Archives for 2010

Rightly or wrongly, Catholic clerics are rarely far from the firing line.

Two weeks ago, Cardinal Ouellet said that abortion in the case of rape was wrong. That triggered predictable stories that talked about the ensuing “firestorm of virulent reaction” against the Church, even though Cardinal Ouellet was simply repeating Catholic moral teaching and not proposing an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada.

Charles Lewis’ article here is an insight beyond the surface story to a look at what the Catholic Church is proposing in terms of proactive solutions to Canada’s abortion rates.

I am launching an appeal with my Ottawa colleague [Archbishop Prendergast] for an awareness campaign and [for] more programs providing assistance for women in distress in Canada,” Cardinal Ouellet said. “There is a great scarcity of information, support and financial assistance to enable pregnant women to make an informed choice.”

So what can we expect? More of these types of programs. The Gabriel Project outreach is in its earliest stages in Nova Scotia though it’s already running throughout the US, and we can expect to see more of these laypeople-run/church-supported programs pop up across this country in the near future. They’re an opportunity for the church to be proactive and to get laypeople, even non-Catholics, involved in the process.

This article really juxtaposes the life of the fetus against the life of the mother. I don’t see things that way. I just don’t think it’s quite that black and white. (EITHER the fetus lives OR the mother thrives…)

PWPL welcomes Deborah Mullan to the team today. Deborah has made many funny comments in the past and adds some much needed wit into what can be a heavy debate. You can check out her full bio, here.

This means we are closing in–Jennifer is in Halifax and Deborah is in Victoria. That’s right. We’re taking over from coast to coast. [insert sinister laugh track here.]

One small administrative thing, too. We are dropping the “Andrea adds” on the homepage and PWPL women will just be putting our comments in the comments for now.

I love those experts:

The teen pregnancy rate in Canada is declining faster than in the United States, England or Sweden, and experts say that reflects a generation of teenagers who are better informed about sex and young women who see a future that includes goals other than motherhood. Between 1996 and 2006, the most recent years for which information is available for all four countries, Canada’s teen pregnancy rate fell by 36.9 per cent, according to a study released Wednesday by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada. That’s compared to a 25-per-cent decline in the U.S., a 4.75-per-cent dip in England and Wales, and a 19.1-per-cent increase in Sweden.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the rates are down. I’m just wondering whether it’s possible that pregnancy rates might be down because Canadian teenagers (at least, some of them) are having less sex?

Academic papers have throughout history been subject to selective use. A group or ideology will refer to only those quotations that support their arguments. So if you have the time to cut out the middle man on the recent paper ‘G8 Academies Joint Statement on Health of Women and Children’, you can read it in full for yourself here.

Things are only going to heat up more on the G8 front leading up to the meetings. It’s pathetic fallacy–Ottawa is so hot right now that last night I found myself wondering–if I had a water bed, could I freeze the thing and then sleep on that? (Yes, air conditioning would be easier. No, I don’t have air conditioning, leading to creative solutions/visions of sleeping on an ice cube.)

Anyhoo. Where were we? The G8.

This was the big, bold cover headline in the Star yesterday.

Lots of ink spilled thus far on this topic. My only new comment is that it is not the least bit surprising to me that there are pro-abortion bureaucrats and politicians working in Minister Oda’s office.

…before there is an emergency.

On the surface, ‘Be Prepared’ seems like an infallible motto of expecting the unexpected. Championed by organizations like the Red Cross and Scouts, it’s a battle call of readiness. So when the National Health Service promoted access to the morning-after pill today under this banner, the save-the-day heroes of preparedness that marched in my mind came to a screeching halt.

Released just after the airing of the Marie Slopes advertisements on abortion services on UK television, the draft guidance feels like the second blow to an already crumbling attempt in Britain to support the alternatives to abortion.

It recommends that pharmacies should offer the morning-after pill in advance, particularly for those under 25.

They should be “advised that emergency contraception is more effective the sooner it is used” and that an intra-uterine device is more effective in an emergency but can also be used long term, NICE said.

The results of this ‘be prepared’ strategy are yet to be projected, but I’d bet my Girl Scout sash it’s going to be an increase in chemical abortions and unknown physical and emotional toll on the young women who regularly undergo them.

I can oppose female genital mutilation until I go blue in the face, it won’t have the same impact as when she explains it. So I’m very grateful for this piece:

I am familiar with this debate in two ways. First, I come from a culture where virtually every woman has undergone genital cutting. I was 5 years old when mine were cut and sewn. Second, while serving as a member of parliament in the Netherlands, I was assigned the portfolio for the emancipation and integration of immigrant women. One of my missions was to combat practices such as FGM.

To understand this problem, we need to begin with parental motives. The “nicking” option is regarded as a necessary cleansing ritual. The clitoris is considered to be an impure part of the girl-child and bleeding it is believed to make her pure and free of evil spirits.

But the majority of girls are subjected to FGM to ensure their virginity—hence the sewing up of the opening of the vagina—and to curb their libido to guarantee sexual fidelity after marriage—hence the effective removal of the clitoris and scraping of the labia. Think of it as a genital burqa, designed to control female sexuality.

When the motive for FGM is to ensure chastity before marriage and to curb female libido, then the nick option is not sufficient.

Moreover, the nick option does not address the main problem in Western liberal democracies where FGM is outlawed, which is that it can almost never be detected, so that few perpetrators are brought to justice. Even if we were to consider tolerating it in its most limited form, how could we tell that parents who want to ensure that their daughter will be a virgin on her wedding night will not have her (legally) nicked and then a few months later (illegally) infibulated? I applaud the compassion for children that inspires the pediatricians’ proposal, but they need to eliminate this risk for little girls.

When it comes to this subject, there is no middle ground.

[h/t]

Pro-life, pro-choice: Everyone’s going to have something to say about this one:

Greg Bruell and his girlfriend of a year and a half, Sandra Hedrick, had a pact. “We agreed that if we got pregnant, we’d terminate because we were not in a stable family unit,” Hedrick says. Or as Bruell more starkly puts it, “I resumed sexual relations with her on the condition that were birth control to fail, she’d abort without waffling.” “Resumed,” because nine months ear lier Hedrick had conceived a child with Bruell and the couple decided to end that pregnancy. Or rather, he decided, and she went along. Their relationship was too rocky—a series of breakups followed by passionate reunions—for them to become parents together, Bruell argued. Plus, both were still in the process of finalizing divorces, and he was a newly single father struggling to balance his needs against those of his eight-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son. Bruell wanted to steady their destabilized worlds before jumping into fatherhood anew.

I’m surprised Greg Bruell isn’t ashamed to put his name into print. The lead might as well read “I was using this woman for sex, and forced her to promise me I’d never have to take any responsibility for anything.” And the “girlfriend”–why oh why would you go along with this? Prostitution without the pay.

Man. Ruin a perfectly good Sunday and I only made it two paragraphs in. Let me know how it ends if you manage to keep reading.