ProWomanProLife

You are here: Home / Archives for All Posts / Free Expression

The comms strategies of environmentalists in Alberta

by Leave a Comment

I listened to this program on CBC not too long ago. It’s Chris Turner talking about how to be a Green Party candidate in Calgary. I appreciated his remarks.

Activists in particular tend to come guns a blazing, and it’s rare that others share the passion. That can be the first problem.

Pro-life activists tend to want to speak truth but we can be bad at listening. And we can be bad at meeting people where they are at. (Listening and meeting people where they are at is not the same thing as compromising on important values, she reminds herself.)

In any event, finding consensus in a conversation is a good starting point, whether you are an environmentalist in Calgary discussing the oil sands or a pro-lifer at a downtown Toronto dinner party.

Listen

Really, truly, authentic pilgrimages

by 1 Comment

Breathtaking-Views-Slide-1600x543

Now for something totally different and shamelessly self-promoting.  I was actually given an invitation to blog about this, so I’m not being totally shameless.

Having lived in Rome, Italy for two years and marrying a man who spent nearly a decade traipsing around the European continent, I have some experience in these matters.  There are pilgrimage companies, and then there are pilgrimage companies.  Likewise, there are tour guides (especially in the Vatican) and there are tour guides.

Orbis Catholicus Travel is one of those tour companies offering small group pilgrimages to Italy, the Holy Land, Mexico, (even Cuba – in January 2016) and France that really knows a thing or two about authentic pilgrimages, and excellent tour guiding.

We keep groups small and intimate, we stay right in the heart of the action, and we make sure that groups get to know an area intimately, with regard to the art, history, culinary traditions and religion.  And we don’t do the marathon tours of spending 14 nights in 14 different cities – watch out!

We know our guides. Tour guides can make or break a tour.  Ours happen to be our good friends with whom we prayed, ate, lived and celebrated Rome.

There is so much more I could say on the subject, but suffice it to say, your time and resources would be well spent. So I encourage you to visit Orbis Catholicus Travel to learn more about our upcoming tours.

 

OCLA position paper on institutional bias against pro-life campaigners in Ontario

by 2 Comments

Great to see. I almost have a hard time believing that this is real! Read the whole thing, concluding with what anyone engaged in the pro-life side of things knows to be true:

The OCLA seeks to raise the concern that there is palpable institutional bias against pro-life advocates in Ontario and that this is harmful to society and substantively unjust towards members of the community.

“The abortion distortion” very often means we have free expression up until the point when abortion comes up. I hope that OCLA position paper works toward fixing that.

I also hope that they are prepared for a barrage of insults ranging from how they can’t think, to how they are in the pocket of the radical, religious right etc. etc. etc.

censored

Out of the mouths of babes

by 2 Comments

2679024003_2c44919dbc_b

Sometimes the most insightful and remarkable statements come from children.  We have all been witness to a child whose keen observation, humility and complete innocence causes them to spout great and eternal truths at the most uncanny and opportune (or inopportune) moments in life.  Often these truths, which are so obvious to the child, have been have sullied by adults with our greed, our cynicism and our pride.

Here is one such example, and it is worth watching.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9–Rf1K9aA]

(The YouTube link is here.)

We would do well to heed these children.

 

photo credit: Mud Fest 2008 via photopin (license)

Debate on campus

by Leave a Comment

From the Onion:

Saying that such a dialogue was essential to the college’s academic mission, Trescott University president Kevin Abrams confirmed Monday that the school encourages a lively exchange of one idea.

They forgot to get into the part about socially ostracizing, raising eyebrows, looking askew and docking grades for those students who discuss an idea other than the one idea everyone already agrees on. But that story could be for another day.

15

Legal action against the Ontario government

by 7 Comments

The Association for Reform Political Action and Run with Life blogger Pat Maloney are taking legal action against the Ontario government by challenging the constitutionality of not allowing abortion to be subject to access to information requests.

Pat Maloney used to get aggregate abortion statistics by filing these access to information requests, but since the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act was passed in Ontario, she can’t.

She is not asking for private information, only the aggregate stats. The denial of this information is the opposite of Public Sector Accountability. Here are the notes from press conference held this afternoon at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

That’s because all abortion information is now excluded from FIPPA: Abortion numbers. Abortion complications. Abortion costs to the taxpayer. The demographic statistics of women who have abortions: their age, how many abortions they have, and the gestational age of the fetus at termination. Anything and everything about abortion is now being hidden by the Ontario government.

This is not about being pro-life. We need good statistics to see trends in our society and to know whether education programs are working.

Challenging the Ontario government for withholding abortion statistics.

Challenging the Ontario government for withholding abortion statistics.

On plan A

by 1 Comment

Plan B.

It’s the emergency contraception that works in part by not allowing an already fertilized embryo to implant, so an exceptionally early abortion.

It also works by wreaking havoc on a woman’s body, lots of nausea, throwing up, waiting at home by yourself.

I was waiting in the drugstore yesterday and I noticed it sitting there on the shelf. Plan B.

It’s not called Plan A.

Getting pregnant at the wrong time is never your first choice.

When you are asked about your plans for the future they are never “I’m going to complete my degree, but only with difficulty and perhaps by taking longer because I’m going to get pregnant—round about second year?—with someone I don’t love or know that I want to be with for a weekend, let alone a lifetime.”

Immediately you are launched into “Plan B” territory.

I would say Plan B—the drug, and Plan B the idea is a bad plan, and what you want is a new Plan A.

Your Plan A might not be executed in exactly the fashion you thought, but women should not need to have surgery or take pills to be equal and successful in this world.

Doing so means acquiescing to the fact that this is an anti-family world, and that life is only ever played out on sterile terms.

We don’t make accommodations for people who need special circumstances very easily. Why is that?

Perhaps because we rarely ask?

If we are to build a world where women truly thrive, it can’t include abortion, because this cuts life off, and demands that women function as men.

On this idea of creating new plan As—it happens All. The. Time and is fairly non-controversial in practice.

My Plan A: I thought I would be an international diplomat or journalist. I thought I would live and work in Europe, and I spent near two years there trying to build this future. I was actually fairly fluent in German for a time.

My life today? I am not an international diplomat or journalist. My writing portfolio is focused almost exclusively on domestic, social affairs. I live in Ottawa.

The other Plan A from a slightly earlier stage in my life was to be a kinesiologist. I thought I might do water therapy/rehabilitation for people who have suffered accidents, because I lived and breathed the pool in high school. I love swimming still.

I do swim, three times a week. And that’s as close as I am to that Plan A.

Plan As almost never look exactly as we thought, and a good friend, a good feminist, any strong woman in your life will help a younger woman understand that. As we live through the ups and downs of life there is a long term trajectory toward achieving not just your own practical goals, but your vocation—without claiming a false right to kill your unborn child along the way.

I am not where I thought I would be or perhaps even should be today, but I am happy.

We should never acquiesce to a contrived Plan B when we can live a Plan A adventure.

(I’m so far gone on planning these days that there are no letters left in the alphabet.)

I tried to say a version of this as my concluding remarks at the “Stump the Pro-lifer” event yesterday, but I don’t think I really captured what I meant, so trying to post those thoughts here today.

7657re2

Looking out over the coffee fields of El Salvador. Part of me wishes I could be a coffee farmer. But I realize this plan is more than slightly unrealistic.

 

On age and ideas

by Leave a Comment

Bad ideas are bad, good ideas are good whether young or old. Peter Stockland comments:

Bad ideas in young heads are as bad as bad ideas in old heads. The issue is not the age at which those ideas enter our heads, but whether they become ideologically fixed and impervious to contradictory reason or experience. The question to be asked is not so much about the beliefs that those under 35 hold, but how, why, and when they give way to a more nuanced and more realistic understanding of the world.

Bold is mine, because that part matters. Are my ideas so fixed that they are impervious to reason and/or experience? I hope not.

pride

April 9: Stump the Pro-lifer!

by 1 Comment

Do you have questions you’ve always wanted to ask people who call themselves pro-life? Lingering concerns? Secret confusion? Do you think I’m a horrible person and you want to put me on the spot? Well then, it’s your lucky day…

Come one, come all to what promises to be a good event.

On Thursday, April 9, in the Agora at Ottawa University, you can ask all you’ve ever wanted from a panel of four. 7 pm. See you there.

StumpTheProLifer

 

Meta