Life Links 6/8/10

The Florida legislature has sent Governor Charlie Crist their ultrasound bill. He has 15 days to sign or veto it.

Just when you thought Amanda Marcotte couldn't get more ridiculous. Here's her explanation for why abstinence-only education is to blame for an increase (from 11% to 17%) in teenage girls who use the rhythm method as their method of birth control

Why blame abstinence-only proponents for this? Don’t they just blithely tell young women to “just say no” and leave it at that? Well, yes and no. No one is under the impression that abstinence-only texts or speakers generally push the rhythm method, so much as they push the wedding ring as the cure for all your ills. How you’re expected to control your fertility within marriage is rarely discussed at all in these programs. Still, the rhythm method is associated with the prudish strand of Christian moralizing that also drives the abstinence-only movement, and so the more popular that kind of thinking, the more likely the rhythm method will be seen as a legitimate practice by teenagers.

She doesn't take any time to see if the increase is concentrated in areas where abstinence-only education is taught. Nope, that'd be too much work. Just throw a couple of faulty generalizations out there and you're set.


A Michigan man and his son in Colorado have been arrested for making threats against Congressman Bart Stupak.

On Monday, U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade in Detroit announced a criminal complaint against Hesch, 73, of West Branch, and his son, David Hesch, 50, of Loveland, Colo., on charges of conspiring to send a gruesome, violent letter to U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, threatening to murder the Menominee Democrat and his family for Stupak's vote for health care reform.

Signed "The Devil Within Us," the letter mentioned the congressman's family by first names and went on to threaten that he would "paint the Mackinaw (sic) Bridge with the blood of you and your family members."

The Belfast Telegraph has the story of a woman who saved her child's life by getting a second opinion after old equipment lead hospital staff to believe her child was already dead.

An Irish hospital wrongly told a pregnant woman her unborn baby was dead — just hours before an operation to remove the foetus.

The woman, who was supplied with abortion-inducing medicine by the hospital, saved her baby's life after she sought a second opinion from her local GP. The shocking incident at the scandal-plagued Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda was caused by out-of-date and unsuitable equipment and shoddy work practices.