ProWomanProLife

You are here: Home / Archives for 2009

Archives for 2009

Quality of life assumptions

by 1 Comment

This is a lovely column by Leonard Stern from yesterday’s Citizen:

Studies show that able-bodied folk consistently judge the quality of life of disabled people to be much lower than do disabled people themselves. We project our own fears onto the disabled. Even medical professionals commit this error and underestimate the quality of life of disabled patients.

I recall once going to hear a disabled woman speak, about ten years ago. She touched on this topic, and I was left with the very distinct and uncomfortable impression that I had been doing just that–judging others’ quality of life to be low simply because I couldn’t fathom living in a particular way. 

Obama and pro-lifers

by 6 Comments

In case you haven’t been following the story, here’s a pretty decent summary of the Notre Dame scandal. I don’t understand why a Catholic institution would go out of its way to honour the least pro-life president in recent memory. Apparently, I am not alone.

______________________

Andrea adds: There’s this in today’s Post, too, about Obama and the honorary degree, and his position on abortion: 

If there is any abortion–anywhere, at any time, for any reason– that President Obama does not think should be legal and funded by the government if need be, he has not indicated it thus far. 

Very conciliatory, that Obama.

A poignant point

by 3 Comments

I thought this was a good point–in an article actually about the Tamil demonstrations: 

But if anyone needs proof that trafficking is the answer to the question of very effective protesting, they need only have watched a huge but quiet protest against Canada’s 40-year-old abortion laws held on Parliament Hill on Thursday, which included a non-disruptive march around Ottawa streets.  Number of questions raised in the Commons or headlines posted in the media about their pro-life campaign to save the unborn from what they perceive as an illegal slaughter: Zero.

Old stereotypes die hard

by 8 Comments

Meant to mention this. After the march on Thursday I went to the Rose Dinner, a Campaign Life Coalition event.

At my table: A policy writing woman, a nurse (female), a woman in politics, a female student of political science. Another woman working in policy, and some women over at the other end I never got a chance to talk to. Two men at our table of ten.

To think, pro-choice types had me convinced I’d meet a man doing this pro-life work. And everywhere I go–women, only women–as far as the eye can see. I’m just saying.

______________________________

Rebecca adds: Based on my very circumscribed experience (my acquaintances skew academic, liberal and secular) pro-lifers tend to be women. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of men, including some young men, at the marvellous conference in Halifax last weekend. Most of the women I know are pro-choice but feel strongly that they would never have an abortion themselves; most of the men I know think it’s a very good thing indeed that abortion lets them off the hook if they accidentally get someone knocked up. This makes a sort of sense to me; abortion is something that’s done to women’s bodies, to a baby within a woman’s body, and I can see why women dislike it on a visceral or intuitive level more than men do.

Of course, because I spend most of my time around academic, liberal and secular types, I have come across some men who are pro-life, but have had the metaphorical stuffing beaten out of them whenever they voice this, and so have learned to keep quiet.

Randy Hillier on freedom of conscience

by 9 Comments

Ontario PC leadership candidate Randy Hillier writes about freedom of conscience:

Last year, Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons came close to implementing a policy that would have made it “unethical” for doctors to decline, as a matter of conscience, to perform controversial medical procedures on otherwise healthy patients. If adopted, the policy would have compelled doctors who consider abortion the taking of innocent life to provide such a “service” themselves or risk losing their license to practice medicine in Ontario.

Fortunately, after an outcry from the public prompted some sober second thought, the College stepped back from the policy, allowing doctors to continue exercising their conscience in the performance of their duties. In doing so, however, it also warned doctors that they could still be subject to prosecution by other quasi-judicial bodies such as Ontario’s human rights tribunals. [Read more…]

When life imitates the Onion

by 4 Comments

I believe the Wall Street Journal used to–perhaps they still do–have a section called “When Life Imitates the Onion.”

This piece qualifies.

______________________

Rebecca adds: “We accept as a basic truth the idea that everyone has the right to marry somebody.”

Excuse me? Since when? Children don’t have the right to marry somebody. People in jail, in most jurisdictions, don’t have the right to marry somebody. The certifiably insane don’t have the right to marry somebody, nor does Canadian law accept proxy marriages, or plural marriage, or marriage between first degree blood relatives.

Marriage is a stamp that society puts on a relationship. Not all societies have the same rules about marriage, but they all have rules, formal and informal, and they have by and large been served well by them. If your society declines to put its stamp on your relationship, you’re not married. In Israel, which has no civil marriage, you can only be married by clergy, and almost all clergy there insist on marrying within the faith, so Jews have a great deal of difficulty marrying non-Jews, Muslims non-Muslims, and Christians non-Christians.  This could be a good thing or a bad thing but it’s consistent and coherent.

“Jennifer Finney Boylan is a professor of English at Colby College.” Of course. Some things are so preposterous only an academic could believe them, to mutilate, er, sorry, re-assign a phrase.

I’d say the legal status of his/her marriage is about the least of Professor Boylan’s problems.

A fight we can’t lose

by 2 Comments

Interesting article, and very hopeful on the pro-life front:

The pro-life movement is arguably more comfortable with the language of rights and liberties than its opponents. Abortion foes are defending a right to life grounded in the Declaration of Independence, after all, whereas pro-choicers are defending more nebulous rights (privacy, autonomy, etc.) supposedly grounded in “penumbras” and “emanations” from the Constitution.

The article discusses marriage, life and Obama. Now I happen to also be in favour of two person, man/woman marriage. And that is a position I’ve also attempted to argue in the public square.

It is a million gazillion times easier to defend life in the public square–precisely because the arguments–and the sound bites–are rights based. They are equality based. Equality and dignity for both mom and child. There’s this shaky notion pro-abortion types put forward that abortion serves women’s rights because they are “in control of their own bodies” but it’s a superficial argument, and one that is fairly easily overcome by unpacking the euphemism and looking at what really happens.

In short, I believe very strongly that combatting abortion is a fight we can’t lose.  And that’s good news.

________________________

Rebecca adds: I still can’t see how abortion can be construed as part of a right to privacy.  Our Dear Leader Trudeau famously quipped that government has no place in people’s bedrooms.  I’m not aware of many abortions that take place in bedrooms, and even the most die-hard libertarians would have a hard time defending the idea that government has no place regulating clinics and hospitals, especially when they’re run by public funds.

But let’s go with the idea that abortion involves “privacy” and shouldn’t be interfered with by the state that it stems from something that takes place in the bedroom.  If someone is raped in a bedroom, is it none of the state’s business?  What about a murder in a bedroom?  The proposition that something that happens in a private residence, or has something to do with sex, is inherently private is patently absurd.

I suppose the standard libertarian position would be that rape and murder are the government’s business even if they happen in bedrooms because the injured party doesn’t consent.  To the best of my knowledge, the informed consent of all parties involved in an abortion never takes place, either.

Meta