Archives for October 2011

In order to comment on a movie, one typically watches it. I started watching 180, the new and popular pro-life movie, but only got through the first five minutes. This is not because it was bad, but because I ran out of time.

(In those first five minutes the host asks random people on the street if they have heard of Hitler. To be frank, I was amazed that so few people had.)

Anyways, seeing as I have not seen the movie, I am linking to Stephanie Gray’s blog on the topic, a trustworthy source. Hopefully I get to see the movie myself soon, in which case I’ll add my own thoughts.

A Lancet study reveals that where a common contraceptive is used in eastern and southern Africa, HIV rates have gone up:

The reasons behind this association are as yet unclear, and may be biological. But to those who have not been blinded by the leftist global health consensus, another explanation seems quite possible: the aggressive promotion of contraception may increase the rates of sex, both protected and unprotected (especially with multiple partners, the main cause of the HIV pandemic).

Such a dynamic has been seen in previous research on why condom promotion in Africa has also not slowed, and may have even increased, the rates of HIV infection. Edward C. Green, formerly of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard (and a proud liberal), summarized the undeniable evidence in a Washington Posteditorial two years ago.

Those not blinded by the leftist global health consensus will have no problem understanding this. Those who have? Consider opening at least one eye.

If you are interested, you can listen to the debate audio by clicking here. The question: Can Canada have a maternal health policy in the developing world that excludes abortion? Yours truly for the Yes We Can side and Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada in opposition. Enjoy.

If you live in the Ottawa area, consider coming to First Place Options’ Festa and Concerto Italiana, a fundraiser for a great local charity that helps women, men and families through unplanned pregnancies. It’s on October 28; click here for more info.

In Saturday’s debate at Queen’s, much was made by my opponent of women being the ones to decide in abortion. Keep in mind we were debating maternal health and abortion in the developing world. My point was that where women don’t have autonomy in the first place, they certainly won’t have the ability to freely choose an abortion. (Furthermore, I believe this “free” choice is highly exaggerated here in Canada, just the same.)

Anyway, this article from India on a young mother forced to abort twice, who hung herself with the third pregnancy after her in-laws ordered another abortion…because the baby was a girl. Just so long as they have access to abortion though. So she can make a choice as to whether to end just her baby’s life and/or her own, too.

Many people fall prey to this idea of putting second things first, not just pro-lifers. (BTW, this is not to say that every pro-lifer is a Christian. But so many are that this is worth posting.) 

I love this C.S. Lewis quote which essentially says the same thing: “When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now…When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”

As some of you are aware, I debated Joyce Arthur at Queen’s University yesterday afternoon. Behold: my short report.

There were about 150 students there, though I am bad at estimating crowds. It was peaceful, with the exception of some guffaws of laughter at me from a very limited group of possibly 5 to 7 anti-Andreas. (I am working with the language here, since I got called anti-choice all night. Incidentally, this suits me just fine since I am anti-this-one-“choice”. Those kids were certainly Anti-Andrea. Probably anti-life, too, if I were to guess. Oh yes, I have a keen sense of discernment.)

Joyce was respectful and pleasant in her demeanor, and wore her trademark flower as well as a lovely black skirt. She wore a shirt too, I might add, but I didn’t notice it in particular.

The question: Can Canada have a maternal health policy that excludes funding for abortion?

As expected, I said Yes We Can! My arguments came down to 1) describing that the unborn are human like you and me therefore abortion means taking a life and 2) highlighting the way in which abortion is irrelevant for saving women’s lives. I showed (if I do say so myself) a great graph showing how Canada’s maternal mortality declined well prior to 1969.

I found Joyce’s arguments (not surprisingly, let’s remember whose web site we are on) less than compelling. To address the humanity of the unborn she said simply it doesn’t matter, because the woman still decides. She is very set on legalization of abortion western-style for the developing world, so much so that she failed to wholly address the fact that maternal mortality declines with good medical care, sans abortion. She made the point that abortion is a mainstay of every woman’s life: normal and routine, nothing to see here. So where my main point was to ask the question that if we can decrease maternal mortality without abortion, and the data clearly shows we can, why wouldn’t we do it? However, she doesn’t view abortion as negative, so she sees no point in trying to avoid it.

That was jarring for me, as I suspect it was also jarring for those girls in the audience who have had abortions. There’s no amount of saying something is super easy that will make it so, when it’s not.

My other points: abortion in the developing world has been used to get rid of girls, legal abortion does not equal safe abortion, limited funding from government means we ought to use measures that garner the biggest bang for your buck (things like providing antibiotics and oxytocin).

I believe the only video recording is on my iPhone, so I’ll try to get that up. It’s not the greatest quality, sorry. I also have an audio recording of dubious quality, but I’ll transfer it to my laptop and see if I can improve it there.

Many thanks to the University of Ottawa pro-lifers who came out to support me! I think the bulk of the audience, however, was neither strongly pro-life nor strongly pro-choice and therefore this was a great event to introduce your average student to both sides of the story.