Archives for 2009

Jojo Ruba from CCBR was shouted down during a presentation he was giving at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eulKIaVM9DE]

According to the above YouTube poster:

The small group of Abortion supporters blocked the projector, swore at the presenter, and drowned out attempts at communication for over an hour, until a St. Mary’s Conflict Resolution Official inexplicably chose to order the students (still sitting quietly in their seats) to leave rather than have the unruly mob arrested by police.

Jojo Ruba had this to say:

What looks worse, shutting down a university-approved presentation or arresting people who are unlawfully disrupting that presentation?” asked Ruba, who said he was appalled the university gave in to mob rule. “St. Mary’s should be ashamed of itself for showing students they need only scream when they don’t like something, rather than dialogue respectfully.”

I don’t know where these university students got the idea that it was OK to squelch free speech.  Alright, so maybe I do.

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Andrea adds: Wowee, they sure do have those slogans down. No thinking allowed. You know, I haven’t really missed not seeing/hearing/knowing the news these past ten days all that much. This is just sad.

I enjoyed Juno a great deal, but I couldn’t hum you anything from that soundtrack if my life depended on it. That wasn’t really what I was paying attention to. I guess I missed something good: It just won a Grammy for Best Soundtrack. Yippee-dee-doo!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20PQBtyfNZY]

MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield fixed data on autism.

This is what happens when feminism goes too far. Men become outraged by one of my favorite cereal commercials. (I do prefer this commercial with the British accents, but I digress…)

I believe in the strength of women. I believe we are capable of more than we know. But when we start claiming we can do anything men can do, men start questioning why we don’t have snow globes thrown at our crotch more often.

Now, “if women are the weaker sex, she shouldn’t be secretary of state. She shouldn’t run for president. She should stay home to bake cookies.”  Okay, so O’Reily’s guest is not the most articulate man, and there’s a whole lot that’s offensive to women infused into this one statement. But he’s a great exmple of the monster over-the-top feminism has helped create.

Oh, I know. She’s busy counting the days until her sixth baby is born… But what can I do? She’s the one who knows stuff about ethics. I’m just, you know, a know-nothing reactionary right-winger who doesn’t like too many medical interventions in what should be normal life stuff. (Don’t get me wrong: modern medicine is great when you need it; but we don’t need it nearly as often as some people would have us believe.)

Anyhoo.

Long piece in the Globe and Mail about yet another “simple test” that could, they claim, detect genetic problems with your baby earlier in a pregnancy. It’s too early in the morning (plus Véronique is, last I heard, still pregnant…) to start a “spot-the-euphemism” drinking game, but gosh, what a piece. A few choice samples:

Current methods to collect fetal DNA, such as amniocentesis, involve an intrusion into the uterus that can trigger a miscarriage – a risk that makes many couples refuse the procedure.

(Written as though most normal people – and not, say, reactionary kooks like me – would, of course, never refuse such a procedure… I mean, really, what’s the big deal?)

Yet as with most advances in reproductive medicine, the new technology is raising tricky social questions.

While some see it as a better way to prepare parents and hospitals to care for newborns with special needs, others fear it smacks of eugenics as science makes it ever easier to reject a less-than-perfect baby.

(“tricky social questions”?)

This is a powerful technology,” said Doug Wilson, head of the genetics committee of the Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Canada.

“If it can be proven to be as accurate [as current diagnostic methods] it will become the new diagnostic gold standard.

“If it can be done at 10 weeks, instead of 16 weeks, it will relieve the stresses of pregnancy early.”

(“relieve the stresses of pregnancy”?)

Dr. Wilson of the obstetrics society noted that even the best current screening methods result in a number of women being told they are carrying a baby with Down syndrome when they are not.

“You could have 10 to 15 women who screen positive, but only one of them will be a true positive,” said Dr. Wilson, also head of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Calgary and Foothills Hospital.

(Right. And that would have nothing to do with a pregnant woman’s decision not to have a giant needle stuck into her uterus? or with – what did they call it? – the stresses of pregnancy?)

U.S. statistics suggest that 80 to 95 per cent of women who receive an early prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to end their pregnancies, she noted. In Canada, the number cannot be tracked due to privacy regulations.

Had enough for one morning? Me, too.

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Tanya’s mind is reeling: So instead of insisting on more accurate screening methods, science is looking for screening methods which can be performed earlier. And this even though it’s likely about 8 out of 10 abortions performed in the name of “fetal abnormality” end the life of a perfectly healthy child.

Now, I’m opposed to eugenics across the board. But even if you aren’t, isn’t that disgusting?

Do they tell the woman, when she screens positive, that there’s less than a 10% chance her child has Down Syndrome? Where are the “reproductive rights” activists now?

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Rebecca adds: Well, two cheers for Canadian medicare, because at US$700 a pop, I can’t see this test being offered, and thus in practice available, here anytime soon.

What’s that about a slippery slope? “But CEO Harry Stylli said the company plans to develop screening tests for a range of other disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and Tay-Sachs disease.” Tay-Sachs causes deterioration from late infancy on, leading to death by age 4 or 5. I can imagine how abortion might seem to be a better choice than bringing a child into the world doomed to a short and painful life. But cystic fibrosis patients often live into their late 20s and 30s, and sickle cell anemia reduces the average life expectancy to the late 40s. Implicit in this testing is that at least some parents will choose abortion over bearing a child with the disease being screened for. What sane argument can be made for aborting a baby who will have a medical condition that can largely be managed, and who with today’s medicine could potentially live half a century, and see his or her grandchildren? Heart disease and hypertension also shave a decade or two off life expectancy; if we could pinpoint the genes for those and screen for them in the womb, would that be a good reason to abort? Where do we stop?

The mother of those octuplets talks to the media.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLtm_DW2jMQ]

[h/t Maclean’s]

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Rebecca adds: It’s surreal. Where to start?

One tiny detail of the story: there is a daycare at the university that she hopes to use while finishing her Masters in counselling. There is a very well regarded daycare that a lot of my friends have used at a nearby community centre: for the four infant spaces (infant being between 12 week and 18 months) they have a waiting list of 150 babies. And she’s under the impression that she’ll be able to find, never mind pay for, fourteen spaces?

“I wanted to be a mother” – yes, of course, what could be more natural than to want to be a mother, and since (it’s implied) her fertility problems are linked to an injury, how much worse to feel that your ability to become a mother has been violently taken away from you? But at what point do we have to move beyond the wants of individual adults, and think about the babies?

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Patricia says: The throwaway question “you knew you weren’t going to selectively reduce?” was a nice touch, I thought. It provides a chilling insight into the world of assisted reproduction. As the mother goes through her story, the interviewer just wants to make sure she’s got the process right: the mother had implanted multiple embryos and she didn’t plan on killing even a few of them. Without batting an eye, the mother acknowledges that the “selective reduction”/killing step was not part of her plan and continues on with her story. Implicit in the whole exchange is a complete acceptance that that step would be a completely normal response to the possibility of such a multiple birth, but it just didn’t work for this mother.

I wonder how they decide which babies to “selectively reduce”? Does the doctor review that decision with the parents?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-cJZrBlzE]

More often than we’d like to think. Often enough for there to be an organization dedicated to the cause.

Our undercover investigation obtained over 800 taped conversations with Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation clinics all across America, which prove that Planned Parenthood and NAF fail to comply with the law. They ignore the law even in cases of child sex abuse where child rape is disclosed and acknowledged – not just suspected.

Now, does Planned Parenthood ignore the law because they so strongly believe that every girl deserves unfettered access to abortion? Maybe every counselor we see in these undercover tapes is a gung-ho feminist willing to risk legal repercussions for the cause. Maybe they’re just that devoted to what they consider “women’s rights.” But would a real feminist, one who cares about more than just abortion, not shudder in the face of statutory rape on an epic scale? It’s been suggested that when girls 15 or under get pregnant, over 60% of the time it’s by an adult.

We have also uncovered data showing that as the age of the victim goes down, the age of the perpetrator goes up.

But maybe Planned Parenthood isn’t just a billion dollar oxymoron. Maybe they’re only in it for the money.

Ezra Levant has the latest… from the free speech point of view.

From my own anti-casual-abortion point of view: I’ll say again (sorry if you’ve read this before; but I am going to say it every chance I get), I object to subjecting unsuspecting bystanders to graphic GAP images without giving them a chance to brace themselves. I challenge everyone to see those graphic and disturbing images [you have been warned], along with Silent Scream – especially pro-choicers, for they should know what it is that they’re defending. But I don’t want to force them to. This said, and given what else goes unchallenged on campus, I consider the treatment of those pro-life students more objectionable than the images in question so I find myself, reluctantly, defending them.