Three parent embryos was approved in the UK yesterday. This article explains what this is about:

But what has been proposed, and now approved by the House of Commons, is not a treatment at all.  The proposed technique ignores people who already have mitochondrial disease, spurning them in favor of creating new individuals who will (advocates hope) not carry the genetic mutations.  The proposal is to manufacture genetically-engineered babies.  Mitochondria are inherited from the mother, so the proposal calls for recombining parts from two different eggs to engineer a genetically new egg (or destroying and recombining parts from two different embryos, to assemble a genetically new embryo), theoretically with healthy mitochondrial DNA.

My cab driver this morning understood this sounds like a terrible idea. The question is, why didn’t the majority in the UK Parliament?

Amy Julia Becker makes a great point about finding out that her child had Down syndrome.

There is some false, yet underlying assumption that pregnant women have to go through genetic testing to know if their child has the disability.

But more importantly, that tiny bit of medical information, in essence tells us nothing.  Not only are the doctors  “ill-equipped to interpret test results and to offer a fair and balanced description of Down syndrome” but the fact itself does nothing to describe who these little people are.  The medical information does not describe these little girls and boys, who despite their disability, will have all kinds of interests, quaint personality traits, and precious moments.

Being a parent of a child with Downs is as joy-filled and full of surprises as any parenting experience would be.

Genetic testing merely puts parents on a search and destroy mission without ever allowing them to know who their child is.

In the hospital, we received a diagnostic portrait of our child. Some of it was spot on: she has tubes in her ears and wears glasses. She needed a heart procedure. She still sees therapists every week. And yet the diagnostic portrait, even though it included some accurate facts, never showed me anything true about our daughter. It never told me that she wouldn’t love dress up clothes or baby dolls but that she would love spelling words and playing Monopoly. It never told me that she would sneak the iPad under the covers—not to play games or watch videos—but to read Matilda. It never told me she would form a friendship with my 88-year old grandmother, and that together they would read and sing and look at pictures. It never told me how much of her life would be worth celebrating.

photo credit: Wondermonkey2k via photopin cc

This came out yesterday, just days before the celebration of Christmas.

Health Canada has set an internal deadline of mid-January to finally make a decision on the abortion pill, a drug that is already available in 60 countries but has been stuck in Canada’s drug-approval pipeline for more than three years.

Sadly this article does NOT accurately describe the routine consequences of the RU486 abortion pill, which for most women is a harrowing ordeal.

You can read an article that I wrote on the issue that explains the serious problems with this drug.  The number of deaths world-wide stand at about 22, but the adverse effects of RU486 are much more prevalent and often under-reported.

I will be writing on this issue again in the coming year.

For now, we will not allow any Grinches to steal the joy of Christmas, so a very Merry Christmas to you all!

photo credit: Sarah_Ackerman via photopin

The Canadian Medical Association Journal has published an article that shows how access to abortion in English speaking Canada falls behind that of Quebec.  The article covers researchers, funded by the Society of Family Planning, who presented their preliminary findings of a study on access to abortion at the Family Medicine Forum in Quebec City on Nov. 12.  What they found was that of the 94 abortion facilities across Canada, 46 of them are in the Province of Quebec.  They claim that Quebec is a leader in “equitable access” with half of its abortion facilities in rural areas and at least one facility in every health region.

What the CMAJ article and the study are really aiming at, however, is raising the issue of “medical abortion”.

Researches claim that the poor access to surgical abortion in other provinces “puts [women] at higher risk of having a second trimester abortion and its associated complications. And for those without the resources or time to navigate the system, it may mean carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.”

Co-investigator Dr. Edith Guilbert, a senior medical advisor at the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec had this to say:

Increasing access to medical abortion — that is, abortion induced by oral medication — could close some of the gaps in rural access because a local family doctor could administer the drug. “It saves women having to travel. It saves them having to undergo a surgical procedure.”

The article goes on to say that Health Canada has been considering approval of mifepristone (known as RU-486) since December 2012.

According to a recent CMAJ commentary (2013;186:13-14), the drug is considered the gold standard for inducing safe and early non-surgical abortion.

What they don’t, of course, mention are the deaths, complications and horrendous health hazards that have befallen women and their unborn children in BC, the US and around the world.

Three pro-abortion feminists wrote an incredibly well researched book entitled “RU486 – Myths and Misconceptions”  in 1992,  describing RU-486 as a “new form of medical violence that endangers women’s lives and violates their right to be free from bodily harm”.

One of the authors, Renata Klein, wrote an open letter to MPs in Australia in 2005 , stating that:

“Then, as now, some of you will be astonished that as an internationally recognized feminist and academic who has worked on reproductive issues for 25 years and strongly supports a woman’s right to safe legal abortion, I will side with what are seen as conservative and anti-abortion views.

However, then, as now, I cannot support the view that chemical abortion is seen (a) as good reproductive choice for women, and (b) as a safe alternative to already available abortion by aspiration. I write to you because I am appalled by the misinformation given to the public by supporters of RU-486, who continue to claim chemical abortion is safe, and who portray it as a simple procedure; take three RU486 pills and –bingo! You are no longer pregnant.”

Any person who would dare to support chemical abortion, RU-486, must read this book and the other real-life testimonies of women who have suffered the days, even weeks, of agony and gore as a result of this monstrous chemical concoction.