Archives for 2011

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.

Three cheers for the We Want the Debate people! For they are provoking a reaction. Here “We Want the Debate” meets “We really, really don’t want the debate,” in the person of Joyce Arthur, who, ironically, I just debated on abortion in the developing world.

I’ve debated Joyce Arthur about why maternal health strategies in the developing world should not include abortion. But I’d love to see her debate someone like Stephanie Gray of the Centre for Bioethical Reform. I suspect Joyce wouldn’t, however, and it has everything to do with the weakness of her position, which would be sadly exposed in debate with the formidable Stephanie Gray. (I am not so formidable.) Otherwise, why wouldn’t she debate it? If a position is strong and defensible, I can hardly understand why you wouldn’t get out there and make sure people know it and learn about it. Look, pro-choice support is generally waning…it would be really wise if those who ardently support it got out there to beef up their numbers.

I appreciate people who are not apathetic. In that sense, I appreciate Joyce, though we would both agree that we have nothing in common on this issue. But pro-lifers are out there, making their views known, up and at ’em, and having lots o’ kids too (for the most part, myself not included). Where will the pro-choice consensus be in years to come if no one defends it publicly? It’s a sad statement on this tenuous “consensus” that the best my opponents can do is never whisper a public word about it, especially not in debate.

A surprisingly positive look at the feminine face of the pro-life movement in the U.S:

The most visible, entrepreneurial and passionate advocates for the rights of the unborn (as they would put it) are women. More to the point: They are youngish Christian working mothers with children at home.

A group of 12 nurses are suing the hospital where they work in New Jersey because the hospital is telling them to assist in abortions or lose their jobs. This is the dream of many a pro-choice fanatic, that all doctors and nurses would be forced to learn and participate in abortions. One hears whiffs of this in Canada every so often, too. Not altogether “pro-choice,” that view.

The birth control solution. That’s the headline on an article espousing the view that the planet truly does have too many people, by a dude who writes for the New York Times. Not too shabby, you think, he must have something important to say. “All the news that’s fit to print,” so we’re told. Or, in this case, all the propaganda that’s fit to regurgitate.

It’s amazing to me that the overpopulation myth refuses to die. But instead of my personal rant, I’ll quote at great length from Unnatural Selection, the recent book about sex selection abortion, which touches on overpopulation in more than one spot.  This particular quote is about Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb, a widely discredited book about how the globe could not support so many people, debating one Ben Wattenberg, who called Ehrlich “a prophet of doom” on The Tonight Show back in 1970.

As The Tonight Show episode wore on, Wattenberg vainly tried to point out that Ehrlich’s predictions were off base. “Sooner or later,” he said, “you suffer a credibility gap.” But this did little to abate the audience enthusiasm. The crowd applauded wildly every time Ehrlich made a new point. To Wattenberg, meanwhile, audience members were cold, bordering on derisive. When the demographer suggested the U.S. could remain a nice place to live with 300 million people–a number we reached in 2006–they broke into peals of mocking laughter.

We should welcome the 8 billionth human whenever he/she comes.

(Also on this: “Contraceptives no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.” I could write an entire op-ed from the perspective of a young woman living in North America to highlight why and how that is false. Kristof can’t be expected to understand the mindset of a young woman today, but it would be nice if he at least tried.)

From the Carleton Lifeline blog:

Trespassing charges that were filed against members of Carleton Lifeline, the pro-life student club at Carleton University, were withdrawn by the Crown yesterday.

This is good news, except I’m not sure why the students should pay for the school’s legal fees:

In a subsequent decision regarding costs of the motion to strike, Justice Toscano Roccamo ordered the students to pay Carleton University’s legal costs in the amount of $18,400.87 plus applicable taxes. Carleton University had asked that the students pay $21, 467.68 in legal fees.

They weren’t trespassing and should not have been charged. I assume they’ll wait to pay until the case Lobo et al. v. Carleton University et al. is resolved:

The Crown stated that the basis for withdrawing the trespass charges is that the issues dealing with the relationship between a university and its students was already being dealt with in Lobo et al. v. Carleton University et al., the civil action brought by two Carleton Lifeline members, Ruth (Lobo) Shaw and John McLeod, against Carleton University and members of its administration.

If you want to support them, you can learn how to do so, here.

Oftentimes we are told that abortion has no effect on society. It does. Sex selection abortion highlights this effect in a radical way. A report from India.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysd4f-ZzFEU&feature=youtu.be]

I’m sorry I missed Dr. Angela Lanfranchi when she spoke in Toronto last week. Here, she speaks with Michael Coren on Sun TV about the link between abortion and breast cancer. It’s worth watching.

She is right when she says “doctors don’t like making waves” and this topic is considered too political. I know many good doctors who refrain from expressing anything they worry might be a political view. It doesn’t mean they are bad people or bad doctors, far from it, in fact! But it does make Dr. Lanfranchi one brave woman, and as you know, we are fond of profiling these sorts of women here.

For more information on this topic, check this website.

Think the UN made abortion a human right? Think again.

 It is now commonplace that people around the world are told there is a new international right to abortion.

Those who receive this message are people who have the power to change abortion laws; parliamentarians, lawyers, judges and others.
Those delivering this message are influential and believable people; UN personnel, human rights lawyers, judges and others.

The assertion they make is false. No UN treaty makes abortion an international human right.

So the San Jose Articles were born, as a tool to help countries and their citizens stand up to these false claims. Read them, print them, reference them, and pass them along.

Recently, there has been a lot of debate around the national population growth in Canada, many people fearing that there simply aren’t enough Canadians (and nowhere near enough Nova Scotians), once populated industrial towns now only operate senior centres. For me, these are negatve arguments to make, as they make me feel like part of the GDP and less like a human being. I’ve heard the statistic of 2.1 children needed for every fertile female, and this insinuates that I have a social, dare I say patriotic, obligation to have at least that many. Conversely, I don’t want to be told that the fewer children I have, the better it is for the world. This too turns my reproductivity into a social and patriotic act, a duty and a commodity. But of course, we aren’t saying both of these things to Canadian women, we’re saying a little more here, and a little less there.

Yes, of course, the developed world should decrease its consumption – and the co-benefit of providing women with services to avoid unwanted pregnancies is particularly large in the UK because of its high per capita emissions. But does she realise that a reduction of 8-15% in carbon emissions can be obtained by providing family planning to all women who want it. This reduction would be equivalent to stopping all deforestation, or increasing the world’s use of wind power 40-fold.

Here, the writer is speaking about those poorer regions of our world. Those who she claims “want” family planning but don’t have it. I would like to point out, that most of the women I have heard interviewed from those poorer countries don’t want to keep getting pregnant but are never asked if they want to have as much sex as they’re having. Many want something they can hide, keep secret from partners etc. This, to me, illustrates that it’s not a family planning issue so much as a women’s rights issue. Shouldn’t they have the freedom to say no to sex? Should we really be giving them contraception and telling them to stop having children, in the name of having a little less there and a little more here?