(This is a repost of an article which originally appeared in my diary here and original commentary is on that post. I have included some information from the comments in that post.)

Someone on the Dark Christianity community (in reference to dominionist groups opposing the new HPV vaccine--which would essentially eliminate both cervical and penile cancer if children were immunised) made the very appropriate comment that these dominionist groups are, in fact, "pro-cancer".

It goes a little deeper--not only are they pro-cancer, but they are pro-birth-defects and even pro-spouse-abuse--based on policies they are promoting which in part are explicitly based on urban myths popular in the dominionist community.

In this previous article on Talk2Action I have reported on "moral refusal" clauses in general, and how they are being used increasingly not only to deny birth control to women (even if birth control is prescribed for medical reasons unrelated to contraception such as polycystic ovary disease) but even potentially lifesaving medication like antivirals--simply because those antivirals can be used to treat certain forms of STDs.

"Moral refusal" is now expanding to not only include telling women they cannot be treated for herpesvirus infections (including, notably, chickenpox) or use birth control, but it's now expanding to allow doctors to refuse treatment to entire classes of people--in particular, gay and lesbian individuals--simply because of their sexual orientation.

In a landmark case now in litigation in California, two lesbians are suing a clinic that has used the "moral refusal" clause to refuse to provide insemination services--because the clinic's employees feel lesbians are "living in sin".  If the clinic wins, this could have drastic--potentially deadly--consequences for pretty much all non-dominionists.

We all have heard South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli's description of a woman who might qualify for an abortion under the rigid strictures of South Dakota's draconian abortion law - an exemption now immortalized as the Sodomized Virgin Exception.

Bob Nelson, a contributor to the Rapid City Journal's Mount Blogmore, considers the plight of those young women less fortunate.

It was an easy rape, she said
(Though not the way she hoped to wed)
The stones were sharp against her head,
(Not her dream of a bridal bed)
And the dress he tore as he thrust her down
Was not her idea of a wedding gown.

But really, it was not complex.
Just some simple brutal sex.
And though her young life had other plans
She would bear the child of the gentleman.
And try to love each smile and dimple,
And be thankful that the rape was simple.
And thank the men who made her free.
Simple men like Napoli.

No thanks are necessary, little lady. It was their simple pleasure. As Napoli himself says, "If I, as a legislator, can make life better, really help somebody, that's a wonderful feeling."

If you live in Iowa, read the Des Moines Register or other state papers, in the past week you have most likely come across this advertisement of an Iraqi woman holding up her ink-stained finger. Upon closer inspection, the ad reads:

"Iraqi's have the right to vote.  Why not Iowans? When it comes to marriage, the people of Iowa should be seen and not heard.  At least that's the way Sen. Michael Gronstal would have it, as he refuses to let the people of Iowa vote on the Iowa Marriage Amendment."

Iowa has not suddenly disenfranchised its citizens.  The ad is sponsored by Focus on the Family, and the issue, as they see it, is the right to bring a state gay marriage amendment to the general polls.  Iowa already has a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) stipulating that the only legally-recognized marriages in Iowa are those between a man and a woman.  However, after Lambda Legal Defense filed a lawsuit to overturn that law, Focus on the Family and its local affiliate, the Iowa Family Policy Council, spearheaded a drive to push through an amendment to the Iowa state constitution, which they argue would prevent "activist judges" from ruling against the state DOMA.

Your wife, your mother, your sister, your daughter . . . or somebody else's criminal?  A woman you love, or what Covenant News calls just another murderous mom?

Thoreau said, "The soul of man exists in the Contemplation of the nature of women behind bars."  In this, as in so many other things, he appears to have been right.

While the Bible that many South Dakotans are substituting for the Constitution these days maintains that "her price is far above rubies," those same people have decreed that the worth of any woman, no matter how virtuous, plummets at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum." From that moment forward, not only her body, her hopes and her dreams, but sometimes -- despite the hollow promise of a tacked-on provision allowing "a medical procedure designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant mother" - even her very life can be forfeit.  

(image - Kafka/AP)

One can almost hear Mark Twain snorting in disgust.

This week Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota finally ended the suspense. After a prolonged, tantalizing and agonizing period of presumably sober deliberation, Rounds signed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act.  The law protects human life beginning at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum."  Unless, of course, the live human in question is a woman who wants an abortion - in which case she'd better be a sodomized Christian virgin.

Amarillo, Texas isn't the kind of place where most people would expect to find a rock star. Amarillo invites visitors to "enjoy our wide-open spaces and stay a while" because that's what Amarillo has the most of - wide-open spaces. But that is about to change. This dusty little city of 176,000 on the high plains of the Texas Panhandle is poised to become a new anti-choice Mecca as the headquarters of one of the Catholic church's most influential proponents of judicial status for embryos, the man who has been called the Pope's "vicar for life," Fr. Frank Pavone.

Last week a rape victim who was denied emergency contraception finally saw justice done - even if it was only on TV. On February 14, ABC aired an episode of Boston Legal entitled "Smile" in which an 18 year-old girl, pregnant because she was denied access to EC at a Catholic hospital after being raped, insisted on suing the hospital and taking her case to trial. And since this case was tried in TV-land instead of in a real-life courtroom, she won.

But even that one fantasy victory over Catholic policy on contraception for rape victims was too much for some people to bear.

The alarming erosion of any pretense of a wall between church and state here in Texas is evidenced by the state's diversion of $5 million in health care funds to evangelistic crisis pregnancy centers. Despite the standard restrictions on using public funds to proselytize, this lucrative contract is designed to funnel state money into both Protestant and Catholic CPCs, both of which have only two goals: stopping abortion and winning souls for Christ.

And now that movement is poised to go national.

Southern Baptists have been ambivalent about abortion.  Until fundamentalists took over the denomination, they never had a problem with contraception, but they have always been guarded about supporting abortion on demand.

Most Baptists, including most Southern Baptists, support abortion when necessary to protect the life and health of the mother, in cases of rape and incest, and when the fetus is known to have severe physical deformities such as anencephaly.

The current official position of the denomination, however, differs radically from that of the people in the pews.

Duna, Ethiopia -- Yemmi Samta didn't know that her 14-year-old-daughter, Saron, was pregnant until she found her unconscious and bleeding profusely on the dirt floor of her ramshackle house.

Samta begged a neighbor to load Saron onto a donkey cart and take her to the nearest clinic, 12 miles away. But the girl died on the way from septicemia, a form of blood poisoning, and loss of blood caused by an illegal abortion.

"I held her and pleaded to God not to take her," Samta recalled. "God took her to his arms, and I saw the life go from her body."

Saron's death represents a staggering reality about women and mortality in Africa. African women have a 1 in 16 chance of dying while pregnant, according to a report released last month by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and UNICEF.

And for the last five years, George W. Bush and his most reliable political backers - the powerhouse organizations of the Religious Right - have ensured that it stayed that way.