[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJkBQn1-r8]

These are taken from the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform’s Facebook page. I think these students are doing a very honourable thing, drawing attention to the plight of the unborn. I know their hearts and souls are in this cause, and they are the justice reformers of our age. Still, must be hard, for them and possibly their parents, too. I have great respect for them.

I don’t have many details yet but apparently four students were arrested by campus police as they set up their pro-life display at Carleton University this morning.

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Rebecca adds: Wow, we’re lucky to live in a country facing absolutely no threats from terrorism, organized crime, or random violence. Because if any of those were serious problems, there’s no way police would be spending precious time arresting people for saying unpopular things, right?

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Correction and Update: There’s a short article in the Ottawa Sun, here. Five students were arrested by Ottawa City Police, not campus security.

There’s a cover story in Newsweek called Man Up! (my link is to a critique of the article I appreciated), there was a story in Friday’s Globe and Mail called the Emasculated Male and I’ll be giving a talk on Tuesday night called The Status of Men:

Canada has a Status of Women department. Guest lecturer, Andrea Mrozek, asks if we need to create a Status of Men department instead. Our general lack of concern for men (and marriage) will spell the end of fatherhood and families as well as the social and economic prosperity we enjoy. Ms. Mrozek reviews the decidedly politically incorrect Men and Marriage by George Gilder (1986) placing it in the context of the new millennium. Tuesday, October 5^th, 2010, Laurentian Leadership Centre, 252 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, 7:30 to 9:00 pm

I’ll be more or less presenting Gilder’s thesis, which I thought was pretty interesting, but which also gives me cover from the ensuing criticism. (As in “Gilder said it! Not me.” I’m still trying to weigh who Gilder offends more, men or women, and thus far, it’s a toss up.)

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Rebecca adds: Correcting injustices to women is important not because they’re women but because they’re people, and healthy marriages, families, organizations and societies can’t exist if half of their members are treated badly. But the solution isn’t to treat the other half badly. And we need to hear more about the tension between the sexes from happily married people, and not from bitter divorce(e)s – the tone of any given book about men, women, marriage, divorce, parenting, heartbreak, etc tends to telegraph the author’s sex and marital status pretty reliably from the opening pages.

There will be a Genocide Awareness Project display at Carleton University this Monday. I understand most Canadians prefer to put their head in the sand on this issue, pretending it’s empowering or that the injustice simply doesn’t exist. I’m glad these students won’t let that be an option this Monday.

Here’s their press release:

CONTROVERSIAL ABORTION EXHIBIT SPREADS TO OTTAWA
Students at Carleton University Get Eye-Full

OTTAWA. This October, 4, Carleton Lifeline will re-open the abortion debate—and it will be hard to ignore them.  The students will display six 4×8 foot bloody images from the controversial Genocide Awareness Project (GAP: www.unmaskingchoice.ca/gap.html).  The GAP graphically compares abortion to historical atrocities, such as the Holocaust, and has been met with resistance most particularly at the University of Calgary. This Monday from 10am to 4pm, their exhibit will be displayed in the Quad at Carleton University.  With students passing through that area on their way to and from class, heads are expected to turn. “A university is the marketplace of ideas and we want to use that platform to show that abortion is an act of violence that kills a baby,” said club president Ruth Lobo, a Human Rights major.  “We know this exhibit is effective at changing peoples’ minds because they’ve said so.”

The students said they hope to achieve debate about abortion, and they hope their message won’t be censored. Their exhibit comes on the heels of the University of Calgary Campus Pro-Life (CPL) club’s GAP display.  Out west, the students have faced censorship attempts from U of C — from the university having them charged with trespassing (the charges were eventually stayed) to charging them with non-academic student misconduct.

“We hope Carleton upholds our rights to free speech and academic freedom and encourages healthy discussion,” said history major James Shaw. “And if people are bothered by the pictures, I ask them to consider, if there’s nothing wrong with abortion, why would a picture of it bother someone so much?” A press conference will be held on campus in the Quad at 9 am on Monday October 4th 2010.

“Feminist launches 4000 years for choice.”

I can’t do commentary on this any better than Suzanne Fortin over at Big Blue Wave:

Wait a minute: hasn’t the patriarchy always controlled women’s reproduction, and feminism was a response for that? Is this an Orwellian manipulation of history or what? And have you noted how this campaign equates abortion with choice? From the About page:

The 4000 Years for Choice project seeks to create new icons, symbols, and images about reproductive choice.

Look folks, no matter how many icons, symbols and images you create, they will ALWAYS be superimposed on the image of a dead fetus. Because that’s always the result. So no matter what kind of symbols of “empowerment” are created, they are always created against the backdrop of death and destruction. There’s no evading it. Abortion means death.

 Since they are in the business of rewriting history, I wonder why would they not celebrate 10,000 years for choice. Maybe more. Maybe before fire was created, and before the first wheel… People! Why so short-sighted? Cuz when you’re makin’ stuff up, you should use that time to get really creative.

…that refugees in Canada do not have easy access to surgery with one exception? Yup, you guessed it: Abortion.

When it comes to surgery, the federal plan appears to be much stricter than what Canadians are offered through provincial health care. Other than abortions, which appear to be offered and paid for on demand, all surgeries must be either an emergency or deemed essential by a doctor.

I can’t imagine many legitimate refugees wanting this “benefit” though. You escape an oppressive regime and travel a great distance, all to arrive in a new, safe place so that you can… kill your unborn child? Doesn’t really resonate with me.

The view from Quebec. Where, apparently, misinformation guides a woman’s “right” to choose. Let’s start at the top:

For a long time, the province has been at the forefront of the freedom of choice fight. It is here that Dr. Henry Morgentaler, a Quebecker, started his lonely crusade before being vindicated by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988.

The Supreme Court of Canada did not vindicate Morgentaler. They threw it back to Parliament, where such debates belong. We haven’t had that debate since an attempt in 1989.

If someone thinks human life starts at conception, then of course he will see abortion as murder whatever the circumstances.

Human life, according to medical textbooks across the continent does start at conception. It’s personhood that provides the debate, and that’s where pro-abortion folks hide. Sure it’s human life, but is it a person? We can’t say? It’s all so confusing (to them, not me).

On the day after the National Assembly’s motion supporting abortion rights, Prime Minister Stephen Harper let it be known that he would force his MPs to vote against any private member’s bill aimed at recriminalizing abortion in Canada. This is a sharp break with tradition – normally, MPs are not bound by party lines on matters of conscience. But this shows how far Mr. Harper is ready to go to reassure the partisans of free choice – if only because they are the majority of voters.

As the maternal health motion in Parliament showed, you can whip your MPs and still find they vote against you (see the Liberal dissent). On matters of conscience, like abortion, many MPs simply won’t follow this. As for the “majority of voters” being pro-choice, the majority of voters don’t actually know that Canada has no abortion law. Ignorance is the pro-abortion lobby’s bliss.

The foreign women to whom the Harper government is refusing to fund access to safe abortions don’t vote here, so there is no political cost in denying them a right granted to Canadian women two decades ago.

Again, abortion is not a right. I’d like to see her evidence for saying that. Because merely saying it, on repeat, doesn’t make it so!

Took a while, but they did it. The UN begrudgingly accepts that fewer women are dying abroad than they had hoped. (Funding depends on the problem being very, very bad, so that comment is actually less sarcastic than you might think.)

This is the sort of abortion that doesn’t happen, we are told. Late term for lifestyle reasons. (“I couldn’t possibly have an unperfect child.”) Wonder if the Canadian taxpayer paid for it. Probably.

BALTIMORE – A New Jersey abortion doctor accused of shuttling his patients to Maryland for late-term abortions is now accused of mistreating two additional patients, including a woman from Canada who received an abortion of a nearly full-term fetus. The new accusations against Dr. Steven Brigham are contained in documents filed by the New Jersey attorney general’s office, which is seeking to have Brigham’s license suspended or revoked. Brigham has agreed to stop practicing medicine until a hearing next month.

The documents show that in early August, Brigham performed an abortion for a 35-year-old Canadian who was 33 weeks pregnant. The fetus had Down syndrome. 

The baby had Down syndrome. Summary execution for falling below our very high standards of what it means to be perfect.

(If you’re getting an angry tone from this post that’s because I am.)