Archives for March 2011

Wow. Just wow.

When parents say their children are the true source of happiness and fulfillment in their lives, they may be enacting a psychological defence to justify all the time, money and energy they put into the job, finds a new Canadian study.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests parents are idealizing their role to cope with the downsides of being mom and dad — namely, how expensive it is to raise a family.

Not to mention the fact that parents idealize and overemphasize the joys of parenting sometimes to prevent themselves from strangling the apple of their eyes when they’ve stuffed something nasty down the toilet or scribbled all over the walls or peed on their car seat after swearing they didn’t have to go, or when they won’t stop asking one dumb question after another, or [supply your own list of examples here].

Parenting is WORK! It’s hard! And yes, it can get expensive. Nothing that’s worth doing is easy. People do what they can to get themselves through it. That’s because they’re human.

“I’m able to really be there for [my kids] in that five or six hours of time,” says this mom who left her kids behind for a new life. To really find herself. She’s a better mom now, says she.

Is it just me or does it feel like this woman is not talking about human beings at all? Let alone her own kids. I’m all over flexibility in mothering, to be able to do things as you see fit but really, I have to say, up and leaving entirely somehow (call me crazy) doesn’t qualify. She appears to be more of a disengaged observer of her own life.

Once you’ve decided that human life is expendable, where do you stop? It is perfectly legal in this country for a pregnant woman to end the life of her baby at any point in her pregnancy, for any reason whatever (or for no reason at all). The law does not care whether the child in question could live outside the womb.

Why people are then surprised by a ruling like this one is beyond me. Just think of it as a very late-term abortion.

I am not a religious person. But this story almost made me cry:

SANTA MARIA, California, March 2, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A “pillar of strength” – these were the words Etta Waterfield used to describe her mother-in-law, Jane Russell, who will be remembered by millions as a timeless beauty and talented actress of the silver screen.

But according to Waterfield, Jane’s true legacy lies in her deep devotion to the Bible as a born-again Christian, and her tenacity living out that faith as a pro-life advocate following a tragic botched abortion at the age of eighteen.

“Mom was to the world a movie star, but her passion was for the children. Her passion was for pro-life,” Waterfield told LifeSiteNews.com in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, two days after Russell passed away of respiratory failure in her Santa Maria home at the age of 89.

Russell’s story began in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California where she grew up as the eldest and only girl in a deeply Christian family of five children. The loss of a child – Jane’s older brother, who died at 18 months old – was what inspired her own mother’s zeal for reading the Bible, a hunger she passed on to her daughter.

The death of a child would also later exert a powerful effect on Jane’s life: when the eighteen-year-old star was already well on her way to a successful career in film, an illegal abortion took the life of her unborn child, and left her unable to bear children ever again.

According to Waterfield, the young Jane already “felt horrible” about the moral evil committed in the abortion, which was so badly botched she nearly died. “She knew it was wrong,” she said. “But she as a young teenager, she felt she was trapped and her career starting to take off, and it was an inconvenience, and she thought that was the best solution, knowing all along that it wasn’t.”

But it was because of the open arms of her own mother, Geraldine, that Jane was encouraged to “let the Lord figure out” how to turn the experience to good.

“Grandma Russell was by her side after she had the abortion and she said, ‘Daughter, the Lord will turn this around for good if you allow him to work in your life. There is no condemnation from Him, nor will there be any condemnation from our lips either,’” said Waterfield.

Jane carried on, she said, bearing courageously the responsibility of an abortion that wound up giving her “a heart for children,” particularly those who were difficult to place in adoptions, such as older and disabled children. Russell was to found the World Adoption International Fund (WAIF) in 1955. According to Waterfield, through Russell’s efforts at adoption advocacy, she helped find a place for over 40,000 children in permanent homes who may otherwise never have found them.

And despite losing her fertility, she became “mom” and “grandma” to many: having adopted three children, she left behind six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren at her passing. In particular, Waterfield said, Russell was passionate about using her fame as a well-loved actress to open the word of God to others.

“She made a mistake, but she is the perfect example of what the Bible says: what Satan has meant for bad, God will turn around for good if you allow him to work in your life,” said Waterfield. “That’s Mom right there: those thousands of children – that abortion turned into a blessing.”

[…]

As Russell lay on her deathbed, Waterfield said that she rejoiced to think of the meeting that lay in store for her.

“I whispered in her ear and said, ‘Mom, now you can hold your baby for the first time. You’ll be able to see your baby,” she said, tearing up. “And you know, I just wish I could see that reunion. Because of that baby, she was able to do so much for children.

“That’s her legacy: it’s not Hollywood, it’s the children. That’s how I want the world to know her.”

HIV is an epidemic everywhere, but perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Malawi. With a population of 14.8 million, close to 1 million are living with HIV. The Malawi government has stepped up its efforts to combat HIV over the years, but this newest attempt at prevention seems more than a little misguided.

Mwana Palibe, a cultural belief very popular in the lower shire districts of Nsanje and Chikhwawa has been named as one of the contributing factors to the wide spread of HIV and AIDS in the two districts.The belief, which prohibits couples from exercising their conjugal rights unless all the children who live in that particular house are in, is very popular among the Mang’anja people.

People of the two districts believe that once this tradition is breached, children fall ill from Kwashiorkor like diseases and they eventually die.

But speaking after Journalist Association Against Aids in Malawi, a grouping of media practitioners in the fight against Aids, visited the district, Traditional Authority Mlilima of Nsanje said there was no harm in couples having sex in the absence of their children.

“There is no any other connection in couples enjoying in bed and children falling ill. These are some of the beliefs we must eliminate if we are to win the fight against AIDS,” said the chief.

The association’s Chairperson Deogratias Mmana said the custom fires up men to be seeking relief outside their matrimonial circles.

“This is very dangerous because men can be tempted to go behind their wives and seek relief to other women, a thing which can accelerate the spread of HIV and AIDS in the country,” he said.

Wow, blaming wives for the spread of AIDS by cheating spouses, that’s rich! Ultimately, they’re saying “No no, your children won’t get ill and die if you have sex with your husband. They’ll get ill and die if you DON’T have sex with your husband.” I can’t imagine this message going over well, anywhere, or having any impact on the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Youngest person ever to testify before committee. I like it. So should everyone–it gives the voiceless a voice. It makes the invisible in our society visible. If we were talking about the homeless or people with disabilities or any other disenfranchaised group, everyone would be thrilled:

The video and heartbeat recording of a nine-week old foetus is expected to be used as ‘testimony’ today by a Christian pro-life group in support of an anti-abortion bill. The testimony will consist of projecting an ultrasound image of the pregnant woman’s uterus onto a screen in the Ohio courtroom. The image will also show the foetus’s heartbeat in colour.

It’s stories like this one that really drive it home for me. Maybe the sexual revolution wasn’t so great after all?

CHICAGO — Half of men in the general population may be infected with human papillomavirus or HPV, the human wart virus that causes cervical and other cancers, strengthening the case for vaccinating boys against HPV, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

U.S. vaccine advisers have been weighing whether boys and young men should be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, as they already recommend for girls and young women, but some worry the vaccine is too costly to justify its use.

HPV infection is best known as the primary cause of cervical cancer, the second most common cancer in women worldwide. But various strains of HPV also cause anal, penile, head and neck cancers. Vaccinating men and boys would prevent some of these cancers.

I was watching Book TV last night and saw the most amazing presentation. It was award-winning Alexander Tsiaras, creator of Anatomical Travelogue, giving a video presentation at Idea City ’03. He was talking about his company and their “travel” videos inside the human body. Tsiaras and his team collect massive amounts of data and imaging of the human body through all its stages, then “visualize” this data as computer images. His book, From Conception to Birth: A Life Unfolds, is a celebration of the first stages of human life. It opens, “Is anything more fascinating or marvelous than the conception of a human life?” It was amazing to see someone, a scientist, a software developer, simply celebrating the beauty of conception without any perceivable agenda. The Idea City presentation was great, but this was even better:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4nm1AHugD4

I am a Bell customer. I am not surprised by this story:

A couple from Merritt, B.C. has been battling Bell Canada for months over enormous bills – which they call outrageous and unwarranted – for thousands of dollars in unexplained data charges on their smart phone. “They basically made us scared of our phone,” said Daniel Methot.”We just stopped using it. We shut it off,” added his wife, Kate.

However, Daniel said, he has already ruled out that possibility because the charges continue even when the phone is shut off. He said he’s spent countless hours talking with numerous Bell representatives trying to diagnose the problem. Each time, he said, he had to tell the whole story from the beginning.

I know this is quite off our usual beat but when I even think about needing to call Bell for any reason at all I want to shoot myself, so given that circumstance, I am morally obligated to post this information. And another link to this.

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Deborah adds: I’m going to go out get my very first ever Canadian cell phone today. It’s been hard convincing myself it’s a good idea since it is so incredibly more expensive than in the USA . . . voicemail and caller ID aren’t automatically included with every plan?? And . . . long distance and roaming? They practically don’t exist for cell phones in the US. So now I know what company NOT to choose (and my husband already vetoed Rogers)! Canada needs a revolution. A cell phone revolution!

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Jennifer adds: I think it’s an epidemic. I had problems with Rogers as well, so switched to Virgin. My first bill with Virgin said my smart phone was “online” more hours than are in the day! Their excuse? My phone was “looking for updates” because I hadn’t updated it correctly. The problem is fixed now, but I still ended up paying an extra $40 in fees that I didn’t cause. I basically took out the battery and threw the phone in a box until the problem was fixed. It made me want to claw my eyes out! Not to mention that I’ll never get back the hours spent on the phone with their reps. Awful… I think I’m getting post traumatic stress just thinking about it.

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Brigitte is doing what she can to help: