ProWomanProLife

Those aren’t my words but those of Liberal MP and former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh in Saturday’s National Post. He was asked to comment on the questions raised by the death of a toddler in Delta, B.C., allegedly at the hands of her father. The Post article concerns the speculation that the two-year old was murdered for the crime of being a girl and her parent’s third daughter. The tradegy raises the ugly issue of gender selection and it was in this context that Mr. Dosanjh made these comments: “What does it say about us as human beings? You have a situation in India and here, where we commit feticide and we kill girls when they’re of tender age. Then we kill them and abuse them after marriage. And it has to stop.” 

It seems that Mr. Dosanjh is otherwise pretty firmly pro-choice …  except when parents are choosing not to have a daughter. At one level, that kind of makes sense. It’s pretty obvious that gender selection abortions devalue the sex selected for elimination. And Mr. Dosanjh, and many others otherwise committed to “choice”, recognize that effect and are repelled by it. 

But doesn’t this mean that a woman’s freedom to choose isn’t unlimited after all?

If we don’t want to send a negative message about the value of girls in our society by allowing them to be aborted, what are we content to say about the disabled, the “less than perfect” fetus, which seems to be such an acceptable target for abortion? What are we saying about children in general with an unrestricted abortion license?

I guess my question for Mr Dosanjh is, why aren’t these things feticide also?   

Andrea and I have an op-ed in today’s Ottawa Citizen. It’s also posted here.

The week’s worth of new comments have been posted on The Comments page. Check them out! And feel free to respond to comments as well as posts.  

I’m going to be on CTV’s Canada AM tomorrow morning, at about 7:40 am, discussing the anniversary of the Morgentaler decision. They will also have a pro-abortion person there too.

Ninety-four per cent said that an alcoholic who refused to stop drinking should not be allowed a liver transplant, while one in five said taxpayers should not pay for “social abortions” and fertility treatment…

Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

It’s not because the government cares about us that we have such a zealous anti-smoking campaign. It’s ’cause when we smoke, it costs them money in treatment. Now this article from the UK discusses other problematic aspects of health care. Ending taxpayer funding of “social abortions,” would be a real coup, where in Canada at least, the vast majority of abortions are done for social reasons. But denying the elderly? The obese?

No health care crisis here. Nope, there’s nothing to see here. Pro-choicers talk incessantly about access as if they’d like a clinic beside every 7-11. Here’s betting the vast majority of Canadians are more concerned about the fact that they can’t find a family doctor.

Whether it’s because we’ve all fallen asleep at our tasks like Snow White, or whether we’ve been outplayed in a subtle and long-standing culture war, what is clear is that we are living in a new era of post-feminism.

From yesterday’s Globe: A discussion of why feminism is out of style. Maybe it’s because no one knows what “feminism”  means. Or maybe it’s because feminism today has built itself up on false notions, like “abortion rights.” Or maybe, or maybe… Either way, the fish and bicycle act did get old, like an overtold joke. 

Did you know that the estimated crowd at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. earlier this week was 225,000? Yeah, neither did I, until I checked on Lifesite. And I had checked the entire front section of the National Post every day. Nothing, not even a paragraph on the sidebar on the World/US page. Now, admittedly, the crowd estimate came from the Convention Director for the March for Life. The Washington Post‘s coverage (on page 3) stated that “tens of thousands” participated in the March. Not bad, but AP’s coverage described the crowd as numbering “thousands” and then went on to mention, in paragraph 2 of their story, no less, that “[a] smaller crowd of several dozen abortion-rights supporters held their own rally later”. The New York Times’ brief coverage did not even include a number, although they had published the organizer’s estimate of attendance in a (much longer) article covering an anti-war rally that took place last January.   

ProWomanProLife welcomes Patricia Egan as a permanent blogging contributor. 

Patricia Egan was born in Saskatchewan, but has lived for the past 15 years in Toronto’s west end. She completed a bachelor’s degree in history and French at Trent University. She went on to get a bachelor’s degree in both civil and common law from McGill University.

After graduating from law school, she worked on Bay Street, including six years of part-time work in the legal department of a “big five” Canadian bank. During this period she also had five children. “Contrary to what one might expect from the corporate world,” she says, “they were very good to me as a working mother.” 

Trish “retired” from the practice of law in 2006.  Since then, she has “a life of leisure” with her five kids (ages 3 – 11) and teaches a Canadian history class to the grade seven and eight class at her daughters’ school.  

Trish came to be pro-life inadvertently through CBC radio. She recalls her mother listening to the coverage of the first Morgentaler trials on the CBC. When Trish asked what it all meant, she was completely horrified by her mother’s explanation. “And for some reason,” she says, “that reaction survived seven years of post-secondary education and remained an ongoing concern.”

The issue took on a new immediacy for Trish when her youngest daughter was born with Down Syndrome. “My husband and I encountered people who viewed my daughter as someone who had somehow slipped through the cracks of responsible health care and decision making,” she says. “We realized we are facing a world where people like her might not exist and that there is an ethos of human life positing this would be a good thing.”                           

At the same time, her daughter’s birth opened up a whole new world of kindness and charity and natural virtue, she says. “I discovered seeing those perceived as ‘weaker’ can draw out a kind of charity in the human spirit, a charity that is profoundly moving. In my opinion, each abortion eclipses an opportunity for someone to exercise such charity, and that is a second loss.”  

Hanging outside her kitchen door is a poster with the words “Keep calm and carry on” – these posters were printed up by the British government in 1940 and stockpiled in anticipation of a Nazi invasion. “There’s something that I love in that story and having the poster on hand reminds me to, um, keep calm and carry on.  Can’t put it much better than that,” she says.

PWPL looks forward to Trish’s blogging when she finds a calm moment.

ProWomanProLife in the news: Today’s Post reports on the great divide between pro-choicers and pro-lifers. And the first quote from yours truly says I am still sometimes embarrassed to be public on the issue. Um, well, I guess in public forums it’s a tough topic to broach. But I don’t want people to think I don’t have talking about this in me. I’m not soooo embarrassed that I won’t do the CTV morning show on Monday at 7:40 am, and CHRI in Ottawa at 8:30 and AM 940 in Montreal at 12:30. And I finished up the day yesterday with The John Moore Show in Toronto, which went rather well.

There are rumous Angelina Jolie is pregnant again, perhaps with twins. I have no idea whether to believe this or not, but one thing I know for sure: I find the couple’s ambition to raise a large family awfully cool. Not that we all should aim for our very own soccer team, but hey, if you’ve got the resources, why not?