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Unexpected, unplanned, beautiful

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My friend Veronique Bergeron’s blog, Fearless Family Life has a new look, which caused me to re-read some of her old stuff. It’s pretty great, starting with her description of her family and how the family got started:

I was 21 and unmarried when I got pregnant with my oldest daughter, right out of my first year of Law School. The doctor who confirmed the pregnancy told me that mothers in my situation ended up poor, uneducated and single. My peers told me: “You’re not going to keep it right?” She was born with the sunrise on a Wednesday morning. I didn’t believe in God back then but when they placed her on my chest, I knew I had touched eternity. She was more than a birth control flub, more than an “it”, she was a person who had been meant from all times to be placed in my arms. A unique and timely mix of the right chromosomes, meeting at the right time, never made before, never to be made again. Clara opened my heart to a love that defied every other kind of love: a love devoid of self-interest, a love of the other for the other’s sake. She gave me a new heart and new eyes. And so I was made a mother and never looked back.

Looking forward, not back.

The feminist case against surrogacy

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Oftentimes, in life-related debates, it can feel like there is no common ground. This article highlights the problems with surrogacy, something many feminists are against, whether those feminists are pro-life or pro-choice. The author’s bio shows that on some issues at least, there can be common ground. Read her article–it describes the pitfalls of surrogacy very well.

Kathleen Sloan is a former member of the board of directors of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Executive Director of Connecticut NOW, a consultant on third-party reproduction issues, and co-author of the book Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth and Culture. She has a master’s degree in International Relations and has traveled the world advocating women’s rights, including at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York. She co-authored a brief for fifteen feminist academics and advocates as amici curiae in support of the petitioner (the surrogate) in the case discussed above.

Living the revolution

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She was just beginning her career as a physician and wasn’t ready to be a parent, she said in her lawsuit. “She wanted to meet a man, fall in love, get married, enjoy his life as wife with her husband and then, when she and her husband thought the time was ‘right,’ to have a baby.”

I have personally, to my own ears, not second hand, heard the above as a reason for getting an abortion. That child is long gone–the woman got it. (She wasn’t a physician, but otherwise the quote stands.)

 This is legit when a woman chooses it.

However, the quote above is actually this: 

He was just beginning his career as a physician and wasn’t ready to be a parent, he said in his lawsuit. “He wanted to meet a woman, fall in love, get married, enjoy his life as husband with his wife and then, when he and his wife thought the time was ‘right,’ to have a baby. The deceptions by DD deprived PP of the benefit of that choice.”

This is actually the story of a man who doesn’t want to be a dad and feels deceived into it. In other words, he would have aborted if he could. The courts are telling him he has to pay support and suck it up. 

Please make no mistake: I think the man is a cad and a fool. But only in the way we all are, these days, as most everyone believes pregnancy and sex are totally unrelated. The courts have to force him into payments and fatherhood because they can’t afford to set any precedent where parents are not responsible for their children–someone must pay. 

But this is a sad statement on our society when it comes to relationships. Viva la Revolucion. 

Living the revolution: Having our cake and eating it, too

Women’s healthcare at Planned Parenthood USA

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If Planned Parenthood is defunded in the States, there will be an outcry about how this is misogynistic, because Planned Parenthood is somehow responsible for women’s healthcare. In the United States (not in Canada) Planned Parenthood is actually an abortion provider–that is their main business. 

This little video shows what they offer to pregnant women who want a non-abortion related ultrasound. (If you don’t have time to watch it, I’ll tell you. The answer is nothing.) 

Another woman’s story of becoming pro-life

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Could happen to anyone–any of your staunch pro-choice friends. People change. People learn. And people (over the long term) will never learn that abortion is actually beneficial and easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. That’s due to the nature of what abortion is. Anyway, Frederica Mathewes-Green tells her story. She is an author and she also has a blog, which I am going to bookmark for later reading.  

This issue gets presented as if it’s a tug of war between the woman and the baby. We see them as mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. But that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? It must be the first time in history when mothers and their own children have been assumed to be at war. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her child.

Frederica Mathewes-Green

South Korea overturns gender imbalance

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There is hope. 

In an effort to reduce the incidence of selective abortions, South Korea enacted a law in 1988 making it illegal for a doctor to reveal the gender of a foetus to expectant parents.

At the same time women were also becoming more educated, with many more starting to join the workforce, challenging the convention that it was the job of a man to provide for his family.

It worked, but it was not for one reason alone. Rather, a combination of these factors led to the eventual gender rebalancing.

I note they adhere to the studious conviction that the law played the least role but I suspect two things. One, that the law “set the tone” and acted as a teacher, as it tends to do. And two, that we’ll never know whether the law actually played a role or not, because abortion politics are so pervasive. If the law actually did something, well then, what would that say about laws on other abortion-related matters? 

The future is so bright, this little girl needs shades.

Psychological health after abortion

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A study that came out before Christmas purported to examine psychological health when abortion is denied (due to the request being made after appropriate gestational limits). That study found that women who are denied abortion have higher levels of anxiety and this was reported, though not terribly broadly. Turns out (no great surprise) the study lacks rigor and was funded by a group that aims to promote “reproductive rights” and “safe abortion care.” This article shows why that study doesn’t hold water. 

This seems like a good moment to promote the documentary Hush. 

Only 37.5% of women invited to take part in the study actually participated, and across the study period 42% of these dropped out, rendering the final sample comprised of under 22% of those eligible for inclusion! The 78% of women whose voices are not included were likely those who had the most serious post-abortion psychological complications. With sensitive topic research, securing a high initial consent rate and avoiding sample loss are vitally linked to the validity of the conclusions. The authors acknowledge this fact as they state “we cannot rule out the possibility that women with adverse mental health outcomes may have been less likely to participate and/or been retained.” We really can just stop here, because this is a fatal flaw. 

Women are turning their back on this kind of shoddy research. Go see Hush instead.

Vindication

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There’s a lengthy article here, in the Toronto Star (clearly not the mouthpiece of the pro-life movement) about young women moving away from the Pill.

I have been talking for a long time about the negative side of the Pill, mostly from a women’s health and welfare angle. I have also critiqued the Pill because it distorts the relationship between the sexes and harms women’s chances of long term relationship happiness in something called marriage.

This is something that ideologues have loved to critique. I’m “anti-sex” or “religious” or this or that. I’m betting they won’t say that about the Toronto Star.

I have been on the birth control pill, and the sadness factor, or feeling distant from life, the world and myself is what I experienced. It wasn’t pleasant but at the time, so many moons ago, I had no way to understand what was happening or connect the dots. When I came off the Pill that feeling went away. And so, in hindsight, I realize my life had became more difficult, and coping strategies that I would have had naturally were taken away, thanks to the Pill messing with my hormones.

Anyway, you can read more, for yourself. But let this moment stand, and enjoy it: People opposed to the Pill had good reason, and the rest of the world is now catching up.

Some of the women say they became uncomfortable with putting synthetic hormones in their bodies. Many say the pill affected their emotional state.

A large-scale, longitudinal study published in September in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, part of the Journal of the American Medical Association network, suggests hormonal contraception could cause depression.

The study analyzed data from more than one million women aged 15 to 34, collected from Denmark’s National Prescription Register and Psychiatric Central Research Register over 14 years. The authors concluded women who took the birth control pill had a 23 per cent greater risk of depression than those who did not take the pill. Compared to non-users, the risk associated with progestin-only pills was 34 per cent greater.

Other methods of birth control carried a higher risk of depression, which may be linked to dosage, the study says: women using the progestin-releasing IUD faced a 40 per cent greater risk than non-users; the risk for vaginal ring users was 60 per cent greater. The birth control patch doubled the risk of depression.

 

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Mothers in a modern era

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This is quite a thoughtful look at caring for children and the evolution of family. The author, Luma Simms, doesn’t get into the “mommy wars,” which is a relief. I’ve long been against national, state-funded daycare, not because I’m against daycare per se, but rather because I’m against this inequitable method of telling people how they ought to raise their kids (which is what happens in every jurisdiction where such programs are introduced, lest you want to tell me “but it’s just another choice!” We should be able to care for kids in communities and even when this is difficult, we should aspire to that, without government funding.

I also like how she touches on our prosperity as being part of the problem. Abundance is harder to manage than scarcity, as she puts it.

Finally, notions on family especially on the part of conservatives like myself, have been reduced to an individualistic model. This happens precisely because mom and dad and children as a model is under such profound attack, so it’s a natural reaction to defend the inherent good of just that: Mom and dad and children. That said, I agree with her when she talks about how this family ideal is itself a product of the sexual revolution, not the ideal we should aspire to. Parents need more help than that.

What many miss when talking about family and community is this: The two-parent, biologically intact natural family is itself a product of individualistic thinking. So we research and analyze but the whole time we’re missing something right under our nose, a variable we’ve assumed is immutable. Family breakdown didn’t happen exclusively as a direct result of radical feminism and the sexual revolution, although those accelerated it. The breakdown began when we reduced the idea of what a family is to the bare bones of two parents and their children—what came to be called the nuclear family. But from time immemorial family included many more people in its definition.

Anyway, an interesting read from a reasonable woman. I’m fond of posting the work of interesting women here. I’m willing to bet she’s pro-life too–as so many reasonable, smart women are!!

Luma Simms

Luma Simms

 

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