Skepticism

Global Quickies: Abortion in Spain, shaking hands with women, and dino-chickens

SPAIN
Tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets of Madrid last Saturday in protest of government plans to roll back access to abortion in the country.

SCOTLAND
A bill which allows same-sex weddings to take place in Scotland has been passed by MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.

THE VATICAN
The UN has said that the Vatican should “immediately remove” all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers.

MEXICO
The Legionaries of Christ, an ultra-conservative and ultra-rich Catholic group apologized for the “serious and immoral abuses” (sexual abuse of women and children, drug abuse, abuse of power, etc) committed by it’s founder, Marcial Maciel.

PERU (from Jon)
The Ministry of Justice issued a resolution stating that the government “would not lodge criminal complaints” against former President Alberto Fujimori, or any other high-ranking official for the thousands of forced sterilizations that happened during Fujimori’s presidency.

MOROCCO
A military official was suspended for refusing to shake hands with the first woman governor in the country’s history.

INDIA
An Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader has been arrested for allegedly raping a woman on the pretext of providing her a job.

CANADA
An extremist ultra-Orthodox Jewish group is being investigated by the police for possible child marriages and other forms of abuse.

UAE
For reporting her attack to the police, an Austrian rape victim was charged for having sex outside of marriage and consuming alcohol. Then she was told she could avoid jail by marrying her attacker.

CHILE
University of Chile scientists put artificial tails on chickens to study how dinosaurs walked.

AUSTRALIA
A gigantic specimen of a new species of jellyfish has washed up on a beach in Tasmania, shocking the local family who found it and exciting scientists.

Featured image: “Right to choose” sign in Madrid by David Fernandez

Daniela

Born and raised in Mexico City, Daniela has finally decided to abdicate her post as an armchair skeptic and start doing some skeptical activism. She is currently living in Spain after having lived in the US, Brazil and Italy. You can also find her blogging in Spanish at esceptica.org.

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5 Comments

  1. Yeah, coercive sterilization…Seriously, it even happened here in the States in the 70s. The government even apologized for it in 1976. One of the more annoying things from some skeptics (Cecil Adams in particular) is that, even with a written apology, people see it as ‘unlikely’.

    Also, on the Church, I can find you plenty of stories about residential schools. In the States, there are even stories of priests molesting girls and then forcing them to get abortions. Oh, and some priests even claiming this sexual abuse was ‘traditional’, as some sort of excuse. (Which, of course, even if true, and it’s not, would just be a logical fallacy. Among my own tribe, you have this weird sort of history: Erikson actually figured out what was going on, with pedophile missionaries falsely claiming masturbation instruction was a traditional practice. Naturally, in the 70s, sexologists, such as Charles Sarlin, ignored the whole part about it being a lie used by pedophiles to salve their conscience; apparently we’ve had enough of the deconstructionist theory, so here’s the reconstructionist theory.)

    In Canada, there was even a child prostitution ring run by residential schools in BC, out of the Vancouver Club, in the 1990s! Quebecois priests, still abusive in their own way, outsourced some of it; a few years ago, a Métis man successfully sued the Canadian government for missionaries having him coercively circumcised to prevent masturbation, at age 8.

    So yeah, I’ve collected media articles regarding Church sexual abuse. Basically, indigenous peoples are the end of the line for pedo priests.

  2. Re: The artificially fowl tails in Chile. We may simply have gotten to the point where PhD students, world over, are desperate to find subjects for there theses.

  3. The Austrian rape victim “was told she could avoid jail by marring her attacker”
    For a moment hope flashed brightly, but no, it was only a typo after all!

      1. Never mind, that was a beauty! I enjoyed it immensely. Such a shame it’s not true. Still, one can dream…

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