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charges that were filed against members of Carleton Lifeline, the pro-life student club at Carleton University, were withdrawn by the Crown yesterday.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

I’m heading to my grandmother’s 90th birthday party in Czech Republic. So, posting will be lighter than usual over the next short while.

I have not been tracking with the Republican presidential nomination super closely, but what I see of Herman Cain, I like. When asked on Meet the Press, a popular current affairs show, whether he was a “neo-conservative” he said simply, “I’m a conservative.” (Does the general public care for such terms as “neo-conservative”? I don’t think so.) When the interviewer tried to capture him in a Sarah Palin moment (What? Feign horror. You don’t even know what a neo-conservative is?) Cain simply repeated what he had said before: I’m a conservative, I believe in limited government and lower taxes, etc. Struck me as being a down-to-earth man, one who would connect with normal folks, ie. non-politicos.

Ditto on his positioning on abortion. There have been lots of comments in both the pro-life and pro-abortion (sorry but the folks I’ve been reading are not pro-choice, they are too extreme for that) camps saying Cain is confused, he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Pro-abortion folks have tried to frame him as being both pro-choice and pro-life; ergo, an idiot.

But let’s leave the pro-choice camp alone. For here, it is the pro-lifers who annoy me. They have tried to claim that he is going back on his former pro-life convictions, asking whether he is truly pro-life.

This drives me crazy. The man is saying what we all know to be true: That he as President of the United States of America cannot personally visit every woman about to enter a clinic and tell her not to. He has a role as President and he’ll use it to advance his pro-life principles within the context of what he can constitutionally do. This is a simple acknowledgement of what the office can achieve. He has said he is pro-life. He has said he won’t vote to fund abortions, or Planned Parenthood. But, he also rightfully acknowledges what is possible and what is not.

Yes, I’m feeling crabby today, so if you are catching that undertone, I’m sorry. But nothing makes me more crabby than pro-lifers who cannot see beyond the realm of the political, as if culture were non-existent and as if our politicians were demi-gods sitting in their temples. I only know a couple of pro-lifers like this, thankfully, but man oh man are they ever vocal. Worse still, they are very, very difficult to please. You can say you are pro-life, you can dedicate your life to changing the face of our soulless nation (on the issue of abortion we are lacking a soul, tis true) but unless you vote a particular way (typically for a candidate who has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected) they’ll renege on you and call you a turncoat.

The shorter purpose of this post was to say a simple thing. I like what I’ve seen of Herman Cain.

There is already a Don’t be that guy campaign. Now it seems we need a counterpart: Don’t be that girl.

A reader sent in a link to her blog today. She is troubled because she can’t forgive her parents–her mom gave her money for an abortion when she was a teenager.

It’s a tough one, this idea of forgiveness. She meanders through her anger and thoughts. But concludes with this:

If I refuse to forgive, if I refuse forgiveness, the pain remains.  I’m still in love with the pain.  My journey has brought many wonderful and grace-filled things into my life. I’m afraid that if the pain goes, I have no more right to them. 

I thought that was an interesting concept: first that she is in love with the pain and second, that releasing herself from the pain by finding forgiveness might mean she no longer can access the good things in her life.

It seems to me that she may have problems with forgiving herself, not just her mother. Oftentimes people cannot forgive others because they cannot forgive themselves. They are exacting and demanding of others, because they are exacting and demanding of themselves.

I used to be like this. Maybe to a certain extent I still am, but as they say recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery… I used to be judgemental of others–but only as judgemental as I was of myself. I would wallow in guilt and self-loathing when I made a mistake, because my expectations of myself were perfection.

I was only slowly, slowly released from this attitude over a great deal of time. It took years. But today I can better embrace the imperfections in others because I can accept my own. (How this journey transpired is a faith story and is too long to tell here.)

Anyway, I wish this blogger and post-abortive woman every success on her journey. I think by writing this blog, she is likely already on the road to freedom.

A beautiful story. Rest in peace, Stacie Crimm and welcome, Dottie Mae.