Archives for 2010

The Spanish government is about to amend its abortion law, falling into line with its European neighbours, though local demonstrators are protesting the new law as unconstitutional.

The Socialist government’s new abortion reforms — which notably allow all women to end their pregnancies up until 14 weeks — take effect on Monday.

It’s still unclear how this will affect abortion rates in the country.

Last year around 115,000 abortions were carried out in Spain, according to the health ministry.

The vast majority took place in private clinics and were justified on the grounds that the pregnancy posed a “psychological risk” for the health of the woman.

Currently, the law allows for abortion if the woman’s health is ‘at risk’. Which begs the question, what is good health and how do we measure the risk to it? How individual states answer this question constitutes the ‘grey zone’ of abortion law, in between legal upon request and illegal without exception. So what is good health?

The most famous modern definition of health was created during a Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

The Definition has not been amended since 1948.

By this definition, the WHO model of health allows for the individual to define what health and well-being are, rather than offering a concrete and universal definition. So what shapes our individual visions of health?

What is MasterCard selling in their “priceless” advertising campaign? They are selling meaning and telling us that for 9.7% (for you), or 19.7% (for me), we can have it. MasterCard is selling us moments of meaning, right relations with our spouse and children, meaningful encounters with art and sport, security in old age; MasterCard is selling us wellbeing. Priceless? No, in fact these “priceless” moments can be yours for only 19.7% apr.

Again, take anti-cholesterol medication Lipitor, it advertises itself not as anti-cholesterol medication but as a gateway to fishing with our grandchildren (which is depicted in its advertising), it is selling us not an object such as a pill but, rather, it is selling us familial relations, things of “real” value, it is selling us meaning.

The most significant point, however, is not simply that such companies are trying to sell us meaning. They are also telling us what “meaning” actually is.

Abortion is packaged in such a way when we begin to discuss risk, that it is a relief of pain, stress, hardship, unease. That it is a potential gateway to well-being, but by whose definition?

Happy Canada Day! Families are heading up to Parliament Hill wearing red and white as I type this.

A fun item that might pertain to an activity some of you might do today.

Woman tries to have an abortion. Abortion fails. Now woman worried half to death her baby will be born handicapped because of her earlier choice. And that’s supposed to be empowering?

The clinic staff were shocked,” she says. “They said there was a high chance the pregnancy would still miscarry. Horrifyingly, if it continued he was likely to be born handicapped.”

Over the next few days Lucy agonised over what to do.

“It was a terrible decision to make,” she says. “I didn’t think I could cope with bringing up a handicapped child. And I also knew if my baby was born disabled I would never forgive myself.

“But then my baby had survived so much. I had to give him a chance.”

Although Lucy spoke to doctors at the clinic and also her GP, she says no one could give her a clear idea about what might happen with the pregnancy.

She says: “As my GP explained, not enough babies have survived the abortion procedure to know what the side-effects of the pill might be on them.

“But the more I thought about it, the more having another abortion felt like murder.”

I’ll let you chew on that last line by yourself. Meanwhile, make sure you read the story to the end – see anything funny right there at the bottom? Yes! An ad for Marie Stopes! Well done, Sun!

This time, for men?

And — what do you know? — they have come up with a really nice one: non-hormonal, so without those nasty side-effects that women have put up with for so long; and long acting, so you don’t have to think about it every day, as women have had to do.

This kind of story bugs me. I’m all for children, and children-friendly institutions. But not everyone has to be. If you want your restaurant, or movie theatre, or campground, or what have you, to be an adult-only place, you should be able to do so. (You should also be allowed to operate a smoking restaurant or bar or what have you.) Maybe your business won’t work, and maybe it will. It should be up to you, to business owner, to decide whether the benefits outweighs the costs. Just make the rules clear to everyone, and be nice about it, is all. Sometimes, you pay good money to eat a fancy meal at a fancy restaurant and you want to be able to enjoy that without children running around (that’s why parents hire babysitters every now and then).

If you talk to almost any woman long enough, you’ll uncover an incident of violence (physical or emotional) somewhere in her past. While men are victims of violence just as often, the aggressors of women are most often male. It comes as no surprise then that the new study from Statistics Canada reveals that the majority of dating violence victims are female.

While teenage girls experienced 10 times as much violence as boys their age, a Statistics Canada study released Tuesday says that rates of police-reported dating violence are highest for those in their 30s. Between 2004 and 2008, rates of reported violence rose 40 per cent for women and 47 per cent for men. Women were victims of dating violence 80 per cent of the time, with a majority of incidents occurring after the relationship ended.

Unfortunately, under-reporting may mean the actual rates are much higher.

I’m having a hard time caring what pro-choice “feminists” think:

Leaving aside the undefined and rather pretentious notion of authenticity, “pro-life feminism” makes no sense. Feminism is about equality, about a woman’s right to make her own choices in life, including whether to continue a pregnancy. Without that right, women lose control over their lives. Women who run on a platform that includes denying other women the right to choose how many children they will have or whether they have any are not feminists. They can call themselves whatever they want — pro-family, anti-tax, small government — but not feminists. Feminism means more than individual success in the workplace or in politics. Feminism is also about more than reproductive rights, but it most certainly includes that.

Janet Bagnall will feel good about the fact that I don’t call myself a feminist, no. That’s because the feminists I’ve met who strongly self-identified as such are some of the most bitter, ill-informed, out of touch, boring, whining, unhappy lot of old women I’ve ever met.

Just so we’re clear on why I’m not one.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has been having a difficult time lately. Following the introduction of telemedical abortion pill administration, the organization has been accused of patient neglect and an investigator has been assigned to the case.

Roughly two years ago, Iowa became the first state in the nation to carry out the telemedicine program, which uses “modern technology and telecommunications” to connect a patient from a rural area with a doctor at a remote location.

Planned Parenthood has telemedicine programs in 16 locations throughout the state, including Iowa City.

If a woman chooses a telemedical procedure, the medical staff provides her with an examination and an ultrasound.

Results are then sent to a doctor who meets with the patient via a closed-circuit video conference to discuss any concerns.

Once the doctor has determined the woman is medically eligible to take the abortion pill, a medication dispensing unit is unlocked and the patient has access to the pill, misoprostol or mifepristone.

The doctor observes the patient take the pill and provides her with additional instructions for follow-up care.

But Planned Parenthood is not a group that rests on its laurels. Concurrently, the organization is suing the state of Nebraska for law LB 594, a law which requires abortion providers to evaluate and inform patients of possible complications and risk factors based on information that has been published in accepted “peer reviewed journals” and to determine that the patient has not been coerced prior to the procedure. Obligations not easily fulfilled in a telemedical situation and that will slow down the process with a thorough review of patient history.

The possible penalties? $10,000 per uninformed patient and recovery sums for women who were the victims of coerced abortions that providers knowingly (or negligently) preformed.

The legislation, which was passed in April and is scheduled to go into effect on July 15, has been controversial for several months. According to Planned Parenthood, which services portions of Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska, the law in question seeks to “ensure that women are ‘informed’ before consenting to an abortion, [but] actually imposes requirements that are both impossible to meet and require physicians to flood their patients with false and misleading information.”

With money no object for legal fees, I’ll be watching this case as it climbs the judicial ranks.

…doesn’t mean you’re not alive.

When the study from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists delivered the message that a fetus feels no pain prior to 24 weeks gestation, the conclusion became a line in the sand which will effect abortion limitations on both sides of the argument. In places where abortion is illegal prior to 24 weeks based on the possibility of fetal pain (like Nebraska where the procedure is barred after 20 weeks), activists are now pushing to move the limit forward based on this new research. In places where abortion is illegal only after 24 weeks, the study comes as a blow to pro-life advocates pushing for restrictions.

The situation illuminates the problem with gestational timelines as a basis for abortion law. When did pain become the determining factor for whether or not a person or animal is deserving of life (I blame Peter Singer personally)? After all, there are adults who don’t feel pain…

Physicians ultimately diagnosed Julie, now 28 and living in Manchester, with a rare form of congenital insensitivity to pain.

She has no sensation of touch, temperature, deep pressure or vibrations in her limbs and parts of her chest and back.

She does have sensation in her head and portions of her trunk. Julie’s motor nerves work correctly. She can move her arms and legs and turn her head at will.

The disorder is caused by a gene mutation that disrupts the development of sensory nerve fibers – those that carry sensations such as touch, pain, temperature to the brain.