The Guelph University student union bans the pro-life club, because it was “deemed ‘unsafe to women’ due to its promotion of the pro-life message.”
Liberal fascism is an apt term for this sort of thing, seems to me.
Archives for October 2008
The “Bruinooge effect”
Think social issues lose elections? Think again. An excellent assessment of Harper’s second minority win in today’s Edmonton Journal from PWPL’s very own Rebecca Walberg.
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Brigitte says: Hear! Hear! I sure can’t vote for anyone these days, and haven’t done so in well over 10 years. Plenty of people to vote against, but nobody out there stands up for what I believe in – not even partly. Many politicians I know understand my problem; some of them even claim to sympathize. But they never do anything about it, and then they wonder why mushy-middle platitudes about the need to show restraint and the virtues of incrementalism and whatever other rhubarb they always manage to spout, fail to change my mind. Duh.
This isn’t difficult
Read here about Catholics voting for Obama, in spite of his extreme views on abortion.
This isn’t difficult. If you are pro-life, don’t vote for Obama. He’s extreme on the issue and there’s Supreme Court judges to appoint. But look, that Catholics might support Obama isn’t exactly news–if every Catholic truly thought abortion was unthinkable–we wouldn’t have abortion in North America.
When the Catholic church speaks out against abortion, this is also not a difficult issue. It’s what they do, or should be doing, whether there’s an election or not (speaking out against taking innocent life–I think there may be something in the ten commandments about that). But enter academics at Catholic universities:
Also in the National Catholic Reporter, Lisa Cahill, a professor of theology at Boston College, wrote that certain bishops have crossed the line from extolling church teaching to becoming political partisans. [W]hen the Catholic Church is perceived to be cheerleaders for one political party a rich faith tradition is badly damaged and loses its prophetic voice.”
Another point that’s not really hard: When any church (and bear in mind, I don’t think abortion is a religious issue) starts to think taking life is AOK–that’s precisely when they lose their “prophetic voice.” But hey, if you want to understand why and how Catholics might not see abortion for the issue it is, look no further than those academics, sitting pretty in their ivory towers at so-called Catholic schools, searching for prophetic voices. Louder than their own, I mean.
Suicides on the rise
Suicide rates are on the rise for both women and men. Read about this, here.
Suicides for white adults ages 40 to 64 rose 17 percent from 1999 to 2005, researchers said. For middle-age white men, the rate rose 14 percent to 26.9 per 100,000 in 2005 from 23.1 per 100,000 in 1999. For white women in that age group, the rate rose 19 percent to 8.2 per 100,000 from 6.9 per 100,000.
From time to time, pro-abortion advocates tell me that if abortion were so bad, really, we’d be seeing an epidemic of wounded women. Which, they then say, we’re not seeing.
Really? Seems to me we do have some problems in our culture, generally speaking, with too many people on anti-depressants, and visiting psychiatrists and all.
Now I know the difference between causation and correlation, and I am not saying abortion is causing or even correlated to this increase in suicides. What I am saying is that there’s a problem when suicide rates go up that much that suddenly–and we won’t necessarily ever be able to find a direct link. Oftentimes social problems experienced broadly can’t be directly traced to one single source.
Yet there’s no doubt that abortion causes an increase in depression, suicide and suicide ideation–on that the literature is quite clear, in spite of what the American Psychological Association claims. And so when I saw this report about increased suicides, it made me think of a possible link to abortion. The walking wounded–they are all around us–if we care enough to see.
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Tanya thinks this is no coincidence. Quebec not only has the highest abortion rate in Canada, it also has the highest rate of suicides. In fact, it has the third highest rate of suicides in the industrialized world.
Health class
My husband has been away for the last couple of days and hoo boy, the guy sure pulls his weight around here. I didn’t look at the blog yesterday — in fact, I missed turning on my lap top altogether — and there has been some highly interesting posts and comments. I was thinking of elevating the discussion but I don’t think I have the mental capacity at this point. So here is a highly educating account of a discussion I had with my two oldest while washing dishes:
Oldest daughter (grade 7): We had Health class today.
Me: Oh yeah? What do you learn in Health class?
Oldest son (grade 6), interrupting: We learn about sanitary diapers in Health class.
Me: Aren’t boys and girls separated for Health class?
Oldest son, shaking head in consternation: no
Me: Can you tell me why grade 6 boys need to learn about sanitary napkins?
Oldest son: Uh… So they’ll know what to buy their wives once they’re married? Say mom, does dad ever buy you the wrong kind?
Me: I buy my own, thank you very much. What about you, oldest daughter, are boys and girls separated for Health class?
Oldest daughter: Yes, thank God. The girls talked about puberty but the boys were too immature to talk about puberty so they got the talk on nutrition and the Canadian food guide…
Me: Great. Can you bring back any hand-outs you receive in that class? I want to make sure they teach you the right things about sex.
Oldest daughter: Yes, my homeroom teacher said she wanted us to use the right vocabulary when talking about sex.
Me: I’m not so concerned about how they teach you to talk about private parts. I’m concerned about how they teach you to use them.
Oldest daughter: Mom, what’s herpes?
Me: Herpes is a sexually transmitted disease. I don’t remember it’s symptoms but you can avoid it by not having sex.
Oldest daughter: It can be transmitted to babies…
Oldest son, interrupting again: Why would babies have sex???
See, I had this plan about keeping my kids no older than 6 years of age. But I keep feeding them and they keep growing. The task of raising kids healthy in mind and body sure seems overwhelming at times.
In praise of plain language
This speech by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has attracted some notice for his reference to abortion as “little murders”. But I found something else worth noting in it:
We need to be very forceful in defending what the words in our political vocabulary really mean. Words are important because they shape our thinking, and our thinking drives our actions. When we subvert the meaning of words like ”the common good” or ”conscience” or ”community” or ”family,” we undermine the language that sustains our thinking about the law. Dishonest language leads to dishonest debate and bad laws.
Here’s an example. We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue, and it’s never an end in itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square – peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.
I am not religious (I am a reasonably sour lapsed Catholic). But I’m not against religion, and certainly not against our right as citizens to use our moral compass in public discourse or debate. Most of all, I am in favour of using clear language, especially when discussing important issues. I’m with the Archbishop when he says anything less is a form of theft.
People often ask what they, by themselves, can do to help lower the number of abortions. Well, one way would be to insist, gently but firmly, on using clear language when discussing the issue. “Everybody is in favour of choice. We all have the right and power to choose – in the case of abortion, we can choose life for the developing human being or we can choose death for same. Which one, exactly, are you in favour of? Answer that, then we can discuss women’s reproductive health if you want…”
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Tanya supports: The Archbishop’s take on the word “tolerance.” Tolerance is not the same as embracing diversity (that good ‘ole Christian virtue of loving everyone). Tolerance under the umbrella of political correctness is a way of numbing over anyone who might feel passionately about a particular subject, especially with their moral/ethical compass.
And this is where the phrase, “I’d never be able to have an abortion, but I support a woman’s right to choose” stems from.
Some things are not a choice
I understand the anxiety of wanting to know your baby is alright, while in the womb. But look–how many couples do I know in my own life whose prognosis from these ultrasounds was poor and the baby was perfect? (Three, since you asked.) Does that reduce anxiety? And since the doctors are quite open about there being no treatments when abnormalities are detected–this seems like one more way to make abortion easier, all in search of the “perfect” child.
Unfortunately, little can be done to treat most of the physical anomalies that may be detected early, such as skull malformations. …When the ultrasound delivers bad news, women who may decide to terminate a troubled pregnancy can make that decision earlier.
Some things are not really a choice at all. Killing your disabled child at an earlier stage doesn’t make it any easier.
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Véronique asks: Did you count me in those three? My youngest was diagnosed by ultrasound with a symmetrical intra-uterine growth retardation, which I later learned — once I went into neonatal bioethics — was very bad news indeed. Thank goodness I didn’t really know what the deal was back then or I would have panicked. Anyhow. Do I need to add that he was born a healthy 7 pounds 4 and completely “normal” (in quotes because he is 2 1/2 today and what toddler is normal, I ask you??)?
Since I started studying bioethics, I have been dumbfounded by the number of people who terminate (abort) on the sole basis of an ultrasound. Granted, the physicians I know would encourage further testing. But I also observed that people who are frightened by the possibility of a disabled child will terminate so fast, it makes your head spin. Almost as if they wanted to do it before they could change their minds. Very troubling.
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Brigitte wonders: Here’s what the doctor in charge of the program says:
When the ultrasound delivers bad news, women who may decide to terminate a troubled pregnancy can make that decision earlier.
“It’s safer to do it early on. There are less complications,” he says.
Safer? Complications? Whoa, where did that come from?
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Andrea adds: No, I didn’t count you, Véronique. So make that four.
Why imagine? This is real life
This link asks us to imagine strong pro-life women running for office:
Imagine a strong charismatic crunchy conservative pro-life woman with special needs baby running for for office. Now imagine that same woman with years of national and foreign policy experience. That is a very very scary thing to the pro-death left.
This article goes on to talk about Michele Bachmann, a strong, pro-life Republican in Minnesota.
At 13, Bachmann was forced to become almost financially independent after her parents divorced. She used her babysitting money to buy her own clothes and lunches at school and saved up enough to purchase her first pair of contact lenses. Between college semesters at Winona State University, she took her hardworking streak to Alaska where on one memorable day she cleaned 280 salmon.
In Canada, there’s no political alignment on the life issues: you can be left, you can be right. So I’ll imagine more and more strong right and left wing women rising up to assert why they are pro-life, while being the very best in their fields. Meanwhile, I’m glad to hear about women like Bachmann, Palin, Laura Ingraham…
Strong pro-life women are a very scary thing to the pro-abortion side. Not to belabour the point, but they should be worried. We’re not just coming. We’re already here.
Breaking the law
David Little hasn’t paid income tax since 1999 because he doesn’t want his money, even in part, going to pay for abortions. This is, of course, breaking the law.
Does this mean he’ll get an Order of Canada in a couple of decades?
(Maybe. But not before he goes to jail, or pays a fine, or whatever the outcome will be.)
Musing over election politics after the fact
Can’t tell you how many people I meet who are fiscally and politically left–and pro-life. So the question is, how many swing votes would a party win if they added the life issue to the roster? Parties only ever consider who they might lose–but done carefully, I think there are many votes to gain. Too late, I know, but it’s a conversation I had this past weekend.
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