ProWomanProLife

It’s astounding the number of women who consider abortion in favour of their romantic relationship.  A woman is often put in a position where she feels she must choose between her boyfriend or her baby.  Some men may even be heard uttering, “What?  You’re choosing this baby over me?”

This recent — and very relevant — study published by the peer-reviewed journal Public Health suggests:

When a woman gets an abortion, the couple is more than twice as likely to argue when discussing future children, and nearly three times as likely to experience domestic violence, compared with women who carry the pregnancy to term and raise the child.

So, dude, it turns out that, if she’s choosing the baby, she is choosing you, too.  Suck it up.  You’ll make a great dad.

Contrast this:

North Dakota, with its deeply rooted conservative politics and piety, may soon pass the most radical anti-abortion legislation in the United States.

In the next few days, the state Senate will vote on a “personhood bill” that would declare a fertilized egg a human being. If passed, it would apply all criminal laws now on the books – from murder to assault and prohibitions on slavery – to an embryo or a fetus. The law would also likely end in-vitro fertilization and embryonic stem-cell research in the state.

with this:

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday will lift restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush, an administration official said.

“It will be today. He’s going to make an executive order [lifting the global gag rule],” the official said.

The Democratic president’s decision is a victory for advocates of abortion rights on an issue that in recent years has become a tit-for-tat policy change each time the White House shifts from one party to the other.

I remain far from convinced that outlawing abortion is the way to go. If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t need a law stating that the fetus is a person the same way we don’t need one stating that women are persons too. (Though on the other hand, it did take a fair bit of legal wrangling to get to where we are. This is one of those cases where I’m sorry I don’t have a third hand.) But that’s not what bugs me.

What I find irritating beyond words is the way those stories start. Where, in the story about President Obama lifting funding restrictions do they talk about his entrenched belief that abortion is exclusively a “woman’s right”, which in my mind at least is a lot weirder than a belief (rooted in religion or otherwise) that a human embryo is a human person in development?

Just asking.

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Andrea adds: It takes a science text book to see an embryo as the very first stage in human life. It takes…ideology, leaps in logic and a sustained attack against those medical texts to view abortion as a woman’s right. People can and do choose their views on this topic. But that being pro-life is somehow viewed as extreme is very, very strange to me.

People for the Ethical Treatment of People–the men’s version (or I believe, officially called unisex) is here for the ordering!  (Women can order here.)

Because we believe men can and should be vocal on this “women’s issue.”

A heart-wrenching story in today’s Citizen:

Re: My vigil at abortion clinic is to help women not end a life, March 26.

I wish someone had been standing across street from the abortion clinic on that gloomy day in 1980s, offering an alternative. Perhaps, my girlfriend and I would have changed our minds about the worst mistake of our lives.

I had a successful movie acting career and my girlfriend was a medical doctor. She was on the pill but it failed and she became pregnant. We decided together not to keep our baby because our careers were beginning.

I thought I was being a responsible and loyal boyfriend for helping pay for the abortion and going to the clinic with her. I sat in the waiting room, hoping to escape the responsibility of being a father. She came out of the operating room a changed person and tumbled into an intense depression. No amount of medical training could have prepared her for what she experienced on that operating table.

I was also devastated and tried to avoid the pain by overwork and addiction. Like many couples who have abortions, we broke up.

I lost the two things I tried to protect with the abortion — our relationship and my career. But most importantly we lost our precious child, who would now be 25 years old, and the pain is still with me. Abortion affects men, too.

David MacDonald, Ottawa

It must have taken a lot of guts to write this letter and send it for publication. I hope it will help change the minds of other people who may now be in a similar situation.

Actor Gary Graham comes out strongly (that’s code for ‘mild language warning’) against abortion, here. I especially like how he ends it:

I don’t mean to preach. I’m just telling you what I have come to know, and that I know that I know. The unborn fetus is a baby in development…and to end that life prematurely is to murder that life.

I truly wish that I had had this conviction way back when…when I was only concerned about my selfish convenience of the day. But I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to think about it. It was inconvenient to think about it.

How ironic that the ‘Love’ Generation should spawn such a culturally accepted abomination as abortion.

May God have mercy on us all.

[h/t LifeSiteNews]

A friend draws my attention to a letter published in yesterday’s Guelph Mercury (can’t find a link, sorry). I especially like the last paragraph:

Dear Editor – Re: “Keeping personal views separate” (Guelph Mercury, Jan. 2).

A faithful Catholic is one who is shaped by the moral convictions of a
well-formed conscience and focused on the dignity of every human being, whether
it is the pursuit of the common good or the protection of the weak and
vulnerable.

Yet Guelph Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, a Catholic, admits to being
pro-choice. The optics suggest he is more guided by his political attachment to
the Liberal party than he is with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

As to a secular society such as contemporary Canada, the pro-life ideal has
not been tried and found wanting. Rather, it has been found difficult and
therefore, left untried.

– Ricardo Di Cecca, Burlington

Update: Ah, found a link.

UP-update: What do you know. That’s a line from G.K. Chesterton. Thanks to Dear Husband, resident Chesterton expert, for pointing it out.

For those of you eager to hear something encouraging about the U.S. presidential campaign: A post at the Corner about Joe Biden’s stance on abortion, which appears slightly less extreme than that of Barack Obama.

For pro-lifers, there is one tiny hopeful sign in the Biden pick. For a long time now, the top ranks of the Democratic party have embraced an orthodoxy on abortion policy that includes support for taxpayer funding of it and for keeping partial-birth abortion legal. The Democratic platform supports taxpayer funding. The three top contenders in this year’s Democratic presidential primaries—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards—support both taxpayer funding and partial-birth abortion.

Since partial-birth abortion became a political issue during Bill Clinton’s first term in office, every Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominee has supported keeping it legal (or making it illegal in name with loopholes to keep it legal in practice). When Gore considered running with Evan Bayh in 2000, feminist leaders told reporters that he was unacceptable because he had voted against partial-birth abortion.

This time the feminists said very little as Obama considered Bayh and Biden. For the first time in many years, the Democrats have a candidate for national office who opposes taxpayer funding of abortion. For the first time since partial-birth abortion became an issue, they have a candidate who opposes it, too. It is a less important development, I think, than the fact that their presidential nominee believes that some forms of infanticide should be legal. But it strikes me nonetheless as progress, however painfully limited.

So last night I was sitting on my porch reading Save the Males. I was sitting on my porch because within four minutes of arriving home I was locked out. I had been in the house, mind you, with my very own set of keys, which remained inside, as I went back out… Never mind, it’s not a good story.

Back to Save the Males—I sat loudly guffawing as I read. People passed by, looking up as the neighbourhood was punctuated by my loud laughter. The author, Kathleen Parker is very funny. And funny people can say unpopular things.

Though for the life of me, I’ll never understand why what she is saying is “controversial.” Yes, I am out of touch—the zeitgeist of political correctism seems to be passing me by. Yes, yes, I’m learning when to self-censor. (Andrea enters chi-chi-la-la cocktail party. Old friend asks—so what are you up to these days? Ah, glad you asked: I am spearheading an effort to prove abortion is not a woman’s right! And you? Smile. Keep Smiling—“hold, hold”—as in the Gladiator ring.)

Here’s a quote that made me laugh:

At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public square, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished, along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector, and provider, which are increasingly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy. The exemplar of the modern male is the hairless, metrosexualized man and decorator boys who turn heterosexual slobs into perfumed ponies. All of which is fine as long as we can dwell happily in the Kingdom of Starbucks, munching our biscotti and debating whether nature or nurture determines gender identity. But in the dangerous world in which we really live, it might be nice to have a few guys around who aren’t trying to juggle pedicures and highlights.

Now in my experience, women want men to be their protector and yes, provider. It is on pain of death that they will vocalize said desires. I have no problem doing so, (see previous anecdote from the cocktail party circuit) but I’ve been told “I’m different” perhaps even “special.” I’m also a woman who came dangerously close to calling 911—uttering the words “now is not my time to die”—on a family of raccoons. (My home is my castle. Correction: I rent. My apartment is their castle—and in any case I’m not allowed to have a shotgun. I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway, and that is where A Man would come in handy. It could hang over the doorway, as with Pa in Little House in the Big Woods—the books, please, not the TV series.)

What I relate to in the snippet of Save the Males above is the notion that we are living in dangerous times, and policy writers, assorted authors, lawyers and economists—well, when push comes to shove I hope they rise to the occasion, and I don’t mean by penning a strongly-worded letter. (“Dear Freedom Fighter, I understand that you may not have been given every opportunity in life, and that the decadent West has been needling you for a very long time. However, when the explosion occurred, many in my town experienced a severe drop in self esteem…”)

I will conclude by saying this Long Weekend, I plan on reading more of Save the Males—and one or two of them will even be around to fire up the BBQ. Of the criticisms this site has received one that bothers me more than others is that we are anti-male: Please, it just ain’t so. We are ProWomanProLife, so that you, my strong male friends, will not go extinct like the whales, and that when it comes to sex, love and babies you will not be told It’s None of Your Business. Most of you, I remain convinced, are aware that sex might involve a baby and that this is your domain too—your responsibility, your pride, your joy—to love and protect these kids and your women in the way that was always intended. 

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Brigitte adds: A) I like men, too. Real ones, I mean. I find perfumed ponies sub-optimal – fer crying out loud I don’t need a guy with worse mood swings and emotional issues than I have, and if I needed someone to help me with my gown shopping, I’d call a real gay friend, not some wimpy metrosexual type. B) I enjoy the confidence my martial arts training has given me. I don’t need a protector, but hey, if hubby (who also has a second-degree black belt) feels like doing what needs doing should someone be so dumb as to try attacking us, I won’t mind. C) I also looooove not having to fire up the BBQ.

Of our most recent comments, one by reader Christy Knockleby hit on something that I feel needs further addressing. She said:

It seems to me that if we claim the decision is between the woman and her doctor, then it would make sense to let the men off the hook, doesn’t it? Of course they were involved in creating the pregnancy, but if they’re not supposed to be involved in the decision to abort…. why are we supposed to judge them for the woman’s decision? Except of course nothing is clear cut.

Indeed nothing is clear cut. What of the men who suggest, pressure, or encourage an abortion to a woman who decides to carry the baby to term? Chris Rock does a bang up job explaining this reality. (WARNING: This is Chris Rock, people. Be ready for some seriously foul language.) To cut to the chase, jump to the 2 minute mark.

All humour aside, what guilt does the man harbor, watching this unwanted pregnancy develop into a newborn baby; a doting child? How does that affect the father’s relationship with his child? And with his child’s mother? Statistics suggest that more than half of abortions involve coercion, either by a mate or a parent. Translation: Abortion is not purely a choice between a woman and her doctor.

So should these fathers of potential abortions keep silent? Pro-abortion etiquette would tell us so. One big problem with that: women don’t generally equate a man’s silence with love and support. Quite the opposite.

Gazette columnist Henry Aubin should not be counted among the tiny minority of Canadians who want to make all abortions illegal. Yet he is offended by the Morgentaler award.

Columnists are supposed to have strong opinions, but on the abortion issue I’ve been on the fence. The arguments on both sides of the question have left me torn.

As I see it, it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for women, many of them in trying personal situations, who seek abortions. As well, it’s impossible to wish to outlaw abortions when that would mean returning to their back-alley substitute, with all its inherent health risks.

Still, it’s impossible to ignore that the fetus is an incipient human being. And it’s impossible to shrug off the time-honoured view that human life is sacred.

So call me confused.

On the Morgentaler’s membership in the Order of Canada. however, I feel no ambivalence whatever.

The membership of the abortion-rights crusader, announced Tuesday, is not only an affront to his pro-life adversaries, it’s also offensive to a middle-ground type like myself.

How many more like him, I wonder?