:: Oh, I forgot that human rights were only for boys

Ok, I can't hold back any longer. I have resisted talking about the Catholic flap over Amnesty International's long overdue decision to recognize that punishing women who have had an abortion, or refusing to treat women with injuries from an unsafe abortion, or refusing to provide an abortion to a woman whose life or health would be threatened by a pregnancy, or forcing a woman whose been raped to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, is a violation of human rights.

Now, I could go on about how long it took for Amnesty to take a friggin' position on FORCED PREGNANCY. For several years now they've had a project on preventing violence against women, but never came out and addressed whether access to safe and legal abortion was a human rights issue. However, after two years of debate among the national chapters, the international organization finally developed an opinion -- and frankly a darn good one.

But instead I'd like to go on about the fixation of the Vatican on their position. Oh. My. God. (And I do mean mine, because clearly mine is different from theirs.) The only next step I see for the Vatican is to say openly and plainly that a fetus is worth more than the woman who carries it, and that women really do deserve to be punished.

As it is, the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Bertone, comes pretty darn close:

"Even the life that is the result of violence should be saved," said the cardinal in an interview today with Vatican Radio.

"Even though they are persons in gestation, they are persons, they are human subjects, with all the dignity of a human being," he added.

Why don't people get this?? It's simple people. You can whine about how yucky abortion is, about how all the pro-choicers talk about is "Our body, our right," as if there were noone else involved. Ok, I get that one chant can oversimplify an issue, but let's try this one on for size:

THE VATICAN, THE GOP, ANTI-CHOICE EVANGELICAL CONSERVATIVES DON'T CARE ABOUT WOMEN. They will sacrifice your life in a snap in order to save a fetus. They will jail you. You can be raped, you can be dying, it doesn't matter. You are worth more to them as a dead martyr than a living member of society. In fact, I'm not even sure about that -- there was a time when women who died in childbirth were not allowed to be buried in the church graveyard. Anyone know if that's still true?

Sigh...

I'm sorry for the outburst, but every morning I read the news coming from the Vatican and I just get ticked off. Those self-righteous, mysogynist $&*#s. Read more!