Archives for January 2012

Men and women are different. Woah. Crazy, I know. Takes research to identify this:

The researchers measured behavioural traits in a broader fashion than previous studies did. They argued that these broader definitions provide a more accurate description of personality characteristics. “We believe we made it clear that the true extent of sex differences in human personality has been consistently underestimated,” they write.

They show women scored higher in sensitivity, warmth and anxiety (hello, my old friend). Men scored higher in emotional stability, dominance, rule-consciousness and vigilance (wariness). This is not to say that no man will ever be warm, or no woman will ever be rule-conscious. (Though I maintain that every woman will always be anxious. I have yet to meet an exception.) But that there are differences should not be a controversial thing. Unfortunately, it is, leaving me to discuss the issue on Sun TV lately (no link, sorry) because of this.

Here’s a clip from CBC’s Power and Politics where Don Hutchinson of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (he’s a lawyer by training) and Joyce Arthur discuss the topic.

I wholeheartedly support MPs bringing up this issue. And MP Stephen Woodworth is not bringing up abortion, but rather,  an examination of what is in the womb, and whether a child in the womb has any rights. You may think I’m splitting hairs here in identifying that there is a difference, but I’m not.

Abortion is one possible outcome of pregnancies, but in Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. DFG back in 1997, a mother, pregnant with her third child, could not be coerced into drug treatment of any kind in spite of the fact that her first two were born with problems because of her glue-sniffing addiction. Here, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the mother could not be put in treatment against her will because the unborn child had no legal status until he or she was born. In this case, the mother had no intention of aborting, but she also had no intention of halting her addiction. Had the child had any rights, perhaps this situation could have been changed.

In any event, while I support MPs bringing this up, I still don’t believe that political change is where the abortion debate is at. Ie. Even if we start to debate a law, it won’t truly protect unborn children, because the best we can hope for at this current time is the absolutely uncivilized situation of countries like the UK, where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, and even after that in rare cases, if I’m not mistaken. 24 weeks.  Here’s a picture of a non-human, non-child, non-entity at 24 weeks:

Or how about we work decades long, struggle really hard, and get that abortion limited pushed down to 22 weeks?

Right. Something’s gotta give and while political debate is a useful tool in igniting the conscience of our nation, I don’t think that’s where it’s at, in total.

You might nod your head in agreement with Charles Lewis at the National Post on this one:

We should be horrified about children frozen in lockers like pieces of meat. We should then ask why it bothers us and why what is invisible does not bother us at all.

But then stop and think about the true ramifications of this. Many pro-lifers take the Pill, for example. And so far as I am aware, there isn’t really a way to confirm that the Pill doesn’t work some of the time by causing a very early abortion. (Ie. it makes the lining of the uterus inhospitable for an already created embryo.) Then there’s in-vitro. Many people who would never have an abortion do that, but this tends to create multiple additional embryos that then “hang out” somewhere or are discarded.

This question of whether we should care about that which we cannot see is more troubling than you think on first glance.

I’m going to try and read Embryo soon to try and get a better handle on all this.

This week a couple in Alberta welcomed into the world their second New Year’s baby in a row, their fourth child in total. The annual New Year’s baby story is usually a feel-good tale reflecting on the limitless possibility in the coming days, but in true Canadian journalistic fashion, this tale has been twisted into a warning for prospective parents and fertile citizens alike. These parents’ lives have been painted as living nightmares of drudgery that can only be fixed in the form of permanent birth control.

From the Toronto Sun,

CALGARY – Look at the pile of laundry, mounds of dirty diapers and a sleep schedule where actual sleep is only a rumour — then tell Bobbi Jo Ketcheson just how lucky she is. […]

Ketcheson says she plans to get herself and her husband a gift too, in the form of more certain birth control. […]

Give the sheer volume of work raising and caring for four babies, finding the time for number five will be almost impossible.

And this from CBC,

Lightning shouldn’t strike in the same place twice, the same person shouldn’t win two lotteries and people really shouldn’t have back-to-back New Year’s babies. […]

Ketcheson said all four of her pregnancies came in spite of some form of birth control, and noted she was only hours away from signing a consent form to have her tubes tied when she found out she was pregnant with Grace.

Happily, this CTV article with video properly refers to baby Grace as a “bundle of joy” and closes,

…the family is enjoying their latest New Year’s baby, clipping out the articles about their amazing story from local newspapers and pasting them into what will be a very interesting baby book for little Grace Olivia Ketcheson.

Having back to back babies is difficult. I often refer to my first year with our newborn and 1 year old as “the toughest year of my life,” but it’s easier if you have the rest of the world in your corner telling you to stay positive.

Here’s an interesting article about body modifications and whether or not they should be made/kept legal. The arguments in favor of keeping them legal are along the lines of…

“It’s here to stay regardless of whether the medical community wants it to be here,” he said. “Now it’s a case of how do we make it safe, because kids are dumb and they’re going to do it themselves if they don’t have a professional they can go to.”

I’m not against body modifications, people who want them can get them, but is this heading in the direction of funding professionals for every “dumb” thing kids do?

______________________

Andrea adds: I am against body modifications:

Public health authorities across Canada are struggling to address the growing popularity of body modifications such as splitting one’s tongue like a snake’s and surgically altering ears to make them elf-like and pointy, fearing the spread of infection in an unregulated industry.

I’m not “against them” the same way I’m against abortion, to be sure. I would not, for example, start up a web site to protest them, but if you asked me, I’d say I think it’s wrong to mess around surgically with your body for kicks. The sad truth for the extreme Lord of the Rings fan is that humans don’t have pointy ears… And elves aren’t real… The Shire is fictitious… I could go on…

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Jennifer adds: You’re too funny!

I also wouldn’t advocate for body modifications. I think of them in the same terms as breast implants and similar forms of plastic surgery. People probably do it for various reasons, self-esteem, attention, etc, but for me the problem is in understanding the self as something that needs to be represented by your physical appearance. What a person who gets a “body mod” doesn’t see is that it stems from the same desire for someone else to get breast implants, it’s all about the perception other people have of you. It’s not rebellious, it’s an enslavement to whatever group you’re trying to appeal to. “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” -Virginia Woolf

Is this what passes for “women’s rights?” Now, courtesy of abortion activists, women are permitted to bleed to death, by themselves! Oh the freedom.

Facebook temporarily removed the profile picture of Rebecca Gomperts, the Dutch founder of Women on Waves, an organisation that works to provide women with safe, legal abortions. The image consists of a block of text providing information on how women can self-induce an abortion without the assistance of a doctor. Women on Waves was furious, but media attorney Quinten Kroes said there was little they could do….

Describing the contentious picture, Rebecca Gomperts said, “It’s actually a sticker we designed to provide information on how women can safely induce an abortion using a medicine called Misoprostol. The text is based on information and research from the World Health Organisation. So it is really quite safe.”

“Quite safe.” Wow. I’m severely underwhelmed.

Pro-choice activists will emphasize up and down the block how having a child is medically more dangerous than an abortion. I believe the two can’t and shouldn’t be compared.

What we hear less of, though I suspect it is common enough, are people who pulled their lives together precisely because they were having a child, and knew they had to do better with their lives as a result.

This is one such story: 

A mother-to-be has told how becoming pregnant has helped to save her life after years of suffering from a debilitating eating disorder. Catherine Thomson, 27, battled with anorexia for seven years before she fell pregnant with her first child.

I recall one woman I met last year who chose to have her third abortion, not because she didn’t want to have children, but because she didn’t want to have them under her current less than perfect circumstances. Ostensibly she’d been in those less than perfect circumstances two times before. The abortions didn’t change her debt load or her inability to form positive relationships. I’m not saying pregnancy would have solved her problems either, but the point I’m making here is that abortion doesn’t resolve problems, where wanting a better life for your child is a very strong drive indeed.

Get out the Kleenex. This is a good story about a woman being reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption after a rape:

For most of her 100 years, Minka Disbrow tried to find out what became of the precious baby girl she gave up for adoption after being raped as a teen. She hoped, but never imagined, she’d see her Betty Jane again. The cruel act of violence bore in Disbrow an enduring love for the child. She kept a black and white photograph of the baby bundled in blankets and tucked inside a basket….

[Betty Jane’s] name was now Ruth Lee. She had been raised by a Norwegian pastor and his wife and had gone on to marry and have six children including the Alabama man, a teacher and astronaut Mark Lee, a veteran of four space flights who has circled the world 517 times. She worked for nearly 20 years at Walmart — and especially enjoyed tending to the garden area.

Recall how many stand in favour of abortion in cases of rape. Betty Jane would not likely have been born today.

Abortion is not a woman’s issue–it’s a people issue, something Mark Pickup highlights here in his blog:

According to Roxanne, having a uterus is only criteria qualifying somebody to comment on the unsanitary and unsafe conditions of abortion clinics. Her rage blinds her reason. Needlessly putting women’s lives at risk is every one’s business; child abuse is every one’s business (and abortion is the worst kind of child abuse). Speaking out against practises that endanger or kill people is part of every citizen’s concern who values interdependent community and the greater human family.

I gather he got a comment to the effect that since Mark doesn’t have a uterus, he shouldn’t speak about abortion. I’m inclined to sideline those types of comments, since I think they come from a minority fringe. Still, they can sting. Reading your average virulent pro-choice blog can sting, as I learned just this morning where one blogger who often comments here concluded her post with “Happy f’ing New Year.” It was a reminder of the bitterness in which she lives. (I won’t link to her blog or even name her, since I do not relish the thought of inviting such comments here.)

In any event, men should certainly speak out about abortion, and it’s a foolish woman who says otherwise. That said, we should all tread carefully, not with the extremists  who believe men should fall silent because they can’t get pregnant, but rather with the normal women whose abortion experiences may cause ongoing grief.

And while I believe men should always speak up, I do likewise think it is women who are better positioned to speak to our sisters on this topic. I believe this in the same manner that there are issues that men have to address with men.

…are contagious.

The sun-drenched common room at the south end of Columbia Garden Village retirement home in Invermere, B.C., is quiet most days. The shuffle of slippers on linoleum, the clink of a coffee mug in the sink, or the click of knitting needles are often the only sounds.

But every Tuesday and Friday, 18 kindergartners from Eileen Madson Primary School arrive in a yellow school bus and take over, turning the home’s common room into a classroom, and the home’s residents into active participants. The kindergartners go about their lessons, crafts and play time surrounded by the seniors who live there. Some elders watch from the sidelines, others roll up their sleeves and build block towers or indulge in a reading of a Scooby-Doo storybook.

If you’re in the Halifax area, the next PAIR meet-up is January 21st.