The right-wing foamers’ full frontal assault on twelve-year-old Graeme Frost was clearly insufficient to slake their leaders’ need for the blood of children. More recently a toddler named Bethany Wilkerson has fallen under attack — more specifically, her parents’ decision to give birth to her.
The capsule version of the very good fisking on Orcinus is (1) Don’t abort, (2) Don’t have uninsured children; in fact, (3) Don’t have sex.
What baffles me (and libbish bloggers like me) the most is how the right-wing asstards can, on the one hand, claim to be “pro-family” while, on the other hand, be so obviously anti-family.
Of course it’s not really about family, and I differ from the post on Orcinus in one respect. I don’t think it’s about sex with the righties; I think it’s about authoritarianism, their specific, strong brand of it. They simply want the world to adhere to their rules and be white, Christian, heterosexual, gainfully employed, married with Dad in the workplace, Mom in the home tending for the three towheaded, homeschooled children, everyone kept so busy keeping their eyes on Jesus that they won’t have time for questioning of or dissension against the government.
I see another fight looming on the horizon, though, presaged by an article from the Beeb about a new version of conception control, a pill that may or may not be available in ten or so years — and that doesn’t use hormones at all, but rather does some RNA hacking instead to prevent sperm from penetrating an egg entirely.
RNA interference is a way of “silencing a gene” to stop it working properly, and the researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have identified a gene called ZP3 which is active in eggs just before they are fertilised.
ZP3 produces a protein which allows the sperm to bind to the surface of the egg. If this protein isn’t there, the egg can’t be fertilised.
The Boston team “silenced” the ZP3 gene in mice, and found they could not get pregnant.
The downside is that RNA interference — mind you, this is actual gene tweaking going on here — can have unintended side effects, but researchers point out that the targeted gene appears to be active only in fertile eggs, nowhere else. Thus, obviously, a lot more work will need to be done to figure out if the damned thing is safe, let alone reliably effective.
Why I see the banners in the distance, given the history of both Plan B and HPlV inoculations in the US, should be pretty obvious. Plan B, you might recall, began as a morning-after style pill that would be available without prescription to pretty much anyone who wanted it. Under extreme pressure from the religiously deranged, it eventually got limited to women 18+ years of age. There’s no medical reason for this; it’s just what the righties wanted. That was all.
Yep: Authoritarianism.
HPlV inoculation was similarly fraught. It’s stunning how many people oppose it. And while the vaccine might not prevent all forms of HPlV infection, it definitely offers protection against some, and you’d think some protection would be seen as more desirable than none at all. The righties, though, seem to believe that HPlV inoculation is the same as endorsing sex outside of marriage. To their typical authoritarianism we can add their specific piquancy of sexual anxiety.
A good friend of mine recently had his daughter inoculated. She’s not even of high school age yet. Is he telling her, in essence, go out and screw as much as you want? Or is he instead (1) interested in protecting her for life against a few STDs; and (2) possessed of a realistic understanding of teenagers?
Assuming hurdles known and unknown are surmounted, the RNAi conception control pill is certain to raise the hackles of the goddishly retarded. Not because it may be an effective contraceptive — but because it may take the health risks and misery out of female reproductive choice; and as anyone who’s read Genesis knows, the Daughters of Eve are doomed to be cursed forever with agony and sorrow for having the temerity to be born female, just like their duplicitous, evil grandam, the Original Sinner guilty of leading poor, helpless innocent Adam into the ways of temptation and darkness.
And, if those feckless women persist in having sex anyway, and happen to give birth to children who are thoughtless enough to eventually need medical treatment — what the hell. They deserved to suffer anyway, and maybe even should be hanged in public.
After all, they’ll defend — with lethal force, if necessary — anyone’s right to be born, but after that, you’re on your own, bucko.
