It’s Friday, and the living is easy.  So how about a look at some of the really ridiculous things that come out of people’s mouths when it comes to trying to limit reproductive health, choice, and sex education?

Remember the nun who was excommunicated for approving the life saving abortion?  Turns out the Diocese of Phoenix really did believe that the mother should have died.

The Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix, tells National Public Radio:

She consented in the murder of an unborn child. There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child.

This mother had four other children at home, according to USA Today.  And in retaliation for standing by their decision to perform the abortion, the hospital is being threatened that it will lose its Catholic Institution status.

And people don’t just say stupid things about abortion.  Via PZ Myers, we learn the real reason why anti-choice factions hate birth control.  After all, how can you tell if your woman is cheating on you unless you have full control over her reproduction?

[S]hunning contraception means everyone will be able to tell who is sneaking around, and who is getting the job done in the bedroom. Well, at least it’ll make it easier to monitor the women, but then, that’s what this is all about…making sure that female fidelity is evident.

And in former times, when the married couple fulf lled their vows to God and each other and their witnesses, they produced, at God’s favor, babies to prove it. The lack of a baby indicated either a broken body or a broken vow. While both called for the community’s prayer, the latter also called for the community’s assistance in healing the marriage for the benefit of everyone, for a broken vow means broken people. When a baby gave evidence of a union where no vow had been made, it was similarly in the interest of the community to correct the situation in the way that would most benefit all the parties involved.

Again, it’s all about letting everyone know that the woman is having sex, by making sure she’s pregnant all the time. If you have sex outside of marriage, you are “damaged goods” and must be prominently labeled as such.

Speaking of labels, a teacher in New York was suspended for allowing students to come up with alternate words for sex organs in sex ed class, despite that being allowed in the curriculum.  According to the New York Times, her school said she was conducting “corporal punishment” on her students.

On Feb. 6, 2008, the teacher, Faith Kramer, a health and physical education teacher at Intermediate School 72 on Staten Island, taught a state-mandated lesson on the various behaviors that can transmit H.I.V./AIDS. According to legal documents filed with the case, she wrote down the polite words for sexual organs, sexual acts and bodily fluids on the board — and then asked her students to list any other terms they might know for those things.

In doing so, the judge ruled, she appeared to be following the spirit of a state syllabus that directed that students be encouraged to use sexual terms that they understood, so that they could relate those words to the more formal terminology. “If students use different terms,” the syllabus says, “make sure they understand the relationship between both sets of terms.”

Ms. Kramer argued that she did not ask students to write the resulting slang words, euphemisms and vulgarities in their notebooks, but some did. As a result, some of Ms. Kramer’s 30 students went home with neatly transcribed lists of off-color words for sexual acts and body parts, including two Yiddishisms for the male sexual organ. At least one parent called the school to complain, court documents state.

The next day, Peter Macellari, the principal, requested that school officials open an investigation into the episode, and the Department of Education removed Ms. Kramer, a 26-year veteran teacher with a clean disciplinary record, from the classroom, the court documents state. She was informed by letter that she was being investigated for “corporal punishment” and was sent to an administrative detention center, known colloquially as a “rubber room,” where she continued to receive her salary

Seriously.  She got suspended over “shmuck.”

Mini Roundup: On the bright side, some people say smart things.  For instance, no one “advocates abortions.”  Or “pregnant women do not lose their Fourteenth Amendment right to have an abortion as a result of incarceration.”