Those who write in from time to time suggesting a focus on defining marriage makes me into a fundamentalist? You are right. I concede defeat. Move along–there’s nothing to see here.
I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote. “However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?“
It’s Holocaust Education Week. Two good articles. From The Star :
In what he deemed a perversion of the Hippocratic Oath by which doctors pledge to put the health of their patients’ first, doctors in Nazi Germany believed they were caring for the health of the nation – even mankind – by taking part in the Holocaust.
and the National Post:
But it is particularly important for physicians to be aware of how easy it is to be socialized toward evil, toward becoming willing participants in a process of destruction.
I’ll let readers come to their own conclusions on what lessons to glean from these citations.
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Tanya sees many parallels like this since yesterday. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard that 100 years ago in the US, a black man wasn’t even recognized as a person.
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Rebecca adds: The very first group slated for death in Nazi Germany were the chronically ill and the disabled, under the T-4 programme, after the address of the hospital where the killing were first carried out. The doctors who did the deed sincerely believed that they were ending intolerable suffering for incurable patients, who were otherwise condemned to “life not worth living,” and that by euthanising the sickest patients, they were freeing up scarce resources in an overburdened healthcare system. Any Canadian who doesn’t feel a slight chill down his spine at that hasn’t been paying much attention lately.
Courtesy of the Onion:
WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”
Dr. Leiva responds to Leonard Stern’s piece on euthanasia and speaks on caring for patients:
At the end, as Viktor Frankl says: “love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.”
Inspiring.
Vote, and get a free coffee.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2J8KJDsqqY]
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Andrea notes that coffee helps me to care. Every single day. I’m probably at about 3 cups of caring already, and it’s not yet 9 am.
PWPL is now on Twitter.
A study from the usually serious RAND concludes that slick and successful TV programming that portrays teen sex as cool, fun and consequence free can influence teenagers’ decisions about sex.
In findings that covered 718 teenagers, there were 91 pregnancies. The top 10th of adolescents who watched the most sexy programming were at double the risk of becoming pregnant or causing a pregnancy compared to the 10th who watched the fewest such programs, according to the study published in the journal Pediatrics.
Is anybody really surprised that media consumption influences behaviour? The multi-billion dollar advertising industry is built entirely on the link between what people read, watch and listen to, and what they buy, do and think. Government restrictions on broadcasting content aren’t the solution (although watch for someone to advocate just that). Parents and pressure groups have been fairly successful in getting graphic violence out of prime time TV. This is laudable. But why not pay the same attention to other causes of suffering and social breakdown? Far more innocents are harmed when kids are taught that it’s fine for them to have sex than are harmed by gun violence, for instance.
On a more encouraging note, buried in the second half of the story is this tidbit: “Living in a two-parent family reduced the chances of a teen getting pregnant or causing a pregnancy.” Again, this won’t be news to most of us, but it bears repeating. And it’s good that pediatricians are getting involved – perhaps if we can frame teen sex, pregnancy and STDs as a matter of health, rather than a matter of sexual freedom, we can begin to mitigate some of the suffering that is so well documented by Maggie Gallagher, Kay Hymowitz, Theodore Dalrymple, and the other invaluable writers who have been telling the stories of teenagers set adrift.
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Tanya balks: Bacon is BAD FOR YOU???
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Véronique adds: What about a bacon chocolate bar? Two negatives HAVE to make a positive, right?
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Andrea is concerned about bacon and chocolate, together, advertised as follows:
Breathe…engage your five senses, close your eyes and inhale deeply. Be in the present moment, notice the color of the chocolate, the glossy shine. Rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate. Snap off just a tiny piece and place it in your mouth, let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue.
They conclude rather more pragmatically with the words “Consume within eight weeks.”
Yesterday afternoon I went to work. Yes, that’s too bad. But if I had not gone to work, I would not have been in downtown Ottawa. And when the reminder (bing!) of the conclusion of 40 Days of Life came up, I might have said–it’s too far away, I’m not going.
I might not have met, then, with about one thousand others, standing silently in the cold night with candles outside the Bank Street abortion clinic at six pm last night.
The long procession wound it’s way in complete silence to St. Pat’s church on Kent. There will be no room for wondering about how many came, because the church was full. So however many people fit into St. Pat’s–that’s how many came out to stand up for an end to abortion at the Bank Street clinic, in Ottawa, in Canada.
There’s a strength and a peace in silent protest, in the unity of people, young, old, families–shuffling forward. And the Mass inside the church was beautiful–guitar music and singing, a call for humility, for continued prayers to end abortion, and a welcome for all who are not Catholic. (Speaking as one of those, I did feel welcome.)
This was an encouraging event. (Interesting, as a small aside, was the man wearing a large Barack Obama t-shirt, with a cross around his neck, too. I think he was making some sort of point.)
And the point of my story, is, of course, that we should all work on Sundays. Ok, not really. My point is that we should, at least in small moments, feel hopeful because an end to abortion is possible.
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Andrea updates: Fair report of the event, here.
This story from the UK highlights how a woman felt after she aborted her first pregnancy, because of a diagnosis of Trisomy 13. She regrets her actions, and I’m sorry about that, and I do feel for her. But of equal interest to me is the societal implications–where I believe she is correct:
But the real issue is that ordinary society has changed in its attitude towards disability. After all, antenatal testing (and its consequences) is now so commonplace and standardised that when it was revealed last month that a new blood test has been developed to detect Down’s syndrome – the most common form of trisomy- the news was greeted with seemingly universal delight.
I often am forced to convince on this point: Why would a private decision–abortion–affect anyone else?
It does–it changes the community we live in, visually, because we see fewer different people. It changes our attitudes all told toward pregnancy, too, not just disability. (But that fundamental change has already occurred.)
The kid-glove jargon, I mean. Usually the pro-choice side is very careful to focus on the whole “my body – my choice” point of view. Abortion is meant to terminate pregnancy, they say. They argue that a woman should not be forced to remain pregnant.
But Obama cuts through that rhetoric, shall we say. And in so doing, he makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. (In a bad way, for all those left wondering.)
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZF-_EZ8mb0]
One more thought: If a baby is not the correct “punishment” for a mistake, is an abortion?
