ProWomanProLife

You are here: Home / Archives for 2008

Archives for 2008

Unhappy

by Leave a Comment

So Robert Latimer is to be released from jail. That makes me angry. I understand that he’s no danger to society, and that he’s unlikely to re-offend. But that’s not the point, and never was. It is illegal – and wrong – to take the life of disabled people no matter what the reason. It bothers me that we live in a society that fully sanctions it when the disabled person is still in the womb, and tolerates it once the person is out.

___________________ 

Andrea adds: More disturbing than what Latimer did–kill his daughter–has been some of the sanctimonious pontificating from the media, which has ranged from full on sympathy, to understanding tolerance. This article is no different:

Born with a severe form of cerebral palsy, Latimer’s daughter Tracy was 12 years old, weighed barely 40 pounds, had no mobility, suffered unrelenting pain and endured five to six epileptic seizures a day, when Latimer ended her life… She had little more than a newborn’s consciousness and could communicate only through expressions, laughing and crying.

This is false, but even if it were true, so what? They claim suffering, suffering, suffering on Tracy’s part, but always neglect to discuss her and who she was: Her personality, her preferences, her schedule, her day. Tracy Latimer was a sister and a daughter, who had favourite colours and foods, and was a part of a family just the same as me. And I mean that. Tracy Latimer was no less a person than I.  

 ___________________ 

Véronique adds: About the likelihood of re-offending. When I was listening to excerpts of the parole board proceedings, the Board asked Latimer a question along the lines of: “What if one of your family members was disabled following a car accident? Would you take it upon yourself to end their life?” If my memory serves me well, Latimer never answered the question directly. It was a valid question that deserved an answer. While we are led to believe that disability is congenital and can be avoided by advocates of prenatal genetic testing, disability is often accidental. Latimer may never have to end the life of another daughter with cerebral palsy, granted. But it doesn’t mean that he will never be faced again with the disability of a loved one.

Joyce’s choices on Bill C-484

by Leave a Comment

Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has a letter in the Citizen today. She states there is a conflict between Bill C-484 (unborn victims of violence) and existing laws. There isn’t-because the only law governing the fetus today, and after this bill too, is a woman’s choice.

A woman can do what she chooses with her unborn child.

Now what Arthur is getting at is a longstanding hypocrisy: When an unborn child is wanted, he or she gets medical treatment, even in the womb. And when unwanted, he or she can be killed.

With this bill, when a wanted unborn child dies, the criminal can be charged accordingly.

The decision still hinges on a woman’s choice.

This hypocrisy has existed for some time, and this bill rests on that hypocrisy.

In these cases of violence against pregnant women, they wanted their babies. They chose to keep them. Therefore, honouring their memory, as per their family’s requests, many of whom are backing the bill, means charging the criminal for two murders.

Joyce Arthur, with her complaint, is suggesting that in these cases of violence against a woman and her child, that woman’s choice doesn’t count.

Why? Because Joyce Arthur fears, more than usual, that the eternal hypocrisy of our system will be exposed. (This system, which cares for infants on one floor of a hospital and aborts them on another.)

But either this is a game of choice, or it’s not.

Joyce has two choices then: To support women’s choices, or not.

Arbitrary? Yes. But groups like hers made the rules. Now they ought to play by them.

Brigitte Pellerin is swish

by Leave a Comment

brigitte.jpg

PWPL is proud to report that our very own Brigitte Pellerin is swish. Or at very least, she’s attending a swishy event. She’s on the jury that nominates the winner of the prestigious Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing and has both a ticket and a dress for this hot, sold out event. No karate kimono tonight.

This revelation spells the end of her self-deprecating “I’m an old goat” series of jokes. Clearly, you are cool and I think the rest of the old goats here would appreciate it if you just came clean.

_______________________

Brigitte is: Thinking about a comeback… I’m sure there’s one somewhere… How about I like being an old goat? Does that work?

_______________________

Andrea adds: As in, you are an old goat in swishy clothing? Works for me.

The National Abortion Federation and Bill C-484

by Leave a Comment

160_vicki_saporta_080128.jpg

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.

________________________

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

davidcameron.jpg

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?

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

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.

__________________

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.  

__________________

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?

Meta