Archives for 2010

From Ottawa Students for Life:

Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party are scheming to force the Conservative Government to promote abortion as part of Canada’s push to fight maternal and infant mortality at the G8. The G8 is an annual summit for the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, and Canada as well as the European Union (I know that makes 9). Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced:

“As president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world’s poorest regions. Members of the G8 can make a tangible difference in maternal and child health and Canada will be making this the top priority in June. Far too many lives and unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple health-care solutions.”

But the Liberals are introducing a motion in Parliament on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 that would force the Government to include abortion and contraception in this effort to help mothers and infants among the world’s poor.

Please email your Member of Parliament, as well as other Members of Parliament, letting them know that you oppose this move by the Liberals that would take a great initiative and turn it into an opportunity to force abortion on the world’s poor. There isn’t time to mail letters via snail mail, so I suggest sending a brief email. For information on finding out who your MP is and how to contact her or him see:http://4mycanada.ca/ParliamentaryContacts.html

We’d like to thanks 4MyCanada for informing us of this issue. You can read more about it and they’re call to action here: http://4mycanada.ca/Emails/20100320.html

Please contact all interested friends and family regarding this issue and encourage them to make their voice heard ASAP!

______________________

Andrea adds: Having seen the resolution, I take back this call to action. Here’s what the resolution says:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government’s G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with the policy of previous Liberal and Conservative governments, and all other G8 governments last year in L’Aquila, Italy; that the approach of the Government of Canada must be based on scientific evidence, which proves that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths; and that the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush administration in the United States, which made humanitarian assistance conditional upon a “global gag rule” that required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from promoting medically-sound family planning.

Everything I stand for is based on sound medical science. I stand for the full range of family planning, which does not include abortion because abortion is not family planning. Until the opposition parties replace the word “contraception” above with “abortion”–I’d say this is all a big game.

_______________________

Brigitte isn’t too sure she understand this game, but would like to add anyway: I, for one, am not against family planning and contraception in principle. But here’s what I really don’t get: Whenever I’m in a debate with pro-choicers and the subject of “abortion used as birth control method” comes up, they deny it vehemently. Abortion is NOT used as a birth control method, they insist. It is NOT back-up contraception. So why am I getting the impression now that “the full range of family planning, etc” does indeed include abortion even though the word abortion does not appear anywhere in the resolution? Just exactly what kind of game is this?

_______________________

Andrea adds: It’s a game to lower voter turnout.

Because I’m that busy and one blog post is better than no blog post, right?

Topic numero uno, I really liked this article by Dan Gardner. First because pieces about declining birth rates written by social liberals are few and far between. And second because he is mostly right, at least about the default positions we assume when defending causes that are dear to our hearts. As a social conservative, I have to admit that I probably cry “Abortion!” more early and more often than I have to. Did abortion and contraception cause declining birthrates or did declining birthrates (or the desire for declining birthrates) cause the push for access to abortion and contraception? It doesn’t make abortion right or the fall-out from widespread use of contraceptives less real. It just means that to address the problem we have to approach it with generosity and compassion rather than shooting from the hip with the first arguments available.

Topic secundo, the Canadian Institute for Health Research is again sponsoring its Café Scientifique and a rep from Planned Parenthood Toronto will be among the panelists. Now, you have to understand that this is not a debate about contraception or abortion. Rather, it is about:

“the value of working together to study health issues that affect communities, such as homelessness, HIV/AIDS and poverty.”

Still, when they say that working together leads researchers to:

“a better understanding of the community, better research and, ultimately, better health outcomes. Working together produces lasting solutions that fit with communities”

my alarms bells go off. So I registered.

Here, Margarent Wente writes about how it’s mostly men who blog because it’s mostly men who are happy to spout opinions off without thinking.

Now I am not a man, but still had an immediate opinion that I felt compelled to share with you.

Every time I do a media interview, it is a generally harrowing experience for me involving phonecalls to family, friends, preparation, late night jogs and sleepless nights, both before and after the interview. This has gotten only slightly better over time. Writing and print are now AOK. Radio, I can cope. TV? It helps keep my weight down; I get that nervous.

For some reason I don’t experience this angst with the blogging at all. Anymore, that is. When I started as a journalist we were told we should blog and given passwords and such. I pulled myself together to do two posts in two years. Blogging annually somewhat defeats the purpose.

In short, I’m saying Margaret Wente is on to something.

And I needed to share this opinion right away.

This morning at an hour in which I don’t generally talk to anyone, I joined CBC’s The Current for a discussion on the politics of maternal health. When the segment is up on the CBC web site, I’ll certainly link to it. For now, you can listen to me below. My main point: Compassionate care in the developing world does not include abortion. 

[podcast]https://www.prowomanprolife.org/media/TheCurrent_short.mp3[/podcast]

____________________

Andrea updates: You can listen to the full show, here.

One of the earliest things I remember learning from my very good parents is that life isn’t fair and I should get used to that.

Having learned the lesson well, I’d still like to remind my parents of the dog we never got and give them advance notice that I’ll be getting in touch with Ontario’s Fairness Commissioner, Jean Augustine, some time soon.

I didn’t know about the Fairness Commissioner, but an add for “Women of Influence” in Macleans caught my eye. There it says that Ms. Augustine has a veritable Passion for Fairness.

So I’m confident she will be interested in my story: How badly I wanted a dog, and how we never got one. No we didn’t. It’s still hard for me, as I consider the diary entries written about the dog we didn’t have, the plaintive pleas. The friends who had dogs. You get the picture.

My second thought was: This is totalitarian territory. A Fairness Commission? Really? For what? Accountable to who?

Anyway, Mom and Dad, when the Fairness Commissioner contacts you about this, and you are annoyed, may I take this opportunity to say it’s really never too late to get a Labrador. Or a Newfoundlander. Or a German Shephard. A Spaniel? Really, I was so willing to compromise…It’s just too bad it had to come to this.

_________________________

Brigitte is thoroughly devastated: Good grief, I gotta go get me some violins…

Oh dear. What a terrible editorial:

The Harper government has taken an illogical stance by refusing to include contraception in its well received initiative to reduce the death rates of mothers and babies in poor countries. Although studies show mortality rates grow for women who have too many children too close together, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told a Commons committee that a new program being spearheaded by Canada “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed the purpose of this is to be able to save lives.”

My two cents: Not including “family planning,” a term which tends to include abortion, in a maternal health initiative is perfectly reasonable.

I’m quite sure we can all see how there would be many facets to maternal health. I’m quite sure we can all see how one government can’t address all aspects. And I’m also quite sure we can all agree that since some people insist on including abortion in “family planning” that’s a mandate a neutral government should stay away from.

Oh wait, though. When it’s anti-abortion, it’s ideological, radical, religious and right wing. When it’s pro-abortion, it’s rational, neutral and scientific.

My fault for forgetting that the debate is “over” and that we’ve achieved “consensus” on this “divisive” topic.

I commented here, earlier, that The Management was working on fixing an ongoing problem with imports from PWPL to Facebook, insofar as every PWPL post was being imported to my Facebook page, making those comments all look like mine.

This has been fixed (thanks, Brigitte). This makes imports to my Facebook page more Authentically Andrea, which come to think of it, could be a great name for a new pro-life perfume?…I tell you, great minds just never rest.  (I expect it to be right up there with Jennifer Aniston’s.)

Meanwhile, to repeat, I am not coming off maternity leave, and have no children hidden in my closet, figuratively or literally.