To think: I could have had ProWomanProLife up and running years ago and retired at 25 to Hawaii.
Poll results worth repeating
More women than men are pro-life. 34 per cent of Canadian women believe a baby should be protected from conception, as compared with 26 per cent of men. Read it here.
Now why bring out this news from October? Because information and good, old-fashioned logic are the main defence against those in favour of extreme choices, like abortion. And they’ll be out, guns a blazin’, to celebrate Morgentaler this month. [Editor’s note: “Guns a blazin'” is an idiom. No human rights tribunals, please, on how I have hurt some downcast feminist’s feelings over her passionately non-violent stance on everything but abortion. Thank you.]
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Rebecca adds:
That’s interesting. I wonder what the reason is for the discrepancy. I think one function of readily available abortion, though, has been to weaken the link between sex and reproduction in a way that particularly lessens men’s responsibilities toward an unplanned child.
Whatever offends you most
I think we all need to thank my former employer Ezra Levant for this. That Alberta Human Rights Tribunal employee worked for her (taxpayer-funded) pay that day.
My favourite exchange comes around the three minute mark:
Ezra Levant: I published those cartoons to use the maximum freedom allowed. I published it without reservation. I published it in the most unreasonable manner.
Bureaucrat: What do you mean by unreasonable?
Ezra Levant: Whatever offends you most.
Right on.
Will wonders never cease?
This blogger with Canoe.ca talks about Juno, the new movie whereby a pregnant teenager has the baby in stark contrast to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a movie I grew up with.
He says:
All I can say to that is that “choice” implies making a decision based on a set of options…
Options. I can recall thinking in my teens and even 20s that I’d rather be dead than unexpectedly pregnant. I meant it. In hindsight, that wasn’t the most mature response, but there you have it. Would have been great to have some mentors putting things in long term perspective.
But a movie that shows there is life for the mother, forget about the baby, after an unplanned pregnancy, is a good thing. And another good thing is to have a Canoe blogger writing about it.
Even if he is a man, and should therefore, by conventional wisdom, sit silently and quietly reflect on how abortion has nothing to do with him.
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Raji adds:
Another Juno article in the NYT on January 13: “Sex and the Teenage Girl”
I liked her comments, especially “….Nor is an abortion psychologically or physically simple…”
I am woman, hear me sob?
A semi-interesting piece in today’s Ottawa Citizen by Susan Riley about Hillary Clinton’s “sudden display of emotion” at a recent campaign event which has reportedly helped her avoid another defeat in New Hampshire.
…no one would portray Hillary — wealthy, well-educated, well-connected and white — as a victim. As an individual, she obviously isn’t; as a woman trying to become president of the United States, however, she faces as daunting and history-shattering a challenge as does Obama — and her odds may be longer. In the New York Times, veteran feminist Gloria Steinem argues that “gender is probably the most restrictive force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen, or who could be in the White House.”
This argument can quickly become futile and self-defeating: who has it tougher in America, black men or women? Both do, in different ways, says Steinem — and, of course, intolerance hurts others, including Jews, Muslims, and, in the case of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, Mormons. But when it comes to winning political office in North America, Steinem argues, it is still hardest for women. The evidence is everywhere — including at 24 Sussex, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper is dining tonight with the 13 provincial leaders, not a woman among them.
Perhaps I am weird. But this endless victimizing really bothers me. So it’s tough for a woman to become president of the United States? I hope so! It ought to be tough for anybody.
[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=6qgWH89qWks]
UPDATE, Jan. 14: Re Judi’s comment – there is a third possibility. Maybe Hillary Clinton is losing (or in danger of same; I’m not counting her out just yet) because people don’t like her, irrespective of her gender.
Get married to your work
This little item suggests we can have happier working lives if we treat our co-workers like spouses.
Really? Won’t we just have a spike in broken, emotionally distraught companies? Save the economy! Keep treating your co-worker like a co-worker. Perhaps the solution here is actually for marriages: We should treat those at home with the same respect we treat those in our offices.
All women are equal, but some women are more equal than others
Hats off to George Jonas for this in today’s Ottawa Citizen.
The suggestion that America, or western societies in general, are still patriarchal is a state of mind. Evidence that in key professions — law, medicine — where female graduates now either match or outnumber males, won’t make a dent in it.
When is Hollywood pro-life?
Last night I watched Law and Order, which reminded me why I rarely watch TV these days. The episode opened with a bombing at a medical clinic that did genetic testing of fetuses. An early suspect was a couple whose pregnancy was terminated after mistakenly being diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. Implicit in the show was that the only problem here was the mistaken diagnosis; of course the abortion was appropriate if the baby had actually had a chromosomal disorder.
Then, in the second act, the plot twists: the lab that was bombed was linked to a scientist trying to find a “gay gene.” (The usual gratuitous swipe at religious Christians was then inserted.) A few convolutions later, and we learn that the pregnant woman in a coma, after being injured by the bomb, is carrying a boy with, yes, the “gay gene.” The father chooses to abort the baby, arguing that being gay is like a disease. The repugnance of all the other characters is loud and clear – suddenly, an abortion would be part of a “gay holocaust.” (Yes, they actually used that phrase.)
Now, straw men and implausible plotting aside, how can any sensible person reconcile this logic? The argument that abortion must be an option all the time, to anyone, for any reason, is at least internally consistent. The argument that an unborn child is a person regardless of what his genes may contain is also pretty straightforward. But to maintain that a fetus is a lump of cells with no intrinsic value or rights, unless it carries a gene for homosexuality, in which case aborting it is a grave sin, is morally and logically incoherent.
Every now and then, Hollywood makes sense
Sort of picking up on Andrea’s point, though perhaps with a twist. It’s not always true that beauty and fashion sense go together. If you pay any attention to Mr. Blackwell’s list (and if you don’t, you should start – it’s pure girlie fun), you will notice starlets that make his worst-dressed list very often display way too much skin for no good reason. I don’t mean to sound like a boring old prude, but there’s no way to redeem this outfit. He called Posh’s style “one skinny-mini monstrosity after another”.
Hear! Hear!
Beauty and intelligence
Today, feminists everywhere celebrate what would have been Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th birthday. She was Jean-Paul Sartre’s “life partner.” But let’s be perfectly clear: It’s not that she would have needed Sartre, no no, she was indeed independent. No woman ever needs a man. It’s just that articles about her tend to mention her relationship to him straight away, and then segue into her completely unique contributions to feminism and philosophy. One of her beliefs, as per Der Spiegel:
…Beauvoir refused to buy into the notion, considered a matter of course in the bourgeois society of the day, that beauty and intelligence are incompatible.
Though it’s certainly not clear that they always go together, either. Probably need to go on a case by case basis on that one.