ProWomanProLife

…it’s that she’s not running for president. This action letter from Cecile Richards,  president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund is just way too much fun:

What might have been encouraging news for women was just the opposite — somehow McCain had managed to find a woman running mate even more conservative than he is on women’s rights. … If you can only do one thing, it should be to tell every woman you meet that McCain and Palin are the most anti-choice, anti-women pair imaginable. Don’t stop at just telling your friends. You can bet that I’ll be telling strangers in the checkout line at the grocery store, the women I see at the gym, parents at my kids’ schools.

Oh Cecile. You’re breaking my heart. But not my confidence, baby.

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Brigitte also found something: She has an annoying mother-in-law. I like her even more… And it looks like I’m not the only one.

The children have been back in school for a week in Ottawa’s French school board and recent scares about processed meats and plastic containers have sure made lunch-making a bit of a challenge. Lunch-making is the bane of my existence. I am certain that Hell is paved with lunch-making. Please don’t write that risks related to plastics and processed meats have been exaggerated by the press. When a spokesman from the cosmetic industry tells me that levels of lead in my lipsticks are “acceptable,” I beg to wonder “acceptable for who?” I’m of the prudent kind who believes that if lead is bad for you, none is better than a little. Same goes for hormone-mimicking chemicals in plastics or chances of catching a deadly illness from tainted meat. Sure, my sons run a greater risk of dying in a fiery crash from being driven around than growing a uterus from drinking bisphenol-A-laden water. Still, I think that if risks related to meat processing agents, plastics, lead and other hair coloring ingredients are low, there is such a thing as a cumulative effect. Think of cigarettes and lung cancer: one smoke might not kill you but a lifetime of smoking on the other hand…

So out with the sandwiches. Oh. My. Goodness. Now what?? What I don’t understand is how children who have been eating salami sandwiches day-in day-out for several years get sick of tuna sandwiches within a week. What do they put in their salami? Crystal meth? If anything, this makes me even more dubious of processed meats than before. But it also makes me think about a different pace, a different lifestyle, when children came home for lunch. When I was a kid, most children went home for lunch and school lunches were exceptional, a special treat. In any case, there was nobody at school to look after children during lunch break. My children never came home for lunch: even when I was at home, we lived too far from the school for them to walk and picking them up every day was difficult. But friends whose children have consistently come home for lunch talk about it like a privileged moment where the children get to unload their morning before taking on the afternoon.

As I am throwing plastic containers and lunch meats out the window, I can’t help but think that the long gone days where someone – usually mom – held the fort even after the children had started school were not only slower, they were also healthier. And we keep finding out in how many ways by the day it seems.

This letter writer to the Globe is a wee bit more pessimistic than I would be. “No single individual in the entire nation who can stir the blood and energize the soul”? Still, I see his point–and wonder whether the problem isn’t with the voters, ie. us, who have low and apathetic expectations.

Listening to the radio early this morning and they’re saying it’s possible John McCain will nominate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. I admit to not knowing anything about her, so off to Wikepedia I went. Among other impressive things, I see she’s a strong pro-lifer:

On September 11, 2007, the Palins’ son Track joined the Army. Eighteen years old at the time, he is the eldest of Palin’s five children. Track now serves in an infantry brigade, and will be deployed to Iraq in September. She also has three daughters, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7. On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome. (Sarah returned to the office three days after giving birth.) Palin refused to let the results of pre-natal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”

^[...]

Palin is strongly pro-life and belongs to Feminists for Life. She opposes same-sex marriage; but, she has stated that she has gay friends, and is receptive to gay and lesbian concerns about discrimination. While the previous administration did not implement same-sex benefits, Palin complied with a state Supreme Court order and signed them into law.

She sounds pretty cool to me.

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Andrea admits she had not heard of her either. But hey, she’s the type of woman I’d choose to blog for this site–strong, confident–and, of course, pro-life. Wonder if she has some spare time? She looks like a great pick.

Having an endless stream of photos to edit these days, I often plop my pre-schooler in front of a Disney movie for a stead. (I know; I’m a horrible mother.) Colour adjusting away in my basement office-slash-playroom (see, not such a horrible mother), I get to enjoy those easy-to-follow story lines.

We’re on Pocahontas right now (and renting a different one every week). We just got through a Mulan phase, which was preceded by The Hunchback of Notre Dame. At the risk of being told I too am reminded of the pro-life, pro-choice dialogue everywhere (and I’d be in great company), well, they all remind me of the pro-life, pro-choice dialogue.

Mulan conceals her female identity to fight in the Imperial Chinese army and heads the defeat of the Huns, saving China. When it is discovered that she is infact not a man, she goes from hero to zero. Regardless of her accomplishments, the stigma of being a woman is her greatest obstacle. Just as ‘unwanted’ fetuses are stigmatized simply for what they can’t help being.

In The Hunchback, Quasimodo is a malformed man persuaded from infancy that he was among the unwanted of society. For his sake and that of others, he was better off secluded in a bell tower where no one would have to gaze upon his hideousness. Sounds like those who preach that an ‘unwanted’ child is better off never being born.

In Pocahontas, the English refer to the natives as savages, chanting that they are “barely even human,” and asking “do they even breathe?” No need to connect the dots there.

Across the board in this magical world of Disney, the underdog prevails and a valuable lesson is learned by all. You know; happily ever after.

So are we really that blind? Not that I think we should make an animated film about the plight of the unborn child, but is our society not simply allowing the most basic of human lessons to go unlearned? Or is it that, the more civilized we become, the more helpless our victims have to be? You see, these victims now, they can’t even speak up for themselves.

My “aggravating factor” is getting bigger by the day. At 14 weeks I will soon switch to maternity garments, also known as tepees. Except that this time, instead of overpriced jeans and t-shirts tepees, I get to go on a shopping spree for business attire tepees. See, I am now a working woman, hear me roar. (Then catch my fancy pumps in a sidewalk crack and sprain my ankle. Or eat my sushi on a freshly painted bench. Yep, that’s me, classy all the way.)

The morning [afternoon-evening-night] sickness has mostly subsided thanks to a $200-a-month Diclectin habit, and has been largely replaced by an overwhelming urge to run to Costco and buy a sea container of fresh berries with a cubic ton of rice pudding. (Mmmm, rice pudding and fresh berries: one of the things that does not remind me of the pro-life / pro-choice dialogue).

In any case, I learned an interesting kernel of information yesterday at the pay office. Employees of the Public Service qualify for maternity leave benefits after 6 months of full-time work. I’m sure there’s a catch somewhere (like turning-in your newborn upon it’s 8th birthday to the salt mines) but I will have been working 6 months, hear this, 10 days before my due-date. Isn’t that hilarious? But even more hilarious is my husband’s commitment to bring me to work on a gurney to complete the 6 months requirement. If I give birth early — hopefully on a weekend — we hope that a strategically placed pillow will do the trick. A friend asked me if this was ethical, to which I replied: “I got a Master’s degree in ethics, therefore everything I do is ethical.” Hey, don’t shoot me: that’s how it seems to work in academia. If you doubt it, go and read anything written by Princeton’s Peter Signer or Oxford’s Julian Savulescu.

So for once, I’ll be hoping for a late delivery. The odds aren’t great: out of five, the three girls (who are indeed everything nice) were born early and the two boys (no comments) were late. But if you want to start a pool, feel free to send your donations to the pro-life organization of your choice.

Apparently, there’s nothing like the government pulling the rug out from under you for getting good press.

Another article that favours Bill C-484. Here’s a good quote where about how doctors tried to save the “aggravating factor,” known in popular parlance as a baby.

They spent four hours at the hospital trying to save the baby,” said Aydin Cocelli, Ms. Sesen’s brother-in-law. “If it wasn’t a baby, then why were they trying to save her?”

Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald has written an excellent piece about clarity, abortion and Bill C-484.

My favourite line:

It is obvious to anyone with a minimal grasp of English that this bill is not about abortion. Notice the key words “criminally assault,” “wants and loves,” and “against her will.” That does not describe the pregnant woman rifling through the phone book in search of an address for the nearest abortion provider.

And my second-favourite line:

Next, politicians and abortion rights groups have to stop pretending that a fetus is not fully human because it can’t survive on its own. If it weren’t fully human, there wouldn’t be all this debate. We do not hold debates about the degree of guppiness of unborn guppies, do we? And if a fetus cannot survive on its own, neither can an infant or a toddler. Are they any less human?

Reading this also caused me to stop and realize that I am way too cautious on the topic of abortion. Yes, you heard me, too cautious. Because I’ve never seen any Canadian political leader do or say anything reasonable on abortion or defending unborn babies, I stopped thinking they ever could. Thanks to columns like this, I am reminded to demand nothing less. (But hey, a girl has to keep her sanity. Low expectations means that even politicians, from time to time, exceed ‘em.)

“What to expect when you’re aborting.”

Would love to talk to her. A bold move, certainly, being that public over a forthcoming abortion. But the blog is anger and angst-ridden. I don’t know what to make of it. If I could help, if I could give her money, if I could, if I could, if I could…

On a truck containing “carbon dioxide”:

“This vehicle stops at railway crossings. Only in Quebec.”

Because it is common knowledge that only in Quebec do locomotives crashing into tank trucks cause grave accidents possibly endangering lives. Or are Quebec locomotive drivers more likely to accelerate when commercial vehicles cross the tracks?

Really, it’s the whole legalistic shtick that cranks me up. We can blow up neighborhoods everywhere in Canada but only Quebec requires us to stop at railway crossings. And we are law abiding corporate citizens.

It reminds me — somehow — of what passes as dialogue between pro-abortion and pro-life where the pro-lifer goes “abortion ends a human life; the fetus can feel the pain of abortion” and the pro-abortion replies “the Morgentaler and Daigle decisions by the Supreme Court have both clearly stated that fetal rights do not exist in Canada and therefore the fetus is not alive and cannot feel pain.” Yes. And the Emperor is fully clothed. By decree, I know.

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Andrea, warmly: Véronique, you make me laugh. What doesn’t remind you of the pro-life, pro-choice dialogue?

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Tanya adds: I do love how your mind works.