Guest post: Abortion and the Savita Halappanavar affair

November 15, 2012 • 4:08 am

UPDATE: See today’s New York Times piece on the Halappanavar tragedy, which includes this:

Mr. Halappanavar told the newspaper that he still could not believe his wife was dead. “I was with her those four days in intensive care,” he said. “They kept telling me: ‘She’s young. She’ll get over it.’ But things never changed; they only got worse. She was so full of life. She loved kids.

“It was all in their hands, and they just let her go. How can you let a young woman go to save a baby who will die anyway?”

But Mr. Halappanavar said he saw no use in being angry. “I’ve lost her,” he said. “I am talking about this because it shouldn’t happen to anyone else.”

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Although several bloggers have covered this tragic episode, Grania Spingies of Atheist Ireland is on the spot, and I wanted to add her perspective to the discussion. Note that abortion is still illegal or unobtainable in Ireland—any abortion, even when the mother’s life is endangered.

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This is what happens when abortion is denied to women

by Grania Spingies

This is what happens when politics embroils itself with religious institutions.

Everybody has heard by now the story that broke in the early hours of Monday night in Ireland. Two weeks ago Savita Halappanavar died of septicemia resulting from medical complications when she was denied pregnancy termination after the diagnosis of a miscarriage had been made.

Her husband recounts that repeated requests for termination (in reality, an evacuation of the uterus) were refused because the fetal heartbeat was still present, and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”. She was left with a dilated cervix for three days until the fetal heartbeat ceased. Four days later she died.

Vigil in Cork City November 13th 2012

Only yesterday io9 highlighted the question “What happens to women who are denied abortions?, and presented the results of a scientific study by a group at the University of California at San Francisco, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). This is the ugly Irish answer.

Ireland has a long and bloody history on the subject of abortion—in fact, on any subject relating to human reproduction. At every step of the way when attempts were made to modernize the country’s attitude to sex and relationships, the Roman Catholic Church and its supporters have fought hard to stop progress in its tracks and bring the country back in line with Catholic Stone Age morality, a morality in which reproduction is paramount regardless of the cost to parents and children alike.

In the land where an uncontested divorce takes on average 3-5 years to obtain, where contraceptives have only been available on demand for a couple of short decades, and where we are still dealing with the legacy of endemic institutionalization of child rape and torture by the Church, it’s no surprise that women can still be denied life-saving medical attention for the sake of honoring a dying fetus.

I should add a note in defence of the medical profession here in Ireland. Most doctors are not in favor of the current legislation, and in fact their own Medical Council says (in the words of Professor Eamon O’Dwyer):

“to withhold necessary treatment from a woman because of pregnancy is unethical as well as professional misconduct, even though such treatment might lead to the death of her unborn child. “

These doctors are caught in a legal nowhere-land, where their own medical guidelines are at odds with the inhumane law of the land. Follow one, and you flout the other. The law at the moment does not allow for abortion under any circumstance at all, although women have the “right” to leave the country for another to obtain one. Theoretically abortion is legal where it would save the life of the mother, but no government has ever written this into law, so in practice one cannot obtain one.

To demonstrate the mess that this issue creates in this country, here’s what O Dwyer said in the very same speech in which he elaborated on the Council’s policy:

“I believe I am entitled to say that there are no circumstances where the life of the mother may only be saved through the deliberate, intentional destruction of her unborn child in the womb.”

This is the sort of misinformation peddled by the anti-abortion lobby most vocal in Ireland, the not-as-Irish-as-they-seem Youth Defence. If you see someone advocating the position that the Savita case is one of medical negligence and has nothing at all to do with abortion, you can pretty much guarantee that you are witnessing an attempt at damage control  from the Defence’s incessant stream of lies, misinformation and emotional blackmail.

What makes this position uglier is that Irish politicians have been dragging their heels for more than twenty years on this subject. After all this time, they are still terrified of the political clout that the Catholic Church has in Ireland. Displeasing the Bishops could translate to losing votes, or so they believe, and so they have flouted the ruling of Ireland’s own Supreme Court as well as that of the EU, and ignored all calls to legislate on abortion in even the most extreme cases. As Michael Nugent points out, as recently as ten years ago:

“the Irish Government tried to tighten the law again, with yet another constitutional referendum, again intended to make abortion unconstitutional even if a pregnant woman was suicidal.”

This situation hasn’t improved. In July of this year, a large group of politicians in the current ruling party announced that they would oppose legislation to liberalize abortion laws in this country. For all his passion and presumed bravery at taking on the Vatican on the subject of child abuse, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny announced rather loftily this October—in Time magazine, no less—that the abortion issue “is not of priority for government now.”

Kenny probably wishes he could walk back the cat on that one now, but as of last night the official line is that they need more time, more investigation, and that there is no evidence that a Catholic ethos prevented Savita from getting the life-saving treatment she needed.

This is sickeningly familiar to the public of Ireland, who have long been far more liberal than the government and church would have you believe. Over 60% of the public, a very clear majority, favors some form of legal abortion, and a mere 10% of doctors approve of the current legislation.

This case has caused public and international outrage, and it is possible that it may in the end prompt positive reform by the government of abortion laws. But none of this will do anything to remedy the outrageous and irrevocable loss of a bright young woman who had everything still ahead of her, for no good reason except to placate worshipers of a fictitious and angry god. Halappanavar should never have been put in this position, and neither should the thousands of other women residing in Ireland who are condemned to pain, suffering, isolation and stigmatization for the crime of an unwanted pregnancy.

Unfortunately, nothing is sure about how this appalling situation will be resolved.

Protest in Dublin November 13th 2012

A Christian brainwashes two-year-olds

November 14, 2012 • 9:01 am

“Give me the child for the first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.”

—Jesuit maxim, perhaps apocryphal

I haven’t seen an example of religious brainwashing as disgusting as this one. It features the odious Becky Fischer, director of the Kids in Ministry International (KIMI), an organization devoted (like her previous outfit, “Kids on Fire School of Ministry”) to turning young children into evangelical Christians. Her form of unremitting brainwashing will be known to those of you who have seen the movie “Jesus Camp“. (Part 1, and all the others, are available on YouTube).

The KIMI describes her activities; “training” is a euphemism for “brainwashing.”

Becky Fischer has trained thousands of children, teens, parents, and children’s workers. This was done through conferences, Bible schools, mission trips, churches and resource materials. She is the author of the book Redefining Children’s Ministry in the 21st Century, Jesus Camp My Story. She has also authored/co-authored eight unique and dynamic children’s church curriculums.

If this six-minute clip doesn’t anger you, you’re at the wrong website. The brainwasher even speaks in tongues to the kid!

The poor kid doesn’t have a chance.

You can see more of Fischer’s disgusting brainwashing here.

h/t: Diane G.

Frida Kahlo and her house

November 14, 2012 • 5:49 am

While in Mexico City, I made a special pilgrimage to the homes of Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo. They were of course known to each other: it was at the urging of Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera that Trotsky, on the run from Stalin’s agents, sought refuge in Mexico, building a compound only four blocks from Kahlo’s house. Frida and Trotsky were also lovers: both she and Diego, though married (and divorced and then remarried) had multiple partners.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, and will have more on Trotsky’s house and Rivera later. Today’s post is on the famous Frida Kahlo, painter, political activist, and lover of life.  If you haven’t heard of her, which I doubt, just read the Wikipedia entry at the link above. She was a superb painter, outstripping, in my opinion, her husband Rivera, a renowned muralist. And while Rivera was the more famous when they both lived, with the passage of time it is Kahlo who is seen as the better artist. She has become an icon because of her talent, colorful life, deeply ingrained leftist politics, and achievements won in the face of terrible adversity.

Born in 1907, Kahlo (given name: Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón) lived only 47 years. She did 143 paintings, more than a third of them self-portraits. Her brief life is connected with her solipsistic oeuvre, for she was an invalid, in great pain most of her life, and portrayed her suffering in her work. Possibly born with spina bifida (see “Neurological deficits in the life and work of Frida Kahlo” by Valmantas Budrys in the European Journal of Neurology), she also contracted polio as a child. That withered one of her legs, explaining why she always wore long skirts.

As if that wasn’t enough, at eighteen she was in a horrible accident, with her bus colliding with a streetcar, breaking her spine and shattering her pelvis. From then until her death she was in nearly constant agony, spending months at a time in bed, encased in plaster casts, suffering over 30 operations, and forced to paint while on her back or in a wheelchair.  She had three forced abortions (the accident thrust a metal pole into her abdomen, rendering her unable to give birth), and in the last year of her life her leg was amputated because of gangrene.

Despite that, Kahlo had an enduring joie de vivre and a stocism worked out through her art, which depicted her fantasies of childbirth and her visions of herself as a broken person, but also her deep love of life and nature (see below). And, of course, there were her famous eyebrows. . .

I spent several hours in Frida’s house (called, for obvious reasons, “La Casa Azul”): the place where she was born, lived for 25 years with Rivera, and died. It’s now the Frida Kahlo Museum, located in the lovely Coyoacán section of Mexico City.

Here are some photos of my visit (click all pictures to enlarge).

La Casa Azul from the street:

The couryard. The paint on the wall reads “Frieda and Diego lived in this house: 1929-1954”:

Young Frida:

Older Frida with Diego; I’d appreciate it if some Spanish-speaking reader would translate!

Though they both had multiple affairs, they loved each other very much (see the letters below). Here’s what Kahlo once wrote:

“No one will ever know how much I love Diego… if I had health I would give it to him; if I had youth, he could have it all. I am not only his mother, I am the embryo, the seed, the first cell from whose potential he was engendered. I am he, beginning from the most primitive… ancient cells, which over time have become ‘feeling'”.

And, near the end of his life, and remarried, Rivera wrote:

“Too late now I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida.”

Here’s a love letter in English to Frida from one of her lovers, the architect Isamu Noguchi:

And a letter from Rivera to Kahlo, in Spanish. Again I ask a reader to translate:

Some of Frida’s paintings. There are not many in La Casa Azul; most are in museums. First, her family:

I found a photo of her painting that picture, flat on her back:

Frida Kahlo working in bed, 1952. Photo by Juan Guzman.

The painting below is one of my favorites, not least for the inscription at the bottom, “Viva la Vida.” It’s not clear if it’s the last painting she ever did, but it is certain that the inscription was added only a few days before she died—and she knew she was dying. It’s incredibly poignant.

There’s a genre Mexican folk paintings, “retablos“, that depict saints or the intercession of saints or angels to save someone in a horrible situation. Kahlo did several of these in her inimitable style. Again, translations appreciated.

A morbid fantasy of childbirth, perhaps reflecting one of her abortions:

And in her study was this teaching diagram, connected in some way I don’t know with the painting above and her medical condition.

A photo Frida in bed, being prayed for. This is probably staged (though she may well have been bedridden), and again I don’t have a translation.

Frida’s studio with its glorious light:

A view of the studio from outside in the garden:

Her easel, wheelchair, and painting supplies:

Her crutches, leather corset, and plaster corsets for her torso, which she often decorated after they were removed:

Frida’s “day” bed (there were “day” and “night” bedrooms), with a collection of butterflies to view when she was flat on her back:

Decorations in the “night” bedroom:

I couldn’t resist a self-portrait in her bedroom:

The kitchen and dining space in the Casa Azul. What a lovely place to cook and eat!

Diego’s bedroom (they slept separately):

Here’s an inscription, apparently in Diego’s handwriting, preserved on the wall outside his bedroom. A Spanish-speaking friend translated the first part of this as “”War starts Next summer. 1953”, but I couldn’t make out the rest. Perhaps a reader can help with that.

Here is an explanation of the two ceramic clocks below:

A fountain in the garden, inlaid with frogs:

She died painfully; one chronology says this:

In early June [1954] Frida contracts bronchial pneumonia. She is confined to bed. In late June her health seems to improve.

On July 2nd, while still convalescing, and against the advice of her doctors, she and Diego take part in a demonstration against North-American intervention in Guatemala. This would be her last public appearance. As a result of her actions, her pneumonia worsens.

On July 13th, seriously ill with pneumonia, Frida dies in the Blue House. Cause of death is officially reported as “pulmonary embolism“. Suicide is suspected but never confirmed. Her last written diary entry reads: “I hope the exit is joyful – and I hope never to return – Frida“.

That afternoon her coffin is placed in the entrance hall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, attended by an honor guard.

On the 14th of July, more than 600 people came to pay their last respects. Her body was cremated later that day. Her ashes were placed in a pre-Columbian urn which is on display in the “Blue House” that she shared with Rivera.

I missed the urn, but here’s Frida’s death mask, lying on the bed where she died.

Below is an hour-long biopic of Frida, and you can see two home movies of her and Diego (don’t miss!) here. (Note that she wasn’t born in 1910, but three years earlier; she always claimed 1910 so her birth would coincide with the Mexican Revolution.

The best biography of Kahlo I’ve found (and read) is Hayden Herrera’s Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. There is also of course the 2002 movie “Frida”, with Salma Hayek in the starring role. The movie is pretty good but not a masterpiece; Hayek, however, bears a remarkable resemblance to Kahlo.

A nice gallery of Kahlo’s paintings is here, and a ton of information about her life is here.

Viva la vida!

Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., 1940-2012

November 13, 2012 • 11:42 pm

by Greg Mayer

Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Alexander Agassiz Professor in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, died on November 11, 2012. Farish made major contributions to vertebrate paleontology, functional morphology, and evolutionary biology. He had been ill with cancer for some time, but had continued to work productively, and his death came quickly following a recent reverse. (See update below.)

Farish Jenkins in the vertebrate paleontology collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, holding a skull of Massetognathus, a Triassic cynodont (an advanced mammal-like reptile) from the Chanares Formation, Argentina. Photo by Hilary Rosner, Tooth & Claw.

Although Farish published on many subjects, the part of his work likely to be of most interest to WEIT readers is that on transitional forms. Farish worked on three great transformations in the history of tetrapods, including two that have become classic case studies in the origin of higher taxa. First, he worked on the origin of mammals, often in collaboration with his  MCZ colleague, A.W. “Fuzz” Crompton. That the ancestors of mammals were to be sought among a particular group of fossil reptiles known as synapsids had been known since the 19th century. What Farish, Fuzz, and many colleagues helped to show was how this transition occurred, and how the bones of the reptilian jaw joint of synapsids moved in to the middle ear of mammals to become ear ossicles, while a new jaw joint, the mammalian jaw joint, evolved. It is a favorite tactic of creationists, even today, to ask how possibly could the jaw of a reptile come unhinged, and a new joint develop, with the reptile bones passing into the ear? Well, the answer is, we know exactly how they did it, because we have the fossils- read Crompton and Jenkins, and look at the pictures!  (For the latest on mammalian ear evolution, see this paper by Luo Zhe Xi.)

Farish was one of the triumvirate who, along with Neil Shubin and Ted Daeschler, described Tiktaalik, the fish-tetrapod intermediate from Arctic Canada that made the front pages of newspapers around the world when it’s discovery was publicly announced in 2006. Neil and Ted got most of the media appearances, but it was Farish who was the old hand at arctic paleontological exploration (in the video below, look for Farish at 1:45). Although describing Tiktaalik taxonomically and morphologically was but a small part of his copious output, Farish may be best remembered for this work.

Most recently, Farish and colleagues completed a monographic account of Eocaecilia, a caecilian with limbs (which they had named and briefly described years earlier). Caecilians (not to be confused with the edible variety) are a group of tropical amphibians which today lack limbs, and Eocaecilia is a form that is transitional from fully-limbed ancestors to the modern condition.

Eocaecilia micropodia (‘the tiny-footed dawn caecilian’) from Jenkins and Walsh, 1993.

Both Jerry and I knew Farish from our days at the MCZ. I last saw him on a visit a year or two ago, after he was diagnosed with cancer, but he was his usual voluble self; Jerry saw him at the MCZ just a few months ago. Always impeccably dressed and charming, he had the demeanor of what I imagine a retired officer of the Royal Horse Guards would be like. He helped organize and lead a superb graduate course on vertebrate paleontology (I cannot recall now whether I enrolled or just attended) in the comfortable environs of the Romer Library, named for one of his distinguished predecessors at the MCZ, Alfred Sherwood Romer. I do recall stories of Arctic fossil hunting, with high powered rifles a necessity, as one man stood guard for polar bears, while others peered at the rocks. In addition to his teaching duties in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Farish taught human anatomy at the medical school. His comparative and evolutionary approach was not only appreciated by medical students, but also provided an opportunity for vertebrate morphology graduate students, by either taking the course or assisting in its teaching (or both), to gain the experience and background in human anatomy that would allow them to go on and train generations of physicians, as well as commanding the much higher salaries found in medical school anatomy departments. The Nature News Blog has some nice recollections of Farish by Hopi Hoekstra, the MCZ’s curator of mammals. The science writer Hilary Rosner has posted an endearing reminiscence of her encounters with Farish, along with a number of fine photographs, at her blog, Tooth & Claw.  As another MCZ colleague put it to me earlier today, “His lectures were legendary…He was a scholar and a gentleman, and truly one of kind.”

A symposium in Farish’s honor, Great Transformations, was held last June. Like Ernst Mayr, also of the MCZ, who got to attend and speak at his 100th birthday symposium, Farish too was able to attend and speak at this gathering to celebrate his achievements. I understand there is a festschrift of the contributions in the works, but unfortunately Farish will now not see it.

Update. More accounts and reminiscences well worth reading have appeared in the Harvard Gazette, Boston Globe, and at Postcardsfrom Farish.

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Crompton, A.W. and F.A. Jenkins, Jr. 1973. Mammals from reptiles: a review of mammalian origins. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 1:131-155.

Crompton, A.W. and F.A. Jenkins, Jr. 1979. Origin of mammals. Pp. 59-73 in J.A. Lillegraven, Z. Kielan-Jaworowska, and W.A. Clemens, eds., Mesozoic Mammals: The First Two-Thirds of Mammal History. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Daeschler, E.B., N.H. Shubin, and F.A. Jenkins, Jr. 2006. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440:757-763.

Downs, Jason P., Edward B. Daeschler, Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., and Neil H. Shubin, 2008. The cranial endoskeleton of Tiktaalik roseae. Nature 456: 925-929.

Jenkins, Jr., F.A and A.W. Crompton. 1979. Triconodonta. Pp. 74-90 in J.A. Lillegraven, Z. Kielan-Jaworowska, and W.A. Clemens, eds., Mesozoic Mammals: The First Two-Thirds of Mammal History. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Jenkins, F. A., Jr., and D. M. Walsh. 1993. An Early Jurassic caecilian with limbs. Nature 365:246-250.

Jenkins, F. A., Jr., D. M. Walsh, and R. L. Carrol, 2007. Anatomy of Eocaecilia micropodia, a Limbed Caecilian of the Early Jurassic. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 158 (6): 285-365. pdf

Luo, Z.-X. 2011.  Developmental patterns in Mesozoic evolution of mammal ears.  Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 42: 355–80. pdf

Shubin N.H., E.B. Daeschler, and F.A. Jenkins, Jr. 2006. The pectoral fin of Tiktaalik roseae and the origin of the tetrapod limb. Nature 440: 764-77.

O Canada!

November 13, 2012 • 12:28 pm

If you did any Googling today, you might have noticed this, and wondered what it was:

It’s the Canadarm! And Canada’s National Post explains:

The 31rst anniversary of the first launch of the Canadarm, the nation’s robotic space exploration tool, is being celebrated with a Google doodle.

The Canadarm had its first mission on Nov. 13, 1981 on the U.S. space shuttle Columbia. The dexterous robotic arm was used to move and retrieve satellites and provide support for astronauts during spacewalks, among other tasks. Although Canada does not have a space program of its own, the Canadarm is the country’s most visible and famous contribution to the U.S. and international space effort. . .

While the Canadarm’s final mission was shuttle Endeavour in June, the more advanced Canadarm2 has a permanent place on the International Space Station.

The Canadarm has a unique place of pride in the Canadian psyche and is often a point of pride spoken of when referring to the nation’s technological prowess. The U.S. radio program This American Life listed the Canadarm as one of the facts about Canada and Canadians interacting with the United States that every Canadian knows about (and can quote instantly), but that most Americans are clueless about. (The other facts mostly centred around which cast members of 90210 were Canadian, which was true when the TAL episode aired in the late 90s and is still true now.)

Well, I know about Banting and Best, and lots of great Canadian actors, Gordon Lightfoot, Shania Twain, and Tim Horton’s donuts (now sadly debased), but this was new to me.  The Canadarm is versatile; it can move payloads, inspect spacecraft damage, repair satellites, and generally look at stuff.

Here’s a video of the Arm in Action:

A mechanical handshake to our neighbors to the north!

h/t: Veronica

How to fight hate speech: with clown power!

November 13, 2012 • 7:36 am

Not by banning it, as do many countries (e.g., Germany, Canada) and U.S. college campuses, but simply by countering it with anti-hate speech.  Or, in the latest case, sarcasm.

Three days ago in Charlotte, North Carolina, a neo-Nazi group joined with the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (it’s amazing that these organizations still have any members!) to hold a hate rally at Old City Hall in Charlotte, North Carolina. 250 counter-protesters decided to “prank them” by dressing up like clowns and shouting ludicrous counter-slogans.  Result: Klan and Nazis looked stupid.

Here’s a video of the event:

The report at The Daily Kos has some cool photos, and there are a bunch more pictures here:

Advocates for white power:

And the answers:


And isn’t this a sight for sore eyes? Here’s City Council Member John Autry, who said “We’re just a great big happy melting pot”—while wearing a clown nose:


Mockery is a great disinfectant. The sad thing is that such a counter-demonstration at a religious rally would be met with universal disgust, at least in the U.S.

h/t: Rixaeton