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Carleton University abortion debate, this Wednesday

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The question: Is abortion a woman’s right or a moral wrong?

The date: Wednesday, March 19th, 7-9 pm

The place: 103 Steacie Building, Carleton University, Ottawa

Stephanie Gray from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform will represent the pro-life side and the Carleton Debate Society will present the pro-choice side. Guess the ladies of Planned Parenthood called uncle after the last round against Jojo Ruba in December 2006. Now I think this debate will go ahead: The student union can hardly afford to cancel it, given all the negative publicity York U just received.

Still, our friendly totalitarian, Kelly Holloway of the York University Student Centre is busy justifying just how and why she shut down the abortion debate at York in the Ottawa Citizen today. Read all about it! here…

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Véronique adds: Read the letter. I’d hate to see what an un-friendly totalitarian sounds like.

My question is if the student union is not accountable – specifically – to conservative pundits, are they accountable to liberal pundits?

If moral considerations pertaining to abortion are personal, what makes yours righter than mine?

What makes an “entitlement” to an environment free of harassment and intimidation weightier than a right – a Charter right I must add – to freedom of expression?

Who decides?

Why?

I don’t need an answer today…

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Tanya adds: Kelly Holloway says,”York University can make its own decisions and, if the York University president wishes to host a debate organized by these anti-choice campaigners, the university will have to take responsibility for that.”

I’m happy to see they are attempting in some way to show students there are responsibilities to be accepted for choices made. Does anyone else think they may be nullifying this lesson just a tad by advocating for consequence-free sex?

More than leprechauns and shamrocks

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It’s St. Patrick’s Day. And while there’s nothing wrong with wearing green and having a pint of Guinness, we have a tendency these days to dumb down and secularize our festival days. But St. Patrick has a great story, a story that must include God otherwise it’s no story at all… He was himself first a slave, and would then help eradicate slavery in Ireland long before other nations… He’s the early William Wilberforce, in a way. From How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, by Thomas Cahill:

The life of a shepherd-slave could not have been a happy one.  Ripped out of civilization, Patricius had for his only protector a man who did not hold his own life highly, let alone anyone else’s. We know that he did have two constant companions, hunger and nakedness…He began to pray… he didn’t really believe in God…. But now, there was no one to turn to but the God of his parents…Patricius endured six years of this woeful isolation, and by the end of it he had grown from a careless boy to something he would surely never otherwise have become – a holy man, indeed a visionary for whom there was no longer any separation between this world and the next.  On his last night as Miliucc’s slave, he received in his sleep his first otherworldly experience.  A mysterious voice said to him:  “Your hungers are rewarded:  you are going home. 

Patricius sat up, startled.  The voice continued:  “Look, your ship is ready”. 

As he tramped towards his destiny, his faith that he was under God’s protection must have grown and grown, for it was virtually impossible that a fugitive slave could get so far without being intercepted.  “I came in God’s strength… and had nothing to fear” is Patricius’s simple summation.

Try though he might, he cannot put the Irish out of his mind.  The visions increase, and Christ begins to speak within him: “He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.” Patricius, the escaped slave, is about to be drafted once more – as Saint Patrick, apostle to the Irish nation.

This is big

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For decades, the medical establishment has maintained that there are no mental health risks for women after abortion. That is changing. Read about it here.

Several studies, including research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006, concluded that abortion in young women might be associated with risks of mental health problems…

I know the American Psychological Association is also reviewing their position statement on women’s mental health following abortion. The new statement has not yet been released, but the very fact that they took down the old one saying abortion has no negative mental health effects means they know about the growing body of credible evidence showing quite the opposite. (Those studies show increased risks of suicide, suicide ideation, depressive episodes, hospitalization for depression and even things like increased drug use and engaging in risky sexual activity.)

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Andrea emphasizes: This is not yet another study coming out showing negative mental health affects for women the result of abortion. This announcement from the United Kingdom shows a body of doctors paying heed to the existing research.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they are counselled on the possible risk to their mental health…

That’s why this announcement is so big. Because the studies showing poor outcomes have existed for a while, it’s just no one listened to them. That’s what’s changing.

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Tanya adds: It is big, I agree. The question is what took them so long. After all, a the British Medical Journal reported this in 2002 , and in 1996, a Finnish study concluded an “increased risk of suicide after an induced abortion.”

Then there’s the New Zealand study which reported in 2006 that “Young women who have had an abortion may be at increased risk of developing mental health problems.” Yet 98.9 percent of abortions granted in New Zealand are “done on ‘mental health’ grounds.” Why did it take so long for women to get informed consent?

The perfect family, the perfect country

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This U.S. bill will prove controversial, no doubt. In the understatement of the century, abortion-related bills typically are.

I have to ask whether national registries work for anything. (Recall the gun registry debacle here in Canada.) Then there’s the fact that I recently learned that offers of adoption do not, apparently, help abortion-minded women change their mind.

So any praise for this bill would be quite limited without knowing more. But one good thing it does is this: It raises consciousness that we are practicing eugenics when we kill babies because they have Downs, or cystic fibrosis. And nobody likes eugenics–which our abortion-on-demand-culture allows us to so readily and easily practice.

When we privately seek the “perfect” family, it has implications for our country. Maybe a national registry of adoptive families might go some distance to showing people that. And maybe there might be a call to help families with children with special needs. Wishful thinking? Possibly, even probably. But when bills like this are raised, people remember that the issue of selective abortions goes on around them every day. And they might just be prompted to do something about it.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

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It’s like Christmas in March. The state of Virginia voted this week to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding.

This amendment is not intended to save money,” complained an opinion piece in the Commonwealth Times. “It is a way for lawmakers to get around Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortions legal in the United States, without directly confronting the constitutionality of the decision. 

Bingo.  And we could all learn from that.

(In Canada, Planned Parenthood receives government funding too. Read about their profit margin in the States, here. They make enough money without government grants.)

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Update, March 19: No Christmas in March after all. The Senate overturned the legislature’s removal of funding for Planned Parenthood. Read about it here.

A view into life in the Czech Republic

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A young mother in the Czech Republic goes for an abortion, and gets it. The doctors discover too late she is pregnant with twins and must carry the second to term. That baby is now eight years old.

She sued for medical malpractice, and received about one third of the damages she asked for.

I am reminded of Emma Beck in the UK, who killed herself after aborting her twins successfully.

She won’t get the chance to sue.

Katerina Novakova, on the other hand, has a healthy eight-year-old, two additional children, and now damages to boot.

Read about it in Czech, here (’cause don’t we all speak a little Czech? “Pivo, prosim!“) or in English, below. Thank you, reader, for this translation.

The story’s protagonists are Katerina Novakova (26) from southern Moravia, and her little daughter. It all started in December 2000, when Katerina Novakova found out that she was pregnant. She was about to sit her final examinations in high school. The child’s father was a man two years her junior. Thus, she decided to abort. Some time later, she discovered that although doctors removed the fetus, another one was left behind in the uterus. Because the risks of undergoing second abortion were too great, the young woman remained pregnant.

It was an unpleasant time Katerina Novakova was living through. She was expecting an unwanted child, her future prospects appeared dim, and above all she was afraid that the incomplete gynecological procedure might have damaged the remaining fetus. Such, at any rate, was her testimony in the civil suit she launched against her doctors promptly in 2001. She sued for 240,000 Czk (ca $12,000) for mental suffering.

The case dragged on until the end of February 2008. Eventually, the court awarded damages “for a life,” in an amount one third of what Novakova sued for, with an explanation that it was her own irresponsible behavior that brought about her pregnancy.

Paradoxes abound in this case. The child, a daughter, born in effect as a result of medical bungling, is now eight years old. For that reason, the court pressured Mrs. Novakova into abandoning her civil action, advising her to rejoice in her healthy daughter (she has two more children by now) – to no avail. The young woman stood her ground.

For journalists with conservative leanings she is thus a poster case serving to point out the wrongfulness of abortion. Her 8-year old child is a living example of how great it is when abortion does not succeed – or is forbidden, a conservative might add.

Therefore, demanding compensation for something that has ended well may seem misguided. The problem is, however, that this happy ending became possible only as a result of the malady of our legal system – its slowness in rendering verdicts. Mrs. Novakova acted quite reasonably. No one can imagine what she has endured, as a very young woman, after a bungled abortion and what kind of life she would have, if the child were born defective. From this angle, her legal action for damages is very legitimate, as well as being very private. It was the lengthy legal proceedings that transformed the dispute into a case of damages recovery for the misdeed of “preserving life” – the life of a happy eight-year old.

Euphemisms on the radio

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Rob Snow interviewed Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast this morning here.

It’s a good, fair interview, but the host uses the phrase “a woman’s right to choose” multiple times.

I am decidedly against the use of euphemisms to describe abortion. “The right to choose?” There is no such right, neither figuratively nor constitutionally, and of course we are talking about taking a life.

But it got me thinking: Maybe I should use more euphemisms. “Why, Archbishop Prendergast, don’t you support a man’s right to unadulterated, responsibility-free sex?” (One raised eyebrow and an accusing glare…) Well? Why not? Because everyone supports a man’s–and a woman’s–right to fun, free, unfettered-by-future-possibilities-of-children, sex.

Yes indeed, euphemisms could prove very helpful.

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Tanya adds: How about anti-consequence? Or, playing on its antonym, pro-unimportance (which would suit Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada just fine, as she’s quoted as saying, “fetuses are not that important”)!

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Véronique adds: Just to make it clear: the radio host is using “a woman’s right to choose” instead of “abortion.” Not the Archbishop. In fact, Archbishop Pendergast’s first sentence makes the link between “a woman’s right to choose,” abortion and the taking of an innocent human life.

That being said, I am irked beyond description by the use of “a woman’s right to choose” like it’s some kind of birth right. None of us are born with unfettered rights to choose whatever. A “woman’s right to choose” is not only an euphemism, it’s a lie. But that wouldn’t be the first one.

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Andrea adds: Thank you, Véronique. “The right to choose” is indeed, both a euphemism and a lie. And yes, the host used the euphemisms, and the Archbishop spoke against those and did an admirable job, too. Sorry if my post was not clear.  

PWPL welcomes new blogger Tanya Zaleski

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ProWomanProLife welcomes Tanya Zaleski.   

Tanya was born and raised on the South Shore of Montreal, where she completed just shy of a full year of CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel or College of General and Vocational Education) in fine arts.

Her life, she says, is a series of good and bad decisions “which have lead me to where I am today.” She thinks the journey has allowed her to become less judgmental. “Thank goodness,” she laughs, “because I must have been unbearable until I was at least 20 or so.” Today, 31 and counting, she sums up her philosophy of life this way: “Always believe the best about people, and always try to meet people where they are.”

When did Tanya become pro-life? Her mother says she must have been nine or ten, during the Morgentaler proceedings when she first voiced an opinion. Her mother describes the infamous day that Tanya declared, in the presence of dinner guests, that “They should not be allowed to do [abortion]!” or something to that effect. Tanya says her mother, although disposed to keeping her views to herself, “always allowed us to speak our minds, even when she did not share our stance on a particular issue.”

It was years later, at the age of 16 that Tanya converted to Christianity and subsequently moved to St. Catharines, Ontario, where she attended two years of Bible college. At 23, Tanya says she “married foolishly,” and got divorced not long after that. Just over five years ago, she moved back to her hometown of Montreal and subsequently got “very unexpectedly pregnant.” In May 2005 her baby girl was born. “My boyfriend and I named her Evangelina,” she says.

“I’ve wept with friends and family who have had or were considering abortion. Women need support; women need options. Abortion is like an option vacuum. It is completely unfair,” says Tanya.

Today, Tanya is a stay-at-home mom of one and a self-taught, self-employed photographer. 

Welcome, Tanya!

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