Archives for 2010

A news story about Quebec’s decision to fund IVF resulting in fewer multiple pregnancies:

The bill that would have made a crime of coercing abortion has been defeated in the House of Commons by 178 to 97. Alas.

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Update: The list of how MPs voted can be found here.

This from the mouths of MPs on both sides of the C-510 (Roxanne’s Law) debate.

One young female MP claims the bill is a “front to attack a women’s right to choose.” A spokesperson from the National Abortion Federation calls it a “bad bill” and “anti-choice.” Words designed to carry heavy negative associations but that essentially don’t say anything in relation to C-510.

Neither of these “arguments” point to specifics of the bill they disagree with, because opponents actually can’t find fault with bill itself. Instead, they elect to disagree on the basis of what it could potentially be rather than what it is. Which is interesting, because traditionally pro-abortionists don’t give any value to potentiality.

The spokesperson for the NAF does concede that violence against women increases during pregnancy, and it is this specific situation of violence during pregnancy that the bill sets out to criminalize. As the bill sponsor Rod Bruinooge points out, we have specified laws for sexual harassment because of its unique nature, and this bill seeks to do the same with domestic violence towards pregnant women. A similar bill has been passed in the US, without threatening a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

On the night of February 8, 1992, Glendale Black had a fight with his pregnant wife.  Tracy Marciniak, his wife, was nine months pregnant and due to deliver their son in only four days.  They had already given their son a name: Zachariah.  Tracy was eager to have her baby and anxious for the day to arrive.  Glendale, however, flew into a rage that night and decided that that day would never come.  He killed their child.

He punched Tracy in the stomach.  Hard.  And then he punched her again.

Tracy was severely injured, and Zachariah began to bleed to death in her womb.  She begged her husband to dial 911, but he refused.  When she reached for the phone herself, he kept it away from her.

Eventually, he relented.  Tracy was rushed to the hospital and delivered Zachariah by Caesarean section.  He was dead.  Tracy herself was on the verge of death, but was saved by her doctors.

Glendale Black was arrested. But in 1992 killing an unborn baby was not a crime.  Black was convicted of assault and nothing more.

On August 26, 1999, three men attacked Shiwona Pace in Little Rock, Arkansas.  She was due to deliver her baby the very next day.  Knowing her baby would be a girl, she named her Heaven Lashay.  But her former boyfriend, Erik Bullock, paid three men $400 to kill Heaven the day before she was to be born.

Shiwona lay sobbing and begging for mercy on the floor while the hit men brutally beat her, choked her, and clubbed her with a gun.  They kicked her in the abdomen repeatedly, killing her child who was to be delivered the very next day.  One of them shouted, “—- you!  Your baby is dying tonight!”

Unlike Tracy Marciniak, Shiwona Pace saw Bullock and her assailants go to prison for killing her daughter.  Only a month before, Arkansas had passed legislation making the killing of an unborn child a prosecutable offense.  If Erik Bullock had hired those killers only a month before, they would have gotten away with manslaughter.

The House of Representatives is voting this week to make the killing of an unborn baby a crime if it happens in a federal jurisdiction.  The measure, called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, has the support of the House, the Senate, and the President.  This is an uncontroversial bill that has passed the House before by wide margins.  Abortions, protected by Roe v. Wade, are specifically exempted.

I call this a similar bill, because coercing a women into an abortion essentially forces her into the role of a hired hit man.

Reading this piece, long on rhetoric, short on substance and reason, made me think of wispy clouds and how Heather Mallick’s words are like them. Or they could be like cumulus clouds, puffier, taking up even more space whilst lacking similarly in weight:

Abortion rights across Canada are like computer-generated word clouds, or to use a more old-fashioned analogy, ordinary sky clouds. Abortion availability is good and prominent in bigger cities in bigger provinces, wispy in small towns and the more backward provinces like New Brunswick. And in P.E.I., as always, it’s a heartless and empty sky.

The vote to pass Roxanne’s Law (Bill C-510) to committee stage is today. This is the bill that would make it a crime to coerce someone into having an abortion. An article about the bill, the state of freedom of expression on this topic, and whether this bill would take away “abortion rights,” here.

Celine Dion comments on her twins, born six weeks ago. Part of what makes “selective reduction” (have you ever heard of such a horrible euphemism?) so terrible is that there are so many women who want children so desperately. She was supposed to have triplets, incidentally, but one didn’t make it:

She also told how she was originally pregnant with three babies, but lost one during the pregnancy. “One little baby decided to step back to help the other two survive. The doctors said to me if there’s something wrong, natures takes it’s course. “I still think of the one who stepped back. I’m sure every woman has the feeling about -the little one that’s not there.”

I wish every woman did have a feeling about the one that’s not there…but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’ve expected something like this for some time, but I thought the Irish would have a vote on the matter.

Ireland’s longstanding abortion legislation could change due to a ruling expected to be handed down by the European Court of Human Rights next week.

When two Irish women and one Lithuanian woman who were forced to travel to Britain for abortions they took the action against the Irish state five years ago.

The three women, who were supported by the Irish Family Planning Association, claimed the inability to have an abortion in Ireland breached their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, which Ireland originally signed up to in the 1960’s.

The three women claimed that the limited abortion law in Ireland means they are being discriminated against, and that the state contravenes their rights under the convention. All three said they experienced medical complication when they returned to Ireland.

Their case was eventually heard last December in the court’s Grand Chamber with 17 judges presiding and on Thursday they are expected to give their final judgment.

Currently abortion is only available in Ireland if the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman. It’s estimated that about 5,000 women a year give an Irish address when they have abortions in Britain, but many more give British addresses. The Irish Family Planning Association believe that several hundred more Irish women also travel to the Netherlands and Spain for abortions.

The court is attached to the Council of Europe and has no relationship with the European Union. Any ruling the court makes will be legally binding on Ireland.

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Andrea adds: What kind of power does the European Union’s Human Rights Court actually have?

When is it OK to reduce the number of fetuses from two to one? In my book: Never. I’m no doctor and I suppose it’s possible there are times when pregnancy really does pose a real risk to the mother’s life. But I’ve never heard of a case where a twin pregnancy was super duper dangerous while a singleton pregnancy wasn’t.

Like so many other couples these days, the Toronto-area business executive and her husband put off having children for years as they built successful careers. Both parents were in their 40s — and their first son just over a year old — when this spring the woman became pregnant a second time. Seven weeks in, an ultrasound revealed the Burlington, Ont., resident was carrying twins. “It came as a complete shock,” said the mother, who asked not to be named. “We’re both career people. If we were going to have three children two years apart, someone else was going to be raising our kids. … All of a sudden our lives as we know them and as we like to lead them, are not going to happen.”

She soon discovered another option: Doctors could “reduce” the pregnancy from twins to a singleton through a little-known procedure that eliminates selected fetuses — and has become increasingly common in the past two decades amid a boom in the number of multiple pregnancies.

Selective reductions are typically carried out for women pregnant with triplets or greater, where the risk of harm or death climbs sharply with each additional fetus. The Ontario couple is part of what some experts say is a growing demand for reducing twins to one, fuelled more by socio-economic imperatives than medical need, and raising vexing new ethical questions.

I’m willing to believe the questions are vexing, but they’re not new. At bottom it’s the same question as ever: Who gives you the right to decide which baby gets to be born? And according to what rationale? We’re not talking about somehow having those fetuses vapourize into a puff of lilac-scented smoke. These human beings are being killed for convenience’s sake.

Fetal reductions are most commonly conducted by inserting an ultrasound-guided needle through the mother’s abdomen and into the uterus, injecting a potassium chloride solution into the chosen fetus or fetuses, stopping their hearts. They are typically performed between the ninth and 12th week, often with the most accessible or smallest fetuses marked for reduction, unless one is abnormal.

…unless one is abnormal. Of course.

Whether or not women under the age of 18 should be required to inform their parents/guardians prior to an abortion is a controversial issue. People who oppose notification want young women to have the same rights and privacy as their older counterparts, and those who are for it fear that younger women may not be mentally prepared for the decision or could be victims of statutory rape going unnoticed or unreported by medical professionals. Either way, the State of Alaska has voted in favour of parental notification, which takes effect this Tuesday.

Ballot Measure 2, which passed, and is now the parental notification law, would require minors under the age of 18 to notify a parent or guardian before getting an abortion.

A third group joined in on arguments between the state and Planned Parenthood during Friday’s preliminary injunction hearing.

Planned Parenthood and the State of Alaska met for the first time in court, after a ballot initiative was passed in the August primary.

It’s not surprising that Planned Parenthood disagrees and has, of course, filed a complaint.

Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest and two doctors filed a complaint Friday in state court in Anchorage, the Anchorage Daily News reported. They contend the law treats teens who want to end their pregnancies differently from those who do not want abortions and are not required to tell their parents about their pregnancies.

The law is so vague, physicians are likely to have trouble determining when they are in compliance, the doctors said. The law, approved by the voters in August, allows teens to avoid the consent requirement by going before a judge or presenting doctors with a notarized affidavit of parental abuse.

Firstly, young women who are pregnant will, eventually, find it very difficult to keep their pregnancies secret from mom and dad. Secondly, there’s no grey area here. Women with affidavits or judge approval don’t need consent, that’s it. If a doctor finds this too confusing, perhaps they’re not mentally sound enough to practice medicine in the first place.

A few months ago, when the State of Nebraska voted for more in-depth screening for abortion procedures, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit, and the state couldn’t financially handle the fight. Alaska, however, with its annually granted permanent funds and  strong oil and fishing industry, has a lot more money.

What do you think about paying surrogates? If you are fine with surrogacy, then possibly paying the surrogate mom may not strike you as a problem. I’ve come to realize I don’t think it’s the transaction of money that is the problem, but rather surrogacy itself.

In any event, a British court has ruled on this matter:

A senior family court judge allowed a British couple to keep a newborn child even though they had technically broken the law by giving more than “reasonable expenses” to the American natural mother. …

His comments, among the first in recent years on the subject by a senior legal figure, will be taken by many infertile couples as a welcome sign that they can now pay women to bear children for them without fear of breaking the law, and so be denied a family.

Given that surrogacy is not the question here, but rather paying a surrogate mom, I’m a bit at a loss for what to say. It strikes me as close to impossible that a woman would “make a living” by surrogacy, and if a couple pays for expenditures and then some, I don’t think that in itself ought to be illegal. Whether it is moral to ask someone else to have a baby for you is a different matter.