Archives for 2011

Commenting on true infringements of women’s rights is something PWPL likes to do. This was always Brigitte’s domain, for no particular reason, just because she always got to it first. But since she is no longer blogging here with us, I will try to keep up, by drawing attention to the Saudi women challenging a driving ban, today.

Canadians have been exposed to photographs and giant warning labels on cigarettes for some time now, but this is all relatively new to your southern neighbors.

WASHINGTON – On June 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will unveil the final graphic health warnings chosen to appear on every pack of cigarettes sold and on all cigarette advertising in the United States. This represents the most significant change to cigarette labels in more than a quarter century and will affect everything from packaging to advertising. The labels combine graphic imagery with straightforward facts to make the message clear: smoking can kill you.

One of the proposed new images, found here, focuses on fetal health… I meant to say, as the package reads, your baby’s health. Because when you take away the medical cloak of harming an unborn child, it’s harming a baby.

I understand the frustration, I really do. But if an organization does harm to even one human being even when helping so many others, do we still call it philanthropic? Do we still think they work for the love of humanity? Some people think so.

I wish our opponents would stop being so judgmental and so quick to cast stones. I would like to suggest to them to do some research and become educated on exactly all that we offer and do on a daily basis, so they could make informed decisions rather than listen to all of the propaganda. […]

In the shoes that I have walked in for the past 17 years, we have tried to help people who need us by treating and educating our patients and hopefully helping them avoid having to make the choice of having an abortion.

Planned Parenthood does offer many services that I have absolutely no problem with, like breast exams. Yes, I want someone to give breast exams and preventative cancer care to those without insurance. I’m not advocating otherwise. However, abortion provider aside, Planned Parenthood also promotes many other practices that the majority of Americans and Canadians may actually find disturbing. For example, the IPPF gave China its seal of approval in 2006, despite the claims of activists that forced sterilizations and abortions were still taking place.

An article in Time magazine in September 2005 claimed that some 7,000 people had been sterilised against their will in Shandong province.

The very year China joined the IPPF, it hit record highs for sterilizations.

An aggressive, and often coercive, prevention campaign also reduced abortions. In 1983 alone, China sterilized 21 million people and fitted 17.8 million women with intrauterine devices. The next year abortions declined sharply to 8.9 million.

Is this how Planned Parenthood envisions “treating patients” in order to help them avoid abortion? And even if their employees didn’t conceal statutory rape, and even if there are fewer abortions preformed than mammograms, is it really worth the trade-off? Do we really have to settle for a shabby runner-up to handle women’s health? I think we all deserve better than that.

Anyone who had given even a cursory glance to PWPL will know there’s no strong sports fan base here.

However, I was reading in the Post about the post-Canucks loss riots in Vancouver  and had a thought. The article is called “Fans aren’t off the hook” and describes how it is ridiculous to claim that only a small criminal element is responsible for the riots. The author is right: certainly there were regular Vancouver Canucks fans looting, burning and destroying stuff. It wasn’t just career protestors.

So we know that regular Vancouver Canucks fans were among the criminals. My question is: how many married men with families were among the crowd? “Hey honey, I’m going to be late tonight. Just have to burn a police car.” I’m not saying our dwindling marriage rate is responsible for looting and violence. But marriage does, some theorize, civilize young men. I’d have to guess the numbers of family men among that crowd were low.

Just a small social theory point this morning.

Your friendly “women’s rights advocates” would never want women to actually see what, or dare I say who, they are aborting. No. That would infringe on a woman’s right to be kept in the dark. Apparently information is not power, it’s patronizing.  

I’m talking about this on Byline, Sun TV, tonight.

I’ll say.

The BBC airs an assisted suicide on TV.

Chatelaine magazine has taken on the question of whether to show graphic photos to high school kids. The comments are the most interesting part. Plenty of women still think you can’t be pro-woman and pro-life. We have our work cut out for us.

A friend has written in with this request:

Dear Andrea: my elder daughter is trying to find good resources to help her think about start- and end-of-life issues (recently having to think about the Groningen Protocol). Do you have any suggestions for her?

What might your suggestions to this student in university be? Please write in with any resources you think are helpful.

The EU is up in arms because they gave money to Hungary but are now upset with just how that money has been used: on pro-life billboards. Love it.

I love this story because the EU is constantly clashing with the former Eastern Block, and I love it when these upstart fledgling democracies show up the old, staid west on life as on other topics. And it goes without saying that I love it that Hungary is running a pro-life campaign.

Busy day here, no time to think, for which I am eternally grateful. Ruminating is, my friends, highly overrated. Anyhoo, not sure how I feel about “womb transplants” from mother to daughter. I wouldn’t do it, but that alone probably isn’t quite the logical treatment people are looking for. Read about it, here:

Eva Ottosson, 56, has agreed to take part in a groundbreaking new medical procedure, which if successful could see her donate her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter Sara.

Doctors hope if the transplant is successful Sara, who was born without reproductive organs, could become pregnant and carry a child in the same womb from which she herself was born.