It will now be 16 years old, instead of 14. With a “close-in-age” exception of five years, which will avoid criminalizing consensual teenage sex (no, I don’t believe 15-year-olds should be having sex, but I also don’t believe it’s the law’s business to discourage them from doing so). This is good news.
Archives for 2008
Changed
There’s a new book out, Changed, authored by the same woman who put together the web site Abortion changes you. I’ve heard great things about her.
Now I decided recently I don’t buy the statistic, widely cited, that one in three women in the United States will have an abortion by the age 45 (Why? That’s the subject of another post, and also, to be fair, some substantive research. I stand to be corrected but I have good reason to believe that number is inflated).
But no matter, whether one in three, or one in X, we still ought to understand that we are indeed living, walking and working with women who have had abortions and that an abortion will fundamentally change you: The woman who has one, the boyfriend, the husband, the children. All of us.
Abortion is never a private matter.
They don’t mince words in New York either…
A statement from Edward Cardinal Egan:
The Catholic Church clearly teaches that abortion is a grave offense against the will of God. Throughout my years as Archbishop of New York, I have repeated this teaching in sermons, articles, addresses, and interviews without hesitation or compromise of any kind. Thus it was that I had an understanding with Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, when I became Archbishop of New York and he was serving as Mayor of New York, that he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion. I deeply regret that Mr. Giuliani received the Eucharist during the Papal visit here in New York, and I will be seeking a meeting with him to insist that he abide by our understanding.
[h/t The Corner]
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Tanya adds: I’m not Catholic, but I think I can shed some light on this.
“For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself” – 1 Corinthians 11:29
In other words, the Catholic Church is saying to Giuliani: “You’re Catholic, and you know better. So act like it, or you’re gonna get it, and not from me.”
It’s a spiritual “just wait ’til your father gets home.” Correct me if I’m wrong.
Adoption of older children
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgL0ojyQ7qI]
I gather pro-lifers are often accused of touting adoption as “the loving option” without showing that love to older kids who need homes. I have yet to investigate whether this accusation is true or false. But the YouTube clip above, from ListenUp TV shows an example of parents who thought differently. Inspiring.
She dislikes stupid people
In the privacy of my own thoughts, I’ve found similar sentiments. (Heavens to Betsy, I’ve never actually said any of this out loud!) Read one woman’s perfect rant regarding Vicki Saporta’s article.
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Brigitte adds: Blimey, she don’t mince words, eh? Some points are a bit hysterical and perhaps less thoroughly informed than she believes, but hey. I’m usually on the side of logic and common sense, however clumsily expressed. One thing I like is her reason for not being totally anti-abortion: Because back in the day, when she had pregnancy scares, she considered it as a way out of a potential tight spot.
Back in the day, had I found myself pregnant, I might have considered it, too. Or maybe not. I just don’t know. I never had to face that terrible “choice” because I was lucky, not because I was good. I’m awfully glad to have been lucky, because now I realize how much I would regret having had an abortion. That realization is what makes me try to change this ridiculous pro-abortion culture in which we live.
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Andrea enjoyed that rant: I am of the uptight variety who thinks that if you can’t express yourself without using expletives, you probably shouldn’t express yourself. But I thoroughly enjoyed that rant, and laughed out loud in many places. Especially this:
WTF? What is based on “a significant amount of legal research”? Her assumption that Bill C-484 will lead to abuse of women’s rights? What is she, psychic?
Vicki Saporta Psychic Services: Deciding just when and how much you need to think. Just one of the many services she offers, thinking is her top priority. So you can put your feet up, and agree.
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Tanya, excited: Oh! Are we pointing out favorite passages? Mine is definitely:
Hello?? Is there ANYONE in the world that doesn’t support a woman’s right to carry a pregnancy to term?This is a non-point. This is the stupidest thing she says. Before I go on, I just want to state, with complete clarity, that I fully support Saporta’s right to have two arms and two legs. Look how wonderful and liberal I am
Weird, what children do to you…
It’s hard to imagine Madonna as a Mommy (hey, I remember Truth or Dare). But look! Having kids seems to have tamed the old Material Girl… A bit.
Madonna has a surprisingly tough take on motherhood – she does not let her kids watch television or eat sweets.
“Children need limits, otherwise they go off the rails,” she told German magazine KulturSpiegel.
Ignoring television is also an authentic punk-rock attitude, she explained.
At 49, Madonna still considered herself a rebel and said she wanted to pass on that attitude to her children.
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Andrea adds: That’s nice. But still, I’m guessing it might be hard for Madonna to limit her kids on some things. Take their spending, for example; we are, after all, living in a material world. And she is a material girl. She is THE material girl, in fact.
New comments page is up
Have a read, here.
The difference forty years makes?
Is this the difference in cultural mores that forty years can make? Through the normalization of taking a life? Then…
Josephine Woodgate was 25 when she had one of the UK’s earliest legal abortions. Today, 40 years after women were given the legal right to abortion, she remains haunted by the choice she made … “Over the years, the regret I felt has never waned. Even now, I still catch myself wondering about the child I might have had, if only I had been given more information at the time…”
…and now…
Kat Stark, 24, a union administrator from Warwick, has no regrets about having an abortion. She was 19 when she became pregnant while at university. “When I found out I was pregnant I didn’t have any money or a partner. I knew there was no way I could have a baby,” she said.
Show me the data
This today, in the Post. And more needed than ever, is a discussion on freedom of conscience for the medical profession. The comment below highlights the issue well. So I decided to make it a post of its own. Dr. Philip Ney responds to the question “In practice, how hard is it to be pro-life in medical schools these days?”
What about, how hard is it to be a pro-life professor in a medical school? Very hard and becoming harder. Why? Because medical schools are abandoning evidence-based medicine and the pro-life physicians are letting them. Abortion and sexual preference are now designated moral issues, which because they are such, cannot be treated or scientifically investigated.
Thank the Lord I was academically successful (full professor 4 times, academic and clinical dept. head etc.) and was an outspoken pro-lifer. I also lost 3 positions. I know it has become much harder in medical schools.
What would I advise students and young profs? Don’t keep quiet and don’t compromise. If God wants you to get to the top, you will. Remember Joseph and stick to your principles. If you are asked if you would perform an abortion, answer “of course, when and if it is therapuetically indicated and when and if there is good evidence abortion is beneficial and relatively free of harmful effects. Until that time, I will adhere to primum non nocere.”Don’t forget that the onus of proof rests on those who propose or perform any medical proceedure to show: it is indicated, beneficial, relatively free of harm, done in good conscience, performed only with fully informed consent and then only when all other avenues, less invasive, have been tried and found wanting. Keep insisting, “show me the data.” You can rest assured there is no satisfactory evidence abortion by choice is good treatment and plenty of evidence it is harmful. Ask me for references if you wish.
When is pollution not pollution?
Intelligent discussion about the environment and pollution can be hard to find. I find the loudest voices on both sides of the “are we headed for ecological armageddon?” debate to be noisy and poorly read in basic statistics. There’s a lot to be said for maintaining the environment, especially in places like Canada, where open spaces are abundant and incredibly beautiful, but it takes a pretty hard heart to ask Indians and Chinese to do without heating and basic transportation for the sake of a theoretical reduction in world temperatures of .8 degrees several decades in the future.
Here is an issue of pollution and a threat to wildlife that’s worth more discussion than it’s getting. The hormones in birth control pills (used also in the morning-after pill and some abortion inducing drugs, but because of sheer volume, it’s really about birth control pills) end up excreted into sewage, and make their way, despite all the treatments meant to neutralize human waste, into the water, well, everywhere. This is devastating some fish populations. If an oil refiner were releasing a substance into the water that had similar effects, we’d hear of nothing else, and be encouraged to boycott the producers, call for new oil taxes, lobby for new laws, and so on.
It’s no secret that the hard core environmental lobby are in favour of Zero Population Growth, where they don’t favour reducing the population. The most common and reliable birth control method (in the developed world, anyway) pollutes the environment. Will Greenpeace or similar have the intellectual honesty to call for a new look at birth control and our reliance on synthetic hormones to manipulate nature? Many people have spoken out about hormonal manipulation of livestock and its effects both on humans and animals. Why the silence here?
By all means, we (humanity) need some method of birth control that is safe and effective. There is a lot about the pill that is politically attractive: it is, used properly, very effective, it is entirely within the purview of the woman involved, which meshes well with the reality of the hook-up culture, it’s marketed for all sorts of trivial things that make it even more appealing (want to have only four periods a year? want to clear up your acne? try the Pill!) and it makes drug companies a ton of money. But there are increasing reasons to think that it’s not very safe. If it’s not safe for wildlife to be exposed to these hormones indirectly, maybe we’ll finally start to look at how healthy it is for the women who ingest it daily.
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