoning has also provided the justification for arresting pregnant women who experience depression and have attempted suicide. A 22-year-old in South Carolina who was eight months pregnant attempted suicide by jumping out a window. She survived despite suffering severe injuries. Because she lost the pregnancy, she was arrested and jailed for the crime of homicide by child abuse. 

These are not isolated or rare cases. Last year, we published a peer-reviewed study documenting 413 arrests or equivalent actions depriving pregnant women of their physical liberty during the 32 years between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2005. In a majority of these cases, women who had no intention of ending a pregnancy went to term and gave birth to a healthy baby. This includes the many cases where the pregnant woman was alleged to have used some amount of alcohol or a criminalized drug. 

I found myself shocked that these are stories of what is happening to women right here in America.

So tell me again that there is no war on women.

There was a time when I thought there was a limit to how far conservatives would go to turn women back into breeding stock and take away their rights as equal human beings altogether.

I am no longer under any such illusions.  If the Republicans not stopped there may well come a time when women in this country are considered human beings, with all the same rights as men, ONLY up until they have  a fertilized egg within their womb. And after that they will be relegated to a human incubator and the rights of the zygote growing inside of them will supersede any rights they may have enjoyed before becoming impregnated.

Once again let express my dismay that any woman in this country votes Republican. It is like a cow giving a positive Yelp review to a slaughterhouse.

76 year old chair of a county Republican party in Georgia arrested after sexual assault broadcast on Skype.

Defendant Billy Joe Turnage, with Georgia Senate hopeful David Perdue.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars: 

The chair of a county Republican Party in Georgia was recently arrested after he was allegedly broadcast on Skype sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a woman. 

On Wednesday, the North Georgia News reported that Union County Republican Party Chairman Billy Joe Turnage, 76, was facing charges of sexual battery and criminal attempt to commit rape. 

Union County Sheriff Investigator Staff Sgt. Darren Osborn told the paper that 911 dispatchers received a report of an ongoing "assault and rape" of a 39-year-old female at Turnage's residence last week. 

"Oct. 22, dispatch received a 911 call at approximately 4 p.m. of what was believed to be an assault and rape," Osborn noted. "It was being viewed via Skype. Deputies responded and I responded as well." 

"Upon our arrival, we started an investigation," he continued. "The end result was the arrest of Billy Joe Turnage. Mr. Turnage was at the scene when we arrived." 

Osborn said that investigators from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted two days of interviews before bringing criminal attempt to commit rape charges against Turnage.

Now look I am not going to say that this is in any way indicative of how Republicans seem to be treating females in this country, because that would be unfair.

I mean just because in many places where Republicans hold a majority there are draconian policies in place which restrict a woman's access to not only abortion but also birth control and free medical advice is no reason to draw a parallel.

Nor is there a real connection between this disgusting assault and the Republicans blocking the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have ensured that women were as valued in the workplace as men.

Two completely separate issues, right?

After all it's not like Republican men see women as inferior, or needing to know their place or anything.

Right?

Sarah Palin attempting to distract from the brawl on Hannity last night. Nice try lady.

I actually almost did not cover this as I think it the far less important or interesting story about Sarah Palin today. (For that just go down a few posts.)

However it is kind of my thing to talk about her Fox appearances so here goes.

First off she is once again dressed in that hideous yellow pleather jacket, which looks like part of an ensemble from the "Streetwalker Barbie" collection.

Then she starts off with this dismissive tone as she addresses a quote about President Obama by Tina Brown:

"How ironic, Because that little lady, Tina Brown, she is such a big part of the problem. She with her, and her ilk, so uber-uppity, so cocksure of their untouchable elitism."

Say what?

Damn somebody is particularly venomous today.

Palin then goes on to blame liberals for keeping women down by making them dependent on social programs.

About Tina Brown she says, "Chick you're a day late and a dollar short." 

Yes because REAL pro-women women usually refer to other women as "chicks."

For somebody whose entire family was just outed as a bunch of drunken trouble makers, Palin is oddly arrogant and seemingly pleased with herself as she makes statements like this:

 "Because these maladroit fake feminist women, They have such a double standard, so hypocritical as they would support anyone who would have sympathy for Muslims who do treat women so poorly. So inhumanely and not do all they can to stop the rise of radical Islam that would adversely affect America's interests.

(I bet you did not know that not stopping the spread of radical Islam was a failing by feminists now did you?)

Hannity then gets sneaky and tricks Palin, who as we know is always throwing her support behind these far right challengers to Republican incumbents, into admitting that voting for the Republican candidate, even if he is not as ideological pure as she might like, would be better than allowing the Democrats to take that seat.

At the end Palin manages to again make her pitch that Obama's recent remarks that many Democrats currently in tight races voted with him, essentially dooms Mark Begich. (Who she disrespectfully refers to as "Marky-Mark.)

"GOP establishment you better not blow it. You better take this gift as gold and capitalize on it."

You know that's actually good advice.

And that is why I will be using the newly released information about that drunken brawl for weeks to come.