ProWomanProLife

As with most news, there are two sides and I’ll try my very best to be positive about this one.

The bad news: Brigitte will no longer be blogging at ProWomanProLife.

The good news: She’s still anti-abortion. (Phewf!) It’s just she’s taken a job with Sun Media and as such can’t keep blogging here. So if one considers the platform and influence she’ll now have, I think we can all agree this is a big success.

That said, no one, NO ONE, was more instrumental in helping me get ProWomanProLife off the ground. I’m almost inclined to remove the “helping me” part. She did it cheerfully, professionally and promptly, because she wanted to. And she’s never gotten anything but a few frappacinos for all her work (which I understand will be different at Sun Media). Over the last years there have been moments when I communicated more with Brigitte than my own family. We’ve run posts by each other and we’ve written some most excellent op-eds. The end result from this blogging adventure is that we are fast friends. So yes, I’m sad this era is over (the blogging, not the friendship) but I am very glad for her as she starts a new and exciting thing.

Good luck, Brigitte!

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Brigitte adds: Thank you, Andrea! It’s been a privilege to work with such fine ladies.

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Véronique adds: This is definitely a severe case of bad news, good news. I am thrilled for Brigitte and yet very sad for PWPL readers. But mostly thrilled for Brigitte as she launches into the next phase of a very successful career!

…lend me your ear. I’ll be giving a talk at Theology on Tap on Tuesday, February 22 at Dow’s Lake Pavilion (Malone’s), Ottawa. It starts at 7:30 and is open to everyone. The topic: The Status of Men. More specifically:

Canada has a Status of Women department. Andrea Mrozek, Manager of Research at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada and founder of the blog ProWomanProlife.org asks if we need to create a Status of Men instead. Come hear Ms. Mrozek review how men are lagging in our current culture and the possible links this has to the decline in marriage and family.

 I like Theology on Tap because you can enjoy a beer while listening, which will certainly make my talk much better. In fact, I’ll order the first round. If you keep drinking, you are bound to believe it’s truly fascinating.

Hot women are pro-life. Hey,it’s not me saying it. It’s the New York Times. And oddly enough they don’t seem thrilled about it.”

(h/t)

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Brigitte adds:

ProWomanProLife is three years old today. Happy Birthday to us!

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Andrea adds: Not to put a damper on the birthday celebration, but it is hard to uncork the champagne when your founding coincides with a reprehensible, sad and heavy moment in Canadian history, both for women and their unborn children. January 28 is the 23rd anniversary of the Morgentaler decision. However, onwards and upwards, there are more and more of us (by this I mean ProWomanProLife types, and pro-lifers in general) and we are all actively and gracefully (I hope) pushing toward an end to abortion in Canada. Maybe I’ll have a beer after work, after all. (I’m not sure three years warrants champagne. Or even a fine wine. But on many occassions I actually prefer beer. It’s the time spent in Germany…I’m officially digressing now. Happy Birthday ProWomanProLife! Thank you to our readers, and thank you to those who quietly and faithfully do their part in the struggle.)

Rebecca Walberg is in the Financial Post today, here. This is great for many reasons, but the one I’ll cite here is that if we aim to change the culture with regards to abortion, it doesn’t mean we (pro-lifers) have to write exclusively about abortion, all the time. Some people, will, of course, but I think it is also important to have experts in all fields, people who are pro-life but may never reference it overtly. Of course, Rebecca is not like this, as she is openly on this web site, I’m just glad she is having such success in other areas too.

Friends, Readers, lend me your ear:

It is the First Day of the New Year, and I, having largely overcome the dreaded common cold (three cheers), have decided I will write down some ProWomanProLife First Principles. Brass tacks. The neeeety greeeeety. (That’s “nitty gritty,” said with a Nacho Libre accent. If you haven’t seen the movie, go rent it. It can do you nothing but a world of good. Hmmm. Perhaps “good” is stretching it. But it can do no harm, and in our impoverished culture, you may at least get a few laughs, which can never be underestimated. Nachoooooooo!)

Where was I? Right. In January 2008, with the 20^th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision looming large, I started ProWomanProLife because I knew other women would celebrate Morgentaler as a hero and a protector of women’s rights.

This I could not stomach, and so, ProWomanProLife came into being, with five other ladies: Brigitte Pellerin, Teresa Fraser, Sheryl Alger (MD, an obstetrician-gynaecologist, no less), Raji Shankar and Rebecca Walberg. Later we were joined by Patricia Egan, Tanya Zaleski, Veronique Bergeron, Jennifer Derwey and Deborah Mullan. Today PWPL has a presence A Mare usque ad Mare—from sea to sea. From sea to shining sea, oh yes.

Unlike so many pro-abortion feminists who stand up and make claims to represent all of womankind, everywhere, ProWomanProLife makes no pretences to know what every woman across this great land is thinking. We only represent those we represent, with the hope of changing some hearts and minds along the way.

We are women who do not see Morgentaler as a hero, who know abortion is not a right. (And that the Supreme Court of Canada never said it was!) We abhor abortion as being contrary to anything approximating compassion.  We further know that many educated women feel this way, that oftentimes pro-choice folks obscure the debate by using euphemisms that make it easy for women to make a mistake and finally, that being pro-life is a rational and compassionate position to take.

ProWomanProLife is a forum for pro-life women to exchange ideas and to feel supported and to know they are not alone in an isolating culture, one that is, to a greater or lesser extent, pro-choice or apathetic to pro-life views. I need not tell you that there are many virulently pro-abortion online forums, and some of those (I count Planned Parenthood among them) are government funded. It is important to raise up reasonable pro-life voices in this atmosphere, and to be there for the stranger’s google search.

Being pro-life, one often faces the mainstream media’s misconception that pro-lifers couldn’t care less about women themselves. So this is also a forum that never overlooks the woman who walked herself into the abortion clinic. We believe that the fetus is a new and unique human being from conception, separate from, though dependent on, the woman and that the two can thrive together. We will continue to repeat this message, attempting to punch through the false idea that “choice” means freedom and a better life.

There are moments, when this blog wanders off the abortion track into other realms. This has been the point all along. For one, no one person can focus on abortion all the time. Secondly, there has always been a no-censorship rule for every blogger at PWPL; so if someone feels the need to blog about what man plays the best James Bond, or why Nacho Libre is a fine, comedic masterpiece, well then, so be it.

I cannot say what the future holds, this in spite of asking my Magic Eight Ball so many, many times. (And look, now a web site to mimick the Magic Eight Ball: “Will PWPL thrive?” “Ask again later.” Ah, such wisdom.)

So long as I (and the eight other bloggers) remain on the opinionated side of life, the blog too, shall continue and with it, the odd opinion piece and study. (Watch for the first ever PWPL study in 2011.) If need be, we’ll send out more press releases, as we did when Morgentaler became a member of the Order of Canada, so that women who are against abortion will continue to have a voice when others pretend to speak for them.  (And should the need arise, we can also convey information through Facebook, so feel free to join our group. And please continue to send in items of interest, as this is always welcome for the daily blogging routine.)

To every reader I say thank you, and wish you the very best in 2011.

Happy New Year!

I am not sure if I’m reading the tone in, but this doesn’t read as the honouring obituary Heather Stilwell most certainly deserves. Heather Stilwell was an anti-abortion activist, a Surrey, British Columbia school trustee and a mother of eight, who passed away of breast cancer at the age of 66 this past weekend.

I interviewed Heather over the phone once for my story on sex selection abortion:

Heather Stilwell noticed something strange was going on in her hometown of Surrey, B.C. A school trustee for Surrey District No. 36 for 12 years now, one of Stilwell’s personal causes has been to promote literacy among kids. On her own time and her own dime, she sews bookbags for kindergartners, using wholesale or donated fabric, and stuffs them with books. The girls like Wemberley Worried, tales of an apprehensive mouse. The boys, usually anything to do with dinosaurs. She estimates she’s given out about 5,000 of these gifts since she started.

In recent years, Stilwell realized that she’d been having to make more and more of the plaid or striped bags she gives out to the boys, and fewer of the pink floral bags for the girls. More dinosaur books, fewer Wemberleys. She can’t put her finger on why, but the boy-girl ratio seems to be increasingly out of whack. “The numbers look pretty skewed to me,” she says. She’s sure of one thing: “[There're] more boys.”

As it turns out, Stilwell is right.

I remember she spoke out on this politically incorrect topic willingly. I remember being surprised that she was happy to go on the record. So many, on such a topic, would not have been. So she struck me as being a courageous and confident lady. Very pro-woman. And very pro-life, as it turns out, though I didn’t know it at the time I interviewed her.

I’m sure she contributed to her community in countless other ways, but this was the one contact I had with her. And as I wrote above, Heather was right about her feeling that there were more boys than girls in the classrooms. So too, will history judge her right in her support of the unborn, though she may not have won the battle while she walked this earth. May her family find peace at this difficult time.

Our very own Rebecca Walberg is moderating a live chat about managing Canada’s water resources with the Financial Post. You can learn more about it, here.

Tonight is a big night in Ottawa. People, we have choices.

Stephanie Gray is debating at Ottawa University. I’d go if I could but my attendance is pretty much required at the talk I’m giving at the Laurentian Leadership Centre:

Canada has a Status of Women department. Guest lecturer, Andrea Mrozek, asks if we need to create a Status of Men department instead. Our general lack of concern for men (and marriage) will spell the end of fatherhood and families as well as the social and economic prosperity we enjoy. Ms. Mrozek reviews the decidedly politically incorrect Men and Marriage by George Gilder (1986) placing it in the context of the new millennium. Tuesday, October 5^th, 2010, Laurentian Leadership Centre, 252 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, 7:30 to 9:00 pm

Yes, it’s bad planning from the Centralized Agency of Forces Working For Good in Ottawa And The World. But it can’t be helped now. The only bad choice is staying home.

I’m going to be writing a talk about the myths of what it means to be pro-life. If you have a favourite, please let me know. Things like “pro-lifers are all men” or “pro-lifers are all religious” or “religious people are all pro-life”–that kind of thing. Merci.