It’s good to read articles like this one, to get a sense of the sentiments of doctors who do abortions, if for no other reason. They see themselves as super heroes, donning capes in hospital corridors (and killing babies in a single bound). Their patients thank them, with tears in their eyes…

The whole article bothered me, from begining to end. That said, the part that bothered me most was the abortion doctor who tells his patients “We’ll get through this together.” Really? Because the doctor is only there for the duration of the abortion–not for the rest of the woman’s life.

As for the one abortion provider who simultaneously is looking to adopt and is worried about what to tell his adoptive child when the time comes? I’d have to say he likely doesn’t have to worry–what are the chances he’ll get a child? After all, there are so many abortions, so few adoptions.

Apparently, so says the Internet, a couple is allowing you to vote on whether or not they should abort their child by creating a web site called Birthornot.com:

So in September, they created the website birthornot.com and have posted about their unborn baby boy, providing health updates, ultrasound pictures, and even videos. They’ve also provided readers with a choice via a poll on the upper right of the site: “Should We Give Birth or Have an Abortion?” As of publication, the “Give Birth” option leads the “Have an Abortion” 54.54% to 45.46%.

(One of the posts shows a ten minute ultrasound. Is it a pro-life ploy?)

The Internet is a strange place. And the world is full of strange people. I’m inclined to ignore such a thing, as it is the very worst of all worlds–voting on the life of this little one whose heart they ask me to watch beating.

Apparently, not much:

We were quick to discover, as pro-life students at Carleton University are learning all too well, that power to the people and all that jazz is a courtesy rarely extended to the pro-life community on university campuses.

At Carleton today, it’s about graphic images. In Halifax, 25 years ago, it was about Feminists for Life pamphlets saying “Peace begins in the womb.” The problem then, isn’t how the message is conveyed. The problem is that the pro-life message is conveyed at all.

Forgive the topic, here, but if this is happening, I suppose it’s something to blog about: Australian women having surgery to obtain “designer vaginas” so they can, apparently, compete with the porn industry:

He said the young women he treated often felt pressured into surgery because they feared men would not find them attractive if their labia did not conform to a standard seen in pornography, in which the labia are often airbrushed out.

Another articles highlights a tripling of demand in Australia. Sounds like a self-imposed form of genital mutilation to me.

“Up, up with people, you meet ’em wherever you go”…That was a song we used to sing at summer camp. (“If more people were for people then people everywhere, there’d be a lot less people to worry about and a lot more people who care!” Wow. The things you learn when you are young really do stay with you. I digress.)

Why am I thinking this today? Because I quite enjoyed seeing Mine Your Own Business this afternoon. And the focus of that documentary was…people. People who need jobs, and the environmentalists who hinder that. The director Phelim McAleer said in the question time afterwards that the two most dangerous words he knows are “sustainable development” because what it typically means is sustainable poverty. Bam! You never hear that in Canada.

So I went to shake his hand after to say I enjoyed the film. (By the way, he and his wife also did Not Evil, Just Wrong, another great documentary.) I also mentioned I’m pro-life, and perhaps he could do a film about the population control side of the environmental movement. He jumped in to point out that they want to get rid of certain people–the brown and black people who are poor. That’s when he pointed out that he cares for people, not the environment.

This reminded me of our t-shirts, People for the Ethical Treatment of People, because you really wouldn’t treat a dog like this. Sadly, with people, it’s all fair game. Pun intended.

I saw this article when it came out last weekend. And sighed. Brenda Major was the lead on the American Psychological Association assessment of abortion and mental health, an assessment that basically discarded every single abortion and mental health study but one. One study. Their conclusions were based on one study. (Read more about that, here.)

So after seeing Major’s article, my exact thoughts were I wonder if Dr. Priscilla Coleman will get a response in the paper? I don’t know if she pitched to the paper and they rejected it, but she did write a response here. She is a psychologist who has conducted much of the research on abortion and mental health (in peer-reviewed journals).

Incidentally, much good literature showing negative mental health effects the result of abortion comes from Europe, and Brenda Major makes it clear she only examines US studies (some of which are great studies, too, don’t get me wrong). It’s just that she is openly admitting there’s a great sphere of literature she isn’t looking at.

The study wars continue, unabated. For me, as a non-psychologist, I’ll always believe that some things are not a choice and we don’t kill to solve our problems. It seems reasonable and logical that when we choose to kill innocents to solve our problems, there will likely be some repercussions to that. But people call me crazy. What’s a girl to do?

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Brigitte adds: I don’t understand this. To me, whether abortions have negative mental-health consequences or cause breast cancer or limp hair really is besides the point. I don’t want the studies to show one thing or the other; this isn’t where it’s at. Even if there was definitive proof that abortions increased happiness in women I’d be against it. I’m guessing pro-abortion types don’t justify their position on the lack of definitive proof that abortions cause limp hair or breast cancer or terrible mood swings. So why the endless study wars? What’s the point?

I’m listening to people call in with their recollections of war on 580 CFRA in Ottawa. One fellow recalls how his father went to war and his mother was home with nine children from age six months to 11 years, eight boys, one girl. He said he remembers his dad today, but he also remembers his mom. Very moving.

There’s a new web site out, that gives information and support for adoption. Apparently, only two per cent of single women place their children for adoption. About 38 per cent abort.

The site has information, plus the stories of birth mothers.

We rarely hear about adoption these days. I think it’s because the abortion choice is so prevalent. But no one, least of all me, ever thought that a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy has to keep the baby. (And this is a pro-life web site, so you all know what I mean by that.)

Spread the word about this new campaign.

I am a seraphic single.

Take today, for example. I woke up at six am, briefly wondered whether I was late for something, realized it was Saturday, rolled over and slept in…until eight. Eight am constitutes a sleep in for me. Earlier is work territory and later means your sister has done her homework, been for a run, baked muffins and already had time to get bored…There I go channeling high school again.

Back to this morning: I opened the curtains at eight, looked at the changing leaves in the sun and approved. I made tea and drank it from my Made in Poland cups. (This is a growing collection, and simply looking at my Made in Poland butter dish makes me happy. You must see it yourself, and you will agree.) I made pancakes and checked the internet. I responded to a response from a woman who works in an abortion clinic to my defence of Roxanne’s Law in the Calgary Herald.

Good times for Andrea. And not, perhaps, what I’d be doing if I weren’t single.

I am a seraphic single, except when I’m not. And I wasn’t when I received Seraphic Single: How I learned to stop worrying and love the single life by Dorothy Cummings  in the mail, for free. My actual thought was something along the lines of Oh For PETE’S Sake!: Does the one thing I ever receive for free thanks to my blogging have to be a book about singleness? For when I received this book I had just had a relationship end. And abruptly ended relationships disturb the equilibrium and the seraphicity of life, to put it bluntly.

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Remember the conjoined twins born in BC a while back? They just turned four. An interesting and endearing look at how they are doing.

Of course, nothing is assured. The state of their health can turn on a dime. Every day they defy the odds. So many odds. How many mothers would have done what Felicia Simms did, not terminating the pregnancy, knowing what she knew? How many families would have banded together, and stayed together, and grown stronger in a bond almost as fierce as that of the twins – ignoring, or at least absorbing, the financial hardships, judgmental stares and whispered disapprovals?

Their mother has come to accept each day with them as a gift and a little miracle; its purpose still unfolding. “They’re here for a reason,” she says, as you lace up your shoes and prepare to leave. “We just don’t know the reason yet.” “Hug!” demands Krista. And you sweep them up, feeling their warm embrace and two beating hearts. And you wonder about that reason all the long way home.