Oh Satire. How I love Thee. Courtesy of The Onion, a biting look at the ridiculousness of egg freezing as a supposed perk:
As part of their efforts to accommodate women who wish to delay parenthood, Facebook officials announced Wednesday that the company will offer financial assistance for female employees to freeze their newborn children.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 15, Canada’s Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether the criminalization of euthanasia is constitutional. The results won’t be known for several months. It’s good to remember the many reasons why euthanasia should never be sanctioned. Here, National Post columnist Barbara Kay explains one of them:
The essay goes on to describe each step – with copious facts and figures – along the way from euthanasia for “unbearable suffering” to involuntary euthanasia (a distressing number over there) to, in bio-ethicist Margo Somerville’s words, “institutionalizing murder in the medical profession.” It’s an excellent essay, but what haunts me most is the “glazed eyes” of her uncle at learning that a sad 50-year old asked for and received death at the hands of a psychiatrist. Glazed eyes, glazed hearts, glazed souls. That’s the real slippery slope.
I’ve now received this news item three times. This is a subtle cue for me to do a post. The undertone from those sending the item, of course, is that this is strange and/or upsetting. And it is.
Two major companies, Apple and Facebook, are offering egg freezing as a perk for their female employees.
Two Silicon Valley giants now offer women a game-changing perk: Apple and Facebook will pay for employees to freeze their eggs. Facebook recently began covering egg freezing, and Apple will start in January, spokespeople for the companies told NBC News. The firms appear to be the first major employers to offer this coverage for non-medical reasons.
“Having a high-powered career and children is still a very hard thing to do,” said Brigitte Adams, an egg-freezing advocate and founder of the patient forum Eggsurance.com. By offering this benefit, companies are investing in women, she said, and supporting them in carving out the lives they want.
My take: This sort of “perk” highlights how this working world is very hostile to women. Work now. Work harder. Work more, in offices that are not conducive to having children. Have children, sure, but always later, later, later. But so that you feel better about that, freeze your eggs now.
It is almost exclusively my demographic that will take advantage of this. Younger women believe they can always have kids. It’s not something they question. Most women who are older than me will think it’s too late. But women in their 30s… that’s the demographic. Those women who quietly wonder what the point of the work, work, work is when there’s no family to come home to.
I think it’s insidious, to be perfectly honest. And sadly, some women will do it. Not because they think it’s a great idea, but rather because it’s an insurance policy, or so they think.
Finally, this is a symptom of a bigger problem, not the problem itself. So don’t blame the women who go ahead and do it. Just some random thoughts on the strangeness of our culture that pays lip service to giving perks to women while giving no perks to women.
We study the effect of estrogen on the fish populations. I have no problem with that. We are then allowed to say if and when there are problems. Likewise, no problem with that. However, if anyone should assert that the effects of daily synthetic hormones on living, breathing women are problematic, it shall be denounced as heresy.
Here ends today’s lesson in what can and cannot be said publicly. I do hope the Fathead Minnows recover. (Everyone loves a good fishing expedition.)
This is old news by now. That said, I love photography. So the 100,000 blue and pink flags (one for every life lost to abortion annually in Canada) making the BBC best photos of the day is a good thing to link to.
…make sure you speak up in favour of a girl’s right to life.
Across the globe, girls are being killed off at an alarming rate, only because they are girls. This includes infanticide but also abortion.
Because this includes abortion, we tend to hear not-so-much about it.
Getting more politically incorrect, we then don’t hear about the coerced abortions of girls.
Normally, missing women results in calls for more attention, parliamentary committees, general outrage. But not when the girls are missing due to abortion.
On October 11, International Day of the Girl, make sure you remember all girls. Those who were denied education, those who were forced into early marriages, those who were denied life. I will also be remembering the hypocrisy of the United Nations for having a special day honouring girls, whilst simultaneously ignoring millions of missing women the globe over.
(For more on missing women in China, specifically, check back here for compelling presentations from a Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.)
(Reggie Littlejohn, of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.)
You may have noticed we have a new look going on at ProWomanProLife. We hope some problems have been corrected, but it’s also possible that new ones have been created. Please let us know in comments or via email when you experience those. And please like us on our new Facebook page, too! Thanks!
My friend Daniel Gilman speaks about all the flags on Parliament Hill of last week.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLw9059QT8w]
This item is apropos of nothing. But I believe that western civilization is on the decline and BIRT (be it resolved that) “eating competitions” are proof of this.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience and trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” –Helen Keller
(h/t)
