My favourite line:

Is all of [the missing women] due to abortion of girls in utero? No. In 1990, much of it was due to female infanticide. But the arrival of inexpensive ultrasound technology in rural Asia in the 1990s meant that the killing became easier to do before birth rather than after.

On a radio show yesterday I struggled to find the right words, to be less aggressive, more amenable with the general public. How to discuss these “missing women?” I struggled but landed on “killing” too. There just isn’t another word. And while I don’t want to be harsh, I have vowed to not use euphemisms in discussing abortion, either.

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers — “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!” — those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.

But what really spoke to me is her description of time at the end: chronos versus Kairos. It almost seems to me that you can’t have the Kairos moments without the chronos. If time stood still in a Kairos kind of way all the time, we’d be frozen and would never achieve anything. Anyway, read the post, and you’ll see what I mean.  And hats off to those warrior women, raising their children well.

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Jennifer adds: I quickly realized when I got home from the hospital, and in my sleep deprived haze began eating three day old mushy peas from the fridge with tortilla chips thinking they were guacamole, that motherhood wasn’t going to be easy. It’s a tough job, parenting, and let’s not pretend otherwise. In pretending, parents can feel like isolated nut-jobs if they’re not out there savoring the moment. So I really liked this article. One of my favourite parts:

I used to worry that not only was I failing to do a good enough job at parenting, but that I wasn’t enjoying it enough. Double failure. I felt guilty because I wasn’t in parental ecstasy every hour of every day and I wasn’t MAKING THE MOST OF EVERY MOMENT like the mamas in the parenting magazines seemed to be doing. I felt guilty because honestly, I was tired and cranky and ready for the day to be over quite often. And because I knew that one day, I’d wake up and the kids would be gone, and I’d be the old lady in the grocery store with my hand over my heart. [...] And here’s what I hope to say to the younger mama gritting her teeth in line:

“It’s helluva hard, isn’t it? You’re a good mom, I can tell. And I like your kids, especially that one peeing in the corner. She’s my favorite. Carry on, warrior. Six hours till bedtime.” And hopefully, every once in a while, I’ll add – “Let me pick up that grocery bill for ya, sister. Go put those kids in the van and pull on up — I’ll have them bring your groceries out.”

While some of the ideas suggested in the booklet Eat Better, Start Better are useful, such as how to cater for youngsters of different religions, other information is extraordinarily basic such as the fact that sugar rots teeth and fruit is full of vitamins. It even tells nursery workers, who have already had two years’ training in looking after children, what the definition of meat is and how best to define a week (Monday to Friday).

Nothing says love like a government book on how to feed your toddler. (From the UK, coming soon to a province near you.)

Dennis Miller once explained that he considered “everyone and everything to be comedic fair game, except for the helpless.” You’d think Down Syndrome kids and dead babies would count as helpless. But no – some people simply have no shame.

I wholeheartedly support MPs bringing up this issue. And MP Stephen Woodworth is not bringing up abortion, but rather,  an examination of what is in the womb, and whether a child in the womb has any rights. You may think I’m splitting hairs here in identifying that there is a difference, but I’m not.

Abortion is one possible outcome of pregnancies, but in Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. DFG back in 1997, a mother, pregnant with her third child, could not be coerced into drug treatment of any kind in spite of the fact that her first two were born with problems because of her glue-sniffing addiction. Here, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the mother could not be put in treatment against her will because the unborn child had no legal status until he or she was born. In this case, the mother had no intention of aborting, but she also had no intention of halting her addiction. Had the child had any rights, perhaps this situation could have been changed.

In any event, while I support MPs bringing this up, I still don’t believe that political change is where the abortion debate is at. Ie. Even if we start to debate a law, it won’t truly protect unborn children, because the best we can hope for at this current time is the absolutely uncivilized situation of countries like the UK, where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, and even after that in rare cases, if I’m not mistaken. 24 weeks.  Here’s a picture of a non-human, non-child, non-entity at 24 weeks:

Or how about we work decades long, struggle really hard, and get that abortion limited pushed down to 22 weeks?

Right. Something’s gotta give and while political debate is a useful tool in igniting the conscience of our nation, I don’t think that’s where it’s at, in total.

The sun-drenched common room at the south end of Columbia Garden Village retirement home in Invermere, B.C., is quiet most days. The shuffle of slippers on linoleum, the clink of a coffee mug in the sink, or the click of knitting needles are often the only sounds.

But every Tuesday and Friday, 18 kindergartners from Eileen Madson Primary School arrive in a yellow school bus and take over, turning the home’s common room into a classroom, and the home’s residents into active participants. The kindergartners go about their lessons, crafts and play time surrounded by the seniors who live there. Some elders watch from the sidelines, others roll up their sleeves and build block towers or indulge in a reading of a Scooby-Doo storybook.

If you’re in the Halifax area, the next PAIR meet-up is January 21st.

A Brazilian woman who has given birth to a baby with two heads, admitted she had initially expected twins. [...]

Mr Vasconcelos added that at no point did the mother, who has three other children, appear distraught that her son has two heads.

He said: ‘On the contrary, the baby was received with much happiness by the family.

‘The mother fed both mouths and the baby stayed with her in her room the whole time. Her desire was to take her baby straight home.’

Jane Hannam, 12, was walking home from Heretaunga Intermediate with a friend last Thursday when they were approached by a female protester outside Hawke’s Bay Hospital and given a rubber foetus and information card about foetal development.

Her parents, Brian and Zarlene Hannam, said it was disgusting that protesters would target young school-aged children and made a complaint to Hastings police.

“We just found her playing with this toy foetus,” Mrs Hannam said. “It was sort of like a really soft spongy flesh-coloured foetus. I just think that’s disgusting.

“Everyone is allowed to protest and I don’t have any problem about that, but what they gave out was really inappropriate.”

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Andrea adds: I think it’s fair to find handing out plastic fetuses weird. I do. Just being honest. The first time I was handed one, can’t be helped, that was my feeling: something along the lines of “ok, so this is weird.” But “disgusting?” “Really inappropriate?” Comments like that reflect on the pro-choice views of the parents. Nothing more, nothing less.

The most visible, entrepreneurial and passionate advocates for the rights of the unborn (as they would put it) are women. More to the point: They are youngish Christian working mothers with children at home.