Archives for 2009

A news story about a 60-year-old Calgary woman who gave birth to twins includes this gem:

She is believed to be among the oldest Canadian women to give birth.

Golly, I rather hope so.

Pro-life club granted status:

GUELPH — A pro-life group at the University of Guelph has been granted full club status by the student union.

The decision about accreditation for Life Choice was announced at last night’s Central Student Association board meeting.

Club status was denied to the group last year in response to a number of complaints the CSA received about a life fair the club held in the University Centre last March.

“As we moved farther and farther from the Life Fair, we found the evidence was weaker because of the time gap,” said CSA finance and human resources commissioner Joel Harnest.

After months of controversy, several contentious public meetings and national media attention, the announcement was made quietly.

Life Choice president Cara Benninger was present when the CSA executive gave out a list of campus clubs that would receive status for the coming semester. Life Choice was on that list.

A club with official status can apply for funding from the CSA and is eligible to book meeting spaces and audio-visual equipment.

“A lot of us are relieved it’s over,” Benninger said. “We’re pleased to have club status again without going through what we went through last semester.”

Harnest said a tribunal that was to be struck to deal with the Life Choice matter has now been cancelled. The terms of reference drafted for that tribunal could now be used for any future issues that arise with campus clubs.

“The Life Choice saga was the spark that drew our attention to the holes in our policies, but we’ve taken the necessary steps to repair those,” Harnest said.

I see my previous post is turning into a fun little discussion of what some feminists think I might have meant by asking where the feminists are when we hear about stories of atrocious mistreatment of women in parts of the world that aren’t North America. This is great – I am thoroughly thrilled to get some traction on that important question. See, I have long been of the view that modern North American feminists (not all of them, but a great many) are in fact mostly concerned with promoting abortion as a ‘reproductive right’ issue and not much else. Perhaps I’m wrong. But here’s what I’d like to see: I would like to see famous and committed feminists in North America be at least half as strident denouncing so-called ‘honour killings’ and all manner of abuse women around the world suffer each and every day as they are decrying “a war on women” being waged from the White House to the nation’s statehouses.

So here’s my challenge: If you find examples of feminists (the more prominent the better, but I’ll take anybody) publicly denouncing anything closely related to “a war on women” that’s being waged by anyone that’s not the White House or the Conservative Party of Canada, please send them along. I will gladly help them spread the word.

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Received Feb. 6 from one reader: link one, link two, link three, link four, link five.

Why, oh why, did they call her “mother” of the believers? What’s motherly about her actions?

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I’ll say it until I go blue in the face: Any religion and/or culture that prefers a woman should die rather than live with the “shame” of rape is sick and twisted and worth denouncing at every opportunity. Where, pray tell, are the feminists?

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Rebecca adds: And yet according to “official” Islam, all suffering and problems with the Muslim world are caused by the USA and/or Israel.

Until Muslims writ large are more appalled by this sort of thing, and spend more energy stopping it, than they are by the possibility that the town their uncle’s second cousin may have lived in is now peopled by Jews, or by the fact that American female soldiers are allowed to gasp drive in Saudi Arabia, I have a bit of trouble taking any of their complaints about issues geopolitical or local at all seriously.  Look to the beam of wood in your collective eye, please.

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Tanya says: What this woman has done is atrocious. I do believe, though, that by denouncing the whole culture based on acts such as these, we can’t gain the trust and respect of the very women whom we hope to see liberated.

I don’t doubt for a moment that Muslims everywhere are horrified and appalled by this woman’s actions.

Big news in the world of post-partum depression. Apparently, they’ve discovered that a “simple” blood test might be able to predict whether or not a woman is likely to experience it. This is apparently good:

If we know early on that a woman is at high risk to develop postpartum depression, then we can implement interventions before symptoms actually occur,” said lead researcher Ilona S. Yim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine.

I read the article with a skeptical eye. As a rule, I think letting Mother Nature dictate things is better than too much scientific intervention. I gather being depressed (or suffering from wild mood swings) after a baby is a mostly normal, if annoying, part of the deal. I also understand that in some cases, severe post-partum depression requires professional intervention. But what I don’t like about a test like that is that it carries the risk of making women identified as likely PPD sufferers stress out unduly during their pregnancy, which isn’t great, especially for first-time moms. And what if you’re tagged but are in fact a false positive? Does the test result become some weird form of self-fulfilling prophecy? “The test,” the article explains, “misclassified about 25 percent of the women.”

Yikes!

But that’s not the worst:

If the findings can be replicated, then testing the level of this hormone might become standard care, Yim said.

“Postpartum depression affects so many women that it would be great to have something that would help to identify being at risk early on, and perhaps develop strategies to prevent it,” she said.

Women who know they are at risk for postpartum depression can take steps to reduce stress that might ward off the condition, Yim said. “They could take yoga classes and avoid severe stressors,” she said.

So after all this you’re meant to take yoga? Why not forget the blood test and advise every pregnant woman to avoid “severe stressors” and do something nice and relaxing (as long as it’s not getting a hot stone pedicure…) instead?

I admit it’s not a story I’ve been following very closely – Andrea is much more on the case. But since she’s away, I thought I’d draw your attention to a rather unsettling development. Is it really necessary to use police forces to try and silence people whose opinions you do not share? I think most obviously no. I don’t like those Genocide Awareness Campaigns, because I find them unnecessarily upsetting (I realize that’s the point; I just don’t think it’s necessary to force people to be confronted with those images – I say challenge people to come see them instead). But they are not, and should not be, considered criminal. That’s nuts.

Here’s a longer post on the topic by Ezra Levant, who is quite properly ashamed of his alma mater.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a group with a “strongly pro-choice orientation,” is fighting for the rights of campus anti-abortion (or pro-life) groups. Good for them.

What is there about these anti-abortion groups that warrant such special denigration?” the CCLA letter said, adding that “the proper response is argument, not censorship.”

Right on!

Actor Gary Graham comes out strongly (that’s code for ‘mild language warning’) against abortion, here. I especially like how he ends it:

I don’t mean to preach. I’m just telling you what I have come to know, and that I know that I know. The unborn fetus is a baby in development…and to end that life prematurely is to murder that life.

I truly wish that I had had this conviction way back when…when I was only concerned about my selfish convenience of the day. But I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to think about it. It was inconvenient to think about it.

How ironic that the ‘Love’ Generation should spawn such a culturally accepted abomination as abortion.

May God have mercy on us all.

[h/t LifeSiteNews]