ProWomanProLife

Read all about it. A woman, who became a man, and then got pregnant. Choice really is our culture’s highest value, even when it looks just plain ole’ crazy:

Mr. Hope said he was worried the procedure, done with the patient in stirrups, might be a little “feminizing,” but said clinic staff acted sensitively to the situation.

You don’t say.

Remember when Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness“? “Truthiness is a “truth” that a person claims to know intuitively “from the gut” or because it “feels right” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.”

I now coin the word “choiciness.” Same idea. Choiciness is a choice that a person defends vehemently because it “feels right” and “sounds good” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

How did I come to coin this word? After discussing abortion with two Carleton University students on campus radio yesterday for an hour.

Upstanding young people of good will, I must hasten to add.

But the gist of the conversation was this: Abortion is bad. It should not be used as birth control. It can cause harm. But it must remain a choice.

I don’t actually disagree all too vehemently. It must not remain a choice in our minds and hearts, but people are certainly free to make their own monumental life errors.

They were truly hung up on the legislative side of things. But given how hung up they were on that, they couldn’t even come forward and say abortion is a terrible choice.

At the outset I explained that I believe in a “Canada without abortion. By choice.” And the host said, so how does that make you different from pro-choicers?

It makes me very different, because I can identify that abortion is a horrible, terrible, life-ending choice that is incompatible with human dignity and true concepts of freedom. Some things are not a choice. And whether or not the state tells me there is a law on this matter, I will always know it is wrong. It’s not confusing. There’s no debate about when life begins.

I was there with a Catholic chaplain on campus, who tried his darndest to explain concepts of what true freedom, true love and community mean from a Christian perspective. It all made sense to me, and I would have liked to hear more. But the worldview is so substantially different from the one that says FREE CHOICE IS OUR HIGHEST VALUE, that I fear it fell on deaf ears.They should interview him, one on one, about the worldview stuff. Would be interesting.

I remain optimistic, though. Because even these ardent supporters of choice were not ardent supports of abortion, and that came through loud and clear.

If you want to know if you’ll be treated any differently once you’re pregnant, the short answer is yes. I imagine this goes for all women, but it is especially true for the young and unmarried ladies out there. Things will be different, but a new autobiographical book entitled The Pregnancy Project concludes that the baby bump doesn’t push a successful life out of reach.

Gaby Rodriguez, of Toppenish, Wash., got headlines last April when she announced at a high school assembly that she had worn a faux baby bump for months to explore stereotypes about teen pregnancy. [...]

“Being a Hispanic girl from a family full of teen pregnancies meant that my odds of also becoming a teen mom were way higher than average,” she wrote. “If I gave people what they predicted, how would they react?”

Rodriguez believes the biggest message from her experience is: Things will be OK.

“It’s not the end of the road for them,” she said. “It’s going to be harder, but it’s not the end of the road.”

Last night, I went to see The Iron Lady. I have very low expectations when I go to see any Hollywood movie, but I must say, I give this one two thumbs up.

It has some shortcomings, of course. Some lines are given to Thatcher that simply don’t ring true, for example. One of them comes very early on when she tells Dennis, her soon-to-be husband, who has just proposed to her, that she won’t be a regular woman, “life must be about more than just washing teacups,” or something to that effect. It doesn’t ring true as something Thatcher would say. It sounds too feminist, and she wasn’t one, and is unnecessarily offensive to most every mother in the audience. Heck, I was offended, and I am not a mother.

There are also one or two other moments where I thought this isn’t Thatcher, this is Meryl Streep vying for an Oscar.

That said, I do hope Meryl Streep does get an Oscar for her performance here. Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as a tough, sensible, hard working and concerned Prime Minister. That there are shortcomings around some of her lines, some of the history, even the controversy over whether one should depict a woman yet living as having dementia doesn’t change that.

Have you ever gone to listen to great piano concert and thought, I must become a pianist, immediately? Or have you been to the ballet and subsequently wished you could dance? This movie had me leaving thinking I should run and become Prime Minister. To leave our great nation in a better position than how I found it (that was said in a British accent). It’s that kind of movie, and that can only be a good thing.

Here’s an interesting article about body modifications and whether or not they should be made/kept legal. The arguments in favor of keeping them legal are along the lines of…

“It’s here to stay regardless of whether the medical community wants it to be here,” he said. “Now it’s a case of how do we make it safe, because kids are dumb and they’re going to do it themselves if they don’t have a professional they can go to.”

I’m not against body modifications, people who want them can get them, but is this heading in the direction of funding professionals for every “dumb” thing kids do?

______________________

Andrea adds: I am against body modifications:

Public health authorities across Canada are struggling to address the growing popularity of body modifications such as splitting one’s tongue like a snake’s and surgically altering ears to make them elf-like and pointy, fearing the spread of infection in an unregulated industry.

I’m not “against them” the same way I’m against abortion, to be sure. I would not, for example, start up a web site to protest them, but if you asked me, I’d say I think it’s wrong to mess around surgically with your body for kicks. The sad truth for the extreme Lord of the Rings fan is that humans don’t have pointy ears… And elves aren’t real… The Shire is fictitious… I could go on…

_______________________

Jennifer adds: You’re too funny!

I also wouldn’t advocate for body modifications. I think of them in the same terms as breast implants and similar forms of plastic surgery. People probably do it for various reasons, self-esteem, attention, etc, but for me the problem is in understanding the self as something that needs to be represented by your physical appearance. What a person who gets a “body mod” doesn’t see is that it stems from the same desire for someone else to get breast implants, it’s all about the perception other people have of you. It’s not rebellious, it’s an enslavement to whatever group you’re trying to appeal to. “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” -Virginia Woolf

This creeped me out and made me laugh at the same time. I have no idea why OB wants to apologize to me, but there ya go, I fell for the gimmick and put in my name. This one’s for women, although a man putting in his name would be pretty funny too.

What am I talking about? Click here.

Recently, on a flight back from the Life 2011 conference, the woman sitting next to me asked me a few good questions.
Firstly, she asked me what kind of conference I had attended, something I think I would have hesitated to answer prior to the conference. It was either the lack of sleep (I was on the red-eye) or the weekend of communion with inspiring, openly pro-life people, or maybe some cocktail of both, that emboldened me that morning (and for the rest of my life) to answer confidently and without pause. She was older, obviously wondering what to ask next, when I asked her why it was she was away. She was working with at-risk youth in urban areas. “That’s amazing!”, I replied.

Then we went on to talk about how building confidence, having role models, all of things are the origins of preventing the abuse and sexualization of our youth, as well as a crucial part in preventing crisis pregnancy situations. Ultimately, we were working towards similar goals. I told her about the various charities in the area she could connect with, some expressly pro-life, some not, some simply community oriented that could provide her and her team support. I gave her names, phone numbers. Then she asked me a very interesting question. She asked, “Since you do all this work with women, youth and children, do you work with any pro-choice groups?”

I thought about this for awhile. I’d never been asked that before. Finally I said, “As far as I know, no pro-choice advocate groups are doing that kind of work.”

A movie I will want to see. Not before I brush up on my modern British history, however, as one can’t be sure how Hollywood will slant the facts. However, love her or hate her, no one, absolutely no one, would claim Margaret Thatcher was not a strong woman.

What is in the water these days? First we have a radio station auctioning off a Russian bride. Now Ottawa’s “Hot 89.9″ is giving away in vitro. No really. Now I probably don’t need to tell you that Hot 89.9 isn’t a family station. In fact, I’m listening to it right now and they are playing Pitbull. (I had to google that; here, let me help you.) It’s your general umcha umcha I’m blasting this techno beat as I rev my souped up sports car down your quiet suburban street type radio station. Nothing terribly wrong with that. Haven’t we all done it? Anyhoo.

How on earth did they come to this? The signs around town just show a baby and say something like “Win me.” I’m truly at a loss. It could be a publicity stunt. It could mean they are catering to a largely female crowd of roughly my age. It is certainly a sign infertility is a feature of our current culture.

I think it’s gauche and inappropriate; I can also think of worse things. Like giving away an abortion. (But then again, don’t we do that all the time; our tax dollars generally take care of it.) What’s hot, what’s really, really not. To me, this radio thing is somewhere in between.

Is this a joke? An Edmonton radio station has a wife-winning contest:

The Bear is giving away a wife! See the Latest Entries below! But we’re not going to give this opportunity to just anybody…. to weed out the no-hopers and time-wasters, we’ve developed the application form below. If you’re interested in potential holy matrimony with a hot foreign chick, fill it out to the best of your abilities. If we pick you, you’ll be heading to Russia with 13 nights’ accomodation, return air fare, and $500 spending money to meet the lucky lady!

In a world where flashy North Americans go on national TV to win a wife/husband, it can all get pretty confusing around what is and isn’t an appropriate way to meet someone and get married. But this one veers dangerously close to human trafficking territory. What do people think?