Archives for 2010

Pigs are flying, all around me, even as I type this. Sweet vindication, for Maurice Vellacott and any and all of us concerned about the link between abortion and breast cancer (and the link between the Pill and breast cancer, too). Gloria Galloway is right:

…[T]rying to prevent abortions by scaring women with breast cancer would truly be wrong. But so too would be suppressing the risks of abortion or any medical procedure.

Incidentally, I agree with the first part of the statement. The reason freedom of information is important is simply because it’s important. Done. There will someday be an outcry that information was not released and/or publicized on this topic. I’m not saying it’s going to the headline in tomorrow’s paper, but I believe I will live to see that day.

Anti-depressant drugs may not do anything for moderate depression, says new study.

Some widely prescribed drugs for depression provide relief in extreme cases but are no more effective than placebo pills for most patients, according to a new analysis released Tuesday.

Recently, I have had cause to think there are too many doctors willing to put 100 per cent healthy women on anti-depressants. The ups and downs of life are not meant to be entirely eradicated on a steady stream of medication.

A study indicates there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, and the Pill and breast cancer:

…Dr. Brinton’s participation in the study was significant because the NCI has “firmly maintained” a position denying an abortion-breast cancer link since 2003.

The study, titled “Risk factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the age of 45 years,” was published in the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) medical journal “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.”

If you could stop just one person from getting cancer, wouldn’t you get the word out on these links?

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Brigitte disagrees: Oh dear me, no. You don’t mention it AT ALL. Instead, what you do is share intimate but meaningless information with strangers in the hopes of “raising awareness” about breast cancer, even though it’s getting hard nowadays to find someone somewhere who isn’t aware of it.

From time to time, someone writes in admonishing our team to “stick to abortion.” Indeed, this is a pro-life blog, but that wasn’t the point of this pro-life blog.

The point was to show that many women have many differing interests and can all be pro-life. So today I find Rebecca Walberg in the Financial Post in an article on leadership. Yesterday it was missile defence. Rebecca has the most varied expertise of anyone I know. Enjoy.

How much you want to bet this is just the first wave of such stories?

Thousands of elderly people are being forced to have tubes fitted so they can be artificially fed if they want to be admitted to a care home, a major report warns today.

There is no evidence that tube feeding prolongs life, and it deprives patients of the pleasure and social contact involved in normal eating and drinking, says a Royal College of Physicians working group which recommends that artificial nutrition should only be used as a last resort.

The report found that many care homes across the country are making it a condition of residence that people, often in the advanced stages of dementia, have a tube fitted into their abdomen.

“This is an invasive procedure with a risk, so it should not be undertaken lightly,” said Dr Rodney Burnham, chair of the working group. “One of the concerns we had was that we felt in many places there were cases where this was done without proper thought.

“This is a widespread problem. Many care homes say they will not take a patient until they have had a gastrostomy. There is no reason for them to do that. They should have nursing support.”

This would be abuse even if it turned out to prolong the life of these patients by 3 years – which I gather is most unlikely. Who wants to live like that? I am not a pro, but I do have some experience with these things, and I can tell you that forcing elderly patients – even those whose dementia is so advanced that they barely know who they are anymore – to “live” according to what’s least inconvenient to random caregivers is not compassionate.

I’m afraid we’ll be seeing more and more stories like that one, because we live in a world that values independent and unfettered living above all else, and where those whose presence is inconvenient to us (from “unwanted” babies to handicapped people to old dementia patients) aren’t welcome.

It’s a fine mess we’re in.

Human rights lawyer offended by tracking how people feel:

The Stampede hired Illumina Research Partners to conduct a market research study. While it mostly gauged people’s knowledge and opinions of the Stampede, one section asks opinions on a number of statements including, “The only acceptable definition of a family is a husband, wife and children,” and “Some jobs are best suited to men. Women should just accept this.” …

Human rights lawyer Mellissa Luhtanen said the two statements can be taken as a slight against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community as well as women in general.

“They are outdated, discriminatory and irresponsible,” she said.

I’m quite sure there’s a fairly large percentage of the population that agrees with both statements, but knows they can’t say anything for fear of being chastized by the likes of this lawyer.

In any event, why not wait for the results before getting offended?

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Brigitte can’t resist: Or why not suggest questions of her own? Like “Some jobs, like shopping for shoes or bearing children, are best suited to women and men should just accept that. Do you agree?”

There’s a bad idea:

Verbal abuse isn’t pleasant. Nobody likes to be called a fat cow, or crazy or stupid, but when life’s a bitch because your partner is crude, mean-spirited or cruel, who ya’ gonna call? Traditionally you call your mom to vent, or a friend, or a therapist – or nobody, you just deal with it – but if a new bill backed by the government is passed by France’s parliament, the French will indeed soon be able to call the police when their partner bad-mouths them and he will be charged with “psychological violence.”

I assume it is always going to be “he” that gets charged, since in the longish BBC news article about this proposed innovation, including interviews with women psychologists and lawyers, I saw no mention of men being victims, only perpetrators. That tells me the bill is ideologically inspired by feminists, who seem to think that women are too fragile to fend off an insult from their boyfriend, too timid to give as good as they get, or too stupid to know where the front door is and use it.

[…]

If a woman, or a man, believes his partner is deliberately inflicting psychological cruelty on him, it is his responsibility to insist it stop, or insist they get help, or walk out. Allowing the state to decide and punish the offending party (and how would you do that? Fines? A jail term for calling your girlfriend ugly?) basically says people have no moral agency to set the rules of engagement in their most intimate relationships, essentially an idea so totalitarian that even Communist countries have never tried to implement it (Communists bugged people’s homes to ferret out politically incorrect thoughts, not to monitor domestic intimacy).

Now there are of course cases where verbal abuse leads to actual physical abuse. And there is also such a thing as verbal cruelty that is bad enough to be considered abuse. Certainly in some cases police intervention is warranted. But a bill that would allow anyone to call the cops any time their partner loses it and calls them something unpleasant? That’s just crazy.

Love the headline on this story: “Beware of friends offering sperm”. Go ahead and read the rest of the story if you want. The details don’t really matter – everything you need to know is right there in the headline.

A group of doctors in South Korea is decrying abortion, and the fact that they did abortions to make money:

We sold our soul for money,” said Dr. Choi. “Abortion was an easy way to make money.”

And that is what it is in North America, too. How many times have we heard those who are in favour of abortion say it’s a common, easy medical procedure? You think those doctors doing them are thinking about the women and children involved? I don’t. Very few of them, anyway. I’m not implying that doctors here make the big bucks off of abortion. But abortion remains a procedure on the roster like any other, one that an Ontario doctor is going to bill OHIP for, go home and have dinner. Done.

Fortunately for me, I am not single and I did not gain any weight during the holidays.

Put on a few extra pounds this holiday season? Don’t expect a welcome mat from BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site who recently made like a high school bully: belittling and booting members for weight gain.

According to the Guardian, the site has just expelled 5,000 members for packing on the pounds. To add insult to injury, the site’s founder, Robert Hintze, stated, “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

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Andrea adds: This sort of thing gives me cause to ponder why the divorce rate isn’t higher. Again.

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Brigitte puts on her cynical hat: Probably because the people who sign up on that site aren’t looking for marriage…

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Andrea again: Understood. But my point poorly made was that marriage doesn’t happen in a vaccuum and a culture that sells “beautiful” people for sex online, of their own free will, is missing the point entirely on what it means to be in meaningful relationship.