John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

That's a point of agreement, I think: that lying to pregnant women to coerce them into carrying a child to term is shitty and should be illegal.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Honestly, I am kind of surprised that the woman who was coerced to wait with her abortion to long wasn't able to sue the centre and force it to pay up all the costs for rearing her child. I guess she wouldn't have a chance if she was poor, but in a country in which someone can start a law suit because he was stupid enough to burn himself with coffee, one would think that those centres were now deep in law suits from everything to psychological cruelty to whatever else the consequences of their misinformation are. IE I bet that they DON'T inform the mothers if they see something off in their scans.

They don't even have actual doctors trained to use the ultrasound machines, apparently, so any "medical diagnosis" would be a roll of the dice. You'd get better advice from a carnival fortune teller, because at least they have an investment in the mark leaving satisfied.

edited 9th Apr '18 5:50:07 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

How is that legal? I mean, they are basically pretending to be a medical institution without being one.

Because Rewigious Fweedom.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

John doesn't go into detail exactly how CPCs stop just short of being regulated, unfortunately. The mere fact that they're not subject to HIPAA should already be a massive red flag to women everywhere and should be broadcast in front of every single damn CPC.

Also infuriating is how they can get taxpayer funding in 16 states. Unsurprisingly, a good number of them are red states, though most of them are swing states of various leanings.

edited 9th Apr '18 6:08:30 AM by ITNW1989

Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.

When John started his church tax shelter, the idea was to get the government involved at the absurdity and shut them down.

New York at least, will probably have some sort of regulation in place in a few months to deal with this. Can’t speak for everyone else.

Stop it. They flat out say there is no regulation, not that it’s protected speech.

edited 9th Apr '18 6:29:14 AM by Beatman1

You missed the point. Any attempt to regulate them or get them shut down is met with cries of "religious freedom".

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Just like the ear-piercing screeches of those on the right who demand "Religious freedom!!1!" for their bakery to be able to say "no F**s allowed".

Ironic how some people who consider these "rights" would head straight to Fox News to claim religious discrimination if they were ever refused anything.

edited 9th Apr '18 7:32:01 AM by Wildcard

Some people believe that religious freedom means the freedom of Christianity from persecution, including laws and regulation. I'm not being snarky. I have literally heard people say that the point of religious freedom is to keep Christianity safe.

While it's ridiculous in America, it's not ridiculous in North Korea or other countries where it can get you murdered. NPR talked to a community that compiled lists of countries by list of danger to Christianity—which is understandable for a religion based on martyrdom.

None of which allows people in America to act like they're a persecuted minority here.

I also think of the debate on abortion to be "sleight of hand" politics where the Religious Right politicians make a huge stink about an issue that doesn't threaten any of the issues that would be cost them votes or funding from, say, military contracts or big box churches. It's a "safe" issue that riles up the locals as an easy source of base versus...you know, social justice.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Just to point out, but the details of that case are a lot different than popular belief presents it.

1) The woman was 79 years old, sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson's parked car attempting to remove the lid in order to add cream and sugar. Said car, a 1989 Ford Probe, lacked any cupholders, so she was holding the cup between her knees.

2) The coffee that spilled onto her groin was between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, which will cause third-degree burns between 12-15 seconds for 180, and two to seven seconds for 190. Due to her wearing cotton sweatpants, the hot liquid got absorbed and practically pressed against her skin, prompting a trip to the emergency room and "she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent." During the trial, her lawyer pointed out that serving the coffee at 160 degrees would have raised it to a minimum of 20 seconds before third-degree burns would be caused, and that most other establishments served their coffee at 140 degrees.

3) She then stayed 8 days in the hospital getting skin grafts, during which time she lost roughly 20 pounds (roughly 20% of her body weight, and putting her at 83 pounds) due to the shock her body was going through, and she was rendered disabled for about 2 years after.

4) Here's the real meat and potatoes, ripped right from That Other Wiki. Naturally, McDonalds callousness prompted the civil suit, even while Liebeck admitted that she was at least partly to blame.

5) McDonalds' arguments really didn't hold water. Their first claim was that their customers bought the coffee while en route to work and waited to drink it until there - which was proven false by their internal research saying that most customers started drinking immediately after purchase.

6) The most damning evidence, and what got them slapped with $2.7 million in punitive damages (equal to 2 days' worth of coffee sales), and was later reduced to $480,000 by the judge (3 times the compensation amount, bringing Liebeck up to $640,000), is this part, emphasis added.

That was what got them slapped with a gross negligence lawsuit - that they knew the problem existed, but did nothing to resolve it. It's the same reason the Ford Pinto made it through production - the company was well-aware of the problem, but figured that the costs of pushing it through and accepting the losses were lower than the costs of halting production.

Apologies for the long rant, but it's a bit of a Berserk Button of mine, given how awful the reality of the situation was that became the poster-child of the Frivolous Lawsuit trope.

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"

It is hot coffee. Everyone knows that hot coffee can burn you. Like, I knew someone who got such burns because she had the brilliant idea to put the hot water (or was it milk?) she needed to make pudding into a glas bowl because she couldn't find the metal one....predictable, the glas burst and the stuff spilled over her legs. But nobody would have ever gotten the idea of blaming whoever made the glas bowl for not writing "don't put overly hot fluids into it" on the bowl, because this is something you should simply know. Just because you are a customer it doesn't mean that you don't have responsibility. And what has the age to do with anything? Perhaps the daughter should have opened the cup for her frail mother.

Much-much shorter version.

Basically, Mc Donalds' used to just warm up the coffee from the previous day and to disguise the awful taste, they piped it extra f***ing hot.

So, it was f-ing scalding in this occasion.

But it was also bad coffee.

Which is worth sueing over.

edited 12th Apr '18 10:45:17 PM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

This might be a health violation and in a way a scandal but if it advertised that the coffee was extra hot, there was even MORE reason to act responsible with this stuff. Basically that it might have cheated its customers is a different issue from one of said customers acting like an idiot.

While I normally ere on "Customers should not be stupid" I point out that customers are purchasing a beverage and by advertising it as extra hot, you should still believe that such a thing is drinkable and will not cause boiling burns if spilled.

Because the assumption is you are receiving a drink not a health violation.

Doubly so because the dangerous coffee is to cover up it's shitty tasting day old coffee.

But that's just me.

edited 13th Apr '18 12:57:15 AM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

The coffee was much hotter than it should have been, and the customer was severely burned, not just scalded and annoyed. The case was legit.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Well, if that was the only issue, what is the point of the stupid disclaimer? If a case involving a normal hot beverage would be thrown out of court?

And this still begs the question WHY those fake doctors who tell patients that they have time to wait with abortions are NOT slapped with law suits forcing them to pay for the child those women didn't want to have?

If it had been a single, isolated incident, it wouldn't have made the national news like that. What made the case so egregious was that McDonalds knew full well about the consequences of its heating policy for coffee and had already paid out lots of money in settlements to other customers, yet had taken no steps to mitigate the risk.

edited 13th Apr '18 5:27:35 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That case was no frivolous lawsuit. It only seems that way to those who do not know the whole story thanks to Mc Donald’s lawyers spreading stories to discredit her. All to help discourage future lawsuits.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Yeah that case involved Mc Donolds repeatedly selling a product that was boiling while claiming that it was hot, knowing that it injured people and not caring.

As for the topic, my understanding is that they’re legally not fake doctors, as long as they never claim to be medical practitioners and never claim that their centre is a medical centre they’re fine. I imagine that the scam they’re running wouldn’t work on a person is a solid place emotionally and with an education that gave them the skills to spot scams, but that’s not their target, their target is low education women who are in emotionally fragile state due to their position.

Plus they will have a lot of money compared to the women they’re targeting, there’s a basic threathhold needed to make headway in a legal fight and I doubt many of their victims have the kind of money needed to start such a fight.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

But sooner or later one of them will.

Honestly, I still can't get over the notion that this isn't just allowed, but even sponsored by the government. Just...wtf!

Yeah, one of the worst examples of a Bavarian Fire Drill I've ever seen, as it causes long-term harm to dozens of people. Again, it'd be entirely different if they were to help the mothers by offering them support networks, medical services, counseling, and daycare - but they're just using scare tactics to scare 'em off abortion, and then "Eh, whatever" afterward.

As George Carlin so eloquently put it - "If you're pre-born, you're fine. Pre-school, you're fucked!"

edited 13th Apr '18 12:39:30 PM by ironballs16

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"

That's the thing (and I realize I'm probably getting close to a banned topic here, let me know if I need to delete this); there's plenty of evidence to suggest that providing support for mothers, in addition to proper contraceptive education, is much more effective at decreasing abortion rates than banning them outright or going around shaming or scaring people (usually women).

But why would we improve social safety nets and education when we can hold people biologically capable of bearing children to some weirdly puritan standard of "personal responsibility"?

I'm a deeply religious person but I know the Christian Right doesn't give a damn about abortion save for giving them a target to point their base at.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.