Rebecca Walberg and myself on abortion and maternal health in the National Post today.

My main point is that there is a fair amount of ideology in the maternal health debate and au contraire to what the maintream media is pushing, blame for the useless politicking lies at the feet of pro-abortion activists who would rather throw out a maternal health mandate than see one go forward without abortion included.

How long before some anti-G8 anarchist group takes credit?

(Back to abortion and mental health, to include or not to include.)

You can say that again:

It’s very close,” said John Wright, senior vice-president of the polling firm. “This is an issue that has very strong opponents, and very strong proponents.”

For all the hoopla around the issue in favour of abortion, quite frankly, I’m surprised it isn’t more than 56 per cent in favour of funding abortions abroad. Us pro-life types must be greater in number than the media lets on.

There are many orphans in Africa and it’s not because of a lack of access to abortion. It’s due to the AIDS epidemic and warfare, so far as I can tell. Thus far, no one has suggested we kill those kids off “to save them.” Until now:

But Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation Canada, says Harper’s decision to exclude abortion funding from his initiative will create generations of orphans in developing countries.

Fan-Tas-Tic. Remind me. How is it these people enjoy mainstream media support, again?

I’m not a pollster but asking if others should receive more, less or the same as you do on anything–be it abortions or ice cream–strikes me as a formula for one answer and one answer only: Why, the same! The same would be most fair.

Which is precisely what this poll shows. Thank goodness we have professionals doing this stuff.

Reading Mark Steyn in Maclean’s this issue was like therapy for me. He basically speaks about those who are quite sure, very sure they themselves have absolutely no bias. It’s just everyone else:

What’s impressive about these anti-Fox critiques is their indestructible lack of self-awareness. Two years ago in Ottawa, I attended an awards luncheon hosted by Mr. Newman at which the keynote address was a lazy shapeless ramble by his CBC colleague Patrick Brown on China and the media. At one point, Mr. Brown remarked that Chinese state media wasn’t bad compared to Fox News.

Steyn goes on to say:

I’m a partisan figure–that’s to say, I have “views” with which others disagree: I favour small government, I oppose abortion, I loathe Canadian government regulation of free speech, etc. …But there’s something weird about a bunch of fellows insisting that they’re sober, responsible, and objective, even as they’re hyperventilating ever more bombastically about how the competition are bombastic hyperventilators. After all, a guy who enjoys getting his news from the mouthpiece of the Chinese politburo surely has “views.” Why can’t he just admit it? Why can’t the CBC or CNN or the New York Times, just say, “Hey, you know, you’re right, we have a particular world view and our content reflects that”?

Everyone, absolutely everyone, has a bias, a world view, a way of seeing things. They then interpret news and events through that bias. That’s life.

(And of course, I also enjoy reading, as I already knew, that Steyn opposes abortion. He just slides it in there, and I do appreciate it.)

After an abortion your risk of  a preterm delivery of your first wanted child goes up. Posted here, but it’s subscriber access only. I’ve copied part here:

Dr. Ghislain Hardy, a third-year resident in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at McGill University did a retrospective chart review of women who had delivered a baby between 2001 and 2005 at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Among the 17, 916 women who had a singleton delivery, 2,276 (13%) also had undergone a previous abortion and 862 (5%) had two or more induced abortions.

After adjusting for baseline characteristics, women with one previous abortion were 45% more likely to have a premature child at under 32 weeks; 71% more likely at less than 28 weeks; and more than twice as likely at less than 26 weeks. This association was even stronger for those with two or more abortions. “Preterm birth is a major concern in our health-care system today. It is the most important cause of neonatal morbidity,” said Dr. Hardy in his presentation. The rate of preterm birth is on the rise in Canada, and was more than 8.1% in 2006. Preterm birth is a burden on neonatal intensive care units, and these children go on to have health and social problems.

I had to assume when I read Dr. Robinson’s letter that she is willfully blind to the studies showing psychological problems after abortion. This letter is, er, to the point in response to her:

Dr. Gail Erlick Robinson neglects to mention that the “relief ” some women experience after abortion all too often takes the form of suicide. While Dr. Robinson rubbishes Dr. David Reardon, whose research has documented substantially increased incidence of suicide post abortion, based on medical records from California, Dr. Reardon merely confirmed what Dr. Mika Gissler and colleagues had reported back in 1996 in the British Medical Journal in another “gold standard” study based entirely on medical records from the Finnish abortion and death registries. Gissler et al. found that women who had had an induced abortion in the prior 12 months were three times as likely to commit suicide compared to women who had not been pregnant during that year, and six times more likely to commit suicide compared to women who had had a live birth in the prior 12 months. Clearly, post-abortion depression is a much more serious problem than postpartum depression. Importantly, not a single study has refuted these inconvenient but rock-solid scientific findings about post-abortion suicide.

Joel Brind, professor of biology and deputy chair, Department of Natural Sciences, Baruch College, City University of New York.