Archives for January 2012

When the sage glitterati of our intellectual elite want to show some level of annoyance while maintaining their politically correct bone fides, they claim a subject is “nuanced,” “complicated,” or “difficult.” I’m speaking here of André Picard’s article in the Globe recently about how sex selection is a “complex issue with many nuances.”

You know what? Give me Joyce Arthur over André Picard, I say. Dude claims he is unbiased and nuanced, while actually being a cheerleader for abortion. I much prefer people who have a strong opinion, aka, a pulse.

Anyway, the Post comments today in Full Pundit on this “infinite nuance.” I enjoyed that.

Or, in the words of one friend who emailed me his frustration, “sex-selection abortions are not nuanced and complicated.  They are pretty damn simple.  I want a boy.  I carry a girl, therefore I terminate girl’s life simply because I want a boy. Wow. Uber f*&ing complicated.  Soooo nuanced!  How do we keep up?”

Indeed. All that nuance, keeping me up at night.

That’s Father Raymond de Souza’s view. I tend to agree. I’ve been asked multiple times over the past days what the solutions are to eradicating sex selection abortion. The fact is that in a permissive abortion regime, there are none. And the people who could end the permissive abortion regime don’t want to, ergo, they really don’t care about missing women.

My favourite line:

Is all of [the missing women] due to abortion of girls in utero? No. In 1990, much of it was due to female infanticide. But the arrival of inexpensive ultrasound technology in rural Asia in the 1990s meant that the killing became easier to do before birth rather than after.

On a radio show yesterday I struggled to find the right words, to be less aggressive, more amenable with the general public. How to discuss these “missing women?” I struggled but landed on “killing” too. There just isn’t another word. And while I don’t want to be harsh, I have vowed to not use euphemisms in discussing abortion, either.

Ok, maybe everyone doesn’t love a sad song. But with this post, I am walking you down memory lane to visit with a 16-year-old Andrea who listened to this song on repeat at summer camp. I just rediscovered it. A reminder that this blog wasn’t meant to pertain to abortion, all the time.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uc8KPSIzAc]

Now this blog wasn’t meant to pertain to abortion all the time, but since ProWomanProLife is known to return to that topic from time to time, let me add this. If the world were a little less lonely we’d have fewer abortions. Because pro-life or pro-choice, whatever you call yourself, you can’t begin to think that abortion constitutes a story of support or success. Nope. You can’t. It’s a lonely act, one done in the absence of community.

This post is so well written and worth reading for everyone, but especially young mothers. The whole thing. Here’s a taste:

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers — “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN’T!” TRUST US!! IT’LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!” — those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.

But what really spoke to me is her description of time at the end: chronos versus Kairos. It almost seems to me that you can’t have the Kairos moments without the chronos. If time stood still in a Kairos kind of way all the time, we’d be frozen and would never achieve anything. Anyway, read the post, and you’ll see what I mean.  And hats off to those warrior women, raising their children well.

______________________

Jennifer adds: I quickly realized when I got home from the hospital, and in my sleep deprived haze began eating three day old mushy peas from the fridge with tortilla chips thinking they were guacamole, that motherhood wasn’t going to be easy. It’s a tough job, parenting, and let’s not pretend otherwise. In pretending, parents can feel like isolated nut-jobs if they’re not out there savoring the moment. So I really liked this article. One of my favourite parts:

I used to worry that not only was I failing to do a good enough job at parenting, but that I wasn’t enjoying it enough. Double failure. I felt guilty because I wasn’t in parental ecstasy every hour of every day and I wasn’t MAKING THE MOST OF EVERY MOMENT like the mamas in the parenting magazines seemed to be doing. I felt guilty because honestly, I was tired and cranky and ready for the day to be over quite often. And because I knew that one day, I’d wake up and the kids would be gone, and I’d be the old lady in the grocery store with my hand over my heart. […] And here’s what I hope to say to the younger mama gritting her teeth in line:

“It’s helluva hard, isn’t it? You’re a good mom, I can tell. And I like your kids, especially that one peeing in the corner. She’s my favorite. Carry on, warrior. Six hours till bedtime.” And hopefully, every once in a while, I’ll add — “Let me pick up that grocery bill for ya, sister. Go put those kids in the van and pull on up — I’ll have them bring your groceries out.”

Here’s part one. This could have been a lot worse. It could have also been a lot better. I do believe that they should do a sting operation on a Planned Parenthood clinic. Someone should try asking them important and reasonable questions like “When does life begin?” and watch them squirm. Or lie. The truth really won’t do when you are trying to coerce women into believing that abortion is totally and completely neutral.

_________________________

Update: And part two, here. A lot of repeat from part one.

So far as I’m concerned, this is an old story. But it’s still good it’s coming up, since it is still a problem. I suppose some people have a hard time accepting the facts in front of them:

Other organizations, such as the South Asian Women’s Centre and the Immigrant Women’s Health Centre in Toronto, said they didn’t know of a single case of a woman seeking a sex-selective abortion. “I don’t think that any one of our councillors in 30 years of serving immigrant women has had someone say I want to know the sex of the fetus before getting an abortion,” said Ayesha Adhami, administrative co-ordinator at the IWHC. “We’re a little concerned about there being racial stereotypes around this, and whether or not it’s actually happening in Canada is hard to say.”

Actually, it’s not that hard to say at all.

Sorry. But this is my blog, and the title is my take on this story:

While some of the ideas suggested in the booklet Eat Better, Start Better are useful, such as how to cater for youngsters of different religions, other information is extraordinarily basic such as the fact that sugar rots teeth and fruit is full of vitamins. It even tells nursery workers, who have already had two years’ training in looking after children, what the definition of meat is and how best to define a week (Monday to Friday).

Nothing says love like a government book on how to feed your toddler. (From the UK, coming soon to a province near you.)

This just in, according to the Canadian Association Medical Journal. (Not exactly a bastion of the pro-life movement.)

An editorial in a major Canadian medical journal Monday urges doctors to conceal the gender of a fetus from all pregnant women until 30 weeks to prevent sex-selective abortion by Asian immigrants. A separate article in the same issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns that Canada has become “a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favor of having sons” due to advanced prenatal testing and easy access to abortion. “Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male to female ratio in some ethnic groups,” said the editorial by interim editor-in-chief Rajendra Kale.

So why would not telling the sex until 30 weeks limit abortion in a country with no abortion laws? Likely because doctors don’t like doing partial birth abortions on completely viable fetuses. Legally, however, if some enterprising doctor believed in the cultural disposition that encourages having boys, and wanted to do these late term abortions, no one could stop him/her.

…and also a commentary on the good that crisis pregnancy centres do. PWPL is non-religious, but faith is clearly a part of this woman’s story and you can’t take that away. In any event, I found her story very moving.

Ten or so minutes long, you can find it told here.

Last night, I went to see The Iron Lady. I have very low expectations when I go to see any Hollywood movie, but I must say, I give this one two thumbs up.

It has some shortcomings, of course. Some lines are given to Thatcher that simply don’t ring true, for example. One of them comes very early on when she tells Dennis, her soon-to-be husband, who has just proposed to her, that she won’t be a regular woman, “life must be about more than just washing teacups,” or something to that effect. It doesn’t ring true as something Thatcher would say. It sounds too feminist, and she wasn’t one, and is unnecessarily offensive to most every mother in the audience. Heck, I was offended, and I am not a mother.

There are also one or two other moments where I thought this isn’t Thatcher, this is Meryl Streep vying for an Oscar.

That said, I do hope Meryl Streep does get an Oscar for her performance here. Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as a tough, sensible, hard working and concerned Prime Minister. That there are shortcomings around some of her lines, some of the history, even the controversy over whether one should depict a woman yet living as having dementia doesn’t change that.

Have you ever gone to listen to great piano concert and thought, I must become a pianist, immediately? Or have you been to the ballet and subsequently wished you could dance? This movie had me leaving thinking I should run and become Prime Minister. To leave our great nation in a better position than how I found it (that was said in a British accent). It’s that kind of movie, and that can only be a good thing.