I heard through this or that blog that someone over at Wonkette had written a piece making fun of Sarah Palin’s son, Trig, because he has Down Syndrome. I didn’t want to even link to it and was later pleased to see all kinds of advertisers pulling away from Wonkette. What I will link to is a smackdown of anyone who thinks it’s OK to make fun of a Down Syndrome child because you don’t like his mother’s politics. Enjoy.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U83fHHkHLS0]
(h/t)
I’m privileged to work with good folks. Here’s my boss, Dave Quist, talking abortion politics on David Akin’s new Sun Media show.
Surrogacy carries so many ethical, emotional and biological unknowns that many countries ban it outright, France being one of them. You may have given your French DNA to a surrogate in the U.S., but in a time of dwindling resources, which country takes responsibility for this new life? Apparently not France.
In a ruling that affirmed France’s ban on surrogacy, the country’s top court refused on Wednesday to allow French citizenship for 10-year-old twin girls born to a surrogate mother in the United States who carried the babies for a French couple. The Court of Cassation said that a California county went too far by ruling that a French couple are legally the twins’ parents. The ruling exposes the legal limbo that many would-be parents find themselves in because of inconsistencies on surrogacy between countries like the United States, which legally recognizes it, and those that ban it. While the court ruled that the girls could not be listed in France’s civil registry, it also said that nothing prevented them from living with the couple in France. The couple’s lawyer said they planned to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
They’ve signed a law banning late term abortions:
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin on Wednesday signed into law a prohibition on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, making it the fourth state to ban such late-term abortions. She also signed a law preventing health insurers from covering elective abortions.
And way to go, Gov. Mary Fallin. See? Some women do have gumption. Although I can imagine the political pressures in Oklahoma are very different from here.
It hit the news today that a Conservative MP seeking re-election, Brad Trost (SK) said that Planned Parenthood was denied funding because they support abortion.
First of all, we don’t actually know that Planned Parenthood was denied funding.
Secondly, there are pro-life MPs in this country because there are pro-lifers in this country. This is not shocking. Pro-life Canadians look for pro-life candidates to represent them. Brad Trost is one of them.
Thirdly, too bad Stephen Harper is more concerned with control than free speech. Brad Trost should be allowed to say what he wants, because he represents pro-life constituents, and is pro-life. There are pro-lifers, both Liberal and Conservative (and even NDP! gasp!) and this is, again, not shocking. They should be allowed to speak freely. And they should work to defund pro-abortion agencies of government money. In point of fact, we should not be paying for abortions through state-funded medical care. Talk about controversial politics, but that would be my first move if I were a politician, which I’m not. If you want abortion, don’t make me pay for it. (It’s the pro-life version of “if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one” so often thrust my way by angry pro-choicers.) I digress.
It’s entirely disappointing when abortion becomes so taboo that no one can mention it, period, without the media and some politicos getting their knickers in a knot.
A final thought: This will continue to happen, every single election campaign so long as we continue to pretend that the “issue is settled.”
Here ends the rant.
You know, all it would take is one strong woman. That’s all. For Pete’s sake. I know abortion is the third rail in politics but it really doesn’t have to be and I don’t understand why even women like Elizabeth May who previously have said reasonable things on abortion (“I don’t think a woman has a frivolous right to choose. What I don’t want is a desperate woman to die in an illegal abortion”) feels she has to backpeddle so furiously. As she does, here.
You know, there are those who criticize the American political scene because there are politicians who become pro-life in order to run. Yes, it’s true. They aren’t really pro-life but they say they are, in order to win votes. (Unheard of!) In any event, that is just as bad as the Canadian scene where politicians apparently would rather jam a fork in their eye than say they are pro-life, even if they are. Simple truths like “abortion is wrong,” or “partial-birth abortion is deplorable” should not be so hard to say. Or how about a simple “I’m pro-life, so deal with it”?
You’ll recall Ruth Lobo for standing up to the Ottawa police before she was handcuffed and taken away in a police van for wanting to do a pro-life display on her own university campus. If you found that inspiring, as I did, then here’s a good opportunity to support her as she continues to combat the injustice of abortion:
A fundraising dinner and Silent Auction, to
support Pro-Life missionaries Ruth Lobo and James ShawApril 30th, 2011
Dinner Served at 7:15 PMNotre Dame Cathedral 375 Sussex Dr. Ottawa, Ontario
•Keynote Speaker: Jason Jones (producer of award-winning film Bella)
•Dinner includes Green Salad, Pasta (Vegetarian and Meat), Cinnamon
sponge cake, Wine, Cheese
•Only 100 Tickets at $20
•email PMLauzon at gmail.com or ruthie.lobo at gmail.com to reserve
•Silent Auction (Looking for Donated Items of $20-$50 value, or more)
Last summer, I read Margaret Somerville’s article on children’s rights to their biological origins in the Globe & Mail.
Adoption is our longest-standing experience of dealing with a situation where children have been intentionally disconnected from their biological parents.
In the past, adoption records were permanently sealed. We now recognize that as being harmful to the adopted person and potentially so to the birth family, and unethical. Yet donor-conceived Canadians do not know who at least one of their biological parents is, because donors here are allowed to remain anonymous, which is no longer the case in a growing list of countries (including Britain, Australia and New Zealand among many others). That also is unethical and, if we continue with gamete donation, it must be changed.
Adoptive parents were once advised by “professionals” – as the parents of donor-conceived children have been and still often are – not to tell their children of their origins; they were told that secrecy was best.
At the time, I disagreed. I thought forcing parents to reveal their identities would deter already apprehensive parents from going through with adoption on both ends of the process. However, a recent experience may change my mind.
A few weeks ago, I was watching NBC’s ancestry reality show called “Who Do You Think You Are?”, which is essentially a very long advert for the website Ancestry.com. I had used this website years ago, but never found much. The show prompted me to give the site another chance. For me, the search entry has always been the same, looking for my biological father. I knew his name but not how to spell it, had his photograph but no year of birth, had his birth country but not his current location. The search on the site? Well, it turned up a matching name with the correct spelling, his year of birth and a matching country of origin.
I think I was a little shocked at first. It was funny, how something I had put so much time and energy into years ago was suddenly so easy. I found more about him through a Google search, his location, more recent photos, details about his life. This wasn’t particularly impacting, I had put to rest my expectations of finding this person years ago. What was shocking was the difference it seemed to suddenly make in me. And it was sudden. One minute I couldn’t have told you where my biological father was or if he was still alive and the next, I could. The effect was instant. There was a confidence perhaps that wasn’t there before. I won’t say something was “missing”, because that implies desiring it to return, but something that was not present before was now present.
We are the stories we tell ourselves, so do I think all children have a right to know their story? I don’t know if it’s a “right”, but I will say…it is, in an inexplicably intimate way, better to know than not know.
The Department of Health (DH) is set to launch a legal challenge against a ruling that the full statistics on late abortions must be made public.
Following a request from the anti-abortion ProLife Alliance (PLA), the Information Tribunal ruled in October 2009 that the data must be disclosed under freedom of information laws.
The decision was hailed by the PLA as a victory for ‘transparency’, but ministers fear that releasing the figures could lead to the identification of patients and doctors involved in late abortions.
While abortion on ‘social’ grounds is only legal in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, under Ground E of the 1967 Abortion Act it is legal to abort a foetus right up to birth if there is a substantial risk of ‘serious’ physical or mental abnormality.
Campaign groups like the PLA are concerned about cases where mothers opt for late termination because their unborn babies have been diagnosed with conditions such as a cleft palate and club foot.
They claim that the rules are being flouted to weed out ‘less than perfect’ babies, where doctors say such conditions can usually be corrected by surgery.
The concern seems to be the identification of women and doctors who have participated in such abortions, because they do in fact violate the UK’s 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act:
Women who consider abortion are referred to two doctors who then advise her whether abortion is suitable based on the decision of which of four conditions apply; only when the doctors reach a unanimous decision is the woman allowed to terminate pregnancy.
Pregnancy can be terminated under one of the following circumstances, if the pregnancy:
- puts the life of the mother at risk
- poses a risk to the mental and physical health of the pregnant woman
- poses a risk to the mental and physical health of the existing children
- shows there is evidence of extreme foetal abnormality i.e. the child would be seriously physically or mentally handicapped after birth and during life.
But is that a good reason for a government body to continue to release inaccurate statistics?
Apparently, Heritage Minister James Moore wrote an article when he was a student decrying late term abortions and also the media’s biased reporting of abortion. There’s a couple of deplorable things going on here.
One is that the media saw fit to print this story. If ever there was a desperate, fear-mongering political strategy going on in unearthing this article from ten plus years ago, this is it. Also, if there ever was one Conservative who is without a doubt, completely and totally NOT socially conservative, aka pro-life, it is James Moore.
Secondly, it’s deplorable and sad that decrying partial birth abortions would somehow tarnish one’s political reputation in this country.
Finally, it’s deplorable that James Moore isn’t standing by his original piece, which sounds to have been entirely reasonable.