Well, here we are. The year is pretty much over. And while to many commentators it appears to have been a pretty darn wretched one, I’m quite pleased with it myself. Among many other good things that happened in 2008, I’m very grateful to Andrea for launching PWPL and delighted that she asked me to join. Thanks! And may 2009 bring even more good things to you and yours.
____________________
Andrea asks: What’s that saying again–it takes a village to raise a web site? (For me, in any event, it took Brigitte.) In any event, don’t thank me, no, no. A good team effort here with PWPL. And yes, I think 2008 was a good one too!
Last year we were still on a knife edge thinking things would go wrong. But now he’s out of the woods we are delighted that 2009 will be Kai’s year.”
A spokesman from Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Trust said they cannot comment on individual cases.
But he added: “Where abnormalities are spotted in the scans, our multi-disciplinary team will always offer prospective families the full facts and options as presented at the time.
I think you know by now where I stand on abortion in general. But what I think is worse are doctors who callously tell women what they don’t know for sure, such that many women barely endure their pregnancies in fear and worry.
“I think the proper reaction to a beauty pageant these days is to be bored by it. I would have thought that old version of feminism, which was violently opposed to lipstick and high heels, had died out by now. It’s an extinct image of feminism — that you can’t be both frivolous and serious or care about clothes and read books at the same time. And, in a way, it’s sort of depressing that these same old-fashioned battles keep on being recycled.” …Take heart, sisters, for there is a new breed of feminist out there that is reinventing the ideology. Subscribing to the original feminist theories of equality (equal pay, equal rights and the importance of a right to choose), they pick the fights that mean something to them, ignoring the elements of feminist politics they find irrelevant.
You know what I’m bored by? Pro-abortion, “right to choose” feminists. How about having a new idea, ladies?
______________________
Tanya rolls her eyes: “original feminist theories…right to choose.” Let’s ask an original feminist, Susan B. Anthony :
She blamed men, laws and the “double standard” for driving women to abortion because they had no other options. (”When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged.” 1869) She believed, as did many of the feminists of her era, that only the achievement of women’s equality and freedom would end the need for abortion.”
Canadians don’t want to go back to the abortion debate. People are happy with the status quo. It’s working well.
I just changed my cell phone plan. I had the same plan for years, and I thought it was a great deal, mainly because it was a great deal back when I got my first phone. I’d tell everyone how great my plan was, and in 2002 I wasn’t lying. But in 2008, I was sorely misled. After doing a little homework, I learned I could get all the same services with the exact same cell phone provider for about half the price. All this to say, I was happy with the status quo until I got all the facts.
Most people I speak to about the abortion issue don’t realize abortion is legal in Canada right up to month 9. Most don’t know that women are exposed to a procedure (vacuum aspiration abortion) that has never been tested on animals and that it is alone in that category among all medical procedures performed in Canada. Most don’t know that, in 1988, when the Supreme Court struck down the law regulating abortion, it handed over to Parliament the responsibility of enacting a new law. And, yes, most don’t realize that a kidney has more rights in Canada than a fetus. Let’s be honest. There’s something Canadians don’t know.
The very phrase “We won’t go back!” so commonly chanted by those who are pro-abortion, confirms that they’re unhappy with the way things once were, but it says nothing about today’s status quo. To say that Canadians are happy with the current state of affairs is to assume we are all aware of that state. But, mostly, we are not. So let’s not muzzle the discussion. Then we’ll see if people really are happy with the status quo.
To put it bluntly, Ms. Fairbrother may not be able to confirm the existence of this caucus, but if she’d bothered to ask around, anyone who has spent any time on the Hill would have been able to fill her in.”
Oh SNAP! (I learned that expression from my 11 year old niece. It’s my pathetic attempt to recapture my youth.)
Sarah Palin. I second this nomination, for the abuse she endured because she is religious and pro-life, for the stands she took and held, publicly, under great duress from supposed friends and enemies alike, and generally for being an advocate for the unborn as a successful woman everywhere she went.
I say! This Rod Bruinooge character is really starting to gain traction, isn’t he. Most excellent. I especially like this from him:
The bottom line is that people like myself are not going to stop until, at the very least, unborn children have more value than a Canadian kidney,” he said.
How about we make a t-shirt that says:
People are kidneys too
In Canada, body parts have more rights than entire fetuses.
Are we really that dumb?
Any other ideas?
________________________
Andrea: I’ll put forward ”People for the Ethical Treatment of People” and keep thinking about it.
________________________ Brigitte passes along Dear Husband’s suggestion: He says “People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans” (or PETH) would be easier to pronounce than “PETP”. He’s obviously not French.
________________________
Andrea had already thought of the pronunciation difficulty: It’s PET-”P” –as in sounds like “pet peeve.” Come to think of it, that leads to all kinds of very witty advertising slogans. “Is killing people one of your pet peeves–in particular when they call it abortion? Join PETP today…” (I’m still working on it, ironing out the details.)
________________________
Brigitte is working so hard she belongs in a Dickens novel:
Couples are willing to do whatever it takes to create a family, and this leads to extra frozen embryos. In Canada, clinics cannot dispose of embryos without legal consent from patients.
So we have, they estimate, about 50,000 embryos hanging around. Embryos the parents wanted, until they didn’t. I’m prepared to say as someone who would like to have kids and who is on the outside edge of her fertile years–that perhaps the “whatever it takes” mentality has to go.
