A young man with Down’s was on the ferry from the Toronto Island airport this past weekend. He was excited to get off first and had positioned himself accordingly. But then he let me go before him with a smile, in a kind of chivalric gesture. It was one of those nice, if small, moments in a busy city.
I already get choked up when I see people with Down Syndrome, knowing as I do that we don’t see as many of them as we should.
If you’re pregnant, trying to conceive, or think you might be pregnant, there’s a new study you should be aware of.
The risk of miscarriage may be higher among women who take certain anti-inflammatory drugs in early pregnancy, a new study suggests.
The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs in the study included ibuprofen such as Advil, naproxen, diclofenac, and celecoxib (Celebrex), some of the most common medications used during pregnancy, according to earlier research.
Just to be safe, I’m going to switch out the Advil in the medicine cabinet for aspirin.
This isn’t exactly the leading article in the New York Times or anything. Just a small item about a small country that had a referendum and kept their ban on abortion. Here’s what made me smile:
Campaigners for the change argued that the threat of prosecution meant women had to go secretly to neighboring Austria or Switzerland even just to get advice on their options in an unwanted pregnancy.
Imagine having to go to a whole different country just to get advice! Except that their country is probably about the same size as Ottawa. Certainly couldn’t be too much bigger than the GTA. In the abortion debate it’s all the same arguments getting pulled out in different places.
Is this a joke? An Edmonton radio station has a wife-winning contest:
The Bear is giving away a wife! See the Latest Entries below! But we’re not going to give this opportunity to just anybody…. to weed out the no-hopers and time-wasters, we’ve developed the application form below. If you’re interested in potential holy matrimony with a hot foreign chick, fill it out to the best of your abilities. If we pick you, you’ll be heading to Russia with 13 nights’ accomodation, return air fare, and $500 spending money to meet the lucky lady!
In a world where flashy North Americans go on national TV to win a wife/husband, it can all get pretty confusing around what is and isn’t an appropriate way to meet someone and get married. But this one veers dangerously close to human trafficking territory. What do people think?
Good column here, by Susan Martinuk. And thanks to everyone who helped me think this through at my earlier post. I will be discussing this with Brian Lilley on Sun TV today. His show airs at 9pm.
Pro-choice groups want “safe and legal”, right? Well, maybe not that safe. From The New York Times,
The Virginia Board of Health on Thursday approved a set of regulations for abortion clinics that abortion rights advocates say could result in the closing of a number of the state’s more than 20 clinics. Supporters of the measures say they will make the clinics safer.
[…]
In a statement, the Family Foundation, an anti-abortion group that promoted the measures, called the approval, “a significant pro-life victory,” and said that “Virginia’s abortion centers now face the choice of either spending their profits on meeting standards or no longer doing abortions at their facilities.”
Just take a moment to ponder that last line.
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Andrea adds: As I’ve said before, “safe, legal and rare” comes down to “legal” for many an extreme abortion advocate these days. When you scratch just the tiniest bit below the surface, this becomes clear. And yet they still get off with the stranglehold on “women’s rights” rhetoric. Boggles the mind.
When “Yes We Can” took hold of Americans (and Canadians) and Obama became President, I was one of the few who wasn’t a fan. Nowadays, we’re a dime a dozen, including some Democrats. It’s nice to be vindicated after such a short period of time.
Can’t take credit for the post title, as I believe it was Jon Stewart who mused that Obama’s slogan for 2012 might be: “We thought we could, but…”
Anyway, I don’t like President Obama because he is America’s most pro-abortion president in history. (For me, there were many other reasons, too, but I won’t get into those here.) I’m glad to see opinions on him are shifting, if they haven’t turned already.
I suppose we can add a little question mark to the slogan below.
Wait no more to find out! China’s Ministry of Education is apparently making a course on love and sex compulsory for university students. Because nothing says love like the Chinese authorities forcing a course on the topic.
I have been following, at least a little, the story of the Alberta woman who killed her newborn son, throwing his body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard.
The woman, Katrina Effert, received no jail time, merely a suspended sentence. The judge had this to say:
Judge Veit ruled, according to multiple media reports, that because Canada allows abortions it reflects how “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”
Naturally, this is all very disturbing stuff. But the light sentence, although explained today in light of our abortion-friendly culture, would have likely been given prior to abortion being available on demand, precisely because a mother murdering her baby was viewed as so contrary to a woman’s nature. Lower sentences associated with infanticide, in short, recognize that a woman bonds with her baby over nine months gestation, and that subsequently killing that baby represents a break with normal maternal instinct.
It is in the same way that having an abortion breaks with normal maternal instinct–the desire to protect your baby.
In today’s day and age, we undoubtedly have to get rid of the lower sentences for infanticide, precisely because women have grown more and more distant from their own bodies, how they work, and what pregnancy is and what abortion does.
But if we lived in an abortion-free culture, I’d be in favour of lower sentences for women who kill their newborn infants. Some may well do so in cold-blood. I feel, however, that killing your own baby is such a strange thing that mental disorder may, in fact, be to blame.
I’m still thinking this one through. I thought to myself, hey, I should discuss this with someone. But then I realized I have a blog for such questions as this.
Thoughts?
I suppose this is one of the reasons why countries with massive gender imbalance (largely due to sex selection abortion) have cause for concern.