ProWomanProLife

This story starts with hubby sending me a link to this:

A Muslim religious channel in Britain is being censored after allowing presenters on air to condone marital rape and violence toward women, and for calling women who wear perfume in mosques “prostitutes.”

The U.K. Daily Mail reports that in one program, the host told viewers that it was “not strange” and “not such a big problem” for a man to force his wife to have sex.

The U.K.’s T.V. watchdog, Ofcom, ruled the Islam Channel breached the broadcasting code in five different programs between May 2008 and October 2009.

At first, I must admit, I was rather confused. Weren’t we just told marital rape was impossible under Islam? I must have misunderstood.

And then I went googling around for fun, to see who was picking up the story (yes, looking for outraged feminists – no, didn’t find none… so far), and below is a screen capture of what I found. Look at the list of headlines (and news sources), and see if you can correctly identify each outlet’s bias. It’s a fun game!

Marie Stopes International runs one of the most aggressive marketing campaigns I have ever encountered, from TV ads on abortion to youth-friendly JibJab style cartoons depicting sexual scenarios, from World Cup themed vasectomy ads in cabs to the latest SexFactor (playing off the uber-popular UK talent show, The X Factor).

MSI, in their efforts to become the primary source of contraceptives, reproductive surgery and abortions, have now taken it upon themselves to be the first to “educate” the children of Manchester about the birds and the bees.

Marie Stopes International is hosting SexFactor for 200, 15 year olds from local Manchester schools to give them all the facts about how to avoid unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and sexual assault.

SexFactor will be a fun, interactive day with workshops on sex and relationships being held at the Lancashire County Cricket club today.

[...]

Louise Brennan, Clinical Lead at Marie Stopes International’s Manchester clinic said:

“The research is very clear; where sex and relationships education is taught in conjunction with contraceptive services, young people are more likely to delay their first sexual experience, practice safe sex and are less likely to have an unplanned pregnancy or contract an STI.

“Many of the students attending SexFactor, previously have not received any sex or relationships education. So this is about arming young people with the information to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancy and STIs, to respect each other and to have the skills and knowledge to have safe sexual relationships.

“We have received requests from teachers to visit their schools to teach sex and relationships education because students have become pregnant. Many teachers are telling us they don’t feel they have the training or information to properly teach comprehensive sex and relationships education.

“Marie Stopes International calls for the Government to make the teaching of sex and relationship education compulsory and to fund the proper training of teachers, but in the meantime we are helping local schools.”

School boards are elected by their communities. MSI, as a non-gvernmental organization, answers to no one but themselves. So is it really about teaching children to “respect each other” (which I find difficult to imagine for 15 year olds at an event called SexFactor), or is it about getting them familiar with the brand name?

Some folks are trying to organize an electronic debate on abortion, here. It’s in French, but I don’t know whether the organizers would agree to have an English component if asked.

This journalist is looking for you. Here’s the message as it appears on Twitter:

Looking for parents who would have liked to have more children than they did, for one reason or another. Know anyone? #parenting #pregnancy

Out of touch? Ill-informed? Trauma sustained by meeting obnoxious pro-lifers in their youth? I can’t psycho-analyze the level of media paranoia on the A word anymore than I can figure out Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s.

This article is a good one, though. Because on abortion, as on other issues, the media have ceased to report, instead opining excessively. (I opine excessively, too, it’s just that when I write for papers my pieces are actually in the op-ed section.)

So the next time you watch the pro-life community dismissed as a fringe element, ask yourself: Who’s really out of touch with the American people here?

Some people have a strange definition of “far greater“:

OTTAWA — A third of Canadians want the abortion debate reopened – but a far greater number want politicians to leave the explosive issue alone and are satisfied with the status quo, according to a poll released Friday.

Forty-six per cent of those surveyed said the federal government should “leave things as they are”, while 34 per cent said the abortion issue should be reopened and 17 per cent said they didn’t care one way or the other. Three per cent declined to answer.

Actually, what bugs me in this story is the 17 percent of people who say they don’t care. I can see wanting to keep things as they are, and I can see wanting to change the status quo. But not caring one way or the other?

Father De Souza hits one nicely on the head:

What drives the hostility to the government’s motherhood issue? Motherhood. The heart of the opposition to the initiative is its starting point – expectant mothers. To a certain cast of mind, considering women as mothers constitutes something of a retrograde step. Hence the objection that helping mothers to have safe deliveries is somehow illegitimate unless similar help is offered to women to avoid becoming mothers at all.

In most elite circles, the great social liberation of the past generations has been the liberation of women from the expectation, to say nothing of the reality, of motherhood. Indeed, liberation from the fear of motherhood due to easy contraception and unlimited abortion is considered perhaps the greatest item of social progress in the last half-century. Consequently, for a program to explicitly favour motherhood, even at the minimal level of ensuring safe deliveries, causes howls of outrage from those who think that African villagers should behave more like liberal society matrons – if one might use that pregnant word, figuratively speaking of course.

In many African countries, for example, for Canada to fund abortions would be breaking the local laws. To flout local laws and undermine local customs was once called paternalism. It’s an odd turn for Canada’s abortion extremists to be paternalistic, but such is the strangeness of this controversy.

How exactly is this not promoting abortion?

The advert from Marie Stopes will be screened on Monday, offering what the organisation says will be “clear, non-judgmental information” on unplanned pregnancies and abortion services.

Marie Stopes said it took the decision to screen the commercial after a study found fewer than half of UK adults knew where to go for specialist advice about an unplanned pregnancy other than their GP.

Asking your family doctor seems like a good place to turn when you want personalized health advice. At least your GP will understand your medical history and family background. Something tells me a ‘specialist clinic’ will want less information.

Spector on Charest, and Margaret Wente who says relax, abortion rights aren’t threatened, and write a cheque to Planned Parenthood.

Around the 13 minute and 30 second mark, a good segment, here.