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Archives for February 2008

The National Abortion Federation and Bill C-484

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Vicki Saporta and the National Abortion Federation will not support Bill C-484. That’s the unborn victims of violence bill before Parliament right now. How could they? They point out in the release that the bill’s sponsor, Ken Epp is a known public enemy, er sorry, “a known opponent of legal abortion.” For the National Abortion Federation, it’s all sweetness and decency, hands across the water and teaching the world to sing: Until a pro-lifer enters the room.

Their reasoning? The bill will apparently conflict with “well-established Canadian laws.”

NAF fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term. Because this bill does nothing to protect women and because its possible consequences include casting doubt over well-established Canadian law, NAF opposes C-484.

That’s funny, because Parliament deemed the bill votable. And then there’s the fact that Canada has no abortion law. So where might the conflict be?

On the plus side, NAF will not be mandating death–they felt it necessary to state their support for a woman’s right to keep her baby in the same press release.

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Brigitte adds: I always like to ask people why they say the things they say. Here I would like to know why the NAF insists that they “fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term.” I’m glad they do, and I don’t mean to question their motives (well, you know, not unduly), but I wonder why they felt the need to add this sentence.  It’s like this other bit I noticed a while back, from Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, who suggested that:

… a more appropriate way of dealing with such a serious crime is for the courts to impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant.

Why do people who insist the fetus has no rights because it is not a person also insist that a crime against a woman who is carrying one of those non-person things in her body should be punished more severely than a crime against a woman who’s not carrying a non-person fetus thing in her body?

Pop goes the taboo

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Read about your right to accurate sex selection–for purposes of abortion– here.

…Eventually, we’ll establish rules to ensure the safety and efficacy of fetal sex tests. At that point, we’ll declare them adequately regulated. That’s how a taboo begins to die…

Sex selection abortion–if only we could make it safer, more reliable. Avoid the pain and distress of a false gender test result. Just imagine what those couples must suffer.

A debate I’d sooner not have

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David Cameron, Conservative opposition leader in the UK will support a lower limit on abortion. That limit currently stands at 24 weeks.

Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, won’t, “on the basis of medical advice.”

Though it’s admirable that Cameron will support a lower limit, this is the kind of debate I’d rather not have. Abortion is not typically at any number of weeks about women’s health, but rather about our cultural mentality. If it were truly about women’s health, we’d encourage a woman’s ability to support what her body does naturally. 24 weeks, 20 weeks, 14 weeks, eight weeks, four weeks or two… always a person, and largely a choice made for distinctly non-medical reasons.

So, um, was there some kind of ceremony?

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Win for original screenplay

I have been rather busy lately with the launch of a new television show and haven’t had a chance to write much. Or do anything else, for that matter. (And you do know, don’t you, how fast a pile of laundry can grow when left unattended?) I didn’t catch the Oscars last night, but I now see Juno won for best writing, which is awesome. I saw the film a few weeks ago and was both charmed and delighted a) by the movie’s plot; and b) by its non-preachiness. I was worried it’d be a movie about abortion, which I didn’t really want to see. But it’s not. It’s a wonderfully clever little love story in which a pregnant teenager decides to carry her baby to term. Well done.

How can it be right, if it feels so wrong? Part II

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I haven’t seen Juno, but I want to, especially after watching the Academy Awards. So this morning I was drawn to a Canadian mommy-blogger who posted on it here.   

Juno resonated with the blogger (who calls herself, I hope ironically, Her Bad Mother) because of her decision years ago to abort an unwanted baby. The entry is inspired by her gratitude to her own mother, who supported her through the abortion despite her own obvious grief. It’s a moving and disturbing column, worth reading in its entirety, but here are some excerpts.

On the abortion itself:

Then, then, she made all arrangements and we made the long drive, together, to the place where I had to walk a terrible mile alone, but she was there, again, on the other side and that night we curled up together on a dusty bed in a motel together, somewhere some distance from home and cried and contemplated our ghosts…

On appreciating her mother for helping her to have an abortion:

I didn’t understand the depth or breadth or weight of my mother’s sacrifice until I became a mother myself, and the ghosts gathered ’round me, and whispered to me of love and loss and regret and unregret and gripped my heart in their tiny hands and squeezed until I cried. I didn’t understand until I’d suffered a loss not of my own devising, until I’d prayed for the life of this child, this oh-so-badly-wanted child. I didn’t understand until I became a mother, for real, for aching-heartfelt-feargripped-real, just how great a thing she had done.”

This blog entry speaks to me of three victims: The unwanted child, the heartbroken grandmother, and the blogger herself, whose grief years later shines through in her writing. What a culture we’ve created, in which a young woman suffers “a loss of her own devising” and is convinced she did the right thing. What a strange standard by which to judge motherhood, that helping your daughter abort your grandchild, while doing permanent damage to herself, is considered worthy of gratitude and praise.

Celebrating selective abortions

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Maclean‘s Mitchel Raphael reported on the pro-abortion celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision back in January:

Bloc MP Nicole Demers found the evening particularly moving. Now a grandmother of two, she had four abortions in the years after giving birth to her second son, who had hemophilia, in order to avoid passing the disease onto other male children. (Females are rarely susceptible to hemophilia.)

Four abortions? Because of hemophilia? Reading pieces like this one always makes me think of the line that keeps being re-drawn. Where does the buck stop? (As in, this life is not worth living, this person is better off dead…) And the line is never drawn by those whose life is, well, on the line. In this case, all those Canadians who have hemophilia.

In 2002 I gave birth to a cleft-affected child some asked if I would have had an abortion had I known about her condition in advance. But how can knowing only one thing, albeit a challenging thing, about a child in utero compare to everything else that makes each life unique? I could have spared my daughter the pain of plastic surgery but I would also have denied her all the joys she gets from being a sister, a bright student, a cherished friend and a gifted gymnast. And I would have denied myself the delight she brings into my life, surgery and all.

This is how selective abortion keeps moving the line: We care not a bit about the million things that make each person unique and worthwhile. Because of one illness, we don’t bother finding out.

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Andrea adds: Such a short report and I see even more problems. First of all, it’s as though the story’s spin is to say an abortion because of hemophilia is AOK. Then there’s that number: Four. Four abortions. That’s a special kind of failure to grasp how birth control works. (Oh wait, she did use birth control, except she calls it abortion.) Finally, though not entirely clear, it appears she took those babies’ lives pre-emptively–as in, they might have hemophilia, if they were boys. Words fail.  

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Rebecca adds: I’ve always wanted to ask people who opt for eugenic abortions: If you found out your baby had hemophilia only after he was born, would you want him dead? What, after all, is the difference, but for a few weeks’ gestation?

Unborn victim didn’t exist

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My grandson was murdered, says Mary Talbot in today’s Ottawa Citizen.

Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada offers up a “there, there, Mary.”

While we deeply sympathize with them and understand their wish, it must be recognized that victims of violence are not those who should be making decisions about justice in a democratic society. Appropriate laws and penalties must be determined by impartial parties who do not allow emotion or personal bias to colour their decisions…

I think it’s fair to say this: Arthur says she sympathizes with Talbot, and somewhere, somehow, that may be true. But Arthur is also the author of Fetus Focus Fallacy and where Talbot knows she had a grandson, Arthur thinks she had a fetus, and furthermore, that we ought not to focus on that. 

As for “impartial parties informing the laws,” I’ll assume that means we’ll be rescinding the Morgentaler decision. And that he, and all pro-abortion groups, will be giving up their fight in New Brunswick in short order.

The bottom line: Arthur sees only one victim here and can’t really sympathise with Mary Talbot at all, as a result. And that would be due to her own lack of impartiality.

The Oscars tonight

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Juno‘s up for a couple of Oscars. Flogging a dead horse, here’s yet another analysis of how/why/I just don’t get it could the characters in Knocked Up and Juno not have an abortion? 

Both women are intelligent, independent, savvy, and urbane. One is an ambitious career woman, the other a wisecracking high schooler. So, how is it that neither really considers abortion as a viable alternative to carrying a fetus to term?

Um, here’s the answer for ya: Because they are intelligent, independent, savvy and urbane. Seriously.

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Véronique adds: My favorite part was:

In the contexts of both films, all roads for our pregnant women lead to the abortion clinic. This is not an ideological analysis, it is rational one, it is what both of these characters, as they have been written, would do.

So much for choice.

How can it be right if it feels so wrong?

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A translation of a short article published in yesterday’s La Presse:

Julie, in her early thirties, should have given birth to her third child in the middle of winter. Instead, she went to the hospital in the fall. Her daughter was born but never lived…

You think miscarriage or premature delivery followed by death. But the article continues:

Faced with a pessimistic diagnosis, Julie and her husband decided to end the pregnancy after 5 months. While she is certain she made the right decision, Julie is nonetheless overcome by a profound distress…

No kidding. This is turning the old “How can it be wrong if it feels so right?” on its head. Please help me find other examples of right decisions causing profound distress because as things are now, I feel like abortion activists have successfully taken over the minds of Canadians.

That nagging feeling of distress, could it possibly be your conscience telling you that terminating a disabled life was likely a selfish decision based on your needs rather than compassion for the child?

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Andrea adds: The Thought Police have been out and at ’em…for years… “Your decision is right, your decision is right. Because it was your choice and it was therefore right. And abortion is a right. And right. Thank you for listening and please don’t reflect on any profound distress you may be feeling.”  (This decades-long public service announcement is brought to you by assorted pro-abortion groups.)    

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