Archives for June 2010

All $1.5 billion dollars of it.

This article is such a relief to read. A relief, I tell you. This has been my point all along: we are layering western politics over the developing world.  And when Melinda Gates speaks, people listen.

Here’s a fun item to get your blood moving on this chilly morning (scroll down to “Let’s have grandchildren”):

Some studies have found that having more daughters makes people more liberal,” Kevin Lewis reports for The Boston Globe. “The theory is that parents perceive conservative policies as constraining the freedom of women. A new analysis by sociologists at New York University contests this finding. Controlling for gender, religion, age, education and marital status, the analysis indicated that having a higher proportion of daughters relative to sons was associated with being Republican or conservative. The authors of this latest study suggest that conservative policies ‘support the genetic fitness of women by capitalizing on each pregnancy, reducing male promiscuity and increasing paternal investment in children’ and ultimately maximizing the number of grandchildren, despite restricting the freedom of daughters.”

OK. I’ll bite: Aren’t those generally associated with an acute concern for the “genetic fitness” of women more worried about encouraging the “good” pregnancies over the “bad” ones, instead of “capitalizing” on each? Oh, and how is it that a desire to reduce male promiscuity and increasing paternal investment in children is considered bad and restrictive for women? By whom?

Apparently, people say they have sex even if they’re not quite married yet. Who knew?

Bold is mine:

Please be advised that the Standing Committee on the Status of Women adopted the following motion from the Hon. Anita Neville at yesterday’s meeting (June 7, 2010):

“That the Committee examine: (a) the climate change impacts on women, and their adaptive and mitigative capacity; (b) the manner in which a gender perspective should be included in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of national environmental policies, in particular strategies related to the impact of climate change on women and the allocation of resources with respect to sustainable development; (c) whether a gender-based analysis of Canada’s policies concerning climate change and sustainable development has been conducted, and if so, its conclusions; and (d) Canada’s role in ensuring that a gender perspective is included as part of the international community’s response to global climate change.”

I eagerly await the results. Particularly regarding my adaptive and mitigative capacity. (Filing under “Crazy out of touch with the average woman.”)

Marni Soupcoff in today’s Post on how today’s rebels sit on the right side of the spectrum.

Left wingers have their causes, yes. But “differently-abled lesbian Asian women” are officially the norm. By all means, keep fighting the good fight, I say. Today this amounts to fighting for yet another major corporation to come out with a gay character in an ad. It is so brave! to be gay and eat a McDonald’s burger or shop at IKEA or drive a Hyundai or a Subaru, now affectionately dubbed The Lesbaru. Oh, one thing: When corporations start placing gay people in their ads–it’s because there’s profit to be had by doing so, an obvious reflection of just how mainstream some of these “brave and courageous” causes actually are. Try criticizing Islam. Try speaking up for Israel. Hey–try getting a major corporation to speak out against abortion.

I’m just saying. (Here ends the rant.)

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is calling for action and funding at the starting line. The simple goal? Getting women in developing nations healthy:

“Some simple blood tests, consultation with a doctor and qualified help at the birth itself can make a huge difference,” Mr. Ban said in an address to an international conference in Washington aimed at finding solutions to problems affecting women and girls worldwide.

“Add some basic antibiotics, blood transfusions and a safe operating room, and the risk of death can almost be eliminated,” he told delegates attending the gathering known as the “Women Deliver” conference.

Though Ban is surrounded by abortion right’s activists, he is nonetheless a diplomat who doesn’t want to identify himself as pro-abortion.

None of the new Gates money will go to fund abortions, Gates said, and the U.N. has no official position on abortion other than to support its safety where legal, Ban explained.

While I feel I will disagree with Ban Ki-Moon in the long run, I can back his desire to get things started with the basics and avoid any delays in providing this service.

Deaf child hears his mother’s voice for the first time:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDD7Ohs5tAk&feature=player_embedded]

[h/t]

This item manages to be very graphic without graphic language. I winced twice while reading it and had to look away from the screen, actually. Question is, why?

I think because it brings together all the evil that is abortion into one piece. A statutory rape. A young girl alone. The “boyfriend” working to conceal it. A pregnancy ended in a gruesome fashion in a country where the “safe” and “friendly” kind are very much available…

I’ll grant not all abortions are this evocative. But making abortion into this easy, banal thing is a severe avoidance of the facts at hand, every time.

For me, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a longstanding example of why abortion simply doesn’t solve any problems for the women of Africa. As we in the west debate the maternal health initiative, the Congolese women are supporting themselves and each other by any means necessary in otherwise insurmountable conditions.

Theirs is the stigmatized sorority of rape.

Behind these courtyard walls at Heal Africa, they’ve found a sanctuary and femaled a village of the otherwise damned.

Erased as wives and daughters for a crime done to them, they’ve been cast out from their homes, expelled from their hamlets, reviled by husbands and fathers and brothers, ostracized by neighbours

There is a fundamental problem in the DR Congo. It’s not lack of ‘access’ that plagues the lives of these women, but it’s that they are abused then shunned because of it. Often severely injured, women of rape are not welcome in their own homes or even the homes of relatives, so with no one left to turn to, these women have erected their own communities, safe havens, from the rubble of war and systemized abuse.

It was through the assistance of a local “listening house” — a network of counselling shelters that functions also as an underground railroad for disenfranchised rape victims — that Ushindi made her way to the central Heal Africa establishment in the North Kivu capital.

These women, some trained as counsellors, and their children, conceived through rape, now occupy the 28 safe houses HEAL Africa has provided.

When the subject of abortion is raised, if she’d ever considered ridding herself of the fetus, Ushindi gasps. Not only is the procedure illegal in the Congo — except when the mother’s physical health is endangered — but she, like the majority of Congolese, is Catholic, not the pick-and-choose kind either.

“That would be killing. There is already so much killing in my country. An abortion would make me just another killer, like the soldiers.”

HEAL Africa is not only providing safe houses and care but also works to combat gender and justice issues that are ultimately at the core of the mistreatment of the Congolese women.

HEAL Africa’s hospital and community development work address the root causes of illness and poverty for the people of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The hospital and the 28 women’s houses in Maniema and North Kivu have provided a safe place for many victims of the war, and have been a motor for combating poverty and promoting community cohesion over the past 14 years.

While HEAL Africa is doing all of the right things to empower women, it is all the more imperative that the G8 initiative works to preserve the goals and ideals of such organizations and allows them access to much needed funding without abortion agendas.

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will note, from time to time I post something of no value whatsoever. Today, on a rainy day in Ottawa, I post the song I am blasting while I clean. Save this house! I have put off cleaning for too long. Plus, I love the spirit of the west, and Spirit of the West. Good times.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adZOXU5pKnY&feature=fvst]