13 Days. This is the new length of time that scientists have been able to grow an embryo outside the womb.

On the one hand, this is very cool. It shows the miracle of the embryo, which the scientist comments on herself:

It had been “absolutely unbelievable”, she said, to see the “amazing, self-organising ability” of the cells. “They have to talk to themselves and together they make something more beautiful,” Zernicka-Goetz said.

On the other hand, we were all embryos once, so any experimentation is taking place at cost of someone’s life. I do realize that IVF isn’t terribly successful and that 70 percent of embryos once implanted in a womb don’t make it. That said, 30 percent do, and all of us were once embyros, so this is not something to take lightly.

HUSH is a film by Mighty Motion Pictures that views through both lenses the controversial field of research around abortion’s health risks. Canadian director and pro-choice advocate Punam Kumar Gill collaborates with Canadian producer and pro-life advocate Joses Martin to investigate the long-term effects of having an abortion.

[Tweet “Hush is not pro-choice or pro-life. It’s pro-information”].

Read about the documentary and then download and view it!

What: Ottawa Against Abortion Music for Life Concert

When: April 29th, 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm)

Where: St. Patrick’s Basilica (basement) (281 Nepean St.)

Why: To support OAA’s work

More information can be found on their Facebook page, here. The concert is free but there will be a silent auction and they are gladly taking donations! Come on out and support a group working to make abortion unthinkable in the Ottawa region.

This concert will be way more fun than sitting around with your headphones on!

It’s happening, a recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal says.

While the natural odds of having a boy over a girl are slightly higher, they are consistent across the globe: up to 107 boys for every 100 girls. But Indian-born mothers living in Canada with two children had 138 boys for every 100 girls. In Ontario, that number inflated even more among Indian-born women with two daughters, who then gave birth to 196 boys for every 100 girls.

After abortions, the numbers rise dramatically: 326 boys after one abortion, 409 boys after multiple abortions, and 663 boys for every 100 girls following multiple abortions in the second trimester, when doctors can determine the sex of the fetus.

280 is the number of abortions in Canada daily.

Watch a video about this new social media campaign from Life Canada here.

It’s amazing to me that this goes unnoticed. We are used to it; we get confused (Person? Fetus? Human being? Child? What is it?)

But regardless of what you think the fetus is in the moment it is aborted, the loss of a city the size of Waterloo every year is a pretty sad fact, a huge loss of potential. It is our downfall that we cannot welcome children into our lives with greater ease. That we see so much else as being more important.

This is an individual tragedy, that many women mourn. It’s also a collective tragedy for which we must all take responsibility.

How easy have I made it for a woman to see her pregnancy through to full term? That’s the question I’m asking myself today.

This isn’t about pointing fingers at women who have had abortions, or the men who took them to the clinic. It’s about all of us and what we desire for this country.

I am glad people are outraged by this.

When Felipe Montoya applied three years ago to become a permanent resident of Canada with his wife and two children, he ran into those barriers. One of Montoya’s children, his son Nicolas, has Down syndrome, a condition that prompted Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to determine that Montoya and family may be inadmissible on health grounds. Montoya, a native of Costa Rica, has been a professor of environmental studies at York University for the past four years. As numerous news stories have reported, on March 3 he received a letter from CIC — signed, “Sincerely, DO877” — saying that “it appears that you or your family member may not meet the requirements for immigration to Canada.”

The letter from D0877, following wording dictated by bureaucratic form letters, continues: “I have determined that your family member Nicolas Montoya is a person whose health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demands on social services in Canada. An excessive demand is demand for which the anticipated costs exceed the average Canadian per capita health and social services costs, which is currently set at $6,387 per year. Pursuant to subsection 38(1) … of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, it therefore appears that you may be inadmissible on health grounds.” The reason: “Your family member, Nicolas Montoya, has the following medical condition: Down’s syndrome.”

We should also be outraged that this same mentality–children who are different are too difficult and too expensive–encourages the vast majority of women to abort their children when they receive a prenatal diagnosis of a genetic abnormality.