…Really ugly. Zealots on the pro-choice side are the masters of spin. Fetus, products of conception, “a woman’s right to choose”…to choose what exactly? They’ll never outright say.

Now they are spinning one woman’s loss of her baby as an abortion, simply because she’s a politician’s wife and they want to claim her husband is a hypocrite.

Some blogger is asserting that when Karen Santorum, wife of candidate for the Republican nomination to run for President Rick Santorum, lost her baby because she was about to lose her own life in a difficult pregnancy, that it was a second trimester abortion.

They’re trying to make it very “confusing.” It’s a technicality or semantics–no difference between what happened to her and abortion.

Intentionality matters. It matters in areas unrelated to abortion. If you are driving down the street and hit someone entirely by accident, you’ll be treated differently than if you geared up, aimed, and deliberately ran someone over.

When a baby dies while attempting to save the mother’s life, that’s not abortion.

I must say, bloggers like that make it no surprise that fewer and fewer decent people enter into politics.

What actually happened.

Watch, however, as the blogger attempts to show she has compassion:

It is revolting that Rick and Karen Santorum choose to stigmatize and harass those of us who, as they did, grieve over the loss of a possible child in the second trimester.

The spin never ends. Ugly, just ugly.

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.

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.

This post is long overdue… but since one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to not put off until tomorrow what you can do today, here we are. By the way, this resolution has already borne much fruit, let me tell you. This morning I got rid of a jar of Hoisin sauce that was made during the years of the ancient Tang dynasty. Mystical, and yet, too old for cooking. And some apple butter from 2009, which was oddly, still looking just fine. (What on earth is in that stuff?!) Starting afresh in 2012!

Anyways, I have long wanted to draw your attention to the lovely Véronique’s new blog. Vie de Cirque: My life in a ten-ring circus is sometimes in English, sometimes in French, always worth reading for that Je Ne Sais Quoi that makes Véronique who she is. I intend to link to her blog often enough–for a dose of realism mixed with humour and wisdom when it comes to family life.

You knew her here first. Yes. May she always remember the little people along the road.

To conclude, another of my resolutions is to spend less time staring vapidly at my computer screen, writing and re-writing blog posts that are here one day and gone tomorrow. And let’s get serious–NO checking the random Facebook profile of a friend of a friend who just got married and wow, that’s a pretty dress, but actually you don’t know her and never will, therefore she is not here, not anywhere, not by anyone’s definition a “friend.” I’m digressing now, a terrible habit, the eradication of which will be a resolution for 2013, in the interests of not adding too much to my plate for one year. Happy New Year!

_______________________

Véronique adds: Well, what an awesome coincidence since one of my New Year’s resolutions (the kind that I will keep of course) is to contribute a post a month to ProWomanProLife! I wish I could think of Andrea as one of “the little people down the road” but I’d be happy to have 25% of PWPL’s traffic on my blog! To tell you the awful truth about myself, I found it very difficult to write about abortion while pregnant. And I have been pregnant twice in the last 2-and-a-bit years. So wait for it! (And feel free to make me feel really bad if I don’t follow through, ok?)

________________________

Andrea adds: I will not hesitate to make you feel very bad. Publicly. You’ll rue the day you ever made this resolution. Welcome back!

This article is from last year’s Globe and Mail (Friday, but still, last year). It’s sad that someone with a mere four kids would have to endure such rude commentary.

People asked, “Did you do fertility treatments?” When I said no, one person responded with, “So, this was on purpose?” Another man educated me on my carbon footprint: “Your overactive uterus is causing overpopulation.”

I feel annoyed on behalf of my friends who have families of four, or double that (or more than double that). I know they endure A LOT–of derision, snide remarks, and hostility. This article gives you a mere taste.

Amazing to think this is where we’ve landed: women were once outcasts for being “barren” and now they are outcasts for having kids. Will there never be a happy medium? Sigh.