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Archives for February 2008

The ultimate goal

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Tanya, a contributor to our Comments page wrote in response to my post on criminalization. Her comment:

“Even though the criminalization of abortion is not, for you, an immediate goal, the question begs to be asked; is it not reasonable to have its criminalization as an eventual goal?

Let’s parallel this human rights issue (abortion) with another one from another era, when William Wilburforce first introduced a bill to criminalize the slave trade. He was ridiculed and success seemed far off. He was always up-front with his ultimate goal. Through creative and gradual measures, by more means than simply introducing his annual bill, his goal was eventually realized.

I understand that there is much to accomplish in the mentality and practices of Canadians before a legal ban on abortion would even be beneficial. However, I would hope that every person who speaks out for the right for the unborn would have as an ultimate goal that these tiny humans’ rights be held up as equal to our own.

The point is well taken. Arguing against criminalization from a fetal rights’ perspective offers no wiggle-room and I can be accused of taking the easy way out by avoiding the question altogether. Either the fetus is a human being and deserves the same protection from harm as other human beings, or fetuses are not human and have no claim to a protected right to life and integrity. The third option, well described on our Comments page by Dave, involves getting into philosophical contortions to justify killing some human non-persons in a discourse reminiscent of 19th century slavery rhetoric. Our dismal historic track record in deciding who – or what – is human suggests that we should stop the circus act and recognize that determining humanity based on human-made criteria has embarrassed more than one civilization. Will our treatment of the unborn shame us in a few generations? I have no doubt about it, particularly in light the demographic decline of Western civilizations.

I do think criminalization is the ultimate goal. But I also think that it will happen naturally as mentalities change to recognize the humanity of the fetus. Our role as pro-lifers is not, in my view, to push for criminalization but to change mentalities. If mentalities change, criminalization will naturally follow. The same cannot be said about the reverse.

Legal abortion kills woman, age 30

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This ought to be front page news in every paper across the globe.

Emma Beck’s suicide note read as follows:

Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion…I see now I would have been a good mum. I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital…

In February the following year, the night before her 31st birthday, Miss Beck hanged herself at her home in Helston.

This is not the first time I have heard a woman tell her story and say that she told the abortionist she did not want an abortion. It is in fact probably closer to the tenth time. I’m starting to understand how choice-friendly these people are. What part of “I don’t want to do this” don’t they understand?

But I got to hear the other women say it live, instead of reading it in a suicide note.

I wrote about the increased risk of depression, suicide, suicide ideation and mental health episodes the result of abortion here. It’s a link becoming increasingly clear to just about everyone who cares enough to see it. And this, unfortunately, does not include most of those groups advocating for “women’s rights,” who insist on castigating the evidence as part of a pro-life conspiracy.

May Emma Beck rest in peace. 

Order of Canada clear for 2008

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Phewf. Dr. Henry Morgentaler will not be on the Order of Canada list for 2008. Good news.

But my letter was already written, so I thought I might as well post it. As a friend said recently, never miss a chance to express your opinion.

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Brigitte wonders: Missing a chance to express your opinion? What’s that like?

Has anyone seen a line lately?

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This article by Mark Steyn is excellent but I certainly believe something is missing. It’s awfully difficult to “hold the line” against Muslim extremism when there isn’t one. (And I’ve been looking for a while now. Next step, an ad in the papers… SWF seeks cultural, western civilizational line to have and to hold, til death do us part.)

So let’s talk alarm, shall we? One area where North Americans are alarmed is that many Muslims fail to believe in “reproductive choice.” Women’s rights types would be more than happy to confer on Muslim women their ideas on how and when women can exercise said choices. A safe and legal termination–now there’s your answer to severe birth defects.

So can we bring immigrants round to our way? I sure hope not.  

When we accept abortion on demand, which we most assuredly have, then truly, we can afford to be unperplexed by just about everything else. When dismembering a fetus limb from limb results in exclamations of “We need choices!” there’s a problem. And that is most often the reaction in my social circles, when abortion comes up at all. It’s a miracle my friends still invite me back. (But thanks to this site, I’m less of a downer at parties. No need to wax on about societal decline orally when you can do it in writing.)

I take great comfort in knowing that history moves in many directions. Onwards and upwards, pro-life people! “Hold, hooooold…” Those are probably my favourite two words from any movie. (Gladiator)

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Andrea is feeling particularly alarmist today: Who can you count on to hold the line? Probably not these folks.

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Véronique adds: Makes it awfully hard to take the moral high ground with regard to polygamy I’d say. So polygamy is generally perceived as bad for women but poly living, now, that’s liberation!

The conspiracy files

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It’s important to be aware of emerging threats. Read about the “medical right” here and their dangerous use of The Ultrasound. (Da da da… that was three notes of scary music.)

An interesting and immediate contradiction emerges:

…[The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice] describes the anti-abortion movement’s multimillion-dollar immersion into the non-medical use of ultrasound equipment and questions the ethics of using medical diagnostic technology to persuade women to continue a pregnancy. Lost in the craze for non-medical ultrasound imagery is the potential risk to the developing fetus…

Speaking of “potential risks” there’s this thing called abortion, which proves to be a potential risk to many a developing fetus.

But still, I’d like our readers to be aware of how dangerous The Ultrasound can be. Sometimes its use reveals a baby alive and kicking in there.

In the next edition of the conspiracy files, we’ll show how some doctors recommend women my age and stage take folic acid even when they are not yet pregnant. Certainly implies that I should be pregnant-a nefarious plot to force women to have babies. Stay tuned.

Women who know too much

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This article isn’t meant to make you sad, but that’s what I felt after reading it.

…today’s young women are questioning abortion not because they know too little, but because they know too much. They have paid the price for the modern feminist embrace of counterfeit liberation…

Yes, we all know too much. So perhaps my feminist “foremothers” will forgive me if I don’t thank them for bestowing on me a false notion of equality, an “equality,” they themselves, in many cases, never had to experience.

How to reach the Governor General

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How and why: Here’s info on how to reach the Governor General so that you can express your concern about Dr. Henry Morgentaler being received into the Order of Canada.

If you are feeling keen, you could copy that letter to each of the following people who sit on the independent advisory council:

Beverly McLachlin, PC, Chief Justice of Canada, Kevin Lynch, clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the Cabinet, Judith A. LaRocque, CVO, Deputy Minister, Canadian Heritage, Karen Kain, CC, chair, Canadian Council for the Arts, Yvan Guindon, CM, PhD, president, the Royal Society of Canada, Thomas D. Traves, chair, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Patricia A. Baird, OC, OBC, professor emerita at the University of British Columbia, Daurene E. Lewis, CM principal of the Nova Scotia Community College Technology Campus, L. Jacques Menard, OC; chairman of BMO Nesbitt Burns, J.E. (Ted) Newall, OC chairman of Nova Chemicals Corp, Marie-Lucie Morin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Incidentally, that Globe and Mail poll never tipped in favour of Morgentaler, and was never published in the list of past polls.

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Clarification: Sorry, my post is not particularly clear. We know Morgentaler has been nominated and that the Governor General’s office has a file on him. The letters are to show there is a level of concern and controversy over his nomination and that Canadians are very much divided on this issue, thereby hopefully preventing him from being received into the Order.

Castro mildly demurs

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Fidel Castro is resigning from another “term” as President. The media report this as if he had been elected and actually had a democratic mandate. Now they’ll need a replacement, which is kind of like when the Liberals held a convention after Paul Martin stepped down, right?

Unbelievable, the way people discuss Cuba. This morning the CBC asked their “woman on the ground” (she was in Mexico, but I digress) what his legacy was, and she responded with talk of free public health care. They then pondered poverty in Cuba–whether it had been caused by Fidel or whether the American boycott was to blame.

I’m going to conclude now with a short lesson, Communism 101, if you will. And I’ll Keep It Simple, so the CBC can understand:

Communism=poverty

Now I have to go see whether some savvy stylist can replace the hair I just lit on fire.

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Update: I had not noticed this in the Post today, an article about a Montreal exhibit of Cuban art, which avoids and evades the “politics” of Cuba–namely the notion that Castro is and was a tyrannical dictator. Thank you, Robert Fulford.

¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today lacks both critical intelligence and historical honesty…

Still, its romantic, half-blind approach calls for a strong antidote. Fortunately, there’s one available. A visit to the MMFA show should be followed by a viewing of Before Night Falls, the superb film that Julian Schnabel made in 2000 from the memoirs of Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990). As a teenager Arenas welcomed the revolution but later found himself classed as its enemy because he was gay and because he sent his poetry outside Cuba for publication. Schnabel shows Arenas (brilliantly played by Javier Bardem) brutalized by the goons of homophobic communism, which established prison camps for the punishment of gays. Exiled in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, Arenas arrived in New York. He killed himself in 1990, leaving a suicide note that blamed Castro for ruining his life.

Neither Arenas nor anyone who shared his fate gets mentioned in the Montreal show. The governing principle of the exhibition is neither artistic nor historical. What the MMFA has delivered on this occasion is a distorted and pathetic expression of cultural diplomacy.

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Rebecca adds: Orwell famously described his dystopia as a jackboot stamping on a human face, forever. The always-interesting John Derbyshire added a codicil: “Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.”

Indoctrinate U

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Saw this movie last night. Good times, a really funny (well, in that scary kind of way) movie, which highlights how Marxist professors prevail at the average American university, and being Republican, conservative, libertarian, anything vaguely associated with the right side of the political spectrum is baaaaaaaad (bleat that word like a sheep, please).

Those of us who think differently from the status quo don’t even have to be particularly smart (and so many sceptical readers will pause here to say, “that’s right! cuz you’re not!”). But the mere fact that we see things differently gives us a leg up in this world. When you are consistently forced to present your views to a hostile public, you end up doing more reading, more pondering, more debating. Rather than just saying, time and again, right on! I agree with you.

Which reminds me of a column I read yesterday. The author acknowledges all her friends think, well, just like she does:

I’m an atheist. So is everyone I know, or maybe they’re being Canadian and refraining from mentioning their religion.

And that is a good indication you might need to broaden your horizons, lest you merely follow like a lemming and end up jumping off a cliff, in spite of yourself.

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Brigitte adds: Right on! I agree with you…

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Andrea bleats: Baaaaaaaa.

A hot commodity

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The embryo is a hotly contested item these days. But few actually consider what it is. Enter Embryo – A Defense of Human Life, by Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen. The book is non-religious, and indeed the authors argue that it is science and not religion that shows the embryo is human from conception.

I might highlight some of the existing contradictions in Canada: Our Assisted Human Reproduction Act outlaws choosing the sex of an embryo for couples undergoing invitro fertilization. But sex selection abortion on the flip side, weeks or months later, is completely legal. In some cases, then, embryos in Canada are afforded greater protection than the fetus. Canadian hospitals are also fundraising to develop embryonic stem cell research centres. We ought to ask ourselves whether humans are meant to be created, used and discarded. This book might help with that.  

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