Won’t somebody please think of the rapists? At least the white, handsome, star athlete ones?

A former Stanford University athlete convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation in a case that has shed light on what advocates say is an epidemic of violence on college campuses.

Brock Allen Turner, a 20-year-old swimmer who dropped out of the elite California university last year, appeared stoic in court in Palo Alto on Thursday, two months after a jury convicted him of multiple felonies, including assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman.

…

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, was arrested on the Palo Alto campus on 18 January 2015 after two Stanford graduate students spotted him lying on top of the victim outside of a Kappa Alpha party behind a dumpster. When officers arrived, the woman, who is not a Stanford student, was “completely unresponsive” and partially clothed, with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit, according to police.

She was resting. She was unresponsive because she was thinking about something. And resting.

The two witnesses who were biking past that evening said they saw Turner “thrusting” on top of the motionless woman and that they intervened and held him until police showed up.

Turner, who had a blood-alcohol level that was twice the legal limit, testified in court that he could walk and talk at the time and acknowledged that the victim was “very drunk”. He claimed that he did not intend to rape the woman and that the encounter was consensual.

Sadly for Turner, the victim doesn’t agree that the “encounter” was consensual.

After a jury convicted Turner of sexually penetrating an intoxicated and unconscious person with a foreign object, prosecutors asked a judge to sentence him to six years in California prison. Probation officials had recommended the significantly lighter penalty of six months in county jail, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

The judge, Aaron Perksy, cited Turner’s age and lack of criminal history as factors in his decision, saying, “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him … I think he will not be a danger to others.”

After the hearing, Santa Clara County district attorney Jeff Rosen slammed the sentencing, which will likely result in Turner spending three months behind bars – a fraction of the maximum 14 years he was potentially facing.

Yes but he’s an athlete. He was at Stanford. He’s white. Each item is worth several years off his sentence.

The high-profile case intensified scrutiny of rapes at US colleges and comes at a time when national leaders and activists across the country have increasingly raised alarms about the culture of sexual violence on university campuses.

A recent White House survey found that 10% of female college students experience some form of sexual assault and that only 12.5% of rapes are reported.

Turner’s case attracted significant attention in part because criminal prosecutions of campus rape cases are rare. In recent years, there have also been growing concerns about the ways in which universities protect athletes accused of sexual assault.

But athletes are the whole point of universities. Of course universities protect them…male athletes, at least.

Unlike me, Anna Merlan at Jezebel didn’t like Jimmy Carter’s opinion piece on prostitution and decriminalization. She didn’t bother to be especially honest about it though.

Writing for the Washington Post, Carter editorialized that sex work is bad and oppressive. He’s against Amnesty International’s call to decriminalize all aspects of adult, consensual sex work, because he doesn’t think consensual sex work is real.

Some assert that this “profession” can be empowering and that legalizing and regulating all aspects of prostitution will mitigate the harm that accompanies it. But I cannot accept a policy prescription that codifies such a pernicious form of violence against women. Normalizing the act of buying sex also debases men by assuming that they are entitled to access women’s bodies for sexual gratification. If paying for sex is normalized, then every young boy will learn that women and girls are commodities to be bought and sold.

(Emphasis mine.)

It’s curious to suggest that decriminalizing sex work would lead to a wholesale devaluation of womanhood, but other aspects of Carter’s argument aren’t new.

You see what she did there? Se casually translated what Carter said into something else – she bolded his words, just as I did, but then she misrepresented them. He didn’t say “decriminalizing sex work would lead to a wholesale devaluation of womanhood”; he said something more interesting than that, and less easy to brush aside. Maybe that’s why she ignored it in favor of something sillier and more banal.

Explain to me why he’s wrong. Why is he wrong to say that normalizing the rental of women for sex will teach boys that women and girls are commodities to be bought and sold? Why wouldn’t it do that? If it becomes legal to buy and sell access to women, isn’t that teaching boys that women are a category of people who can be rented? Not simply paid to do some work, but rented for access.

But then again – human beings do have a long history of rising above prejudices of that kind, and treating everyone as an equal no matter what cues their society gives them.

Cue hollow laughter.

Rachel Moran says there’s a lot wrong with Emily Bazelon’s NY Times Magazine piece about the decriminalization of prostitution.

Bazelon’s mischaracterization of the issue of prostitution, in my opinion, was confirmed and reaffirmed in her article in ways too numerous to document here. Her piece has had to be corrected three times (including her contention that Dutch prostitution is confined to Amsterdam, when it is, as any European could tell you, countrywide.) U.S. psychologist and academic Melissa Farley, who was quoted in Bazelon’s article, has filed a demand for correction of Bazelon’s misquote of Farley; as of this writing (June 1, 2016), the New York Times has refused to correct it.

Bazelon also stated that there had been no reported cases of trafficking in New Zealand, somehow managing to miss that on April 14, 2015, Naengnoi Sriphet was sentenced to 27 months in prison by Auckland District Court for recruiting women from Thailand to work in a “massage parlour” in Auckland.

Bazelon’s fact-checker contacted me to ask whether it would be fair to say that I believed Amnesty International had taken its pro-decriminalization stance from pimps and sex-traffickers. I responded that it would not be fair to say so without qualifying that statement, and I reminded her of what I’d told Bazelon several times already: that Amnesty International had taken their cues from the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, then co-chaired by Alejandra Gil, who has since been convicted and is serving a 15-year sentence in a Mexican prison for sex trafficking.

Bazelon ignored my conversation with her fact-checker and attributed to me a one-line fragment of what I’d said, making no mention of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, Gil or her sex-trafficking conviction.

That’s crappy. Surely it’s an important piece of information, that Rachel Moran says Amnesty International had taken their cues from a group co-chaired by a convicted sex trafficker.

Then there’s the account by Sabrinna Valisce that Bazelon omitted entirely.

It is to be hoped, going forward, that institutions of influence will pay attention to voices of experience from within these regimes. Sabrinna Valisce fought long and hard for what she believed to be right when she campaigned to pass New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act. She was subsequently violated and abused within the same system she fought for. It took courage for her to publicly admit she was mistaken. Now that she is speaking out about it, we owe it to her—and to women around the world—to listen.

But that would be such a downer.

Jimmy Carter in the Washington Post:

It is disturbing that some human rights and public health organizations are advocating the full legalization of the sex trade, including its most abusive aspects. I agree with Amnesty International, UNAIDS and other groups that say that those who sell sex acts should not be arrested or prosecuted, but I cannot support proposals to decriminalize buyers and pimps.

Some assert that this “profession” can be empowering and that legalizing and regulating all aspects of prostitution will mitigate the harm that accompanies it. But I cannot accept a policy prescription that codifies such a pernicious form of violence against women. Normalizing the act of buying sex also debases men by assuming that they are entitled to access women’s bodies for sexual gratification. If paying for sex is normalized, then every young boy will learn that women and girls are commodities to be bought and sold.

Emphasis added.

I’d love to know how the libertarian feminists get around that – really know how they do, not just hear their babble about “agency” again.

Carter prefers the Nordic model.

Critics of the Nordic model assert that mature adults should be free to exchange money for sex. This argument ignores the power imbalance that defines the vast majority of sex-for-cash transactions, and it demeans the beauty of sexual relations when both parties are respected.

Sex between people who experience mutual enjoyment is a wonderful part of life. But when one party has power over another to demand sexual access, mutuality is extinguished, and the act becomes an expression of domination. As author and prostitution survivor Rachel Moran explained in her book, “Paid For,” once money has exchanged hands, a woman must deliver whatever service the customer demands.

Check out Rachel Moran on Twitter to see her passion on this subject.

In May 2015, when the Carter Center held a global summit to end sexual exploitation, sex-trade survivors, including Moran, described their painful journeys through exploitation. They told of the abuse they suffered — abuse that should be understood as torture. They expressed their determination to speak not only for themselves but also for those who are either too traumatized to come forward or who perished as a result of homicide, suicide, drug abuse or disease. They compare their movement to the abolition of slavery, an institution that once also seemed like a permanent fixture in society.

Prostitution is not the “oldest profession,” as the saying goes; it’s the oldest oppression.

Those survivors told us that they once believed that selling sex was their choice but that this attitude was a requirement for survival — that only once they were fully free from the fetters of the trade were they able to fully understand their lack of choice.

If full legalization is adopted, it will not be the “empowered sex worker” who will be the norm — it will be the millions of women and girls needed to fill the supply of bodies that an unlimited market of consumers will demand.

 

Women and girls as commodities to be bought and sold.

Speaking of fascists…the Catholic church spent 2 million dollars lobbying against a New York law that would make it easier for victims of child sex abuse to sue their attackers. Tell me again about how religion is all about compassion. Tell me again about the connection between religion and morality.

The state’s Catholic Conference has hired some of New York’s most influential lobbying firms, including Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, Patricia Lynch & Associates, Hank Sheinkopf, and Mark Behan Communications. They spent more than $2.1 million from 2007 through 2015 lobbying against the Child Victims Act and for or against other bills, according to state records.

The Child Victims Act, introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, would eliminate the statute of limitations that currently requires victims to file civil lawsuits by age 23. It would also give those who can no longer sue under current law a one-year window to file a civil suit.

And the Catholic church considers it appropriate for the Catholic church to try to block that, for self-interested reasons.

The New York Catholic Conference filings show they hired lobbyists to work on issues of “statute of limitations” and “timelines for commencing certain civil actions related to sex offenses,” among other topics. These reports come after Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of the New York Archdiocese, was criticized for not wanting to talk about the allegations of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church or the Child Victims Act, the New York Daily News reported in a separate story earlier this month.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan thinks it’s very unfair for news media to talk about child rape in the Catholic church at all.

“They are willing to spend limitless money in order to basically keep bad guys from being accountable for their actions,” Melanie Blow, chief operations officer of the Stop Abuse Campaign, told the Daily News. “I think they’re doing it because they don’t want to have to pay out settlements.”

In New York, the Catholic Conference has said it does not oppose victims getting justice but wants any new laws to ensure the same rules apply to both public and private institutions. New York Senate Republicans oppose the one-year window for victims who are already past the statute of limitations.

Bollocks. It wants to protect its own.

Saletan on Trump’s open racism:

Republicans who have sworn allegiance to Donald Trump—the majority leaders of the United States House and Senate, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and numerous governors and members of Congress—don’t think this country can return to the racism and fascism of the 20^th century. They want us to believe that Trump will respect the norms of the post-Holocaust, post-segregation era because they support him. In truth, their capitulation should alarm us. As other countries have learned, the first step in the descent to racism and fascism is to become numb to them. Over the past week, we’ve received fresh evidence that the numbing process is underway.

Most Germans didn’t think Hitler was going to be what he went on to be. That was a big mistake.

On Friday, at a rally in San Diego, Trump claimed that the federal judge who is hearing the fraud case against Trump’s real-estate “university” isbiased and corrupt—in part, apparently, because the judge is “Mexican.”

Trump has previously portrayed people as biased or untrustworthy, based purely on Latino ancestry, on at least four occasions. Last summer, after retweeting an allegation that Jeb Bush “has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife,” Trump defended this claim on the grounds that Bush’s wife—who had been an American citizen for more than 35 years—was “from Mexico.” On Dec. 12 and Dec. 29, Trump suggested to Republican audiences in Iowa that they shouldn’t vote for Sen. Ted Cruz because “not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba.” In February, Trump accused Gonzalo Curiel, the judge in the Trump University case, of conspiring against him, calling Curiel “Spanish” and “Hispanic.” When Trump was asked to explain the connection between the judge’s alleged bias and his ethnicity, Trump said: “I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border.”

Trump’s attack on Friday continued in this vein. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump,” he told a crowd in San Diego. “His name is”— at this point, Trump, having raised his voice like a drum roll, held up a piece of paper and pronounced the name carefully, gesturing for effect—“Gonzalo Curiel.” The audience booed, and Trump let the moment soak in, shaking his head in solidarity. Trump told the audience two things about Curiel: that he “was appointed by Barack Obama” and that he “happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” After railing against Curiel and the lawsuit for more than 10 minutes, Trump concluded: “The judges in this court system, federal court—they ought to look into Judge Curiel.”

…

Let’s recap. At least five times in the past year, the candidate who is now the Republican nominee for president has implied that certain public officials are suspect, or are acting against the national interest, because they or their family members are Latino. This isn’t a complaint about illegal immigrants. It’s not even a dog whistle. It’s a straight-up appeal to prejudice. It’s about the color of your skin, the sound of your last name, and where your ancestors came from.

The BBC has a new horror –

At least 2,234 Indians have contracted HIV while receiving blood transfusions in hospitals in the past 17 months alone, say officials.

The information was revealed by the country’s National Aids Control Organisation (Naco) in response to a petition filed by information activist Chetan Kothari.

God damn. That’s appalling.

The highest number of patients who had been infected with HIV as a result of contaminated blood in hospitals, were from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh with 361 cases, Mr Kothari’s RTI (Right to Information) query revealed.

The western states of Gujarat with 292 cases and Maharashtra with 276 cases rank second and third respectively.

The Indian capital Delhi is at number four with 264 cases.

“This is the official data, provided by the government-run Naco. I believe the real numbers would be double or triple that,” Mr Kothari told the BBC.

Under law, it is mandatory for hospitals to screen donors and the donated blood for HIV, hepatitis B and C, malaria and other infections.

“But each such test costs 1,200 rupees ($18; £12) and most hospitals in India do not have the testing facilities. Even in a big city like Mumbai, only three private hospitals have HIV testing facilities. Even the largest government hospitals do not have the technology to screen blood for HIV,” Mr Kothari said.

Ohhhhhhhhhh god – they don’t screen the blood.

I have no words.

Iran’s Holocaust Cartoon Contest announced the winners at a closing ceremony on Monday. Here’s the winner:

Look closely at the drawer: the words are “Shoah Business.” The thing at the top is the front entrance to Auschwitz.

My former zookeeper side is obtrusive this week. I used to know a few gorillas quite well – not as well as their longstanding full-time keeper, but quite well. I felt very attached to them. Harambe’s death makes me sad and angry, even though I don’t think the zoo could have done anything else.

The police are investigating the family of the boy who jumped into the gorilla exhibit.

That sounds kind of absurd on the face of it – they surely didn’t tell him to jump in, or want him to. But. People can be amazingly irresponsible at zoos…except that irresponsible is too mild. People will go over and around barriers at zoos; that’s what I’m saying. People will ignore all the impediments that are obviously there for reasons, in order to do what they feel like doing. The public was always by far the worst thing about working at the zoo.

That doesn’t apply to a toddler though; it applies to parents. The story I’ve seen is that there were four kids and the boy got in when no one was looking. An accident. Ok but maybe they should have been more careful than that?

A day after police said they’ll investigate the family of a boy who slipped into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo, the child’s family spoke out.

“Our child has had a checkup by his doctor and is still doing well,” the family said Wednesday in a statement released by a representative.

That’s good, but Harambe is still dead. That’s not so good.

“We continue to praise God for His grace and mercy, and to be thankful to the Cincinnati Zoo for their actions taken to protect our child,” the boy’s family said Wednesday.

“We are also very appreciative for the expressions of concern and support that have been sent to us. Some have offered money to the family, which we do not want and will not accept. If anyone wishes to make a gift, we recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambe’s name.”

The continuing to praise God for His grace and mercy part really pisses me off, because it totally ignores the stupid wasteful death of Harambe. Where’s the grace and mercy for him? He wouldn’t be dead if the parents hadn’t lost track of their toddler. You’d think he was a piece of machinery the toddler got to close to.

Cincinnati police said Tuesday that their review will focus on the actions of the boy’s parents and family. It is not related to the operation or safety of the Cincinnati Zoo, authorities said.

“After the review, we will determine if charges need to be brought forward,” police spokeswoman Tiffaney Hardy said.

“If it is determined charges need to be brought forward, we would then discuss it with the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office.” The prosecutor’s office declined to say how long the investigation might take.

Authorities have said the boy’s mother was with the child when he slipped past a fence and tumbled into the moat.

Except I don’t believe it about the “slipping” past a fence. If it were that easy the zoo wouldn’t have gone 38 years without anyone jumping into the gorilla exhibit.

Jane Goodall’s response to the killing highlighted the conflicted nature of the decision to kill the animal.

“I feel so sorry for you, having to try to defend something which you may well disapprove of,” Goodall wrote in an email to Maynard.

Goodall described the killing as “a devastating loss to the zoo, and to the gorillas.”

The zoo really had no choice, but that doesn’t make it any more fun for them.

In Egypt on Sunday a girl died under general anesthetic for a genital mutilation.

Mayar Mohamed Mousa, 17, died in a hospital in the province of Suez on Sunday while under full anaesthesia, said Lotfi Abdel-Samee, the local health ministry undersecretary.

“This is something that the law has prohibited,” stressed Abdel-Samee.

Despite the ban in 2008, female genital mutilation (FGM) is still widespread in Egypt, especially in rural areas. It is practised among Muslims as well as Egypt’s minority Christians.

Christians as well as Muslims think females are dirty deformed creatures.

While 200 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected to the practise, there have been major strides in Egypt, as well as Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Kenya against FGM, according to Claudia Cappa, the lead author of a February UN children’s agency report on the issue.

“The latest figures from the Egypt Demographic and Health Survey show that we’re winning,” the United Nations Development Programme said in a report last year.

“Mothers’ attitudes are changing, too,” UNDP said.

While 92% of mothers had undergone the procedure, only 35% of them “intend to circumcise their daughters,” according to the UNDP report.

Too late for Mayar Mohamed Mousa though, as well as her sister, who was mutilated first and survived.

Originally a comment by Kevin Kirkpatrick on Women interrupted.

I think it’s a direct parallel to the well-documented “racism without racists” cultural trend.

In that vein, I was every bit as disturbed by this guy:

At that point a man at the next table said to the guy, “You crossed the line”.

Just unpacking those 4 words, and the context and brazenness of their usage; it comes across as “Dude. Yes, of course sexual objectification of women is funny… but you gotta be subtle to be funny… you know, with clever entendres, sly winks, and nudges. You aren’t being funny because you’re being too overt.”

Putting myself in his head for a moment, I suspect that this guy actually believed himself to be standing up for the comedian, and for women in general.

I totally empathize with Samantha’s sentiment about the “boldly sexist asshole” needing to be fired along the lines of “Who would even feel safe working late with him around?” I think this is the boss whose overt sexism makes for slam-dunk discrimination lawsuits; who can’t help but make comments like “Oooh, looking good today, Janice! You should wear blouses like that more often”.

On the other hand, the “you crossed the line” guy is the boss who’s going to have that thought, but keep it to himself (taking pride in how not-a-sexist he is for doing so). And who, two weeks later, is going to put Jim, not Janice, in charge of the next big project. Not because he’s sexist, but because he’s pragmatic, and just wants to ensure everyone’s mind stays focused on the job, not on Janice’s chest.

A year ago the CBC told us about a very bad man, and a better one:

Saskatchewan-born comedian Brent Butt is rushing to support comedian Jen Grant after she was sexually harassed during a set at a corporate event.

“I have been a standup comedian for 28 years and not once have I been heckled with sexual threats. I also don’t know of any other male comics who have been sexually threatened,” his Twitter statement read in part.

Grant, who is originally from Ottawa and now lives in Toronto, had been hired to do a 45-minute corporate set in a country club in suburban Toronto. According to Grant, within three minutes of taking the stage, the heckling began.

“I am interrupted by a male … saying to me, ‘There’s a 51 per cent chance that my buddy here will have sex with you. and I will take the other 49 per cent,'” she said in a blog post.

It was a corporate gig, so she couldn’t respond the way she would at a club; the rules are different. So he went on and on and on.

“‘Oh, the things I would do to you,'” Grant quoted the man as saying, in what she called a “rapey” voice.

“It’s hard to put into words how I felt at that moment. Scared. Objectified. Threatened. Invalidated,” she said.

Grant walked off the stage in tears, something she said she had never done in 16 years as a comedian.

That’s nice, isn’t it? She was doing her work, and that guy stopped her doing it, by reducing her to the hole between her legs. “You don’t have any talent, or anything to say; you’re not smart or funny or interesting; you’re just a hole.”

So Brent Butt tweeted:

I’ve been a stand-up comedian for 28 years, and NOT ONCE have I been ‘heckled’ with sexual threats. I also don’t know of any other male comics who have been sexually threatened. Yet most female comics get that within their first week. A lot of them hear it on Day 1.

And then again, and again, and over and over, during their entire career. But, heaven forbid, if a female comic ever finally gets fed up with this repetitive, vile, hostile garbage, there’s always some dim asshole who’s quick to tell her she’s being ‘too sensitive’. Well guess what, you dim asshole, she’s not being too sensitive.

You’re being a piece of shit.

Try not being a piece of shit for a while, and I bet that’ll REALLY cut down on the amount of rampant sensitivity you have to tolerate.

That. We’re not being “too sensitive” by responding to repetitive, vile, hostile garbage. We’re not.

Slavery in Scotland.

Abul Kamal Azad went to work at a remote hotel in the Western Highlands. He thought he’d been given a job in London.

When he called his new employer from the airport, he was told the plan had changed. He was to take a coach to Glasgow, then another bus to a place called Ballachulish in Lochaber in west Scotland.

…

Used to the clatter and commotion of Dhaka, he found the isolation disorienting. He was met by Shamsul Arefin, the man who had arranged for him to come to the UK, promising him a good job and a better life. Arefin drove him the last leg of the journey, and at last he found himself standing on the side of a hill in a remote corner of the Highlands, staring up at the dark windows of the hotel. He felt the first stirrings of fear.

It sounds like a Gothic novel, but it was real. He’s answered an ad in Bangladesh –

The advert led him to Arefin. A big man with a powerful voice, he exuded confidence and authority. His wife had important connections in Bangladeshi political circles and he owned a chain of businesses both there and in the UK, including the Stewart hotel. After their first meeting, he contacted Azad again and again, encouraging him to take a job. “He saw something, I don’t know, some vulnerability,” Azad says. “He was always calling me with promises,” he says softly, looking at his hands.

Arefin showed Azad a work contract for £18,000 a year as a tandoori chef, but told him he’d need to pay up front for his Tier 2 sponsorship visa, which would allow him to work for up to five years in the UK. At first he asked for £5,000. But as soon as Azad raised the money, he was told to find more. In the end, Azad borrowed £15,000 from moneylenders and raised another £5,000 selling his family land, his business and, finally, his wife’s jewellery.

£20,000 of debt for a fraud – visas don’t cost £20,000.

Azad spent months working as the sole employee in the Stewart hotel, cleaning, cooking, and gardening for up to 22 hours a day, seven days a week. After a few weeks, Azad asked for his wages and says Arefin grew angry, telling him he would be paid at the end of the month. The date came around, but his salary never appeared.

“I was the only worker for 37 bedrooms, I did everything. I woke every morning at 5am. Two coaches [of tourists] would arrive day after day.” Locals would be hired but then leave almost immediately. “Nobody would stay and work for this man, but I had no choice. I thought, if I go back to my country, how will I pay my debt? My family depends on me. Every month I need to send money home.”

Then other Bangladeshi men started to arrive, having paid Arefin £15,000 to £30,000 for a work visa. Arefin paid them only £100 a month. They worked from 5 a.m. to midnight.

The workers were too scared to talk to locals or guests about what was happening. “He told us, ‘You can’t talk to anybody. If you do, I will cancel your visa,’” Azad says. There was no mobile phone reception, no internet access and no transport. Arefin accompanied them whenever they went into town on hotel business. Some of the workers slept on the floor of empty rooms; others were forced to sleep in a decrepit caravan behind the hotel, with only slug-infested blankets for warmth. In the middle of winter, they were made to go outside in the freezing rain and snow to chop logs, wearing only the sandals they’d brought with them from Bangladesh.

They did eventually get out, and Arefin was prosecuted and convicted, but they’re very little better off – they still owe huge debts in Bandladesh, they have trouble finding work, the authorities did little to help them.

In Arizona…

The voice on the other end of the phone is friendly, but unhelpful, when a Rewire reporter says she’s six weeks pregnant and would like an abortion.

“We don’t provide that,” Marie says.

Marie makes appointments for MomDoc, Arizona’s largest women’s health network. MomDoc is owned and run by Mormons who [sub]scribe to a belief that opposes abortion in nearly all cases.

“Can you tell me where I can get an abortion?” the reporter asks.

Marie says she can’t. “I’m sorry,” she adds.

People who oppose abortion and put that opposition into practice should not be running women’s health networks. Period. It’s ridiculous. People shouldn’t set up networks for the purpose of not doing a major part of the work the network claims to do. They should go into other kinds of work.

MomDoc imposes a virtual gag order on employees when it comes to abortion care, as a half-dozen former OB-GYNs, nurse practitioners, and support staff told Rewire in a series of recent interviews by phone and email. What they described affords a window into the workings of a private medical practice, one that opposes abortion care and attempts to suppress abortion access on religious grounds.

…

That Arizona’s largest OB-GYN practice opposes abortion care disturbs pro-choice advocates in a state where reproductive health access is constricted by forced waiting periods, parental consent requirements, and state-directed counseling intended to discourage patients.

Ethical guidelines from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a professional organization of 57,000 members, advise physicians who object to abortion on religious grounds to notify patients beforehand and to refer them to abortion providers.

“You need to give your patients all the options so they can make their own choice,” Julie Kwatra, legislative chair of the Arizona chapter of ACOG, told Rewire in a phone interview. “Not telling a patient information is in opposition to every rule of medicine.”

But oh no – they have a religion, so they can do whatever they want to.

In 2012, Arizona’s right-leaning legislature instituted a religious privilege law that shields health-care professionals who hold religious beliefs from losing licensure.

These protections, critics argue, further stigmatize a legal medical procedure that’s already under attack in GOP-held legislatures nationwide.

Yes but it’s only women who need it, so it’s fine to stigmatize it and conceal it and lie about it and refuse to tell women who to get it. God hates women, after all.

MomDoc’s website and advertisements make no mention of its faith-based opposition to abortion rights, pro-choice advocates note.

“Drive down the freeway and every other billboard will be a MomDoc billboard on how they provide midwife care and how they really care about the family,” Kat Sabine, executive director of NARAL Arizona, said in a phone interview with Rewire. “To me it’s almost like locking down and cordoning off abortion care even more than it is in the community.”

By asking its employees to refrain from discussing abortion care, MomDoc runs counter to prevailing professional health-care norms to inform and refer patients, explained Lori Freedman, author of Willing and Unable, a book about doctors’ constraints on abortion.

“I think there’s an ethical problem there—this is information patients would want,” Freedman said a phone interview with Rewire.

But God is the boss of ethics, so the Mormons must be right.

Sarah Ditum at the Staggers:

Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe that man you care about didn’t do that awful thing to the woman you don’t care about very much. Maybe this time, of all the times, is Gone Girl in real life and that man you like – the sports star one, or the actor one, or the musician one, I’m not going to specify – really is the victim of a vicious feminine plot to destroy him. After all, you’d know the real thing if you saw it, wouldn’t you? You’re no rape apologist. You’d never harbour liking or admiration for a man who was abusive or violent to women. We all know that this is at the core of your moral thinking, because you’ve been extremely careful to say so, explicitly, before declaring that this time – this one time – is different.

Of course. Absolutely. Because we human beings have an infallible goodness-detector – I think it’s up there somewhere near the prefrontal cortex – in our brains that has been demonstrated to work perfectly over all of human history. Well when I say “human beings” I of course mean men – women aren’t human beings, they’re human-other beings, or human-less-than beings – human-minus beings perhaps says it best. Women don’t have infallible anything, obviously, and they can never tell shits from the sweetest kindest gentlest guys you’ve ever known. But men have it, and women who listen to men can avail themselves of it.

I will let you in on a secret now. A sensational true fact about abusive men. Here goes: pretty much every man who has ever harmed a woman has been liked by someone. Even the ones who aren’t famous have someone to have a pint with. Extraordinary I know, but the ability to be popular with other men – or with other women – has never stood in pristine opposition to the ability to go home and shove your girlfriend against a wall, taking care to focus only on the parts of her body that will stay clothed and covered.

Wait – really? Are we sure? That’s disturbing, if so.

Because it’s not really about the fact that they’re talented or charming or successful. It’s about the fact that they’re men. There is a quiet conspiracy of power compelling us to preserve every crevice of doubt where a man’s reputation can hold on. It’s true that women are not believed when they come forward with allegations, but even the disbelief has an insultingly shallow quality – if her story becomes impossible to deny then the criteria for her dismissal can be easily changed, and the charge of “liar” replaced with one of “slut” or “gold digger” or “asking for it”. The reason women’s words count for so little is that women are counted for so little.

Because men could be football players or movie directors or tv stars. Women are just bleh. It’s too wasteful to throw away talented men just because they hit women.

Being liked is not just compatible with misogyny: misogyny can be the social code that cements the liking. Patriarchy would have fallen apart a long, long time ago otherwise. So maybe this time, this sports star or actor or musician didn’t do it. It’s possible. And maybe this time, like so many other times, she’s telling the truth. Maybe her life matters at least as much as his career and reputation. That is possible too.

Possible, but so very very unlikely.