Anyone who had given even a cursory glance to PWPL will know there’s no strong sports fan base here.

However, I was reading in the Post about the post-Canucks loss riots in Vancouver  and had a thought. The article is called “Fans aren’t off the hook” and describes how it is ridiculous to claim that only a small criminal element is responsible for the riots. The author is right: certainly there were regular Vancouver Canucks fans looting, burning and destroying stuff. It wasn’t just career protestors.

So we know that regular Vancouver Canucks fans were among the criminals. My question is: how many married men with families were among the crowd? “Hey honey, I’m going to be late tonight. Just have to burn a police car.” I’m not saying our dwindling marriage rate is responsible for looting and violence. But marriage does, some theorize, civilize young men. I’d have to guess the numbers of family men among that crowd were low.

Just a small social theory point this morning.

Your friendly “women’s rights advocates” would never want women to actually see what, or dare I say who, they are aborting. No. That would infringe on a woman’s right to be kept in the dark. Apparently information is not power, it’s patronizing.  

I’m talking about this on Byline, Sun TV, tonight.

I’ll say.

The BBC airs an assisted suicide on TV.

Chatelaine magazine has taken on the question of whether to show graphic photos to high school kids. The comments are the most interesting part. Plenty of women still think you can’t be pro-woman and pro-life. We have our work cut out for us.

A friend has written in with this request:

Dear Andrea: my elder daughter is trying to find good resources to help her think about start- and end-of-life issues (recently having to think about the Groningen Protocol). Do you have any suggestions for her?

What might your suggestions to this student in university be? Please write in with any resources you think are helpful.

The EU is up in arms because they gave money to Hungary but are now upset with just how that money has been used: on pro-life billboards. Love it.

I love this story because the EU is constantly clashing with the former Eastern Block, and I love it when these upstart fledgling democracies show up the old, staid west on life as on other topics. And it goes without saying that I love it that Hungary is running a pro-life campaign.

Busy day here, no time to think, for which I am eternally grateful. Ruminating is, my friends, highly overrated. Anyhoo, not sure how I feel about “womb transplants” from mother to daughter. I wouldn’t do it, but that alone probably isn’t quite the logical treatment people are looking for. Read about it, here:

Eva Ottosson, 56, has agreed to take part in a groundbreaking new medical procedure, which if successful could see her donate her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter Sara.

Doctors hope if the transplant is successful Sara, who was born without reproductive organs, could become pregnant and carry a child in the same womb from which she herself was born.

An article about a woman who takes beautiful pictures of babies who have died just as soon as they are born, as a memory for the grieving family:

Many people find the idea of photographing deceased children morbid, and I respect this view. But these grief-stricken parents must, for the most part, leave the hospital empty-handed. This life they dreamed of and hoped for stays behind – in the morgue. While other parents leave clutching a treasured bundle, the families I photograph take only a baby hat, footprints and handprints, and a tiny hospital bracelet. My photos are powerful. My photos are proof. They say to one and all: This life was lived, even if only in utero. This life mattered. This baby was our baby and we love him.

Pro-choice folks make fun of pro-lifers. They call us “fetus fetishists” and other odd assorted names. But is it so funny to consider these fetuses as lives lived, even if only in utero? Is it so risible to envision that those lives matter? It’s simply consistent when pro-life people step back and say these lives matter, wanted or unwanted. It’s not so strange to think of the fetus in the womb as a life lived. This article shows that really well.

I do support the use of graphic visuals in the abortion debate:

But Andrea Mrozek, of the Ottawa-based group Pro Woman Pro Life, said she supports the Calgary demonstrations because they shed light on an issue few want to discuss in Canada. “Abortion is very hidden and concealed in our culture and [this tactic] brings it out into the open in a way that can’t be avoided. I think that’s very important.”

Ron Paul, a libertarian politician and once presidential candidate in the United States discusses abortion:

Morality has a lot to do with legislation,” explained Paul. “We don’t have abortions today because the law permits it – that’s made it worse – but the law accommodated the social changes that had occurred. It was the breakdown in our social system at the time…We would like to think that all we have to do is elect the right politicians and everything is going to be okay. But the government is a reflection of the people and their values,” he continued. “That is why the burden is on people like you to make sure we have those values.”

That’s my burden, so to speak, to make sure we have pro-life values; to change hearts and minds, not necessarily legislation.