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Planned Parenthood Ottawa: Their choice or no choice at all

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It was November 2007 when the Ottawa Senators Foundation, the wives and girlfriends of the Ottawa Senators (also known as the Sens Better Halves) chose First Place Pregnancy Centre as one of their designated charities in a tree raffle. First Place Pregnancy Centre is a small counseling centre located on Bank Street in the Glebe, in Ottawa. They rely exclusively on charitable donations to help women in crisis pregnancies, in offering post-abortion counseling and generally in offering pregnancy help and information.

 

Today First Place Pregnancy Centre sued Planned Parenthood Ottawa. Why?

 

When the First Wives made First Place Pregnancy Centre one of the charities, Planned Parenthood attacked. Calling First Place “anti-choice”—they raised a stink and cast aspersions on what First Place does. As a result, First Place withdrew from the fundraising opportunity. So today First Place sued Planned Parenthood for “interfering with critical funding” and for defamation.

 

First Place doesn’t offer or refer for abortions, but that is something they openly tell each client. They’ll give you all the information you need, but they won’t help you obtain an abortion. Last I checked, that’s not a sin.

 

Many women appreciate the heightened sense of awareness and empathy First Place provides: It is, after all, very difficult to be truly sympathetic to a woman grieving an abortion when you don’t believe there’s anything wrong with it. That’s something First Place does. Does Planned Parenthood Ottawa?

 

Which leads me to another point. Pro-life women and girls get pregnant unexpectedly too. Consider that pro-lifers believe that the unborn are people, not to be killed. In short, abortion is not an appropriate option. Should that pro-life girl only have the option of counseling from Planned Parenthood—a place where in the same room with a different client that counselor will sanction and refer for an abortion? Pro-lifers have sex, fear pregnancy, get pregnant, are further terrified and need counseling too. Must they all go to Planned Parenthood Ottawa? Or should there be other options?

 

Let me add at this point that all pro-lifers support Planned Parenthood Ottawa. It’s not because we want to, mind you, but because we are forced to. Planned Parenthood Ottawa is rolling in government dough. I don’t agree with what they do. But I am not able to withdraw my tax dollars.

 

The only choice I have available is to support other groups, like First Place Pregnancy Centre. And so can the Sens Better Halves.

 

First Place pregnancy centre offers another option. They do it day in and day out whether you’ve had an abortion in the past or will have one in the future. They just won’t help you get one.

 

I think that’s understandable. Only the most obtuse question the very idea of being pro-life. And no one’s forcing anyone to go to First Place either. Seems to me women are smart enough to choose. Seems to me that First Place offers one more choice. Seems to me that Planned Parenthood Ottawa in throwing their weight around last November, has been served a lot more than legal papers. They should serve up the explanation on why they think their choice is the only choice for all of Ottawa’s women.

 

Hope it’s a good one—because relying on choice mantras when you take others’ choices away sounds like a dirty trick to me.

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Tanya adds: There’s a Facebook group petitioning against the Sens Better Halves and their donation to First Place Pregnancy.

 

One Facebook group member is on staff at PPO and had this to say as she tried to articulate what makes this organization ‘anti-choice’:

I have deep feminist intervention perspectives, and i’m a believer in the philosophy that a womyn knows best what is best for her own good. By allowing for these myths [referring to a link with breast cancer, risk of infertility, increased risk of depression, and so on] to continue, i feel that we bully womyn.

Let’s be out and open with it. What they call ‘scare tactics’ can actually be backed up credibly.

Regarding abortion’s link to breast cancer: It is a highly politicized issue, and studies have shown a variety of results. It’s irresponsible for a medical professional not to mention the possibility. Now’s a good time for me to bring this up again.

As far as infertility, even the Mayo Clinic says: “It’s possible — but very uncommon —for a surgical abortion to cause scarring on the inside of the uterus or to weaken the cervix.” Are we not to even mention this possibility?

Let’s not forget depression. We’ve covered that before, too.

I could go on with this, and this, but that might be overkill.

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Andrea adds: Thanks Tanya. That Planned Parenthood Ottawa employee lost me at “womyn.” I will attempt to ensure she gets spelling lessons soon.  

Dependent at 20 weeks, 40 weeks, 80 weeks and counting

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When it comes to lowering the number of weeks for legal abortion in the UK, it seems much of the debate is revolving around “the medical evidence” for survival rates outside the womb. Then there’s the view to women’s rights–the pending disaster should women not be allowed to kill their babies at 20 weeks. Finally, some crazy person claiming science can’t decide it all.

Far be it from me to comment on all things scientific, but babies delivered at full term do not survive on their own outside the womb. Not the ones I know, anyway. That’s the human predicament. We offer ourselves to compassionately care for these babies, where the mother can’t or won’t. Unless we don’t get the opportunity because all those babies are aborted, which is more the reality right now.

Saving money on special effects

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The UK votes to support animal human hybrids and saviour siblings. The negatives are many: a devaluing of human life, embryos as commodities, using people for parts. A loss of the uniqueness of the human soul, a utilitarian approach to medicine.

But let it not be said that I am always negative, a wet blanket, a downer. On the plus side, in due time, budgets for movies like the Narnia series should go way down (save on graphic designers, hire a real centaur instead.)  

Animal-human hybrids, saviour siblings and gestational limits

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The BBC reporter here asks Dawn Primarolo, a Labour MP and health minister why animal-human hybrids are wrong. (Watch the video link.) She does not answer that, but rather moves fluidly into a discussion of embryonic research, saying

This is a decision about where life begins

Well, yes, it is. And now it’s 14 days. Why? Because she said so.

She goes on to talk about how the embryo is a collection of cells under 14 days. And how we can only get certain possible treatments from this collection of cells. And how those “cells” would only be used in very extreme cases where there were no other avenues of research.

This, plus lowering the abortion limit in the UK from 24 to 20 weeks will be up for a free vote in the UK tomorrow.

I guess I find the juxtaposition of discussing abortion and embryonic stem cell research fascinating. In order to fight for late limits on abortion she uses the “woman’s right to choose” argument; in order to justify the creation of people for the sole purpose of experimentation, she uses the treatment argument–“it could save your life.”

Whose life? Certainly not the saviour sibling’s, that’s for sure. Should be an interesting vote.

But I don’t want to be an engineer

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The poster back when I was in high school said “I want to be an engineer, just like my mom.”

Well I didn’t, and my mom isn’t one either. Shockingly, new research shows the lack of women in science-related fields may be because we don’t want to.

Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women – highly qualified for the work – stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.

I am sure, however, that the government can find some way to force us: You will like math. You will do math. You are good at math. Repeat.
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Brigitte adds: Ha-ha! Adds. Get it? 

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Andrea adds, subtracts and multiplies: but isn’t so good at division or percentage increases. Hardy har har. (Keep your day job, Brigitte, keep your day job.)

Planning parenthood isn’t possible

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One of life’s greatest jokes is that you can actually plan parenthood. Jennifer Roback Morse has a good line on this: She was an economics prof, was going to time her pregnancy to coincide with summer break and have the baby in care by the time September rolled around. That didn’t work. She ended up successfully adopting–but then also coincidentally conceiving–at the same time. Two kids in less than nine months, a record, she jokes, even for a Catholic.

Pro-choicers will admit as much in candid moments. Over coffee, an acquaintance who worked for Planned Parenthood (we would meet to hash out the issues) once sighed–it’s true, most kids are not planned.

Ultimately, that’s why law suits like this a such a shame: Awarding damages for kids because they were born should never be the jurisdiction of the courts. If someone needs help, private citizens and charitable organizations should step in to do so. But this sets a precedent that allows the myth to flourish–that women have total and complete control over reproduction, always.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse to the rescue

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Depending on where you sit, you either view women as playing second fiddle to men in our society (Women still earn less than men, men are in the positions of power, there are more male politicians and CEOs); or you view men as playing second fiddle to women (women always get custody, men are forced to pay support even when they don’t have jobs, men don’t get a say in whether a baby is aborted or kept, and they subsequently get no say in whether or not to pay support).  

 

I’d like to see an end to “gender based analysis”—this view that can only conceive of men and women in competition. One gets the gold, the other not silver or bronze but dead last… a never-ending opposition, whereby husbands never do anything good for their women, and a wife is unfailingly generous to just about anyone, so long as it’s not her husband.

 

All that preamble to say Jennifer Roback Morse is starting a much needed new institute. The Ruth Institute. She calls it:

 

A Think Tank for Intelligent Women and the Men Who Love Them, Promoting Marriage At Home, at Work and in the Public Square.

 

And it will promote:

 

marriage as a fundamental, gender-based, social institution

the family-friendly, free-market, faith-filled participation of women in all aspects of society

collaboration and cooperation with men, both at home and at work

human sexuality as an engine for building up the family, through both spousal unity and reproduction

 

Her audience is 

College-educated, career-minded women, who want to raise children and love their husbands.

 

Some may wonder why this is necessary. For women who want to love their husbands? Is that so hard? Clearly, it is—we have a high divorce rate.

 

I’ll be honest. I love Dr. J. I enjoyed her books before I met her. In person, she is all the more reasonable, compassionate, smart: someone who made some mistakes, learned from them, and is passing that wisdom on. Plus then there’s that economics PhD and a love for freedom. Certainly jibes with my finnicky personality—how to balance marriage, which will involve sacrifice, with a desire to live free or die? 

 

Some may wonder where the male equivalent is: and I think there’s a need for that too—to teach men how to love their wives. But Dr. J is only one woman, not every woman—and she’s doing quite enough for women to learn what it means to be married—to be fulfilled in family life after years and years of proving ourselves in a “man’s world.”

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Rebecca approves: This is wonderful news. I must say I’m distressed that so many people are responding to instances of bias against men and boys by insisting that men, not women are the real victim. Most of us recognize that it’s not a zero-sum game, where if men are happy, women aren’t, or vice versa, or that one sex is in a perpetual state of victimhood inflicted by the other sex. In fact, it’s the opposite; men and women are happiest together, as our recent sparkling posts have discussed. Marriage and partnership aside, most women are happier when their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are thriving and happy and treated well by their community, as men are happier when their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters do well.

 

Why is it so easy to fall into silly battle of the sexes cliches? One of the smarter things feminism did, in my opinion, was point out that although men using pornography, telling sexist jokes, and trolling at bars were objectifying the women involved, these women were still someone’s daughter, or sister, or wife. Drawing a connection between the treatment of women in general and the average guy’s love for his female relatives, and desire that they be treated with more respect, helped to make this sort of behaviour unacceptable. But it should be just as unacceptable to tell jokes that rely on the assumption that all men are cads, or stupid, or to set up sitcoms or ads whose entire premise is that men are The Perpetual Culprit.

 

This pro-abortion culture is brought to you by…

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I heard Judy Graves speak this morning. She works with the homeless in Vancouver. Goes out at night and meets homeless people “in their home”—under bridges and in alleys. She then works to find rooms for them, get them to doctors, provides them with the necessities to live. Her talk was entirely inspirational.

 

She told her story: As a young woman, single and without support, she made a call from a phone booth to find out the results of a pregnancy test. The person at the other end said—you’re pregnant. But if you don’t want to be, I can get you an abortion.

 

Different time, different place: A friend recounted recently how she was told in person that she was pregnant. Her response, in shock: “Wow, this is difficult.” Nurse’s response was to tell her she can help her get an abortion. My friend retorted, “It’s not that difficult!”

 

Finally, I just got an email to the site. Girl, this time in first year university, gets pregnant. Health care worker tells her first thing—here’s where you go for the abortion.

 

Is this what passes for compassion, for help? What kind of choice is this? Have these health care workers lost any semblance of compassion or empathy? Do they not care? Do they think providing an abortion constitutes care? Such a response is incredible. How can they so completely fail to register the real issues at hand—to send women packing with nothing more than the words “I can get you an abortion” ringing in their ears?

 

These three women I spoke of kept their babies. And lived to tell the tale, imagine that. Not everyone gets the same happy ending. Health care workers, clinic workers, those who give this kind of lame excuse for advice—our pro-abortion culture is at least in part, courtesy of them.

 

I’ve said for a while that women don’t really get choices. It just dawned on me how very painfully true this actually is.

 

It’s a special kind of country for young women to live in where killing our unborn children is the first choice presented. The very first one. Do you have to call yourself pro-life to think this is wrong?

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