ProWomanProLife

Sarah Palin announces her resignation.

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Andrea reads this: “But Palin also hinted at her own national ambitions, invoking a quote that she credited to Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction.” Good for her. I’d be thrilled if she ran again, nationally. I wouldn’t personally have the stamina for that kind of abuse, but I’d be thrilled.

And listening to this as I come in to work propels me to movie star status, lending a certain grandeur to even small things like pressing the button in the elevator. Enjoy.

The head of the Korean affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation recently pleaded with his countrymen and women to have more children. I like this part:

Korea needs to create a new social atmosphere to make a woman’s job and her home life compatible. We need to allow workers to spend more time with their families. The annual working hours of a worker in Korea is 2,357 hours, the longest in the world. We need to vitalise the public education system to reduce the financial burden of private education and other expenses for children. We need to provide financial support for families, such as a child allowance or a child-rearing allowance, even if only for a very short period.

You’ll notice universal daycare full-day learning is not on the list…

Don’t you love it when your family newspaper tells you how to have great sex? If so, you’ll want to go have a look, here. I admit I was intrigued by the first paragraph:

Put away your vacuum pump, heavy-duty auto booster cables and edible latex Brad Pitt face mask-and-abs combo.

According to a study released Thursday, such items are simply litter along the road to great sex.

Brad Pitt I get, but heavy-duty auto booster cables? Do people (more or less normal people, I mean), use those for sex? I knew I’d missed a couple of beats, there, but I had no idea… Anyway. I don’t like litter so out they go!

Where was I? Oh yes. Great sex.

Apparently, according to that newspaper article (and who wouldn’t believe such a trusted source of empirical research?), “sexual fulfilment has far less to do with technique and perfect bodies — elements most often ascribed great significance by popular culture — and more to do with such factors as presence, connection and erotic intimacy.”

So pop culture and its countless magazines (you know which ones I mean) describing in great detail the 101 secrets to pleasing your guy are actually lying? Now that’s news!

So binge drinking is down, except among college students:

in the United States, anyway, reckless drinking is down over all, but not among college students. Among 18- to 20-year-old men who did not attend college, binge drinking declined more than 30 per cent between 1979 and 2006. But among male students it remained at a steady and significant level, while among female students — and this is the really bad news — it went up.

So why do I care is the question? Because my guess is that the culture of “friends with benefits” or one night stands is fuelled by alcohol… i.e., if a girl is sober, she is not likely to jump into bed with a stranger. And this of course links in to issue of abortion for the obvious reason.

Which reminds me of a study a psychologist friend sent me. An unethical study done in the early ’80s but nonetheless, since it was done, the findings are kind of interesting:

To summarise the experiment, five women and four men were sent, one at a time, onto a college campus. Each approached strangers of the opposite sex, and said: “I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive.” They then invited the strangers either to go on a date, or to come over to their apartment, or to have sex with them.

This experiment was performed twice, and the results produced were very similar on both occasions (which indicates that the data is reliable). The report concludes: “The great majority of men were willing to have a sexual liaison with the women who approached them. Not one woman agreed to a sexual liaison.”

What this study says about men (who were more likely to want to have sex than go on a date!) I’ll leave up for grabs. However, not one woman – approached during the day and presumably while sober – would agree to have sex with a stranger. Today, as per books like Sex and the Soul, and Dr. Miriam Grossman too, we learn this sort of thing is happening way more than it should to negative effect.

And for this (to bring this post full circle) I blame binge drinking, at least in part.

It’s Canada Day. As I ate my wheaties this morning, listening to the radio, I found myself wondering what did I do last Canada Day? And then, of course, I remembered. I wrote press releases, talked to media, talked to more media, “debated” an abortionist’s wife and just generally tried to cope with the fact that the Governor General was giving Henry Morgentaler an Order of Canada, and that they were naming him for the award on a national holiday when no one would notice. 

So last Canada Day was definitely a low point. We all know fighting the abortion-friendly status quo is a long term struggle though. (Rome wasn’t built in a day?)

Happy Canada Day. (Or Dominion Day, as some prefer.)

You know it’s a slow news cycle when national newspapers run extensive singles ads. Unpaid ads, on the front page, above the fold. Mario is the lonely heart pictured in yesterday’s Globe and Mail:

Loneliness of agricultural singles is a growing issue in a province where farms are disappearing, but now experts – and dating sites – are paying attention

There must be a government fund for this sort of thing. A committee for rural dating. Clearly, that there is not is a sign of prejudice against Canadian corn stalks–whose very existence is at stake should young Mario not find himself a mate. I expect this prominent coverage should help spur on a national discussion. And perhaps get young Mario’s phone a-ringing.

This is very important, in particular as Canada Day approaches. And to think I almost missed this item.

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Brigitte disagrees: But Andrea, isn’t Mario kinda cute? If he doesn’t deserve front-page treatment, who does? I’m no rural dating expert, but I did spend a few years in farm country many moons ago and I distinctly remember young people there not having special difficulties finding dates.

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Andrea again: Mario does look cute, and that’s why this is a most egregious situation. If he can’t find a date–who can?? I ask you.

New documents on cabinet discussions pertaining to abortion:

The minutes and background papers of the 17 cabinet meetings of 1988 in which abortion was raised were obtained by Canwest News Service under the Access to Information Act, which allows for their release only after 20 years have passed.

As well, the staunchest anti-abortion minister in the cabinet, Jake Epp, cited potential risks to the disabled and elderly if the abortion law was liberalized, while one unidentified minister “suggested that the government seriously consider ducking the issue.” …Mulroney said “he was personally impressed with the sanctity of life arguments, but would not attempt to impose his views on other Members.”

“Ducking the issue” as a strategy appears to have won the day. (Abortion? What’s that?)

Crossed this article:

Sexual coercion and “reproductive control,” including contraceptive sabotage, are a common, and devastating, facet of dating and domestic abuse.

The article basically links pregnancy among teens to partner abuse. So what is the prevailing belief over at RH Reality Check? “We need to get even more dating-violence education into the schools.” They acknowledge:

Researchers, including Teitelman, are also studying exactly how parents can best educate their kids, not just about the birds and the bees, but also about standing up to sexual coercion. (In one study, Teitelman found teen girls whose mothers had talked to them about resisting sexual pressure were twice as likely to delay sex, or use condoms during sex; when fathers did the same, they were five times more likely to have safe sex.)

I suppose if RH Reality Check is going to allude to the idea that parents should encourage abstinence, it is only fitting that the info be shrouded in brackets toward the end of the article. And yet they insist the focus should be on getting more sex ed “in the schools.”

In this same article, a nurse practitioner points out, “We’re giving teens all this information about prevention in the clinic, and yet I see them back all the time for STI testing.”

So in this article we’ve outlined that the parent thing works well, and that learning about condoms from a stranger (even if they’re a medical professional) doesn’t work well. So we need to elaborate sex ed in schools. Something about not being able to see the forest for the trees…

(Though I’m being a bit critical here, the article is worth a read. It sheds light on a topic we don’t hear enough about.)

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Rebecca adds: “Contraception sabotage” – this is an area ripe for study. I’ve never had a male friend own up to deliberately sabotaging his partner’s birth control, although I don’t suppose many men ‘fess up to it, especially to female friends. I do, on the other hand, know women who’ve quite consciously lied about birth control (explicitly, as in claiming to be on the pill when they’re not; or implicitly, when they stop taking it or “accidentally” miss a week; or say “it’s a safe time” when it’s not, or might not be) and think it was a perfectly fine thing to do, because the guys wanted to marry them, just needed a nudge, ya know? And there are many other situations where I suspect something similar might have happened.

A lot of these relationships ended badly. Not a surprise, given how little trust must exist for those shenanigans to take place. A couple of them are still married a decade later. Still doesn’t justify that kind of lying, in my opinion. At any rate, tricking a guy into fathering a child is as despicable as coercing or intimidating your girlfriend into having a child. And it’s something a lot of people condone, or turn a blind eye to, in my experience.

Some village is missing its idiot:

June 29, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, a Swedish couple said they are refusing to disclose whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child, called “Pop” in the media, is a boy or a girl. They said that their decision, made at the time of the child’s birth, was based on the feminist theory that “gender” is a “cruel” “social construct” that forces children into artificial roles.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.” The parents say they never use personal pronouns, referring to him or her only as Pop.

“I believe that the self-confidence and personality that Pop has shaped will remain for a lifetime,” said the mother.

While we’re here debating cruel social constructs, I’d like to ask one question: Why does Pop have both a mother and a father?