Legalism Over Life: Nun Supports Life-Saving Abortion And Gets Excommunicated

Feministing: Sister Margaret McBride has been demoted from her position at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ after participating in the approval of an abortion for a critically ill patient in 2009. McBride was part of the hospital ethics committee that approved an abortion for a patient with pulmonary hypertension, which can be [...]

Judge This: Outsourcing Pregnancy To India

Full video of Sandel’s lecture here. Your Thoughts?

Pat Condell Excoriates The Left For Not Standing Up To Islamism

There is a lot to chew on in this latest rant from Pat Condell on the need for the tolerant to be more intolerant of intolerant religions than they are intolerant of denouncers of intolerant religions.  While Condell’s  attack on multiculturalism is too broad and at times his rhetoric is cringe-inducingly counter-productive, I do share [...]

Jimmy Carter Breaks With Southern Baptists Over Views Of Women

Good for President Carter: After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church — and he’s decided it’s time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision “unavoidable” after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be “subservient [...]

“Wedding” Young Girls So They Can Be Executed

This story out of Iran is nightmarish and devastating to read: He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so “impressed my superiors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death.” In the Islamic Republic it is illegal [...]

Obama’s New Science Czar’s Controversial Prescriptions

Zombietime has the excerpts from new “science czar” John Holdren’s 1977 book, in which he advocates the following: • Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not; • The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food; • [...]

A Muslim Woman Against the Burqa

From Feministing, worth reading in full: But then the argument goes: surely for the women who choose to wear the burqa, the garment is a choice not a tool for suppression. This argument obscures the fact that there is a pervasive, sexist propaganda in many Muslim communities in favor of the burqa. Many women are [...]

The Burqa Debate In Britain

In the initial post in this series, I raised for discussion the news story about Sarkozy advocating that France ban burqas in public and sketched out some very powerful and influential views from Jonathan Haidt on moral psychology, and gave a brief analysis of Haidt’s views in terms of my developing take on metaethics (which [...]

Parents Of Daughters Favor More Liberal Policies

Via 538 Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors’ key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the [...]

To Ban Or Not To Ban

A youtube point-counterpoint on this topic (on which I am still interested in your thoughts).  Click here for Njustus’s stab at the topic and my attempt to play devil’s advocate against him. Pro-ban: Anti-ban:

Playing Sarkozy’s Advocate

Njustus has kindly accepted my gauntlet to readers to offer on the possibility of the French government outlawing women from publicly wearing burqas.  And his reply is a good one: From a Lockean ’social contract’ perspective, I believe the state should have the power to regulate the wearing of burqas if it can offer a [...]

France Considers Banning Burqas in Public and I Consider Haidt on Pluralism

France, which has already banned headscarves in schools, purportedly as an effort to separate church and state, is now considering banning the burqa in public since it represents servitude and indignity for women (according to Sarkozy).  Click here for the full story and links to perspectives on the option. Would the effects of this be [...]