Archives for November 2011

An informative rebuttal to the column I linked to here. Birth control won’t stop the growing population, since the reason we have that growing population is not due to births, but rather the fact that we are all living longer. This explains why demographers estimate that by 2060 or 2070 we will see the world population begin to shrink.

People, an event tonight and a debate tomorrow night, both featuring Stephanie Gray. Both are open to the public.

Date: November 10, 2011
Time: 7-9pm
Speaker: Stephanie Gray
Event: Abortion and Intellectual Honesty
Location: St. Paul’s University, room 103, 223 Main Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Date: November 11, 2011
Time: Doors open at 7pm; Welcoming remarks begin at 7:30pm
Theme: Debate
Speaker: Stephanie Gray vs. Jovan Morales
Location:  University of Ottawa, SITE A0150 (Engineering Building across from the Sports complex at the main campus)
800 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, ON

UPDATE

More info about the debate tomorrow:

“University of Ottawa Students for Life, in partnership with University of Ottawa Medical Students for Life, will be hosting Stephanie Gray, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, on November 11th 2011 at 7:30 pm for a debate on abortion in medical practice. The event will take place at 800 King Edward Ave – SITE A0150. Ms. Gray will represent the pro-life side, while the pro-choice side will be represented by Jovan Morales of the Atheist Community of the University of Ottawa.”

I will be attending this one, since I like to hear what both sides bring forward. Come out if you can!

…are a problem for  young women, too. For everyone, really. Margaret Wente surprises me here, with her passion. In other cases, her commentary on social issues has been more muted. But she`s right, so I suppose it`s good someone is sounding the alarm on this topic of drifting young men.

…doctors may not tell you. Last night I saw a documentary on Rock Center about women from North Carolina that were unknowingly sterilized in the 1960s. While it was heartbreaking to hear each woman recount her experience and the loss of her ability to conceive, it was the stories of women who were told they were being sterilized but were not fully aware of what that meant that haunted me. The doctors spoke in terminology those young girls didn’t understand, but the outcomes were irreversible. I imagine there are many parallels between these stories and those of women who have undergone abortions, the women felt “butchered” and violated.

November 20th is Universal Children’s Day, an event created by the UN to mark the day that they adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It reads,

Whereas the United Nations has, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status,

Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth, […]

Whereas mankind owes the child the best is has to give,

Austin Ruse has called the UN a “paper tiger”, stating that it only has the power people are willing to give it. Officially, the UN has adopted those aforementioned rights for children (they’re a beautiful thing to read actually). Unofficially, the UN Human Rights Commission has blatantly acted as if those rights and charters do not exist, imposing their own ideals in various publications, charters and frameworks. Over the past few years, they have aggressively campaigned to criticize and coerce countries (like Ireland) into upholding what they call the Benefits of Scientific Progress,

which obligates governments to ensure the availability of reproductive technologies such as modern contraceptives, access to safe abortion services…

On this November 20th, maybe it’s time UN Commissions were reminded of all the UN adopted rights they violate. You can contact the UN Human Rights Commission at [email protected]

PEI Health Minister Doug Currie says abortion is not a service that PEI will offer any time soon. I have no idea (truly) where he stands on the life issue. However, if he were pro-life, simply stating that abortion is an additional burden on the system and not something they can add right now would be the right talking points.

This reader wrote in with her personal story in response to my post about Tiller. She has given me permission to post it, anonymously.

Just wanted to share my experience. At [the hospital] where I was a patient, they promote prenatal testing and abortion. Both are always options they mention. When I found I was unexpectedly pregnant with my second child I was highly distressed (to put it mildly) as was my husband. My first pregnancy ended with a beautiful daughter but a horrific birth that left me with post traumatic stress. I had severe postpartum depression for over a year. I was physically and psychologically in terrible shape and didn’t plan any more children.
When I went to my doctor to begin prenatal care I was sobbing saying how terrified I was of having the same experience again. Over a year after the first birth I was still waking at night from nightmares. The resident refused to refer me to an OB for a C-section saying “There is no medical reason” for a referral. How ironic given that I was in psychiatric care and literally suicidal at the thought of giving birth again. I had told my husband I would wait until the end of my pregnancy and then stab myself to force an emergency C-section if I couldn’t have a planned one. I was not being dramatic, I literally would have rather died than give birth again.
I did not for a minute consider abortion but that was the first thing I was offered since my pregnancy was unplanned. Since I didn’t want an abortion no one wanted to help me. I had to return to the doctor repeatedly until I saw someone different who gave me the referral. Ironically, the OB told me I did have a medical reason beyond the obvious psychiatric reason. If I had a similar birth experience I would have stand a high risk of not healing a second time and facing lifelong problems.
I want to make a complaint about the practice for refusing me the referral but haven’t yet. Once abortion is on the table as an alternative people stop considering other more nuanced, non-violent, patient-centred approaches.

“Once abortion is on the table as an alternative people stop considering other more nuanced, non-violent, patient-centred approaches.” How true. Thank you to this reader for sharing her story.

Well, hello there. I’m finally crawling out from under this rock I’ve been hiding under for a few months. Between experiencing life as a new mother (I gave birth to Edmund Charles at the end of July, he’s cute), my husband going to sea, visiting my parents in Seattle for extended periods of time while my husband is at sea, and other odds and ends, I haven’t had much time to follow the news, read blogs, or much anything else but walk the dogs and try to figure out what is possessing the evil baby swing (I need an old priest and a young priest . . . ). So here goes.

A friend of mine posted this article on Google+ today and it caught my attention. There is a proposed amendment to Mississippi’s state constitution to define personhood as beginning at the moment of conception.

Though the text of the amendment is simple, the implications if it passes couldn’t be more complex. If approved by Mississippi voters on Tuesday, it would make it impossible to get an abortion and hamper the ability to get some forms of birth control.

Because the amendment would define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights, it could have an impact on a woman’s ability to get the morning-after pill or birth control pills that destroy fertilized eggs, and it could make in vitro fertilization treatments more difficult because it could become illegal to dispose of unused fertilized eggs. This could lead to a nationwide debate about women’s rights and abortion while setting up a possible challenge to the landmark Roe v. Wade case, which makes abortion legal.

Outside of the whole debate of whether or not this should be enacted into law, the whole thing that has always baffled me is the idea of separating personhood from humanity. It has never made much sense to me. Why on earth would we arbitrarily decide that at some point a human is all of a sudden a person and at some point they are not, unless it’s to ease the guilt of killing them? Is there any time when it’s really okay to just go ahead and deliberately kill an innocent human being? Personally, I think that separating personhood from humanity is a very bad idea in the first place.

He’s the doctor in Kansas who did partial-birth abortions and was murdered in cold blood in his church.

Now we have a documentary that seeks to celebrate his life.

The article explains that Tiller’s patients fell into two categories: fetal abnormality or suicidal. Most patients fell into the latter category. And the way those patients were diagnosed as suicidal is suspect at best:

It is only recently that the Tiller legacy has begun to unravel, and I doubt if Alan Ball has gotten the memo.  The point of vulnerability has proved to be Tiller’s necessary second opinion provider, Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus. According to former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, Neuhaus would go to Tiller’s Wichita clinic twice a month on average.  There she would sign a form letter printed out by Tiller. The letter would verify Neuhaus’s finding that without a late-term abortion, the girl in question would suffer “substantial and irreversible damage to a major bodily function.”  Says Kline, “No diagnosis — every letter the same.  She received $300 a signature.”

It will be important to know the truth before Tiller is re-crafted as a martyr. Don’t get me wrong, the way he died is categorically wrong. But likewise what he did with his life was categorically wrong, and seeing both shouldn’t be so tricky for our establishment media.

Germany’s Der Spiegel does a better job of reporting on the world’s 7 billion people. (Article is in English.) In 2060, I’d be 84, so it’s fully possible that I could live to see this new demographic trend:

But,” says Wolfgang Lutz, “that shouldn’t distract us from the fact that an entirely different development has been underway for some time.” Lutz is the director of the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) and one of the world’s most prominent demographers. As he sees it, it is “highly probable that mankind will begin to shrink by 2060 or 2070.”

It will be a global turning point. For the first time since the Black Death raged in the 14th century, the world’s death rate will be higher than its birth rate.

I had truly never thought this far ahead, but 2056–I’m gonna have a big birthday party. 80! Woo-hoo.