james_nicoll

Myers once tried to claim from BIOLOGY that women who had abortions and felt physiologically unsettled from the experience were full of shit and probably were brainwashed by theistic propaganda because women have "undetected" miscarriages all the time and they're just fine, amirite?

I hope he was slapped down, pulled up again, slapped down, pulled up again, and repeat for that.

This leaves me rabidly shaking and nearly incoherent.

Many /miscarriages/ are traumatic.

I thought he was too rabid for my taste. Now I know my discomfort was from something deeper. oy.

Do you happen to have a link to that, Carlos? It's not that I don't trust you, but I'd like to see his words as written.

No, and it's a pity, because I don't like making unsourced claims. But my reaction was much like Will's, and it's stuck with me for over seven years. It's possible that I misinterpreted a more innocuous comment -- but then you have to imagine Myers making an innocuous comment about those topics.

It's not that I disbelieve PZ Myers would say something awful, I'd just be surprised to see him be awful in that way.

Ten minutes' Google failed to turn anything up that matched your description (whatever it was, it was a very long time ago; Pharyngula has moved on again from ScienceBlogs, and is now at FreethoughtBlogs).

From limited information, it sounds like it may have been a mistargeted attempt to counteract anti-abortionist claims that abortion is inevitably physically damaging and traumatic? Or suggesting that certain types of post-abortion maladies are primarily psychosomatic rather than physiological in nature?

Some of both. I have a good idea of what a decent human being with Myers' opinions would have meant to say. Life is too short to make allowances for that level of assholery, though.