Archives for June 2010

How classy:

Every child is beautiful (well, not really, but that’s the cliche, right?), and now — thanks to BeautifulPeople.com — you can up the chances of having offspring worthy of a baby modeling career. That’s right, the controversial dating site now has a forum/sperm bank where one may search for genetic material from beautiful people and beautiful people alone.

Back in the winter months, BeautifulPeople.com — a dating website that only allows attractive people to join based on the democratic vote of its members — gained its share of media attention after expelling 5,000 people after they packed on the holiday pounds. Back then, Founder Robert Hintze said, “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Now, the site is taking further steps in the fight against unattractiveness (at least unattractiveness as gauged by people who dig conventionality) by launching a fertility introduction service that allows both members and non-members to score the stuff that dream babies are made of. According to Managing Director Greg Hodge, “There are no financial benefits for us in doing so — we are simply responding to a demand for attractive donors. Every parent would like their child to be blessed with many fine attributes, attractiveness being one of the most sought after. For a site with members who resemble Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie you can imagine the demand.”

Yes, but what if it doesn’t work? Or what if your beautiful child misbehaves anyway?

I’m not a pollster but asking if others should receive more, less or the same as you do on anything–be it abortions or ice cream–strikes me as a formula for one answer and one answer only: Why, the same! The same would be most fair.

Which is precisely what this poll shows. Thank goodness we have professionals doing this stuff.

With my first pregnancy, I bought every book on prenatal care I could find. I ate well, I gave up sushi and soft cheese, and I attended Lamaze classes regularly. Educating myself, I became convinced I had achieved expert status on the subject of childbirth prior to the actual event. However, as my due date came and went without a baby in sight, I suddenly found myself scrambling for information and becoming incredibly stressed as the words ‘potential emergency Caesarean’ rebounded off the hospital walls. I had fabulous health care, I was fit, had a wonderful doctor whom I trusted, a supportive spouse, and a nearby parent. All of these factors led to a fairly easy (relatively speaking) labour, but if even one of those pillars of support hadn’t been there or had wavered during crisis moments… who’s to say what the outcome would’ve been. I’m all too aware that there are many women without such support, and they suffer needlessly because of it. Reading this article from The New York Times about the difference in the maternal mortality rate in Chelsea versus the Bronx, reminds me of how the simplest of social policy changes and education outreach programs can give support to women and potentially save their lives.

More mothers die during pregnancy or soon after in New York than in almost every other state, and according to reports released on Friday by the New York Academy of Medicine and the city’s health department, social factors like poverty, obesity and lack of insurance may be responsible.

While the total number of maternal deaths are small — an average of about 40 a year across the state — city health officials said their analysis showed that maternal mortality was being driven by environmental factors like poor nutrition that could be changed through public policy.

New York City’s analysis, billed as one of the most sophisticated looks at maternal mortality in the country, studied 161 women who died of pregnancy-related causes in the city from 2001 to 2005.

It found that 49 percent of the women who died were obese. Black women, who were more likely to be obese, were seven times as likely to die in pregnancy as white women. Hispanic and Asian women were twice as likely to die as white women.

The death rate was highest in the Bronx and Brooklyn, which have large poor and minority populations. The neighborhoods with the highest death rates were Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights in Brooklyn and Jamaica in Queens. Those with the lowest death rates — actually zero — were Chelsea and Greenwich Village in Manhattan, Bensonhurst in Brooklyn and Flushing in Queens.

Women without health insurance — who may receive less preventive care — were four times as likely to die as women with such coverage, but women covered by Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, fared as well as women with private insurance, the city found.

I’d also like to note this article doesn’t mention ‘unsafe abortion’.

Oh look, what a surprise:

Euthanasia cases in Holland have increased by 13 per cent in the past year, according to new figures.

Last year a total of 2,636 Dutch people were killed by euthanasia, with 80 per cent of cases involving people dying at home after their doctors administered a lethal dose of drugs. This compares with 2,331 reported deaths in 2008.

In 2003, the year after Holland became the first country since the fall of Nazi Germany to legalize the practice, there were 1,815 cases.

Reading Mark Steyn in Maclean’s this issue was like therapy for me. He basically speaks about those who are quite sure, very sure they themselves have absolutely no bias. It’s just everyone else:

What’s impressive about these anti-Fox critiques is their indestructible lack of self-awareness. Two years ago in Ottawa, I attended an awards luncheon hosted by Mr. Newman at which the keynote address was a lazy shapeless ramble by his CBC colleague Patrick Brown on China and the media. At one point, Mr. Brown remarked that Chinese state media wasn’t bad compared to Fox News.

Steyn goes on to say:

I’m a partisan figure–that’s to say, I have “views” with which others disagree: I favour small government, I oppose abortion, I loathe Canadian government regulation of free speech, etc. …But there’s something weird about a bunch of fellows insisting that they’re sober, responsible, and objective, even as they’re hyperventilating ever more bombastically about how the competition are bombastic hyperventilators. After all, a guy who enjoys getting his news from the mouthpiece of the Chinese politburo surely has “views.” Why can’t he just admit it? Why can’t the CBC or CNN or the New York Times, just say, “Hey, you know, you’re right, we have a particular world view and our content reflects that”?

Everyone, absolutely everyone, has a bias, a world view, a way of seeing things. They then interpret news and events through that bias. That’s life.

(And of course, I also enjoy reading, as I already knew, that Steyn opposes abortion. He just slides it in there, and I do appreciate it.)

…this Father’s Day.

In an article in the May issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the Eastern Virginia Medical School examined 43 previously published studies involving 28,000 male and female adults and found that at least 1 in 10 fathers became depressed after the birth of their child.

A study in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology even found that half of male partners experienced varying degrees of psychological malaise following their partner’s miscarriage.

If a man can feel negative emotions after every other type of pregnancy outcome, why not after an abortion?

A 2009 study in the journal Public Health examining the associations between abortion and relationship functioning found that “for men and women, the experience of an abortion in a previous relationship was related to negative outcomes in the current relationship.”

It also discovered that an “experience of an abortion within a current relationship was associated with 116 percent and 196 percent increased risk of arguing about children for women and men, respectively.”

Men whose current partners had an abortion were more likely to report jealousy (96 percent greater risk) and conflict about drugs (385 percent greater risk). The authors conclude, “[A]bortion may play a vital role in understanding the [causes] of relationship problems.”

Dads matter a great deal. Happy Father’s Day!

(in case you wonder where I got this picture: It’s an ad for a bottle holster… which was, OF COURSE, the *first* thing I noticed about the picture. I swear!)

A letter in today’s Ottawa Citizen:

In his letter, Robert Riordan disputes letter-writer David Morse’s statement that there has been a tenfold increase in the rate of abortions in Canada since 1970. He takes Morse to task for using the word “rate” rather than numbers.

The statistics show a tenfold increase in the numbers of induced abortions performed on Canadian women from 1970 to the present. However, Riordan’s claim that the number of abortions “became reasonably stable within a few years” after 1970 doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Using data from Statistics Canada, we find 11,152 abortions in 1970, with the numbers increasing almost yearly and reaching a high of 111,709 abortions for the year 1997. These are the numbers that Riordan calls reasonably stable.

From 1998 to 2004, the abortion numbers did decline slightly, but continued at over 100,000 a year, from 110,331 abortions in 1998 to 100,039 abortions in 2004.

If we examine the rate of induced abortions per 100 live births, we also find a tenfold increase. Statistics Canada reported the rate of induced abortions per 100 live births was 3.0 in 1970 and 31.0 per 100 live births in 2003.

The statistics for the year 2006 showing 91,377 abortions for the country seem to indicate a decline but data are missing. As Statistics Canada cautions the reader, abortion clinics in British Columbia, New Brunswick and Manitoba did not submit their numbers.

Additionally, the Canadian Institute for Health Information estimates that as of the data year 2000, “the Therapeutic Abortion Survey database represents approximately 90 per cent of all abortions performed in Canada on Canadian residents.” At the very least, the abortion numbers hover at 100,000 annually.

Louise Harbour, Ottawa

Executive director,

Action Life Ottawa

…go back to talking about local access. This seems to be the new motto for pro-choice enthusiasts after failing to make the kind of impact they would’ve liked on the Maternal Health Initiative.

Kimberley’s mind was made up. The mother of a toddler, she was pregnant again and wanted an abortion. But as a resident of Prince Edward Island, which doesn’t have a single abortion provider, she had to drive over four hours with her boyfriend to New Brunswick, dodge anti-abortion protesters, then pay $600 out of her own pocket for the procedure.

As a child growing up in Alaska, my small city was over three hours from absolutely everywhere. It’s the price we paid for cheaper housing, less crime, less pollution, and we looked forward to our regular road trips for shopping and sometimes for less eagerly awaited hospital visits. Here in Nova Scotia, people living rurally often travel long distances to Halifax for doctor’s appointments and specialist procedures.

Growing up rurally myself, I find it incredible that anyone would actually want an abortion clinic to move into their town. Especially in a small community, such as those in PEI (total population approx. 140,000), that relies heavily on tourism. The community would hardly want clinics dotting the landscape they’ve worked so hard to preserve.

It’s ridiculous that I have to leave my own province. It’s my own body, I need to have control over it,” said the soft-spoken woman in her mid-20s, who asked to use a pseudonym because her family and friends didn’t know she was having an abortion.

Her friends and family would have been more likely to know, had she had the procedure in a local small town hospital.

After an abortion your risk of  a preterm delivery of your first wanted child goes up. Posted here, but it’s subscriber access only. I’ve copied part here:

Dr. Ghislain Hardy, a third-year resident in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at McGill University did a retrospective chart review of women who had delivered a baby between 2001 and 2005 at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Among the 17, 916 women who had a singleton delivery, 2,276 (13%) also had undergone a previous abortion and 862 (5%) had two or more induced abortions.

After adjusting for baseline characteristics, women with one previous abortion were 45% more likely to have a premature child at under 32 weeks; 71% more likely at less than 28 weeks; and more than twice as likely at less than 26 weeks. This association was even stronger for those with two or more abortions. “Preterm birth is a major concern in our health-care system today. It is the most important cause of neonatal morbidity,” said Dr. Hardy in his presentation. The rate of preterm birth is on the rise in Canada, and was more than 8.1% in 2006. Preterm birth is a burden on neonatal intensive care units, and these children go on to have health and social problems.