You’ll be surprised (perhaps, or perhaps not! This is an abortion-related blog, after all) that this is not a post about the Pill or some other more acceptable form of birth control.

It’s a commentary on the recent “selective reduction” of twins article, which, if this reaction in the National Post today is any indication, was just too jarring for so many:

Another way my twin and I are identical is on the abortion issue,” Ms. Anderson continued. “One of us used to be staunchly ‘pro-choice.’ Now, after coverage of this selective reduction, we’re both staunchly ‘pro-life.’ It seems this sad story has actually made the ‘pro-life’ stance more fashionable. It’s about time.”

I suppose the problem is that abortion itself was never meant to be used as birth control. It was for the extreme circumstances, which today includes “I need to finish school,” or “I wasn’t expecting two.” I hate to be nonchalant about something as painful as this, but we use abortion as birth control every day, so “selective reduction” is but a logical extension. Recall from the earlier article that the mother didn’t feel bad. And I can’t make her, wouldn’t try. The rest of us, with consciences intact, should reject the notion of selective reduction alongside the whole miserable business of abortion for less jarring reasons. And apparently, if the quote above is any indication, that is starting to happen.

Apparently, 33 per cent of women and 18 per cent of men confide in their pets. But wait, there’s more. Canadians are using their dogs as “confidants, matchmakers and possibly even therapists.” Hmmm. I’m not disparaging this, I’m just wondering what kind of commentary these men and women receive in return for unburdening themselves of confidential matters. Woof.

Keeping good statistics is not a pro-life/pro-choice thing. I’m confident the majority of Canadians would be pleased if the number of abortions declined, but as it stands, we really have no sweet clue:

Government statistics on abortion for 2007 and 2008 released on Tuesday appear to indicate there were only 44,416 abortions in 2008, down from the reported 91,377 abortions in 2006.  However, a closer look reveals that this total leaves out abortions committed at private facilities. These are left as “unknown” because facilities in six out of the 13 provinces/territories failed to report.

What is the point of keeping abortion-related statistics if they are going to be this shoddy?

The bill that would have made a crime of coercing abortion has been defeated in the House of Commons by 178 to 97. Alas.

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Update: The list of how MPs voted can be found here.

Reading this piece, long on rhetoric, short on substance and reason, made me think of wispy clouds and how Heather Mallick’s words are like them. Or they could be like cumulus clouds, puffier, taking up even more space whilst lacking similarly in weight:

Abortion rights across Canada are like computer-generated word clouds, or to use a more old-fashioned analogy, ordinary sky clouds. Abortion availability is good and prominent in bigger cities in bigger provinces, wispy in small towns and the more backward provinces like New Brunswick. And in P.E.I., as always, it’s a heartless and empty sky.

The vote to pass Roxanne’s Law (Bill C-510) to committee stage is today. This is the bill that would make it a crime to coerce someone into having an abortion. An article about the bill, the state of freedom of expression on this topic, and whether this bill would take away “abortion rights,” here.

Celine Dion comments on her twins, born six weeks ago. Part of what makes “selective reduction” (have you ever heard of such a horrible euphemism?) so terrible is that there are so many women who want children so desperately. She was supposed to have triplets, incidentally, but one didn’t make it:

She also told how she was originally pregnant with three babies, but lost one during the pregnancy. “One little baby decided to step back to help the other two survive. The doctors said to me if there’s something wrong, natures takes it’s course. “I still think of the one who stepped back. I’m sure every woman has the feeling about -the little one that’s not there.”

I wish every woman did have a feeling about the one that’s not there…but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

What do you think about paying surrogates? If you are fine with surrogacy, then possibly paying the surrogate mom may not strike you as a problem. I’ve come to realize I don’t think it’s the transaction of money that is the problem, but rather surrogacy itself.

In any event, a British court has ruled on this matter:

A senior family court judge allowed a British couple to keep a newborn child even though they had technically broken the law by giving more than “reasonable expenses” to the American natural mother. …

His comments, among the first in recent years on the subject by a senior legal figure, will be taken by many infertile couples as a welcome sign that they can now pay women to bear children for them without fear of breaking the law, and so be denied a family.

Given that surrogacy is not the question here, but rather paying a surrogate mom, I’m a bit at a loss for what to say. It strikes me as close to impossible that a woman would “make a living” by surrogacy, and if a couple pays for expenditures and then some, I don’t think that in itself ought to be illegal. Whether it is moral to ask someone else to have a baby for you is a different matter.

I am not sure if I’m reading the tone in, but this doesn’t read as the honouring obituary Heather Stilwell most certainly deserves. Heather Stilwell was an anti-abortion activist, a Surrey, British Columbia school trustee and a mother of eight, who passed away of breast cancer at the age of 66 this past weekend.

I interviewed Heather over the phone once for my story on sex selection abortion:

Heather Stilwell noticed something strange was going on in her hometown of Surrey, B.C. A school trustee for Surrey District No. 36 for 12 years now, one of Stilwell’s personal causes has been to promote literacy among kids. On her own time and her own dime, she sews bookbags for kindergartners, using wholesale or donated fabric, and stuffs them with books. The girls like Wemberley Worried, tales of an apprehensive mouse. The boys, usually anything to do with dinosaurs. She estimates she’s given out about 5,000 of these gifts since she started.

In recent years, Stilwell realized that she’d been having to make more and more of the plaid or striped bags she gives out to the boys, and fewer of the pink floral bags for the girls. More dinosaur books, fewer Wemberleys. She can’t put her finger on why, but the boy-girl ratio seems to be increasingly out of whack. “The numbers look pretty skewed to me,” she says. She’s sure of one thing: “[There’re] more boys.”

As it turns out, Stilwell is right.

I remember she spoke out on this politically incorrect topic willingly. I remember being surprised that she was happy to go on the record. So many, on such a topic, would not have been. So she struck me as being a courageous and confident lady. Very pro-woman. And very pro-life, as it turns out, though I didn’t know it at the time I interviewed her.

I’m sure she contributed to her community in countless other ways, but this was the one contact I had with her. And as I wrote above, Heather was right about her feeling that there were more boys than girls in the classrooms. So too, will history judge her right in her support of the unborn, though she may not have won the battle while she walked this earth. May her family find peace at this difficult time.

I’ve been trying to figure out what happened with Apple ceasing to make the Manhattan Declaration app available. I’ll be the first to say it isn’t a great app (I have it) but then again, neither was the Smurfs’ house building game, which I downloaded late one night thanks to a bout of insomnia. Neither app was offensive to me.

Seems to be that some activists lobbied Apple to have the Manhattan Declaration app removed because they found it offensive. For those who didn’t sign it, the Manhattan Declaration is an ecumenical statement of faith, “a call of Christian conscience” on three major points: life, marriage and, ironically, religious liberty.

Whether or not you could have signed the Manhattan Declaration itself, I’d recommend signing the petition to have the app reinstated. I just hope it doesn’t come to some sort of boycott. I really love my iPhone.