The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Guess what, folks: abortions are safe procedures, says a big report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Abortions become far less safe when all the roadblocks are thrown in front of women by anti-abortion legislatures. And as NPR points out:
There is no evidence that breast cancer follows abortion, for example, but five states require doctors to tell women there is a link, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that focuses on reproductive and sexual health.
Reasonable Talk (which is sort of like TED talks that you can actually feel safe about believing) has climate scientist Michael Mann from CSICon 2017 on climate change denial in the age of Trump.
This is from a couple of weeks ago, but it bears noting: In The Atlantic, former GWB speechwriter and current Post columnist Michael Gerson takes evangelicals to task for blindly supporting Trump, but also manages to give them way too much credit:
The moral convictions of many evangelical leaders have become a function of their partisan identification. This is not mere gullibility; it is utter corruption. Blinded by political tribalism and hatred for their political opponents, these leaders can’t see how they are undermining the causes to which they once dedicated their lives. Little remains of a distinctly Christian public witness.
“They don’t see”? I think they see just fine. More:
Here is the uncomfortable reality: I do not believe that most evangelicals are racist. But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States. And that is something more than a political compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities.
It’s something, alright.
Relatedly, the Bible on which Trump took the oath of inauguration will be donated to a museum…which one, the Museum of Irony??? HA! Zing. #noregrets
After two instances of Muslim women being forced by NYC police to remove their head scarves and have their photos placed in a database, the Times looks at how “the issue highlights the gulf between criminal justice policy, as it has evolved over time, and the cultural and religious obligations of those in custody.”
Bloomberg profiles India’s Baba Ramdev, a yogi whose brand rakes in billions of dollars, but who also allegedly follows a vow of poverty for himself. Whatever. He sounds like a really enlightened guy:
Ramdev says his worldview is “scientific, secular, and universal”—but he also claims yoga can “cure” homosexuality and has openly fantasized about beheading people who refuse to chant nationalist slogans.
According to the full letter from ex-pope Ratzinger, now released by the Vatican, he didn’t decline to read the books about Pope Francis because they were too long, but because the authors had been mean to him.
Uh oh. The International Classification of Diseases (like the DSM for the whole world) is going to start letting in some alt-med-type diagnoses into its 11th edition.
Yet another bloated, rotting corpse of a sea creature is found on the beach, and yet again people think it’s a Loch Ness-type cryptid.
After YouTube Kids had to deal with creepy, manufactured animated videos using popular characters to churn out ad views, now it has to deal with conspiracies. For whatever reason, the app is bringing up search results for conspiracy theorists about the moon landing “hoax,” lizard people, and who knows what else.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I have to watch John Oliver vs. Mike Pence.
Quote of the Day
I hate when people use an old famous person as their avi because i’ll be reading a book, see a pic of like Oscar Wilde & think “here’s that asshole from twitter”
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