Something You Can Do

Via Bitch, PhD, we see that anti-choice organization Operation Rescue will holding protests outside abortion clinics all over the US and in a few Canadian cities for 40 days starting /september 23rd. You can check their website to see if a clinic in your area is being targeted, and if so, get in touch with them and ask how you can help.

Please do contact the clinic first, and don't just show up to yell at the protesters. The point here is to help protect the clinic's staff and patients from harassment, not to make life just outside their doors even more noisy and tense.

Rachel Maddow Hits It out of the Park

I've become familiar with Rachel Maddow through her frequent appearances on Keith Olbermann's Countdown show, which I watch through Crooks and Liars, and I'm a bit of a fan. At this Pandagon post we see Maddow going head to head with a crazy person who supports abstinence-only education, and she pulls no punches.

My favourite bit is towards the end:

Maddow: If abstinence programs are being used to substitute for programs that actually give people usable information about contraception, STDs and HIV, then they are killing people.

Thank you, Ms. Maddow.

It's also nice to see a host (in this case, Dan Abrams) who doesn't feel he has to be carefully neutral when faced with the choice between hard data and gibbering idiocy.