May 18, 2008

Loretta Westin, on Giving your eggs, altruistically:

It’s the ‘have your cake and eat it too’ syndrome. (That’s French, isn’t it?) When the fertile women stop aborting, the tide will swing. If they start getting married and stop contracepting, then the change will be accomplished.

If the French government started a ‘get back to your real cultural roots’ program, and people started to recover their Catholic faith, that would be the quickest route. Obvious, but not likely.

 

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Suzanne, on How much you wanna bet…:

Plan B will further isolate pregnant women who are in difficult situations. If you have to see a doctor or other professional for your pregnancy, you can at least convey problem issues in your life – domestic abuse, poverty, etc.

With Plan B, a woman is on her own.

 

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Heather Simpson, on This pro-abortion culture is brought to you by…:

I was also very inspired by Ms. Graves’ talk and her work. It was very edifying to hear her speak about how she knew her unborn daughter had a purpose even when she was scared and unprepared for her pregnancy, and about the joy and love she experienced at her birth. It was a bold testament to life and to her strength as a woman. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that Jack Layton was making a very conscious effort to stare at the floor during that part of the story.

 

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Suzanne, on This pro-abortion culture is brought to you by…:

Not only is our culture pro-abortion, it’s anti-life in an even broader sense. A good friend was out for dinner with her husband and six children, en route to a family holiday when one of the restaurant patrons approached them and asked “Don’t you have a television?”, intimating that all they did was, you know, pro-create in the evenings.

When I was pregnant with my fifth child - and very happily so, I might add - I had numerous queries (mostly from people I barely knew) as to whether this was my last, was I crazy, how am I going to do it, was I going to do something to prevent this happening again (like it was a disease) and blah blah blah. Only close friends - those who share the same appreciation of new life - were supportive.

It’s a sad thing in our culture that the default response to surprise pregnancies, particularly among single women, is the suggestion of abortion, even amongst those who are in “health” care. Just goes to show how having a worldview shaped by media hype rather than on truth and justice causes people to have such a kneejerk reaction.

Every life should be a cause for rejoicing, and welcomed with open arms.

 

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Rach, on ProWomanProLife on 100 Huntley Street:

I was faced with 2 “unplanned” pregnancies when I was younger. With my first unplanned pregnancy I was in my first year of university. When I went to the clinic there to find out what “flu bug” I had and how to get better…that’s when I found out I was pregnant. They immediately gave me a sheet of paper telling me what to expect after my abortion. They just assumed that’s what I wanted to do since I was in my first year. I went home totally scared and bewildered. I thank God for some Christians that began to reach out to me and I am so happy to say my eldest son is turning 8 soon and I cannot imagine the world without him!!

I think women need discussions-such as this blog- to understand that no matter how little support they have (I had no partner support, no parental support and very little friend support at the time with the exception of these Christians) it can be done! They can choose to parent the child or even look for adoption options.

Thanks for going on TV and talking about this very delicate subject.

 

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Loretta Westin, on Free range parenting:

Each to their own. That IS free, if not free-range. Each family has to figure it out for themselves, based on where they live, who their kids are and what’s available.

When we’re in Canada our kids have a lot more unstructured time, because sports are not affordable or really accessible. In Cayman, where sports are corporately sponsored, we live close and can afford it. Baseball season is insanely busy. Rugby is year-round. Each kid seems to have a different soccer season.

In Canada our homeschoolers don’t participate in the public school activity, as we are there mostly in the summer. In Cayman they participate in the private Catholic school choir, drama, sports teams and band. It can get hectic.

In Canada we live in a rural area, on a ‘farm’ and the kids are ‘busy’ playing outside. There’s no tv or video games. Anywhere we go, is by van. We stay home a lot.

In Cayman we live in ‘town’, a block from the school. They walk or bike to most school/church activities, without the worry I would have in a larger country with more crime (like Canada).

Compared to just about everybody we know, our children are highly supervised. Just about every non-school activity has an older sibling or parent in attendance. It works for us (so far). Part of our ’success’ is the fact that there ARE siblings. It helps to have people to chase with sticks living in the same house. Neighbors send their kids to our house to play-we have someone for every age group (mostly boys). Noisy, hectic, often somewhat chaotic, but working for us.

 

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MM, on What fits in Mother Russia?:

I will hazard a guess that this only a beginning. A ban on abortion advertising will fail, but it is important, as it seems to signal a long overdue change in the thinking at the top. The Russian ruling oligarchy may have finally noticed that Russia is on a path to demographic extinction, and that abortion is the instrument being used to that suicidal end.

The Russian tradition of top-down coercion is tacitly accepted by most in Russia. Ingrained by centuries of tsarist autocracy and cemented in by seven decades of Bolshevik/Stalinist terror, it is not about to be changed now, under the rule of a former KGB agent.

We can, therefore, expect further coercive measures against abortion in that country. Western pro-lifers should not imagine that respect for life has suddenly been rediscovered in the former USSR. When Stalin’s disastrous five-year plans needed women to urgently join the labor force and motherhood was an obstacle in that, abortion became the answer. The needs have only grown since.
It is difficult to imagine Mr. Putin in the role of a pro-lifer. It is unlikely, however, that this, the first “official” anti-abortion move, is taking place without his approval, if not initiative. Russia needs not just more workers, she needs more citizens, preferably of Russian stock, given the prevailing phobia of foreigners in “Mother Russia.”

So, paradoxically, this may become an opening, albeit a dangerous one, for the faith based pro-life movement to come alive in Russia. An autocratic regime will happily co-opt a former adversary, as long as the alliance serves its purposes.

But, there will be strings attached, and a price to pay, as always. The West was taught this kind of Russian lesson once before. With World War II coming to an end, and “Uncle Joe” having achieved his goals, the Iron Curtain went up and stayed in place for the next half a century.

 

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Suzanne, on What fits in Mother Russia?:

That is nearly 4.5 million babies worldwide - in one year -”in countries where reporting is relatively complete”… never mind where there isn’t complete reporting. Unbelievable. People, we have our work cut out for us.