Archives for November 2010

I don’t know what to think of Saturday morning’s feature on older mothers in the Ottawa Citizen. What I found in equal parts troubling and interesting was to see the feature in the Life section, alongside maternity fashion and the comics. One article reported on “midlife mom” and blogger Angel La Liberté whose website heralds midlife pregnancies as so many fashion statements. You too can have children after 40… look at Céline!! As thrilled as Céline must be with her newborn twin boys, I’m not sure she considers years of fertility struggles and failed IVF attempts, briefly carrying triplets and losing one before finally giving birth prematurely to the remaining two babies on par with choosing the best maternity fashion to fit her midlife curves (not that Céline is particularly well-endowed in that department, which may or may not explain a lot). I don’t know Céline but I’m guessing.

I have no doubt that the particular challenges of pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing after 40 make La Liberté’s blog timely and relevant, still I was struck by the “us against them” tone of the gig. Happy as I am to no longer qualify as a SMUT — well-toned Stepford Moms Under Thirty-five — being neither well-toned or under 35; I did not buy it. Truth is, having children late in life is not so much a choice as the culmination of previous choices not to have children before. Women have children in their late-thirties or early forties for many reasons: some married late,  others were unable to conceive right away, other wanted to get a head-start on their careers, sometimes all of the above.  Their choice not to have children at any given time morphed into a choice to have their children late.

Nobody argues that delaying motherhood is not the healthiest option for mother and baby. And I have yet to meet women who delayed childbearing because it was a bad health choice. We shouldn’t  transform midlife childbearing into a lifestyle choice but wonder why women are not having their children earlier in life. As someone who had two children in her early 20s, I do not recommend it. When my young friends get married and start having children at 21 (usually in the reversed order), I cringe. As a society, it is much easier to look at pictures of Céline, Kelly Preston and Mariah Carey and attribute it to lifestyle than to wonder where we took a wrong turn.

“Up, up with people, you meet ’em wherever you go”…That was a song we used to sing at summer camp. (“If more people were for people then people everywhere, there’d be a lot less people to worry about and a lot more people who care!” Wow. The things you learn when you are young really do stay with you. I digress.)

Why am I thinking this today? Because I quite enjoyed seeing Mine Your Own Business this afternoon. And the focus of that documentary was…people. People who need jobs, and the environmentalists who hinder that. The director Phelim McAleer said in the question time afterwards that the two most dangerous words he knows are “sustainable development” because what it typically means is sustainable poverty. Bam! You never hear that in Canada.

So I went to shake his hand after to say I enjoyed the film. (By the way, he and his wife also did Not Evil, Just Wrong, another great documentary.) I also mentioned I’m pro-life, and perhaps he could do a film about the population control side of the environmental movement. He jumped in to point out that they want to get rid of certain people–the brown and black people who are poor. That’s when he pointed out that he cares for people, not the environment.

This reminded me of our t-shirts, People for the Ethical Treatment of People, because you really wouldn’t treat a dog like this. Sadly, with people, it’s all fair game. Pun intended.

I saw this article when it came out last weekend. And sighed. Brenda Major was the lead on the American Psychological Association assessment of abortion and mental health, an assessment that basically discarded every single abortion and mental health study but one. One study. Their conclusions were based on one study. (Read more about that, here.)

So after seeing Major’s article, my exact thoughts were I wonder if Dr. Priscilla Coleman will get a response in the paper? I don’t know if she pitched to the paper and they rejected it, but she did write a response here. She is a psychologist who has conducted much of the research on abortion and mental health (in peer-reviewed journals).

Incidentally, much good literature showing negative mental health effects the result of abortion comes from Europe, and Brenda Major makes it clear she only examines US studies (some of which are great studies, too, don’t get me wrong). It’s just that she is openly admitting there’s a great sphere of literature she isn’t looking at.

The study wars continue, unabated. For me, as a non-psychologist, I’ll always believe that some things are not a choice and we don’t kill to solve our problems. It seems reasonable and logical that when we choose to kill innocents to solve our problems, there will likely be some repercussions to that. But people call me crazy. What’s a girl to do?

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Brigitte adds: I don’t understand this. To me, whether abortions have negative mental-health consequences or cause breast cancer or limp hair really is besides the point. I don’t want the studies to show one thing or the other; this isn’t where it’s at. Even if there was definitive proof that abortions increased happiness in women I’d be against it. I’m guessing pro-abortion types don’t justify their position on the lack of definitive proof that abortions cause limp hair or breast cancer or terrible mood swings. So why the endless study wars? What’s the point?

I’m listening to people call in with their recollections of war on 580 CFRA in Ottawa. One fellow recalls how his father went to war and his mother was home with nine children from age six months to 11 years, eight boys, one girl. He said he remembers his dad today, but he also remembers his mom. Very moving.

It will take a heck of a lot more than that to restore my lack of faith in the UN, but I’m still pleased about this:

UNITED NATIONS — Iran failed Wednesday to secure a seat on the board running the new UN super agency for women in the face of a fierce diplomatic onslaught against its rights record.

Gotta start somewhere…

This story starts with hubby sending me a link to this:

A Muslim religious channel in Britain is being censored after allowing presenters on air to condone marital rape and violence toward women, and for calling women who wear perfume in mosques “prostitutes.”

The U.K. Daily Mail reports that in one program, the host told viewers that it was “not strange” and “not such a big problem” for a man to force his wife to have sex.

The U.K.’s T.V. watchdog, Ofcom, ruled the Islam Channel breached the broadcasting code in five different programs between May 2008 and October 2009.

At first, I must admit, I was rather confused. Weren’t we just told marital rape was impossible under Islam? I must have misunderstood.

And then I went googling around for fun, to see who was picking up the story (yes, looking for outraged feminists – no, didn’t find none… so far), and below is a screen capture of what I found. Look at the list of headlines (and news sources), and see if you can correctly identify each outlet’s bias. It’s a fun game!

In support to Andrea’s previous post, here is an article that gives a well rounded view from the mother’s perspective of various types of adoption in some of the most trying situations.

Carrying your baby to full-term and then giving it away is preferable to terminating the pregnancy for some women, but there’s no ‘easy option’. Here, three mothers tell KATE HOLMQUIST about putting their babies up for adoption.

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THE RAPE VICTIM WHO RELINQUISHED HER BABY

Four years ago, 27-year-old Toni was raped on a holiday abroad. Having been made pregnant by her rapist, she says she spent a lot of her pregnancy in denial about the consequences, yet at the same time never considered an abortion. “From the second I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was in no position to be a single parent and I would not have considered a termination. I always believed everything happens for a reason. I think the child has a right to live.”

The options can range from open, semi-open (which Toni eventually chose), and closed. This article gives great insight into what can sometimes be a confusing process.

There’s a new web site out, that gives information and support for adoption. Apparently, only two per cent of single women place their children for adoption. About 38 per cent abort.

The site has information, plus the stories of birth mothers.

We rarely hear about adoption these days. I think it’s because the abortion choice is so prevalent. But no one, least of all me, ever thought that a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy has to keep the baby. (And this is a pro-life web site, so you all know what I mean by that.)

Spread the word about this new campaign.

Please forgive the totally-unrelated-to-prowomanprolifesque-content. This is just too funny not to share. Especially for those of us (hi, Andrea!) who enjoy sending text messages on our way cool iPhone.

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Andrea adds: I recently attended a hymn sing at St. Barmaids (Barnabas). Funny.

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Deborah says: Ah, another one to add to my Google Reader. My husband was taking (or trying to take) a nap on the sofa next to me and I kept waking him up laughing. I wish I had an iPhone as an excuse for my occasionally strange typos . . .

Admittedly, St. Barmaids sounds like it could be a really fun church. 🙂

I am a seraphic single.

Take today, for example. I woke up at six am, briefly wondered whether I was late for something, realized it was Saturday, rolled over and slept in…until eight. Eight am constitutes a sleep in for me. Earlier is work territory and later means your sister has done her homework, been for a run, baked muffins and already had time to get bored…There I go channeling high school again.

Back to this morning: I opened the curtains at eight, looked at the changing leaves in the sun and approved. I made tea and drank it from my Made in Poland cups. (This is a growing collection, and simply looking at my Made in Poland butter dish makes me happy. You must see it yourself, and you will agree.) I made pancakes and checked the internet. I responded to a response from a woman who works in an abortion clinic to my defence of Roxanne’s Law in the Calgary Herald.

Good times for Andrea. And not, perhaps, what I’d be doing if I weren’t single.

I am a seraphic single, except when I’m not. And I wasn’t when I received Seraphic Single: How I learned to stop worrying and love the single life by Dorothy Cummings  in the mail, for free. My actual thought was something along the lines of Oh For PETE’S Sake!: Does the one thing I ever receive for free thanks to my blogging have to be a book about singleness? For when I received this book I had just had a relationship end. And abruptly ended relationships disturb the equilibrium and the seraphicity of life, to put it bluntly.

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