Archives for February 2011

…lend me your ear. I’ll be giving a talk at Theology on Tap on Tuesday, February 22 at Dow’s Lake Pavilion (Malone’s), Ottawa. It starts at 7:30 and is open to everyone. The topic: The Status of Men. More specifically:

Canada has a Status of Women department. Andrea Mrozek, Manager of Research at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada and founder of the blog ProWomanProlife.org asks if we need to create a Status of Men instead. Come hear Ms. Mrozek review how men are lagging in our current culture and the possible links this has to the decline in marriage and family.

 I like Theology on Tap because you can enjoy a beer while listening, which will certainly make my talk much better. In fact, I’ll order the first round. If you keep drinking, you are bound to believe it’s truly fascinating.

Awesome!

The House of Representatives Friday passed a measure to end federal funding for abortion provider Planned Parenthood a day after Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., brought the chamber to stunned silence after describing her own personal experience with abortion.

Friday afternoon, the House passed the amendment by a vote of 240-185 with one member voting present. The House must still vote for final passage on the underlying spending bill before the cuts head to the Senate for a possible vote later this month.

I’m not an expert on US federal law-making, and I’d be grateful if someone who knows better than I do (which wouldn’t narrow the field much) would explain and/or correct me if I’m wrong. Send me an email or write in the comments. My impression is that this measure will not go through, but I could be wrong. Still, I like the fact that politicians in the House of Representatives are not only willing to debate the issue, but to vote on it as well. And the sky didn’t fall on their heads. Canadian politicians: are you watching?

You can’t tell someone how to feel. But this is sad:

The Saskatchewan farmer who killed his severely disabled daughter almost 20 years ago says he has no regrets. In a CBC interview, 57-year-old Robert Latimer says he knew the 1993 mercy killing of his daughter Tracy was the right thing to do.

I’ll also take issue with the language used in the report. There is no such thing as a “mercy killing.” He killed his daughter, full stop.

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Brigitte wonders: Would “mercy murder” make murder sound somehow better? Then why do people use “mercy killing” as a way to soften the killing part?

A friend e-mailed this article to me today and asked what I thought of it:

Last week, the University of Victoria Students’ Society finally ruled that a pro-life club broke the school’s harassment policy by comparing abortion to the Holocaust in October 2010.

At a Feb. 7 meeting, the students’ society voted to censure Youth Protecting Youth over “Echoes of the Holocaust,” a talk led by a visiting representative of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. The public disapproval of YPY’s actions follows recommendations made by the students’ society’s complaints committee, which was formed in 2008 after numerous students voiced concerns regarding the controversial club.

Simply put, I think that the university needs to educate itself on the definition of “harassment” and “holocaust”. According to the dictionary widget thing on my computer, to harass is to subject to aggressive pressure or intimidation and holocaust is destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. Since the event was held in a classroom, I’m not sure how anybody could possibly feel harassed, since in order to encounter it one would have to essentially bring it upon themselves and attend the event. I feel pretty safe in saying that abortion easily fits the definition of a holocaust.

Of course, the end of the article gives away the real reason people were complaining:

The complaints committee also recommended the UVSS board weigh mediation options with YPY and host a restorative justice (likely pro-choice) event, organized by the Political Action Committee.

Maybe it’s just me, but if I wanted to do a follow-up restorative justice event, it would be about the holocaust, not abortion. It looks like just another excuse to attack the pro-life club (business as usual).

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Andrea adds: I do see what you are saying Deborah, and I do think this is just another example of open season on pro-life beliefs. That said, I think holocaust is a term that should be reserved for The Holocaust. It’s a word that was created uniquely for that, if I’m not mistaken. I support the Centre for Bio-ethical Reform, but in some ways, I wish they’d leave the term “Holocaust” out and go with “mass slaughter” or “genocide” to describe abortion. I think my feelings on this may deserve a whole post. But in the interim, I’d say you are absolutely right: no one was harrassed by the presentation and this is just an excuse to make pro-lifers on campus shut up.

I’ve just started reading Unplanned, by Abby Johnson, “the dramatic true story of a former Planned Parenthood leader’s eye-opening journey across the life line.”

It’s a book that really gets at how someone like Abby, a Christian from a pro-life family, might end up working in an abortion clinic. I’m just at the beginning and I’d say there’s a lot of naivete coupled with a lack of rigourous thinking. For today, though, I’m going to post the part about Abby’s chemical abortion. As stories accrue about how hard this is on women, I think it’s important to post:

My cramping was excruciating and went on for days and days. I was too ill to get out of bed, ran a fever, and bled heavily. I was frightened, but whether our of shame, humiliation, or self-punishment—or maybe some combination of the three—I would not call the clinic. I couldn’t bear the thought of going to an emergency room or an ob-gyn because there was no way I was going to confess that I’d brought this on myself by aborting my second pregnancy….After two weeks I returned to work though I still felt so weak I’d come home exhausted and go straight back to bed. Finally, after about eight weeks of feeling ill, I felt recovered enough to return to the clinic for one of my volunteer shifts.”

Rachel’s Vineyard is having a retreat April 8-10 in the Ottawa area for any person who has struggled with the emotional or spiritual pain of abortion.

Check their web site for more information.

For those of you who haven’t seen the 2005 CBC Documentary Sex Slaves, it was on last night and I highly recommend taking the time to watch it. It’s not at all like Pretty Woman, which is all show and no reality, yet Pretty Woman seems to have become our argument for legalizing prostitution.

There is a myth that women become prostitutes by choice, that every woman has an abortion by choice (many of the women in this film are forced to do both), and this film illustrates just exactly why and how that is not the case.

An estimated half million women are trafficked annually for the purpose of sexual slavery. They are “exported” to over 50 countries including Britain, Italy, Japan, Germany, Israel, Turkey, China, Kosovo, Canada and the United States. Misunderstood and widely tolerated, sex trafficking has become a multi- billion dollar underground industry.

[…]

“Eva”; thought she was getting a job as a nanny in Toronto until her handlers took her from the airport to a strip club and forced her to work off her “debt”;, i.e., her purchase price, before she could be set free.

I don’t remember Julia Roberts having a pimp.

Courtesy of Rondi Adamson’s blog. I can just imagine Judy Rebick out there, late at night, making her contribution to the Toronto scene. But people, well, all they really want are pets. Cats, apparently. (Wouldn’t be my choice, so I guess the editing could be improved. I’d choose dogs over cats any day.)

Right. So I had not paid too much attention to Justin Bieber. Until now. Asked for his views on abortion, he had this to say:

I really don’t believe in abortion,” Bieber told the magazine. “It’s like killing a baby?”

Now why the question mark at the end of that, I don’t know, and he went on to express reservations about rape. But this is still a positive statement.

I actually think his position on this stuff matters. When it comes to changing the culture, we could use a few more hip Hollywood voices to speak for life. And this guy has millions of adoring fans. I always figured that if you are going to be famous, even if it is only for 15 seconds, you should use that time well. I would anyway. For the record, yes, if I won an Oscar I would speak for life from the podium. You have my word.

Anyhoo. His positioning on sex before marriage strikes me as weak–since “waiting to fall in love” is just a little bit of a sketchy concept for your average teenager.

Nonetheless, I hereby do solemnly swear to stop making fun of Justin Bieber.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zCJigrTb9Q]

An excellent take-down, here.

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Andrea adds: There’s something wrong with this ad. (Beyond the obvious.) I mean that for what they are trying to do they don’t do it well. The high heels and party dress? Walking down that hallway? It just doesn’t create the atmosphere of fear they are looking for. And that’s not just me saying it’s a big ole’ piece of propaganda, because initially, when I watched it I had no idea what I was in for. (Brigitte, you’ll recall, also posted the Old Spice commercials) so I’d like to think that at least for a few short seconds I had an open mind.