Wouldn’t want to leave the mommy-war subject unattended for too long… Here’s a neat little piece from Monday’s Globe and Mail. (I know; I have been swamped with work all week.)
________________________
Tanya adds: Here’s another mom who seems to have 2 kids and a smile… caught off guard, but smiling nonetheless.
A friend draws my attention to a letter published in yesterday’s Guelph Mercury (can’t find a link, sorry). I especially like the last paragraph:
Dear Editor – Re: “Keeping personal views separate” (Guelph Mercury, Jan. 2).
A faithful Catholic is one who is shaped by the moral convictions of a
well-formed conscience and focused on the dignity of every human being, whether
it is the pursuit of the common good or the protection of the weak and
vulnerable.Yet Guelph Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, a Catholic, admits to being
pro-choice. The optics suggest he is more guided by his political attachment to
the Liberal party than he is with the teachings of the Catholic Church.As to a secular society such as contemporary Canada, the pro-life ideal has
not been tried and found wanting. Rather, it has been found difficult and
therefore, left untried.— Ricardo Di Cecca, Burlington
Update: Ah, found a link.
UP-update: What do you know. That’s a line from G.K. Chesterton. Thanks to Dear Husband, resident Chesterton expert, for pointing it out.
This article is a quick biography of quarterback Tim Tebow, a homeschooled Christian who is apparently very good at the sport.
In only three years of college ball, Tebow has already won a national championship and just about every individual award he has been eligible for. Yet it his character, rather than his athletic accomplishments, that have earned him a wide following.
Then this, on what it means to rebel on college today:
Those familiar with the university scene have noticed a new creature on campus in this generation — the culturally conservative, clean-living, academically successful, well-rounded, socially savvy, religiously observant student. He has not displaced his debauched classmates as the new big man on campus, but he is a leader and accepted part of the campus scene — a definite change in the 20 years since I started university. The clean-living Christian is the true rebel on campus, there being nothing else to rebel against, save for licentious living.
We have every freedom–one of the few rebellious things left is to choose to be clean cut–and proud of it.
Glad to hear of a role model like this guy. (Also of note in the article is that his mom was advised to abort him.)
________________________
Brigitte notes: Score another one against baby-boomers. They even managed to ruin teenage rebellion.
I’m sorry to hear Father Richard John Neuhaus passed away this morning. I have had the pleasure of meeting him and I’ll never forget his smile, his warmth, his generosity. R.I.P.
I’m not complaining. I like my life. Even when my driveway, which suddenly looks 5 times longer than usual, is covered with snow. (I have a new winter slogan: “Remember, snow IS a four-letter word.”)
But I can’t quite make it sound as glam as this, no matter how hard I try…
Top Ten Pro-Abortion Moments in 2008, here. Some of these are actually quite funny (see no. 3). Others are revealing. Others are, of course, sad. But let’s focus on the humourous, shall we? My favourite is definitely no. 3.
Justin Timberlake/Jessica Biel
“Nobody should be able to say what you can do with your body,” Biel told cheering crowds at Last Chance for Change, a rally endorsing presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. “I give Jess the right to choose where we go to eat all the time,” Timberlake added.
Wow. What a man.
(h/t Michelle Malkin)
______________________
Brigitte swoons: That’s, like, soooo romantic!
I just received this press release from Carleton Lifeline, Carleton University’s pro-life club–about a Silent No More event they’ll hold tomorrow:
Women speak about their abortion experience at Carleton University
“Abortion does hurt women… it hurt me” – Angelina Steenstra
On January 8th, 2009 at 11:30 AM in University Center 182 at Carleton University, members of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign (SNMAC) will share their experiences with abortion.
This event is open to the public.
Angelina Steenstra, the National Director of the Campaign will be one of the guest speakers. The event is hosted by Carleton Lifeline – the pro-life club at Carleton University. The purpose of the event and the Campaign is to provide women with an opportunity to share the difficulties that they faced after having an abortion, to reach out to those who may be
suffering and let people know there is help available.The event is a good example of Carleton’s new project to create a university that “questions everything” and “challenges conventional thinking.”
Two months ago the SNMAC speakers were unable to present their testimonies due to a complaint from a student, which led to the guests being ordered to leave University grounds.
The club has had trouble with expressing their views previously. Two years ago the Student government nearly shut the club down.
Ruth Lobo, president of Lifeline, says, “We expect this event to proceed without incident after booking and confirming with our student union.”
For More Information
Ruth Lobo, Carleton Lifeline President, [email protected] , 613 – 796 – 1405
“The event is a good example of Carleton’s new project to create a university that “questions everything” and “challenges conventional thinking.”
So glad the university administration and student union is finally onside with allowing learning on campus. Let’s wait and see if they really mean it. (I understand a Silent No More event was unceremoniously booted off campus in the past.)
Came across an article today regarding ulcer medication being used to induce abortions without the help of a doctor. The comment at the bottom caught my eye.
Does anyone realize that this drug is also called Cytotec and is being used ALLL [sic] over the country to induce women? Women and children are dying because of this drug it is a silent epidemic. [sic] Try googling Cytotec Inducing Woman. Then make a news story.
So I did Google it.
Not that I’m surprised, but here’s how the pro-choice side prioritizes the health of the woman:
While Cytotec is hardly a household name, its availability as an underground abortion drug poses a dilemma for women’s health organizations that don’t want to draw attention to self-induced abortion, which is illegal in 39 states. Nor do they want to give pro-life groups another target. “All of us kind of recognize that keeping it a little below the radar may be the best in terms of advocacy right now,” says Silvia Henriquez, director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. [emphasis added]
So the ‘if -you-ignore-it-everything-will-go-away’ method. Proven very effective time after time. Let’s also ignore the fact that Cytotec is an older drug, no longer actively promoted as an ulcer medication, and still rakes in $180 million annually. (Not bad for a $2 pill.) Pfizer considers those sales “very small.” It should be noted that Pfizer repeatedly insists it does not support the off-label use of any drug.
So if these measly profits are being made mainly from the drugs off-label applications, why don’t they pull the drug? Maybe they just haven’t heard enough stories like these:
In 2007 in Massachusetts, an 18-year-old Dominican immigrant named Amber Abreu took misoprostol in her 25th week of pregnancy and gave birth to a 1-pound baby girl who died four days later; a judge sentenced her in June to probation and ordered her into therapy. In South Carolina in February, a Mexican migrant farm worker, Gabriela Flores, pleaded guilty to illegally performing an abortion and was sentenced to 90 days in jail for taking misoprostol while four months pregnant in 2004. A Virginia man, Daniel Riase, is serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to slipping the pills into his pregnant girlfriend’s glass of milk.
Or maybe, contrary to what it says, Pfizer is aware that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers commonly use this drug. Like during late term abortions:
If the pregnancy is over 18 weeks, a medication (Cytotec) will be placed in the cheeks of your mouth to help the osmotic dilators open the cervix.
_______________________
Rebecca adds: There are also some rare but spectacularly bad side effects to Cytotec for labour induction, such as uterine rupture. I have mixed feelings about off-label prescribing, but this is more like an issue of informed consent. Perhaps off-label prescribing is fine, if you’re honest about the risks and unknowns when you’re prescribing that way. I’d like to discuss this with medical friends, and hear what they think about the whole issue. And I can’t help but think that if, say, Viagra came with such horrific potential complications, it’d be a much bigger deal.
This opinion is definitely out there, and I responded to it in the Sun not too long ago.
It’s not an inspiring position and I don’t agree, however, I understand where Warawa and others are coming from.
The thing is–as any pro-lifer will know–some things are not our choice. And there’s a momentum out there in the ether for pro-lifers right now. Not sure why, but it’s there. I say go with it. And don’t worry about debating more than one thing at the same time. That doesn’t mean everyone has to engage in every debate, so Warawa is free to focus on the fiscal. (Maybe he needs a little Tony Robbins to get his pro-life game on, feel the power, that kind of thing.)
A right that’s not exactly enshrined in UN constitutions–yet. Joyce Arthur, well-known pro-choice activist, comments on the National Post web site:
Yes Matt W, let’s err on the side of life – WOMEN’S lives. Because the right to abortion is not about a woman’s right to choose, it’s about her right to LIFE – which means far more than just mere physical survival.
Behind your view is the assumption that women are obligated to have babies just because they are capable of it. Not so. Women can never enjoy full human rights or equality unless they can control their fertility. That includes the right to have sex for pleasure, which carries a risk of pregnancy regardless of use of birth control. So abortion must be available as a backup.
The moral status of the fetus, when life begins etc., does not matter, because women need and will have abortions regardless – even women who think abortion is murder. Abortion is legal because it’s widely practiced regardless of any laws, in every society, in every time. Half of all women in the world will have an abortion at some point in their lives. But 68,000 women die every year and 5 million are injured from illegal, unsafe abortion. So please, let’s err on the side of WOMEN’S lives and keep abortion legal.
Her idea of “rights” reminds me of another quote from a different context:
We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us.
–Rev. Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda’s National AIDS-Prevention Committee
Who is honestly going to stand up for our “right” to casual sex (and hey, while we’re at it, can we enshrine that it be really good sex too?) over someone else’s life? Guess Joyce Arthur just did. (It’s also a twisted sense of pleasure that sees women heading to a clinic to put their feet in stirrups for invasive surgery, all as a matter of routine “choice”.)
________________________
Tanya adds: You know, I think a group of Canadian men should rise up (in this same ridiculous fashion as Joyce Arthur and her ilk) and complain feverishly about male equality because they are unable to get pregnant. And they should also revolt against the injustice of how badly it hurts when they get kicked in the groin. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to belittle the issue, but these exaggerations of Canadian women being “obligated to have babies just because they are capable of it” are so tiresome.
________________________
Véronique adds: Well, if a quote ever summed up how illogical the pro-choice position is, this one would take the prize: “Abortion is legal because it’s widely practiced regardless of any laws, in every society, in every time. ”
So is rape, Ms. Arthur, so is rape…
________________________
Véronique, commenting on the comments: The comments about rape — why it is wrong and how it compares (or not) with abortion are interesting. Is rape wrong because it upholds the right to sex for pleasure over other rights or because it denies women the right to control their own bodies? To me, both arguments merge into one as they both involve a sense of individual entitlement over someone else’s body, be it for power, sexual gratification or whatnot. I wish I had more time to explore some of the implications of this but for the time being, I will just ask what makes something wrong: motive or substance? In other words, does it really matter whether a woman is raped because the rapist didn’t respect her right to physical integrity or because he felt that his right to sex for pleasure was paramount? This line of thinking is characteristic of our times where nothing is just plain wrong.
All this being said, my point about rape was more specific to Joyce Arthur’s argument that abortion must be legal because people have been doing it throughout cultures and generations. If the fact that people do it therefore it must be legal/moral/ethical, then it makes a host of deviant behaviours legal/ethical/moral. Rape and murder come to mind.
And I am not even going to touch the issue of whether legality means morality and vice-versa.