Archives for 2010

I learned how to read at an early age reading Tintin’s Les bijoux de la Castafiore. Since I am openly pro-life  I can’t quite say that I turned out all right. Maybe this steady diet of Hergé in my formative years is responsible for making me the angry ol’ white male mysoginist I have become. Still, I allow many of the books in my house, including Tintin au Congo, which is making waves this week in Hergé’s homeland.

How timely. My 13-year-old son — who also learned to read using subversive material like Tintin, I’m passing it on — was just mentioning the racist undertones in Tintin au Congo. When asked what he thought about it he shrugged and said: “That’s how they thought at the time, now we know better.” Yes indeed. I asked him: “Do you think we are passed that? What do you think we are doing now that our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will look at with scorn and say: “That’s how they thought at the time. Now we know better…” I think that our treatment of the unborn will shame us. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will.

The fact is that the human species has a dismal track record when it comes to arbitrarily deciding what is deserving of moral status (or personhood) and what is not. We are on the winning side of this issue.

While gender barriers are being broken in Canada today, other countries are failing to meet the basic standards of maternal health care because of inequality and poverty.

“Inequality in decision-making, limited access to health services in rural areas and lack of information on healthy pregnancy are among the factors that contribute to maternal deaths,” said Masruchah, secretary-general of the National Commission on Violence against Women.

This story from Indonesia is further evidence that poverty and the gender divide, not lack of access to abortions, is a leading factor in the maternal mortality rates abroad.

“The maternity hospital suggested a C-section, but I didn’t have the money,” Juhri, a motorcycle taxi driver in Depok, a Jakarta suburb, said of the US$1,000-$1,500 procedure. “I took her to a midwife, but she could not handle the delivery.”

An emergency caesarian, if she’d had the power to demand/afford one, would have saved her life.

Our newest member of PWPL speaking to the crowd. Go Jennifer Go!

“Gender disappointment“. When you want a girl and get a boy or vice versa.

When did women become this frivolous and weak? You might feel some disappointment, I’m sure, but then you get over it, because there were only ever two options and both are equally great.

Read it, here:

Our prominent woman sisterhood is telling these young women that they are strong enough to deal with this,” Palin said. “They can give their child life, in addition to pursuing career and education and avocations. Society wants to tell these young women otherwise. These feminist groups want to tell these women that, ‘No, you’re not capable of doing both.’ . . . It’s very hypocritical.”

The Toronto Star has three hilarious stories about abortion today. Story one, story two, and story three. Methinks some folks are in danger of getting a touch hysterical. But hey, great! The more panicky they sound, the better. Like, say, this, from the first story:

Pro-lifers want to revert to the status quo ante, a time when police arrested doctors who carried out safe, therapeutic abortions and put them on trial — until they found that juries would not convict them. Then the Supreme Court struck down those anti-abortion laws.

To be honest, I don’t know what other pro-lifers want (other than the obvious). I’m sure you can find some who are in favour of prosecuting abortion doctors. But I’d be surprised if you found many. Certainly over here we’re not keen on stuff like that. And speaking just for myself, here is what I want: I want women to think of abortion as an unthinkable option – all by themselves. If more of them did, there would be fewer abortions, and that would make me very happy indeed. Other than that, I would like various levels of government to stop funding abortion (except in the very rare cases where the mother’s life truly is at risk).

I’m going to try to accomplish these things without getting too hysterical. Panicking is rarely a good strategy.

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Andrea adds: Hysterical, yes. This sentence wins the “I work in downtown Toronto and have never set foot outside the shadow of the CN Tower” award:

In Canada, medicare covers legal abortions; yet we refuse the pleas of maternal health advocates [Andrea notes women overseas aren’t pleading for this, but “advocates” sure are] to continue funding safe abortions abroad — where the dangers of botched procedures are far higher. Now foreign aid groups say they have been unable to secure renewed funding from Ottawa for work that may include abortions.

This is very thinly veiled political advocacy that aims to legalize abortion, nothing to do with women’s health. If there is no access to any medical clinic of any kind, no access to electricity or to doctors, just how is it that even an abortion is going to be safe?

Incidentally, were doctors to be punished for providing abortions, I would see that as a reasonable action, rather like punishing johns for prostitution. That, alongside punishing Toronto Star editorialists for terribly inaccurate writing and severe naiveté.

So I’m going around town with my nieces and we stop in a coffee shop. Where the tattoed, pierced, 20-year-old guy behind the counter can’t get enough of my niece. He finally asks me, “Would her mother let me give her a cookie? Because,” and I quote, “she’s cute as a button.”

Which of course, she really, really is. I just didn’t expect this fellow to recognize it. Neither did I expect him to use the phrase “cute as a button.” Moral of the story is–don’t judge a book by its cover.

It’s Saturday. There’s plenty of sunshine, a little breeze, and it’s not even cold. So of course people like me are busy thinking up strategies to go and harass women at abortion clinics. Because that’s obviously where anti-abortion (or pro-life, or anti-choice; I’m not sure which particular label I should apply to myself) sentiment leads, right? Says so right here in the paper:

Carolyn Egan, from the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, reports increased harassment of women at their sites. “We believe the Conservative government policies have emboldened and given confidence to the anti-abortion element and it’s extremely unnerving.”

Have yourselves a wonderful day!

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Andrea adds: I find it funny that when women are pro-abortion, they are quoted as “women’s groups.” But when women’s groups are pro-life, they can’t figure out what to do. Couldn’t possibly be a women’s group, could it? Naaaa. We’re a front for old, white men? And they make us go and harass women in front of clinics?