On the one hand, my doctor’s office already has warnings up in the office about the services not provided, including that they won’t offer the birth control pill. So this seems uncontroversial from that standpoint. Doctors are already letting patients, or perspective patients, know their beliefs. On the other hand, this seems malicious. It singles out doctors who are actually providing excellent medical care as if they are subpar. I’d like, incidentally, to be warned if my doctor is the type who wouldn’t hesitate to refer for abortion.

And then, it’s one thing to let your patients know your beliefs. It’s another entirely to be forced to refer for abortions, which is wrong.

Last thing: This could be a moot point. I could barely find a GP after moving to Ottawa. In the Canadian system today, patients simply don’t get choices about which doctor to see.

Read about it here.

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UPDATE: I just spoke to a solidly pro-life doctor in Saskatchewan who feels these new guidelines are not troubling. First of all, these are guidelines, not policy. A guideline falls into the realm of “what we’d like to see” not “what you must do.” That said, these guidelines seem to take into account the differing positions of pro-life and pro-choice doctors.

What the new guidelines say is that a pro-life doctor who won’t even touch the topic of abortion, period, should be up front about that. They could refer to another pro-life physician, for example. This is not about referring to an abortion clinic or a doctor who does abortions.

If I were to snap my fingers and get a medical degree today and start counselling women about their options, I certainly would be comfortable offering full information about abortion, the effects, what it does, and why it is a bad option, but also that yes, it is available without referral for anyone who can look a number up in a phonebook. The guidelines would also mean every doctor should provide a woman information about adoption and parenting; this would help immensely for all the women who are simply given the number for the nearest abortion clinic and nothing else.

So there’s two sides to this equation: There are anti-abortion doctors who conceal information in the hopes that a woman will hit the second trimester without aborting. There are pro-abortion doctors who hand out the number of the nearest clinic without doing anything else. Both offer equally poor medical treatment/advice.

I was also told by the pro-life doctor in Saskatchewan who shall remain nameless that the Star Phoenix did a better job of reporting the issue. I will link to that article at such time as it does not cause my computer to crash, as two attempts have just done, causing me to re-type this update twice now.

It’s a contentious issue. The sense I get, I am told, is that there was no malicious intent against pro-life doctors. I hope I have faithfully conveyed this conversation, because every word matters when it comes to abortion, guidelines, policy and sorting that through.

All in all, I do very much trust the Pro-Life Doctor In Saskatchewen (PLDIS) I spoke to, and if this PLDIS is not concerned, neither am I.

This article in the New York Times never mentions the A word. But I think it hits on a major problem in social science circles, and a reason why research is published supporting a pro-abortion status quo. Perhaps even why the American Psychological Association has such a hard time acknowledging studies with “pro-life” outcomes:

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.”

A non-liberal student is quoted anonymously as saying:

I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”

It takes a brave soul to buck academic peer pressure.

I do love Ben Stein. For commentaries like this.

I keep reading in the New York Times that Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire health nut, is on a campaign against having too much salt in foods in New York City restaurants. His belief is that New Yorkers and visitors shorten their life spans by eating too much salt and therefore raising their blood pressure in a dangerous way. …

But, wait a moment. I also read in the New York Times that New York City is one of the abortion capitals of the nation, with a much higher rate of abortion than most other parts of the nation. And Mayor Bloomberg is a great fan of “…a woman’s right to choose…” to abort her baby.

As I calculate it in a rough way, New York City has about 8 million persons living there, or about (very roughly) 3 per cent of the nation’s population. And New York has a much higher abortion rate than the rest of the nation. So it is possible that New Yorkers have about 50,000 abortions per year, or maybe a lot more.

That is 50,000 killings of totally innocent children every year. Does Mayor Bloomberg think that his anti-salt campaign means much compared with that number? If he wants to save lives, why doesn’t he throw his tiny weight and his huge purse behind right to life? That’s a truly life-saving act.

Some people like to get behind the easy causes.

This is a family-friendly site, otherwise I’m sure the title language should be a lot stronger.

A pharmacy mistakenly gives a pregnant woman the abortion pill instead of her antibiotic.

They’ve issued an apology for the error. I’m sure that’s comforting to the mom.

I know, I know, I’m a crazy pro-lifer. But I’ve always thought that pharmacies should not deliberately keep pills that kill on hand. There used to be something…what was it called again? The Hippocratic Oath.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.

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Jennifer notices: A pharmacy employee posted in the comments to this article, “That leaves us a skeleton crew of 1-4 people at any one time. These few people have to accept the scripts, fill them, handle insurance problems, call/fax doctors, run a register at the counter, a register at the drive-thru, and much more… ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It is a horrible system and errors are constantly happening…they are just usually caught before the medicine is handed to the patient” I would imagine that the one, most important thing to get right, as a pharmacy employee would be to give the patient the RIGHT prescription. But even in the doctor’s office, I’m often handled with latex gloves (which I’m allergic to, as it states in my chart) and given prescriptions that shouldn’t mix with my thyroid medication.

…I dedicate this post to Bell Canada. Watching this is better than therapy. Enjoy.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxXlDyTD7wo&feature=player_embedded”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxXlDyTD7wo&feature=player_embedded]

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Update: Had to watch again. Why? Because today I got mail from Bell Canada. They’d like it very much if I’d return to be their customer again. As I told them on the phone when they called me about this same matter, I already am a customer. Then I asked them not to contact me again. Guess they didn’t jot down those parts–either about me being a customer or not contacting me again. Therapy. This clip is therapy.

There’s a new web site for people to be able to anonymously tell their stories about “reproductive technologies and family fragmentation.” Check it out.

This is a post about euphemisms and double standards.

Carol Downer was just a guest on CBC’s The Current. I got a call (thank you) to tune in, and only caught the end, but Carol advocates for Do It Yourself Abortions. Only she doesn’t call them abortions. She calls an abortion  “menstrual extraction.” Funny that, I’m pretty sure women who get unexpectedly pregnant don’t generally feel crappy because it’s just one heck of a period.

So the lady is not a doctor, a nurse or a medical person of any kind and she wants to do abortions at home, but won’t call them that.

Introducing your “women’s rights advocates,” my friends.

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Brigitte adds: If you have the stomach for it, go read the description Wikipedia has for “menstrual extraction”.

So the Advertising Standards Council has a pretty funny ad campaign out these days. One of the TV spots shows a teenage girl climbing out of her window at night. In walks her Dad and she says, “I was going to the library…” Then the lights start flashing, music starts playing and some funny looking men come out dancing. Altogether quite funny and the punchline is that just because you dress something up, it doesn’t make it true.

Oh Advertising Standards. I saw this and was reminded of a time when the Advertising Standards Council dressed something up to take a truth and make it untrue. Yes, it’s true, when it comes to things abortion-related I have a memory like an elephant. An elephant, I tell you. (In other areas, God Help Us All if I lose my iPhone and am expected to actually show up to any appointment of any kind. Or work. I digress.)

Back in May 2008, the Advertising Standards Council rejected ads from Life Canada which showed a pregnant woman and stated that in Canada, an abortion can be had throughout all nine months of pregnancy. This, they found to be deceptive, which stands contrary to the facts as stated in Canada’s lack of an abortion law of any kind, and statistics, as put forward by Statistics Canada, which shows hundreds of late term abortions are conducted annually.

So join me, friends, in remembering an ad campaign that was completely truthful, but because of ideology, or the abortion distortion, or [insert dancing men, disco lights and the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever] got pulled by the Advertising Standards Council.

A walk down memory lane and a new slogan was born. Just because the Advertising Standards Council disagrees, doesn’t make it untrue.

Who thinks of sending people dressed up as a pimp and a prostitute into a Planned Parenthood clinic to ask for advice? Lila Rose does, that’s who.

So here we have on tape a Planned Parenthood counsellor giving the pimp advice on how to run his business.

It’s a bit surreal. Starting with the pimp being so very concerned about his underage sex slaves but definitely ending with the Planned Parenthood counsellor giving him advice on how to skirt the law and ensure his non-English speaking 14-year-olds can still get abortions without a problem. She tells him she wants as little information as possible. Sounds like the hallmark of a very fine counsellor to me.

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Update: Always good to read a pro-abortion take on things. For example “forced abortions for victims of human trafficking” translates as “reproductive freedom for the disenfranchaised.”  Enjoy.

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Update No. 2: And the Planned Parenthood staffer in the video gets fired. This is good news. There’s truly no excuse, however, for the writer in my first update above, who defends her behaviour.

Abbotsford Right to Life is hiring. For more info, check their web site.

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Update: Apparently Thrive Ottawa is looking too.