You’ll recall back in November that the student association at Carleton University banned the pro-life club. One of their fearless leaders, Ruth Lobo (pictured above being arrested by Ottawa City Police, handcuffs and all, because she expressed pro-life views on campus) challenged that decision.
Yesterday I posted about the new Danish study showing that abortion does not cause mental health problems. Today, Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a reputable psychologist who has been engaged in this debate for years, comments. Worth reading the whole thing.
When your cause is animal rights, apparently all you have to do is mention displeasure and bingo-bango-bongo things change! (No more pigs killed for use in training medical students.) It’s that easy.
People? Not so much.
We need a post about this latest study suggesting abortion doesn’t trigger mental illness. I, however, will not let the media tell me what to think about it. SO. I make you aware of this, while commiting to actually read the thing later.
It’s interesting that though the headlines basically allow the reader to think “no mental health problems after abortion” there are more mental health problems among those who have abortions than those who give birth. The headline comes of the fact that there was no increase in mental health problems after abortion–those who had mental health problems after had them before, where having a baby showed an increase in mental health issues:
Researchers compared the rate of mental health treatment among women before and after a first abortion. Within the first year after an abortion, 15 per 1,000 women needed psychiatric counseling — similar to the rate seeking help nine months before an abortion….While first-time mothers had a lower rate of mental problems overall, the proportion of those seeking help after giving birth was dramatically higher. About 7 per 1,000 women got mental health help within a year of giving birth compared with 4 per 1,000 women pre-delivery.
I reserve judgment. And if anyone feels like they have the time and the inclination and wants to send the study along in full, I’d welcome that!
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Brigitte doesn’t have time to read the whole thing, so she’ll just talk through her hat: Seriously. You don’t see me talk about these things very much. Mostly because to me, the reason why abortion is wrong isn’t because it causes (or not) mental-health problems, or breast cancer, or a bad complexion. Abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent human being, often in a most distressfully casual manner.
So a study says having an abortion does not cause women to seek psychiatric help as much as giving birth to a baby does. So what? Of course giving birth to a baby (even a wanted baby) is stressful. Duh. Nobody ever suggested it was a stress-free picnic. Some women just have a touch of baby blues. Others have more serious problems. Most worry about being a good mom. And I’m willing to bet most moms occasionally feel that they’re not up to the job.
But there’s one thing the woman who gave birth to her baby will never feel: guilt at having taken her baby’s life. That’s got to count for something, even if scientists can’t measure it.
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UPDATE: Read Dr. Priscilla Coleman’s assessment of the study, here. Dr. Coleman is a reputable psychologist who has worked on this topic for years.
You can get in trouble for using the term “pro-abortion.” But in the gruesome story from Philadelphia, is there any other word?
But the grand jury found that Pennsylvania authorities knew what was happening at Gosnell’s abortion mill, yet deliberately looked the other way. In 1993, with the accession of a prochoice governor, the Pennsylvania Department of Health stopped inspecting abortion clinics. “Officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions,’’ the report says, and decided “to leave clinics to do as they pleased.’’
So great is the concern around “access” that standards get tossed aside. The tossing aside of standards happened recently in Quebec, too. Rebecca and I wrote about that, here.
Back to Philadelphia, though. When the goal is unethical (killing babies) is it any wonder that some doctors “cross the line”? From day one of choosing to work in a clinic, they already did.
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Brigitte adds: Words fail...
A longer article about what makes a feminist. It’s hard to nail down and this conversation is going to continue for as long as there are women on the planet, but one thing remains clear:
And these divisions don’t begin to address the biggest bone of contention of all: abortion. The writer and movie director Nora Ephron answered the what-is-feminism quiz simply by announcing: “You can’t call yourself a feminist if you don’t believe in the right to abortion.” Many liberals agree. Yet most Grizzlies oppose abortion; Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who lost in November, even rejected it in the cases of rape and incest. Palin has praised young women who carry unintended pregnancies to term as “strong,” “smart,” and “capable.” It seems unlikely that the Grizzlies can successfully recast feminism as antiabortion, but surveys suggest that women have been growing less sympathetic to the proabortion position—so who knows?
I’m not sure I care whether feminism can be recast to include pro-life women. I am, however, confident that women will come round to seeing being pro-life as a reasonable position to take, regardless of their position on trillion dollar deficits, national defence or any other matter.
Tomorrow marks a celebration of Roe v Wade for some folks. Those pro-abortion folks have been doing a “blog for choice” day for six years now.
Since “choice” is a euphemism for the very painful and heartwrenching concept of killing your child, some other bloggers will be asking a simple question: What do you mean by choice?
I’m sure they’ll have plenty of answers to skirt the issue.
No one should celebrate abortion, which is what they are doing.
I remember once hearing that the most lucrative type of book you can write as an author are Harlequin romances. Not good news for people like me, not good news. Those books are read by women, and now we have a corresponding world of TV.
The question is, as raised by this Globe and Mail article: Do women watch crap? And I’m inclined to say yes.
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For once (!), Brigitte wants to be contrarian: I have read a few Harlequin romances (it was research!) and while I got tired of the predictable writing style (the mouth goes dry, the knees go weak – I cannot STAND the see the words “mouth” and “dry” together anymore!), I have to say some of them are not altogether bad reads. At least they tell a straightforward and old-fashioned story, as opposed to so much modern literary fiction. But television, yes. A different kettle of fish to be sure. I used to loooove Will & Grace and Seinfeld and House and now (thanks, Netflix!), I’m going through Mad Men (second season) and the good ole Get Smart. None of which is particularly uplifting. But see, getting uplifted isn’t why I watch TV shows…
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Véronique comes clean: I watched Bulging Brides today while eating lunch. It was that or I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant on TLC, which scares me stupid, along with A C-section Story and Bringing Home Baby.
Until work installs iTunes on my desktop, I will need to watch low-brow tv on my soup minute (“lunch hour” too generous). At home, I watch House on the treadmill, Mad Man with my husband and The Good Wife while catching-up on work, all iTunes downloads. We do not want cable in our house: the content is too bad, the ads too many and the bills too high.
You’ll remember Abby Johnson as the Planned Parenthood employee who crossed the line, becoming publicly pro-life.
She’s written a book about it, called Unplanned. Here’s a review of the book, which I’m also hoping to get a copy of shortly. It’s a sad story, starting with this:
Johnson was raised pro-life, but “if you’d put me up to a debate, I would’ve lost, because it’s something we didn’t discuss a lot.” When facts are fuzzy, they are easily manipulated. Johnson was recruited on her college campus by a nice woman in a hot pink booth” convincing her that “Planned Parenthood’s goal is to make abortion rare, except for women in dire need.” Johnson was finessed on the spot by the slick marketing job. “Her compassion really captured me..We both cared about people… I really wanted to help hurting people. I was glad I’d met this woman.”
For those of us who are pro-life, we should never forget that plenty of people who say they are pro-life don’t know why. The result is that when they are pushed even a little bit, they lose the debate.
(Never fear! ProWomanProLife is here. Seriously, people. Information is power. And we bring it to you, in snappy, post-sized bits.)
Rebecca Walberg is in the Financial Post today, here. This is great for many reasons, but the one I’ll cite here is that if we aim to change the culture with regards to abortion, it doesn’t mean we (pro-lifers) have to write exclusively about abortion, all the time. Some people, will, of course, but I think it is also important to have experts in all fields, people who are pro-life but may never reference it overtly. Of course, Rebecca is not like this, as she is openly on this web site, I’m just glad she is having such success in other areas too.