…I go to The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. (I love the fact that for a joke, satirical newspaper, you can pick it up on the street in boxes in Washington, D.C.)

The beauty is that they pick up on a strain of truth, so that the satire resonates:

During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group’s long-standing mission and values. Although we’ve traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion,” said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood’s new slogan, “No Life Is Sacred.” “And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it’s going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day.”

Be sure to click on the map of the new enlarged facility. My fave there is the daycare space where “young children can play while their unborn siblings are being terminated elsewhere in the facility.”

This may well be old news by now. I’m on a longer than usual holiday weekend and it’s hard to take a computer with you on your windsurfer. Sorry about the slow posting days, but I think we all need a couple of those. Anyway, Facebook will now have a new “expecting” option:

The social networking site has added that option — “Expected: Child” — that users can add as part of their family members.

This is surely a sign that Facebook is quite far away from the coolio university network that Mark Zuckenberg first intended. It also does betray the idea that there is a child on the way in every pregnancy. Stating that is not quite as obvious as it may seem at first glance… plenty of people “on the other side” of this debate work pretty hard to pretend otherwise.

I get shivers watching this. Holy powerful communications through a well done video. Jarring. And I’m not even sure that I agree with it. (Planned Parenthood is evil, don’t get me wrong, but I think they want anyone and everyone to have “access to abortion,” not just black people. That said, the numbers don’t lie, and more black women are having abortions. And so that is worth addressing and doing some PR on, especially within the black community. I’m just not sure this is a race issue.)  

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkfdGg76JH0″>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkfdGg76JH0]

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Andrea adds: Here’s another clip from the same group. Note the different tone. Note also that it has about 300 views compared with 20,000 plus for the other one.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKMI1DCrnYA&feature=related”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKMI1DCrnYA&feature=related]

Interesting reasoning on why American federal health insurance should not offer birth control free. It is my hope that people will read this article and think about it, instead of the usual kneejerk “contraception helps prevent abortion” comments.

It is no surprise, then, that the rates of every outcome harmful to women–uncommitted sexual encounters, sexually transmitted infections, nonmarital births, and abortion–have climbed precipitously during the decades that the federal government has escalated both public and private support for contraception. Yet the IOM report–a report on women’s health–makes no reference to this substantial body of literature. Americans are likely to support its conclusions generally. They assume, understandably, that widespread distribution of contraception successfully reduces pregnancy rates. Four decades of history and empirical data, however, demonstrate otherwise. Women’s reproductive lives are more, not less, outside their control in a sex and mating market dominated by the notion that it is not sex but “unprotected sex” that makes babies.

Well, I’m not a rock star. Not in the musical way, anyway. Although if you blast the right music in my kitchen loud enough, on occassion, you might be confused.

Anyway, yes, this blog post does have a point and I’ll get there in a second. This morning on the radio I heard that the rockstar Pink has taken up knitting. Please feel free to listen to her hit “So What” while you read this, this fine Saturday afternoon:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfFZqTlWrQ&feature=relmfu]

Where was I? Oh yes, knitting. Apparently upon the birth of her daughter, she can’t get enough of it. The actual quote on the radio I heard was that she said couldn’t believe that she is doing this, but as a new mom, it just brought the knitting out in her.

And it made me think of the very many cool ways in which motherhood has changed some of my friends. My friends were cool before they were moms, but some of them became even cooler. None of them, incidentally, picked up knitting, but my point is that motherhood can change you in ways that are entirely unforeseen. When you are pregnant, you couldn’t possibly know that you’d be knitting away in nine months, could you?

So one of the great things in life is to expect the unexpected and hold on for the ride. Forget all the moralizing for a minute–it’s a life! it’s a person! from conception! (all of which I believe, don’t get me wrong), expecting the unexpected while maintaining your rock star status is just one more reason to be against abortion.

Apparently Sarah Palin is going to have another grandchild. Her eldest son got married two months ago and he and his wife are expecting. There are already snarky speculations that the baby is older than two months. Check out the tone of the article linked above, which concludes with the words “The Palins did not respond to our request for comment.” Ya think? Who would?

Anyway, it’s not Sarah Palin who isn’t practicing what she preaches. This isn’t the first time a parent’s child has gone off the rails, nor will it be the last. What she’s preaching–no sex before marriage–is worth preaching even if not followed. My feeling is that this author is from the “get a quickie abortion to cover up” crew. Hypocrisy comes in many different flavours.

Well gosh darn it! If you can get rid of tellers in banks, and just do your transactions online, why can’t you do that with abortions? So much easier. And just as safe! Of course, later we read the real story:

Clearly we don’t have enough primary care providers. One way to solve this is through telemedicine. We don’t want to be attacking that, we probably want to be celebrating it.”

Celebrate the good times, oh yes.

This time I’m looking for academic/intellectual assessments of what repercussions a high abortion rate has on a community, province/state or country. I’m looking for social repercussions, the big picture, not mental or physical health effects. Research from anywhere in the globe would suit me just fine.

A very reasonable column about Tim Hudak’s prior statements on abortion that is, quite frankly, neither pro-life nor pro-choice. Just reasonable. I like this part, especially:

And there is a subset of Canadians that unleashes online hellfire against anyone who sees anything worth discussing about this country’s unique legal vacuum on abortion.

Elizabeth May found this out in 2006 by daring to suggest abortion isn’t an ideal outcome in the abstract, even as she opposed any infringement upon a specific woman’s right to choose. Fair enough. That’s democracy. What’s annoying is the terror that small subset instills in the political class.

And that’s what I mean about having a little chutzpah, Mr. Hudak. Really, it is a very small subset that unleashes the online hellfire. A shrug and standing by your principles is the way to go. There’s no reason to struggle for talking points on this one. And the more any politician does, the more that small subset smells blood and goes in for the kill.

Is it so very hard for a politician to say “I’m pro-life” even when he follows it up by saying “I won’t do anything on this issue”? Apparently, yes. Some chutzpah would be nice, please, to stand up to the bullies who insist everyone must drone-like repeat the same pro-choice mantras. Actually the very worst thing any politician can do is sit in the middle on this one–best to be clear and forthright.