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Planned Parenthood–in the influencing business

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The pro-choice crowd is in the business of influencing–encouraging a young girl to believe she is not equipped, not strong, not able to carry a pregnancy to term. You think they just leave women to “make a choice?” Well in so doing, they play upon all the fears we know women feel–mostly because we have ourselves already felt them in one way or another.

This is something Sarah Palin highlighted as she spoke at a Right to Life gathering yesterday. You can watch part of it below, and I’ve transcribed a little bit here:

We went through some things a year ago that now lets me understand a girl’s temptation to maybe try to make it all go away–if she has been influenced by society to believe she is not strong enough, or smart enough or equipped enough or convenienced enough to make the choice to let the child live. I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process. Maybe you are going through a battle right now. I want to encourage you. In my moments of doubt that I just went through a year ago I clung to a faith that taught me that we could face the challenges, that we won’t be given anything that we can’t handle and really at times that faith was all that I had. … Trig is the best thing that ever happened to me and I want other women to give this a chance and experience this.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZIf-ZUWRzo]

Maybe you are going through some things right now. May you be encouraged that you are strong enough, and smart enough and equipped enough to deal with it. And may people walk into your life who are savvy and kind enough to know this, and to speak those words.

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Brigitte adds: whoops, both Andrea and I wrote about the same story at the same time. And we did it without calling each other first (“what you gonna write about today?” “I don’t know, what you gonna write about?”). My take on the story is this: Even if, like me, you’re not big on “image of God” references, her speech is powerful stuff. I will not claim unplanned pregnancies aren’t inconvenient. I’m sure they are in many, many cases, and not every woman is as strong and determined as Gov. Palin. But as Andrea likes to say, we don’t kill to solve our problems.

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Andrea adds: I know Gov. Palin means faith in God when she speaks of faith. And the Bible does expressly teach we won’t be given more troubles than we can handle. That is encouraging, but only for those who believe the Bible. But I think for non-religious types you could simply have faith in something better coming down the pipes. I think it’s called optimism. I have come to understand that pro-choicers suffer from a frightful lack of creativity–an incapacity to see how healing in an unplanned pregnancy could occur with the baby living, not dead.

Take back the anti-choice term

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pro-choice

The Anti-Choice Project. I’ve always said on abortion I am indeed anti-choice. The term doesn’t offend me. Everyone is anti-choice on something.

(h/t Big Blue Wave)

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Rebecca adds: This is a wonderful poster, because it highlights the fallacy behind arguments that those who oppose abortion should be content with not aborting their own unborn children. We judge bystanders to atrocities harshly, and not without reason; as Daniel Goldhagen’s work made abundantly clear, the 12 million dead in the Holocaust could not have been massacred without the silence and acceptance of Germans writ large, not simply the active evils carried out by a (relatively) small number. And we are constantly (and appropriately) exhorted not to allow genocide to happen on our watch in the 21st century. Good people can differ about what exactly it is that is disposed of in an abortion, but it should be readily grasped that for those who believe a human life is at stake, more is required of us than simply not having an abortion ourselves.

“Hitler sperm”

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hitler_sperm

Bet you thought the post title was an attempt to be provocative. Well, I’m just citing the latest German condom ad, as it turns out. Phewf?

The message: Use a condom, and be sure you’re not bringing the next Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler or Mao Zedong into the world. Of course, you’d have to sleep with one of those three to risk that—and I imagine most would abstain, especially in the case of Hitler, since he’s been dead for almost 65 years.

This could be the one condom campaign that actually works–because after thinking about producing a dictator like Hitler, people will simply stop having sex.

(h/t Sobering Thoughts)

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Tanya adds: I don’t know. If people stop having sex, wouldn’t that be bad for the condom industry?

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Andrea adds: Counterintuitive, Tanya, I know. But “let’s avoid making another Mao” isn’t exactly what I’d call a turn on.

Fighting abortion–the new extremism

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Might as well test this one. Next time I go to the USA, it’ll be with guns a blazin’ (figurative). I’ll be sure to wear a PET-P T-shirt, and give them my ProWomanProLife card:

Right-wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.“

The right to choose

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PWPL first posted about Annie Farlow here. Now her parents have taken a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal about the care she received (or did not receive) at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. The question remains of how a “do not resuscitate” order was issued without the parents knowledge. You can watch a bit of the story from CTV News here. Scroll down to the story called “Parents aim complaint at Sick Kids.”

Many today seem to live in the zone of personal choice, and having control–even over life and death. I don’t agree with this world view. But it seems pretty clear in this case that the Farlows were denied “the right to choose”–the right to choose life for their daughter.

A valid question

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A question from a not-really-religious pro-lifer in the UK: Why don’t atheists oppose abortion?

Denying the humanity of a 20-week foetus is as unscientific and irrational as denying the beef on your plate is a cow because you can’t hear it moo.

Now many atheists/agnostics do oppose abortion on scientific grounds…but they aren’t very vocal, that’s for sure. Too busy with bus ads, convincing people that there probably is no God? Or perhaps they can’t stomach an alliance with a largely religious crew? Who knows. But worth asking the question.

(cross-posted to The Shotgun)

Letters

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I’ve been getting more letters like this one lately:

 

I found a place where I fit! I didn’t know anything about you until I read an article in a Vancouver paper. I was thrilled to find out that there is a group of people out there who are trying to make their voice known in the abortion debate. Like many women, I too was indoctrinated by ProChoice/Women’s Rights during highschool. I am hopeful that your movement can and will touch the lives of women out there who think that being pro-choice means that you must be religious or anti-feminist. Such a dated point of view.

Thank you to our readers, both new and old. The more of us there are saying that abortion is not a right–the more it will take hold in the mind’s of undecided women.

Advocating for abortion does not make you an advocate for women. Since I believe this is the last leg that abortion rests on–this idea that by offering abortion we are doing women a big favour–when that falls, so will the abortion-friendly status quo. 

I am reminded of the advice of a communications guru on getting unpopular messages across: first be able to prove your point (know your stuff), then say it in the face of challenge, say it in the face of outrage, say it in the face of ridicule. Then say it again. Then find another way to say it.  

Which many of you are already doing… so well done and keep up the good work. And thank you for your letters.

Strange role models

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Those old school feminists choose strange role models: 

‘We want fewer and better children . . . and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.’

That ghastly message appeared in the introduction to Margaret Sanger’s 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization.In a little-noticed incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced that she is “really in awe” of Sanger. “The 20th-century reproductive-rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race,” Clinton declaimed upon receiving an award from the organization that Sanger founded, Planned Parenthood.

I have to wonder why we don’t highlight these sorts of “women’s rights advocates” more often. Certainly does serve the pro-life cause well because Sanger is a very, er, conflicted mentor at best. And either Clinton doesn’t know all she stood for (unlikely) or she really does agree with her. In which case, I’d agree with the author of the article linked to–this certainly does “puncture the fiction that [Clinton] is a moderate.”

(cross-posted to The Shotgun)

Hope does spring eternal

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It’s Easter and Passover and so in lieu of trolling the news for interesting abortion-related items, I offer instead the opportunity to give to good causes. Seems fitting.

We have options: First Place Pregnancy Centre (Ottawa), Options 360 (Washington State), and Aid to Women (Toronto). Finally, you can always buy a T-shirt from ProWomanProLife.

First Place Pregnancy Centre–good people, and they offer choices to women in the true sense of the word, not the distorted one. A great crisis pregnancy centre in Ottawa, not too far from where I live and work. They offer real options to women. They aren’t a centre that just gives a bag of diapers and a pat on the back—they see women through the whole process of having a child that she wasn’t prepared to have. Counselling in these circumstances and offering full and total information before birth or abortion is something not a single pro-choice agency will do—and counseling through the baby’s birth and into the future is Expensive with a Cap E. Please give if you can. 

If you live on the west coast, consider Options 360 in Washington State. Located next door to Planned Parenthood, Sarah Doll who works there say they can hear the suction machine–that’s the sound of lives being lost. How do I know about Options 360 you ask? Because Sarah Doll is the wife of Cyril Doll, and I used to work at The Western Standard with Cyril. Were it not for Cyril, there might not be a ProWomanProLife. He took a leave from work and planned a walk across Canada to fight abortion. I was very inspired by that. I know that there are others doing good pro-life work in this country. But to be honest, I never really took special note because they had always been doing it–and it became part of the pro-life landscape. Cyril up and left a regular job to follow his heart–which apparently involved walking across one of the world’s largest countries in support of life. Inspiring. So support his wife’s group if you can. 

Finally, Aid to Women is having a fundraiser on April 18th. Aid to Women is also right next door to an abortion clinic in Toronto and is run by the indefatigable Nicole Lau. A spunkier young woman you will not find. There will be music at her event and I believe the Archbishop is speaking, if I’m not mistaken. She asks you to call her for tickets if you are interested at 416-921-6016. The theme is “Hope Springs Eternal.” 

And hope does indeed spring eternal. Happy Easter season to all. 

Baby Kaylee

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This story here is heart wrenching and disquieting to me at the same time. It must be so hard to have a baby who can’t breathe–a baby who is not doing well.  

Baby Kaylee continues to defy the odds this morning, breathing on her own for a second day after she was removed from a respirator in anticipation that she would become a heart donor for another infant.

But I’m quite uncomfortable with the juxtaposition with the other struggling baby who needs a new heart–and the idea that Baby Kaylee should become an organ donor so young. Thoughts?

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Andrea just got more uncomfortable: Read here:

Kaylee, his six-week-old daughter who a day before had been administered the last rites so her heart could be transplanted to another child at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, looked up and gurgled Except for the heart-shaped Band-Aid holding a tiny breathing tube in her nose, she looked healthy and pink and hairless – not unlike her now famous father, who has been defying the hospital and holding public press conferences as he lobbies doctors to let his daughter’s heart go to Lillian O’Connor, who desperately needs it.

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Patricia adds: I have some sympathy for these parents – as appalled as I have been by some of the remarks the father has made, including the loving statement that there is no way they would have brought Kaylee into the world if her disabilities had shown up in a pre-natal ultrasound. That said, it wasn’t Kaylee’s dad who brought up the idea of the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration (i.e, starving Kaylee to death). What I’d really like to know and what I suspect we’ll never get is a full accounting of the part of the hospital and Kaylee’s doctors.(Part of the reason for that is patient privacy, which is not an illegitimate concern.) I’d sure like to know who told these parents their baby’s condition was “terminal.” Did anyone at any time actually offer the parents some information about Joubert Syndrome and suggest that maybe they talk to some parents who are raising a child with Joubert? Who suggested the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration? Why were they told (as they alleged in a radio interview yesterday) that as Kaylee’s condition worsened, decisions about their child’s care might have to be made for them? Who at the hospital raised the issue about the cost of the medical care required by Kaylee, resources that might better be used by another child? In short, just what the hell is going on at that hospital anyway?

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