Archives for March 2011

I don’t really know what to say about this article. It had to have taken a lot of bad decisions for doctors and scientists to have painted themselves into this corner, all starting with treating human beings as objects.

Tens of thousands of human embryos hang in cold storage in Canada’s fertility clinics, an unknown number of which are “orphans.”

Increasingly, however, clinics are preparing to match these embryos — which could survive for decades in suspended animation — with infertile couples who long for a child of their own. It’s a form of third-party procreation that experts predict will only become more common as the number of surplus embryos grows.

Embryo donation has been called the most humane answer to an sticky ethical situation: How to dispose of leftover embryos that are created by infertility treatments and then literally frozen in time?

Personally, I don’t have a problem with people adopting embryos. It’s better than them living in frozen stasis for 15 years until they can no longer survive, and I don’t see it as very much different from anonymous adoption of children who have already been born. If nothing else, it’s certainly better than the other two options: destruction or using them for science experiments. However, I think it’s incredibly sad that we’ve gotten ourselves into this position in the first place.

A friend of mine has helped pull this event together, which features former residential school students. March 28, 7 pm, St. Paul’s Auditorium, Pavillon Guigues Hall, Ottawa. Sounds interesting and it’s open to the public. Some online info can be found, here. “No sector of society is immune to sexual abuse or the darkness of heart into which it pulls children, families, communities and subsequent generations. Three well-known Canadians reflect on their journeys from the heart of darkness to the heart of forgiveness.”

Admittedly, I had never heard of Ms. Littlejohn prior to today, but the work she is doing and has done to support Chinese woman’s reproductive rights (and when I say this I mean, as she seems to, the right to bear children) is phenomenal. Who better to give the keynote address on this International Women’s Day than a woman who supports the right to bear children?

BOSTON – Reggie Littlejohn highlighted the suffering of women under China’s One Child Policy as the Keynote Speaker and Award of Excellence recipient at the 100^th Anniversary of International Women’s Day celebration in Boston on March 8, 2011. Below are her remarks:

I am deeply humbled to receive the Award of Excellence on this historic day […]

I accept this award on behalf of the women and families who continue to suffer because of forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide. […]

While women in some areas of the world celebrate the great advances in women’s rights in our nations, women in other areas have seen a decline. As the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, I am dedicated to the plight of more than half a billion women in China who are victims of the One Child Policy. They have had perhaps their most fundamental right stripped away: the right to bear children. And let us not forget the 100 million missing women who are victims of “gendercide,” the sex-selective abortion of baby girls.

Most people know that China has a One Child Policy. Very few people stop to think about how it’s enforced – through forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide.

The coercive enforcement of China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth. It is the biggest women’s rights issue in the world today. It does not matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice on this issue. No one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice.

I’ll know who she is from now on.

 ___________________

Jennifer adds: Reggie Littlejohn’s organization, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, currently has a petition to free activist Chen Guangcheng. Learn more here.

Inspirational speech from a past American president, Ronald Reagan. Neither can Canada survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live. I look forward to such a speech from a Canadian prime minister. Some day, my friends, some day.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WTiK9Dd9z0]

(h/t)

From The Week,

The morning-after pill might soon need a new moniker. A new report in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology suggests the emergency contraceptive might also work well as a woman’s go-to form of birth control, a use doctors have typically discouraged in the past.

Get more information here.

2nd Annual GALA Dinner, Westin Hotel, Halifax, NS
FRIDAY, MARCH 18TH 6:30PM WESTIN HOTEL

“The Case Against Euthanasia”

The speaking engagement of Professor Margaret Somerville is, for CLC,
“once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Campaign Life sees this as an excellent opportunity to defend the case against Euthanasia.
If you are planning to attend this fundraising dinner, Please, order your ticket now.

If you are not able to attend, would you consider sponsoring a youth? We have several who are anxious to hear Dr. Somerville’s presentation.

Give me a call a.s.a.p. (902) 861-1982

INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED
ETHICIST MARGARET SOMERVILLE
REGARDED BY SOME AS HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL
BECAUSE OF HER DEBATES
ON TOUGH MORAL QUESTIONS IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

DON’T BE DISAPPOINTED
RESERVE YOUR TICKET NOW
$100.00 per

Call: Ellen (902) 861-1982 or e-mail: [email protected]

CLC EXPECTS THIS TO BE A SELL-OUT EVENT!

 

I’m certainly concerned that this teen is very ill-adjusted:

Monique Smith, 19, of Brooklyn was arguing with a family member in June when she reached for the hamster, choked it and threw it outside the house, police said.

I actually think grabbing an animal and killing it just because you can is horrifying and is a sign of something desperately wrong. I also think taking yourself off to a clinic to kill your unborn child is a sign that something is desperately wrong. It’s just that we are more concerned about hamsters in our current cultural milieu. There’s no other way to put it.

That sexual revolution…what a hoot:

Dr. Eric Genden, head and neck surgeon at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, has seen his practice change dramatically over the past decade. “My waiting room used to be filled with smokers and drinkers, blue-collar workers,” recalls Genden. “Now it’s filled with professionals who were never smokers or drinkers.” This “new set of patients” is presenting with head and neck cancer, particularly in the tonsils and at the base of the tongue, at a younger age than the hard-living seniors. Genden was puzzled by the change. What could have triggered malignancy in these folks, he wondered, when in the past some 95 per cent of the head and neck tumours he saw grew out of a life dedicated to tobacco and booze?

He now knows the culprit: the human papillomavirus, or HPV. “What we’re seeing is almost an epidemic,” he says, referring to a growing acceptance by the medical community over the last several years that at least one strain of HPV (HPV-16, which also causes cervical cancer) is leading to what’s known as oropharyngeal cancer. “These patients are younger, in their 40s or 50s, mostly male, and they never smoked or drank.”

This is such a stupid thing to have done. I am very disappointed.

Back in January, I wrote a post about PlanB posters at my place of work. It’s about time I updated that post. After initially contacting the marketing director, I was informed there was an ad company that rented those locked poster spaces from us. The ad company was contacted and asked to change the posters because they weren’t cohesive with the facility’s “family oriented” identity (their words, not mine). The posters were changed by the ad company owner about a week after but then were changed back to PlanB posters again at the end of month (when the posters are usually changed) by the regular delivery person who does this job. Once again, management contacted the ad company and requested the posters be changed. They were, and no PlanB posters are currently in the building and should not be in the future.

The moral? This whole endeavor took a lot of time and effort on the part of management, there were phone calls and follow-ups. I’m the only person that had questioned the posters in a building with about sixty employees. I’m incredibly grateful to my co-workers for their support but also recognize that this is perhaps not an isolated event. I don’t work in a vacuum, it’s just a gym. So don’t be afraid to bring these things up, who knows what kind of change you might effect.