So often in advocating for life we are left with the really hard cases. If I had a dime for every time I was asked about rape… But for me, anyway, the point is that when abuse occurs, abortion doesn’t make that go away, or act as a panacea. You’re still left with a terrible situation, one in which there are no easy solutions. This case highlights my point:

A former restaurant manager is expected to be jailed for sexually exploiting a 14-year-old employee he made pregnant three times. A provincial court Judge Mark Tyndale raised the spectre of a four-year jail term Monday for the 35-year-old Calgary resident who earlier pleaded guilty. According to an agreed statement of facts, the restaurant manager and the girl began a relationship that turned sexual by April 2007. She got pregnant twice within a year, first having an abortion and then suffering a miscarriage. After the abortion, she attempted suicide. The man was charged in June 2008 and released with a provision he not have any contact with the girl. He breached the condition by visiting the hospital the day his baby was born.

A young man without arms plays the piano on China’s Got Talent:

For people like me, there were only two options. One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death; the other was to struggle without arms to live an outstanding life,” he said.

Though not many of us will face the physical challenges he does, I still think the principle applies: “One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death; the other was to struggle with ______________ to live an outstanding life.” We can all fill in the blank with the thing we struggle most with.

As a side note, it appears there is no country in the world that does not have its own talent show now.

(h/t)

It’s good to have solid facts, the numbers at your finger tips. Many thanks to the Ottawa-based Dr. René Leiva for getting this letter in the Lancet:

On the basis of data from Statistics Canada, in the 5 years before the legalisation of abortion in 1969, 44 women died as result of complications from illegal abortions. During the same period, however, 23 died of miscarriages. From the time abortion was legalised to 2005, 19 died of complications of legal abortions and 10 from miscarriages. Similar reductions were seen across all obstetric conditions. It can be safely concluded that the real cause of the maternal mortality reduction was the implementation of better medical care.

This goes back to the maternal health debate and how some people were very adamant that women in developing countries need abortions before they need clean surgical environments, basic medications and doctors. Right.

I don’t feel as passionately about this as I do say about abortion, but why on earth would I hand over all my personal information to any old store who asks? I always ask them why they need this information, and they usually say they don’t. 

So I’m glad to see this column called “Why does retail want my details?” It’s a question we should all ask.

Well, forgive me, but of all the lame, backwards ideas that might fall into the (loosely) pro-life category. Only in Russia. The owner of a dairy is apparently hoping to fire all employees who have abortions, or who don’t get married in the Orthodox church. I sure do hope he’s following up with special benefits for all the women who keep their babies.

Now he owns his dairy, so we can’t stop him. But really, Russia has a sadly high abortion rate. He may find he has no employees left.

Consider this: Linda Gibbons is in jail for talking on a city street. That would shock people, except Linda Gibbons is sitting in jail for talking to women outside an abortion clinic. Which apparently then fails to raise even an eyebrow. I’m liking her more and more:

She has never spoken at any of her court appearances, believing silence is part of her protest for the “voicelessness of the unborn,” a supporter, Father Tony Van Hee, explained.

The “temporary injunction” that holds Linda Gibbons in jail is a severe encroachment on our freedom of movement and freedom of speech. What if 10 or 100 young women all moved into that bubble zone? Would they throw us all in jail? I’m considering testing it. Let’s see how far they want to take this.

Suzanne Fortin over at Big Blue Wave wants to study us. Well, she wants to know more about pro-life women. That’s not a bad idea, though I’d have something more journalistic in mind, profiling pro-life women and asking questions rather than a study. That could be my bias after spending my day, all day, today reading A Very Boring Scientific Study. Honestly, one has to wonder whether these authors aren’t deliberately challenging me to Fall Asleep so that I have no idea what they conclude.

Anyway, study pro-life women. I’m all for it. Makes me feel exotic!

The Maclean’s cover story this week is about…the usual. A discussion of how and why some teenage girls are comfortable being skanky, even proud of it. And why their feminist mothers are baffled and confused.

Certainly, it was never a critical goal of feminism to teach girls to be bubble-brained sex objects. I get that. But it seems logical that in forcing all of us to consider sexuality as the main driver of who we are (and in part, that’s what “feminism” does) then a natural response is to let sexuality drive who you are. (Modern feminism included teaching girls they have sex drives, sex lives and sexual desires that are exactly the same as a man’s.) So really, is it so surprising our world is very sexual today?  

My two cents. (As of my posting, the piece is not on the Maclean’s website.)

_____________________

Update: The story is now online, here.

It must be summer when reporters write stories as lazy and old as this one. This can’t even be considered news, can it? An “exposé” about crisis pregnancy centres in the Star today.

I read with disbelief that she categorizes “emotional trauma” as one of the post-abortive myths. It’s a myth when you are a pro-abortion activist, sure. For the rest of the women out there who have had one, this ain’t no mythical beast. Neither is it mythical in the hard sciences, but pro-abortion people choose to look the other way.

These are people who can’t ever conceive that abortion wouldn’t be right. So when someone highlights that abortion might not always be neutral and easy, they are up in arms.

It is deceitful and harmful to make the claim that abortion is an easy choice. It is deceitful to fail to offer counselling and just let women, young women, teens, walk in and out of abortion clinics. Finally, it is deceitful to ignore the scientific literature decidedly indicating that there are negative side effects.

From the makers of Jesus Camp, which I never saw, comes 12th and Delaware, a movie about abortion in America. They focus on a corner in a town in Florida where there is an abortion clinic and a pregnancy centre across the street from one another.

If you watch the clip, substitute “Taliban Camp” for pregnancy care centre and I think you get the frenzied, conspiratorial tone of the journalist and the filmmakers about right. I don’t see it, not in Canada, that’s for sure, but also not in what they are reporting. Nothing appears to be quite that frightening to me.