Archives for 2011

I think I’m supposed to be offended by this, a doll that is for little girls and it mimicks breastfeeding. Would I buy it? Probably not. Would it be “sexual” for a little girl to play with this doll? No. Is it a bit weird? Probably yes. 

We should all return to the days of Little House in the Big Woods, where Ma lovingly made Laura a cloth doll that didn’t mimick anything. And where they poured syrup on the snow and it turned into hard candy! And where the smoked their own meat in a little hut out back. How I loved those books.

Just so we’re very, very clear, this has nothing to do with inappropriate sexual encounters. Nope. Nothing:

A new study has found a third of women suffer from post-sex blues — and it’s not because they regret bedding the partner beside them.Researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia followed more than 200 young women and found 32.9% suffered negative feelings — or postcoital dysphoria — after “otherwise satisfactory intercourse.”

I’m going to take a stab at the “symptoms” of “postcoital dysphoria.” Ten bucks says it sounds something like this: “I can’t believe he hasn’t called.” “He doesn’t love me.” “I don’t love him, why did I do that?” “Was I used?” “Why hasn’t he called/emailed/texted/responded to my calls/emails/texts?” “Could I be pregnant?” “I hope I’m not pregnant.” “What if I’m pregnant?” Followed up by “Why hasn’t he called?”

It’s called being a woman. Dysphoric, indeed. So keep searching, science, for the ever elusive answer to this new “medical condition.”

You don’t say. The famous folk singer is 62! But of course she could adopt. I actually don’t have a problem if women say they never want to have children so long as they conduct themselves with integrity as they follow that course. Not everyone is meant to have children, much as we might like to. Some people care for other people’s children. Some people save unborn children. There are all sorts of things the childless can do, things that are very, very valuable.

Stevie doesn’t want to lose her freedom though, and that strikes me as a not-so-great reason not to have kids. Though I do suppose children hinder your total and complete freedom. But what you lose in freedom you gain in love. Loving anyone does limit freedom as you consider their needs above your own. Love implies some level of dependence. It’s a trade off.

Well, at least we can listen to Stevie as we ponder all these things. Love this song.

A short post on how women have created female blogging ghettos that don’t really compete. The author also comments on women in the workplace:

For the most part, I prefer to work with men than women. Over the years, I have found female-dominated workplaces to be unfocused and ill-managed, consumed by office politics, less competitive and less ambitious, and I have found male-dominated workplaces to be more focused and better-managed, less consumed by office politics, more competitive and more ambitious. I am not naturally a team player. When I was younger, I rode horses and studied karate — solitary sports. As a journalist, I have been most frequently drawn to subcultures that are dominated by men — from the adult business to the U.S. military. I am more comfortable among men. I would rather be where the boys are — than where they are not.

Since we are being politically incorrect here, I’ll just comment on that last line. She may want to work with men; it’s not entirely clear that they want to work with her. I have read (Margaret Mead, George Gilder) that men prefer a work space separate from women. I’m not sure why. I suspect that male camraderie is important, that men want to compete with other men and not with women. Perhaps this is because men have a desire to protect women, rather than compete with them. I’ve also read that if men must compete with women, they’ll drive us into the ground. (Gilder). These theories deserve more time than I’m giving them here, so if you are interested, you can watch this.

(h/t)

Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life, has done this ad. I am reading her book and I just hit the part where she is told to increase abortions for financial reasons. Giving out birth control was not making the money. Abortions did.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgPqBQQeXh4″>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgPqBQQeXh4]

Adelaide was recently ranked Australia’s “most liveable” city, making it a macabre location choice for Philip Nitschke’s specialist clinics.

GWENETH Nitschke believes she will live to see her son operating Australia’s first euthanasia clinic in Adelaide.

Not that the 90-year-old mother of voluntary euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke has a terminal illness.

She reluctantly moved into a northern Adelaide independent living centre last week after a fall at home, and although she has no major health problems, she is urging South Australian MPs to pass a bill allowing doctor-assisted euthanasia.

[…]

Dr Nitschke, the youngest of three children, quietly stopped in to check on his mother yesterday, as he scouted Adelaide’s suburbs for a suitable location to open a specialist euthanasia clinic.

He will spend two days in talks with prospective landlords, but will not disclose potential sites because he said the matter was as controversial as opening abortion clinics. “We really don’t want to go making it impossible to find a place,” he said.

“There is a degree of apprehension here, and people are starting to see this as an extension of the abortion clinic issue, where they fear they are going to be picketed.”

Dr Nitschke said a clinic would initially provide information on procedures required before a doctor could help a patient die, and be fully operational only if a proposed bill passed through both houses of the state parliament on a conscience vote.

The bill last week moved from the second reading stage into committee in the lower house, in what sponsors of the reform hailed as “historic”.

But right-wing Labor government MPs are opposed to the bill and Family First has threatened to withdraw election preferences from any MP who backs the bill.

Health Minister John Hill, who supported the bill last week during a speech about the death of his sister, yesterday said it was not designed to allow a stand-alone clinic. Labor MP Steph Key, who introduced the reworked bill, yesterday said Dr Nitschke’s plan was premature.

With all the troubles there are with IVF in the first place, I’m surprised Britain wants to open another can of worms with this:

Britain is considering whether to approve a fertility treatment designed to prevent some incurable inherited diseases under which babies would be conceived from three biological parents.

Health Minister Andrew Lansley asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to assess three-parent in vitro fertilisation (IVF) after British researchers said they had mastered the technique using cloning technology.

Also, didn’t Dolly the sheep die remarkably early?

That’s the not-so-subtle message of this ad. I could rant about this all day long, instead, just watch for yourself:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSmXKRqFHM]

“You know what you want today. But you never know what you might want for tomorrow.” For so many women what they want tomorrow is children. Only the birth control pill helps them delay and delay until it’s too late. Thanks, Beyaz. And it’s not just those of us who hate the Pill who don’t like this ad. I guess I shouldn’t expect any different. I had not watched TV for a long time before I tuned in and caught…this. Guess it’s back to reading for me.

There really is nothing new under the sun. I think we’ve been down this road before, of wanting to create smarter, better people:

Melbourne’s Julian Salvulescu, now Oxford’s practical ethics professor, has said it is our “moral obligation” to use IVF to choose the smartest embryos, even if that maintains or increases social inequality. Experts have criticised the Gattaca-style idea, saying the money involved could be better spent improving quality of life in Africa.

(h/t)

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Jennifer adds: Adds: I came across Savulescu when researching Marie Stopes Australia. I looked him up because he, like me, is part Romanian, and is not doubt very familiar with the birth defects present since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But this article is interesting because how do we test an embryo’s IQ? Sometimes, autistic children score higher on non-verbal IQ tests. I’m assuming any embryonic test would be non-verbal 😉 Nevermind that IQ’s are very difficult to test. Take for example the IQ test I had before entering into my “gifted” class in grade school, my equally if not more intelligent Russian friend took the same test. I remember her asking me afterward, “Who is Christopher Robin?” (Winnie the Pooh not being as popular in Moscow as it was in the US). I’m also weary of any use of the word “public interest” these days, especially reproducing or not reproducing for the sake of public interest, it’s talk like that that got us China’s One-Child policy.

I wrote my Masters’ Thesis in bioethics on neonatal bioethics. While I didn’t write on neonatal euthanasia, I read plenty about it. Euthanasia is omnipresent in any intensive care litterature, especially neonatal intensive care. The great majority of theoretical case-studies supporting neonatal euthanasia and withdrawal of treatment overwhelmingly use two specific diseases to make their point. The first one is Tay-Sacks disease. The second one is Epidermolysis bullosa. I think these diseases are considered to make life so futile and painful as to not being worth living.

I love it when they are proven wrong.

See the life story of Alice Ervin, published in this morning’s Ottawa Citizen. It moved me to tears. There is no doubt that EB must have caused Alice great pain and suffering. But her worth and her dignity as a human being were not defined by it. I am glad to have met her, even briefly, through the pages of a newspaper.