ProWomanProLife

Recently, there has been an influx of alternative resource centres for crisis pregnancy opening across north America. The problem? Abortion providers don’t like their new neighbours operating in such close proximity. These alternative centres operate with the goal of offering resources to pregnant women, some (as shown in the documentary 12th and Delaware) with the specific intent to change the minds of women considering abortion.

So, where exactly should these centres locate themselves? If a centre wanted to operate near the highest level of at risk women, a place where it would have the highest level of impact, it would open its doors in poorer areas with young populations. Say… near a public high school? But wait, that’s exactly where the abortion clinics are.

The newest mega-clinic recently opened by Planned Parenthood (the second largest clinic in the world) in May of this year is located at 4600 Gulf Freeway Houston, TX. Thanks to Google Maps, one can clearly see that this mega-clinic is smack dab in between the University of Houston and Austin High School. Where is my local abortion clinic? The Halifax Sexual Heatlth Centre (formerly Planned Parenthood) is located at 6009 Quinpool Rd. between two local high schools.

Location, location, location.

I dislike government handouts, but if you’re going to pay parents to have children maybe you ought to focus on the first few years?

New mothers should get a quarter of all their child’s benefits in just the first two years of a baby’s life to reduce the pressure on them to go back to work, it has been suggested.

The move for bringing forward the payments and letting mothers stay at home and let them bond more easily with their babies, according to the Government’s poverty adviser.

Currently, poorer parents are eligible to be paid as much as £100,000 in benefits and tax credits in equal instaments over the first 19 years of a child’s life, if he or she stays still in full time education.

However, Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead, suggested the Government should tailor the system of child benefits so that it better suited parents’ lives.

This could see a quarter of this total – £25,000 – paid out in just the first two years of a child’s life, to take the financial pressure off young mothers to go back to work and encourage them to spend more time with their babies.

From the UK.

DOZENS of young women are having abortions on the NHS after expensive IVF treatment because they have changed their minds about becoming a mother.

Some terminate pregnancies after splitting from their husband or boyfriend, others because they were pressured into starting a family. The phenomenon is worrying doctors and has triggered a backlash from family campaigners who accuse the women of treating babies like “designer goods”.

A large part of the recent initiative from pro-life groups founded by women is to make pregnancy, giving birth, and raising children as comfortable and lifestyle-friendly as possible. This initiative requires tackling the basics needs of new moms. The most noted need on that list?

You’ve guessed it… money.

Thanks to small armies of stay-at-home-moms and women in the blogosphere, there is now a hefty selection of resources ranging from how to make your own laundry detergent to tailored information on seeking a raise for mothers in the workforce.

Feminists For Life unveiled its newest, and largest ever, magazine entitled ‘Raising Kids on a Shoestring’, a pro-active publication designed to give pregnant and new parents more economic freedom by providing them with money-saving and earning tools, while The Globe and Mail is offering maternity clothes shopping advice in its investment blogs.

Though every blogger and columnist may not consider themselves pro-life, they’re all part of a community serving new and soon-to-be parents, and this, in effect, helps to alleviate some of the economic factors associated with abortion by spreading the wealth of money-saving information. As a parent myself, who lives a long distance from the typical support group of family and friends, I welcome this make-shift community of penny pinchers with open arms.

Help save a dollar, help save a life.

Oh, look! An excellent oped in today’s Ottawa Citizen by one A. Mrozek, about the new all-day “learning” program being somewhat less flexible than people were led to believe. Here’s the, ah, money quote:

So how exactly is the Ontario Ministry of Education legislating choice out of existence?

For starters, simply by introducing a monolithic taxpayer funded plan — legitimate and regulated child care providers can’t compete. When the government subsidizes a service, it means others are put out of business.

All-day kindergarten also takes five-year-olds out of existing centres. These children are a day-care’s bread and butter. Care of five-year-olds is substantially cheaper than infant care, which runs into the tens of thousands of dollars annually. Since no child-care centre could possibly charge parents the true infant price, they have balanced their businesses by charging less than the real cost for younger kids and more for older ones. The older ones who will now enter the “free” state centres.

Families with a spouse who stays home are, as usual, totally pooched. Their taxes will rise for a service they don’t ever choose to use. Pascal-plan advocates swear up and down the block we can fund the new system, parents at home and everything in between. The problem is they haven’t told anyone where the money tree is growing.

It bears repeating, again and again, just how expensive these programs are. Costed out, the full Pascal plan comes to $6.1 billion annually. All-day kindergarten rings in at a likely $1.8 billion annually. If money spent on all-day kindergarten went to parents instead, it would come out to more than $9,000 per child, annually.

Indeed. But Andrea, you forgot one thing: Parents wouldn’t know what to do with that money. Better let the government manage it.

Universal daycare isn’t a good idea. Specific programs to help children and families in lower-income brackets, or people with various life challenges (self-inflicted or not), I can see. There is research that shows daycare helps those children, at least a little. But your average kid from the average middle-income family? Not so much.

“It’s also the best anti-poverty program. I want every single child in Canada to have the opportunity to get a square meal when they come to daycare; to get loving care and tender care,” Mr. Ignatieff added. “A lot of children in our country, we don’t like to admit it, start in a very turbulent difficult environment at home. The great thing about these programs is they give kids an equal start.”

Mr. Ignatieff is correct in one sense: Studies show that, on average, child care moderately improves the cognitive performance of children from low-income families — and the benefits last into adulthood. On the other hand, the same studies generally have shown no such lifelong benefits for children from middle- and high-income families.

Oh, and in the average normal family, “loving care and tender care” is something kids get at home, not in a government institution. When’s the last time you felt loved by a government bureaucrat?

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Thanks for posting about this, Brigitte: I try to keep my day job, in which I research child care, and my after-hours life, PWPL, separate. But on a day when a politician follows up an announcement about daycare with one about abortion that becomes difficult, to say the least.

Or so it seems. Claudia Schiffer, 39 and still working as a professional model, is pregnant with her third child. Good for her (and hubby, of course). Here’s the part of the story I like best:

The 39-year-old catwalk star – who is one of the world’s most successful models – has previously spoken about how motherhood changed her entire attitude to her career.

Claudia – who married Michael, 38, in May 2002 – said: “I used to work every single day and travel round the world. I worked weekends, I never took one second off. When I met my husband I said, ‘You know what, this is important. I’m not going to work weekends any more.’

“And when I had kids, I became even more careful. Modelling work is fine because you can do one day here, two days there, you’re never long gone.”

Parenthood good for your heart, researchers say. Woo-hoo!

Contrary to popular belief, having kids might actually lower your blood pressure. Despite the often hair-raising trials and tribulations of raising a little one, researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah say parenthood has a positive effect on the heart akin to cutting out salt or taking up exercise. The study, published in the Annals of Behavioural Medicine, measured the blood pressure of 200 adults (70 per cent of whom were parents), and found that those with kids had systolic blood pressure 4.5 points lower and diastolic blood pressure three points lower than non-parents. The effect is greater on mothers, whose systolic blood pressure was on average 12 points lower and the diastolic seven points lower than their childless counterparts. As Julianne Holt-Lunstad, the psychologist who led the research explains, “While caring for children may include daily hassles, deriving a sense of meaning and purpose from life’s stress has been shown to be associated with better health outcomes.”

Love the headline on this story: “Beware of friends offering sperm”. Go ahead and read the rest of the story if you want. The details don’t really matter – everything you need to know is right there in the headline.

Good column on New Year’s Resolutions in today’s Citizen. I liked reading about Benjamin Franklin’s quest for self improvement. And the concluding idea of the piece should be the mainstay of parenting today, I think:

It is difficult to raise a good student, but it is much more difficult to raise a good person.

That’s Dennis Prager, apparently, and I’d think that if a parent raises a good person, they will be a good student, whether or not they get good grades.