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Archives for March 2008

Feeling crowded since 1969

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A Quebec current events show, Il va y avoir du sport, recently hosted a debate asking: Must the number of births be limited to save the planet?

Doing my best to translate:

In 2009, or perhaps sooner, planet Earth will be home to 7 billion people.
For several decades now, we’ve been wondering if our planet will reach its limits. How many human beings can the world sustain?

Laure Waridel, author and environmental sociologist, pointed out that the resources we consume on a return flight to Paris are equal to what an Ethiopian person consumes over 12 years. Host Marie-France Bazzo therefore asked, “So we should all be living like the Ethiopians?”

Yes, that’s exactly what she meant (duh.)

By the way, in response to the question, “how many humans,” we apparently exceeded the planet’s optimum capacity sometime between 1969 and 1987, according to the World Health Organization.

Freedom of speech on campus, again

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Campus pro-life groups do the Genocide Awareness Project  across North America. But in Calgary, the University of Calgary is asking students to turn the display inward so that no one can actually see it. Today students decided they would defy the university and do the display their way, anyway. The point in all this is the administration’s hypocrisy–for how many other issues would they allow the signs to stand?

Ultimately, this sort of censorship shows the culture thinks abortion is compassionate. And when we are all hit with the reality that it is not, there is a backlash. A choice it is indeed–just a bloody and macabre one.

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Update: UofC tells students they are trespassing on their own campus. Read about it here.

Sex-ed in the 21st Century

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My children Liesl, Kurt, Martha and Brigitta are sitting silently in the dentist’s waiting room, filling-out their health questionnaire. Kurt glances up and asks the million dollar question every parent dreams of being asked in public:

“Mommy, what are Cialis and Viagra?”

Me, clearing my throat, thinking very fast: “Drugs. You aren’t taking any.”

Kurt: “What kind of drugs?”

Me, thinking very fast at a G-rated explanation of erectile dysfunction: “They’re for adult males who have sexual problems.”

Liesl: “Gross…”

Martha: “What are adult males? What sexual problems?”

Me: “Males about the age of Daddy?”

Brigitta: “Daddy has sexual problems?”

Liesl: “Oh, look at the time…”

Me, looking at the receptionist in despair: “Isn’t one of the kids due for a cleaning right about NOW?”

Sex-ed in the 21st century: it’s all about opportunities. They are literally everywhere.

A bizarre cult

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 nicolae

Just stumbled across this article on “reborn babies”.

Reborn dolls look, feel and smell just like real babies. They look so realistic, in fact, that they are often mistaken for the real thing. Every aspect of their anatomy has been carefully constructed to imitate the experience of looking at and holding a baby. The dolls are painted with the same slightly blotchy colouring noticeable on a very young infant. Their bodies are stuffed with sand or silicone so that their legs, fingers, head and hands have the same floppy weight as that of a small newborn baby. They even have the same neck-support issues, so that anyone picking one up will instinctively support the head.

“My daughter, who is a neonatal nurse, finds them eerie, scary because they are too lifelike,” says Martha Englishman, who is retired and has five reborns, partly because she has always collected dolls, but also to compensate for not having any grandchildren. “It sounds crazy, but I love them. They are the next best thing to having a baby.

To call this stuff disturbing is quite the understatement. The models whose eyes are closed look exactly like dead babies. (The ones that are meant to look “alive” don’t look much better to me; the internet is full of sites showcasing these things – here’s one I picked at random.) And what’s with calling them “reborn”? Somebody, please, explain this to me…

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Tanya adds: http://www.channel4.com/video/my-fake-baby/series-1/episode-1/living-doll_p_1.html

Watch your language, part II

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I am a bit of a stickler for how we use words, especially in the context of hot-button issues like euthanasia and assisted suicide. We can’t settle these issues without debating them and we can’t debate them if we are not talking about the same thing. In an otherwise excellent article in this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, Naomi Lakritz writes:

The killing of Tracy Latimer was not euthanasia. It was murder. Euthanasia is also known as assisted suicide. Tracy did not commit suicide, let alone ask for assistance in doing so.

True, but euthanasia is not also known as assisted suicide, at least not in today’s academic literature in bioethics. With assisted suicide, a physician provides the means or information necessary for a person to end his or her own life. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) also describes situations like Sue Rodriguez’ where the patient is able to express a desire to end his or her own life but unable to perform the required actions. Suicide is no longer criminal in Canada and the sticky issue with PAS is whether or not physicians should be allowed to facilitate it. Another sticky issue with PAS lies in the validity of someone’s desire to die. Is it a desire to die or a fear of suffering?

Euthanasia refers to the termination of someone’s life by another for the purpose of ending that person’s suffering. Accordingly, if PAS is technically suicide, euthanasia is technically murder and both should be debated as such.  Suicide is legal in Canada but assisted suicide is not. Accordingly, we oppose PAS by arguing that the presence of a third party no longer makes it a private decision. Since euthanasia is murder (or at least should be), we oppose it by arguing that disabled life in any way, shape or form, is as valuable as another. One of the sticky issues with euthanasia is precisely the lack of active involvement in the decision by the person whose life is to be ended. That person may have expressed a desire to be “euthanized” in the past, but the actual life-or-death decision is made by an external party. This is in great part why the Latimer debacle is so worrying for disabled Canadians: once you let able-bodied people decide what a life worth living is, you eliminate the experience of disability from the decision-making picture.

All this to say, both are wrong for similar reasons. But that doesn’t make them synonymous.

What do you call the fear of tokophobics?

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I almost hate to draw attention to this article (it was in the weekend’s National Post too). But someone else drew it to mine, and I’d like to share the pain. “Tokophobia” is the name of a “disorder”–those women who are apparently morbidly fearful of childbirth. I am now myself quite fearful of these women who claim this illness as their own, and wondering when a psychological association will acknowledge my personal distress officially.

At first as I read, the author had my sympathy. But then I read on. She cites her friends who have had horrible childbirth experiences: “‘It’s a conspiracy,’ she said. ‘Nobody tells you, nobody prepares you for what you go through. If they did, the human race would die out.'” I juxtapose this with my many multiple friends who are having children right now–though they are all great people, none are superheroes–and not one had such a thing to say about her experience giving birth. The author goes on to say this:

And yet, my terror of the process didn’t make me careful about contraception. Instead, I played fast and loose. …In fact, I have been pregnant twice, once in my 20s, and again when I was 30. Both ended in terminations.

and this:

I know I want my own biological issue. The extraodinary all-consuming love that a mother has for her child fascinates and appalls me in equal measure. If I could be spared the pain and just be handed a baby, would I sign up? Now I am in my early 40s when the dangers and complications for mother and baby multiply, and it would be so much easier just to close the door on the matter. But as long as I think there is a  prize worth walking throught fire for, then there is torment.

Well, so long as she knows what she wants–which is apparently her own biological issue as some sort of prize. But just so long as that prize doesn’t come at any personal expense. Less like childbirth, more like winning a huge stuffed dog at a fair, after playing the beanbag toss.

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Brigitte is chuckling: “But as long as I think there is a  prize worth walking throught fire for…”? Like, say, the amazing if painful miracle of childbirth? Gosh, these women. They “intellectualize” things so much they end up making hardly any sense at all.

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Tanya wonders: So, this tokophobia, is it the social equivalent of homophobia?  Should we stare down our noses at her and say, “You’re such a tokophobic!”  Or is she drumming up sympathy for a mental disorder (in which case we need to pull out the ‘tolerance’ card)?  Keeping up with the latest politically correct trends is very exhausting!

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Véronique adds: I became acquainted with tokophobia in the process of writing this article.  (Some argue that women who suffer from tokophobia should be allowed to request cesarean sections without a medical reason). Like all phobias, tokophobia is not rational and difficult to understand for those who do not have the condition. However, just like 3 of my children are “deathly allergic” to red peppers, all women who claim tokophobia are not clinically tokophobic. Having given birth five times without drugs, I speak with some authority when I say that childbirth is not a walk in the park. A dislike for the idea is not a phobia, nor is looking at childbirth with apprehension. Both are normal emotions that can be dealt with through support and preparation.

 

This reminds me of both abortion and assisted suicide arguments. In the case of abortion, a woman faces a crisis pregnancy. Instead of helping her get rid of the crisis, we help her get rid of the baby. In assisted suicide, a patient who is suffering is hopeless to the point of wanting to die. Instead of helping the patient with the pain and the hopelessness, we help the patient end his life.

 

Tokophobia and other non-clinical expressions of fear of childbirth should be treated as such. The problem is the fear, not the baby or the process of childbirth.

 

“Even then, so-called ‘elective’ abortions after 16 weeks are rare…”

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We hear this a lot from defenders of elective abortion. It’s not true.  Abortions in the second half of pregnancy are less common than first trimester abortions, sure, but not by any means rare. From my days working at a women’s clinic (that did not do abortions but referred women to abortionists on request) I can confirm that arranging for a woman to travel to Alberta (at the time no Manitoba OB did elective abortions after 18 weeks) was not all that unusual. And the number of strings that were pulled to help women abort at 17 weeks and 6 days was most impressive. If only medical staff and administrators showed such zeal hastening waits for angioplasties and hip replacements.

On the one hand, I think this argument is a bit of a red herring. Whether or not something should be permissible, legal or desirable has nothing to do with how often it happens. But I think a lot of people have no idea how common late abortions – well after viability – are in Canada.

And if it’s truly just fine to abort at any stage, for any reason, why do abortion rights activists assert that these are rare? The mantra Clinton made famous – that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” – contains within it a clue to the moral issues involved in abortion. Why do you wish, President or Senator Clinton, that abortion be rare if all that is lost is a clump of cells with no intrinsic value? Many people who consider themselves pro-choice are much less comfortable with abortion than they think they are, and they sometimes realize this when they’re asked, or forced, to ponder why exactly it ought to be rare.

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Andrea adds: “Safe, legal and rare.” So far, they’re legal. Safe and rare? Not really. (Someone else quipped that first, and as soon as I remember who, I’ll give them credit.)

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Tanya adds: Safe. As opposed to unsafe? The excuse so many use to keep abortion legal is infact to keep it safe. However, the year before Roe v Wade, the US reported 39 deaths in conjunction with illegal abortion. Compare that with the 40 or so annual deaths related to Christmas tree fires, and the same logic should outlaw this yuletide tradition.

The end justifying the means

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Why put a positive spin on this?

I had thought, “Surely this can’t be a good thing. This is sexual objectification of women.” I assumed most women who went into this would not be doing it for good reasons and would not have choices. What surprised me is that the dancers whom I interviewed for the most part were doing it very self-consciously as a way to finance a longer-term, often educational goal. Stripping is the most lucrative legal profession to a young woman who doesn’t have a higher education.

It’s safe to say that it remains sexual objectification of women, regardless of how much the woman is raking in. So let me re-iterate: “Surely this can’t be a good thing.”

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