I have always wondered why Hollywood insists on making crap movies when there are a lot of good storylines out there. I do like most every Russell Crowe movie I’ve ever seen, so perhaps Noah will be another good one.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSeecpWM8AA]

There are many who have had negative run-ins with pro-lifers and for this I am very sorry. I don’t doubt that it is true. I’m just sorry, because those aren’t the pro-life folks I know or hang out with.

To help combat this negative image, I thought I’d post Victoria’s story, since she is so calmly encouraging for anyone facing an unplanned pregnancy right now.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGVyJ1RefHY]

Dr. Priscilla Coleman spoke at a talk on Thursday night in Toronto, courtesy of the deVeber Institute. It was fantastic. She does research into the psychological effects after abortion. She estimates that 20% of women will experience negative mental health effects.

Based on these women’s stories told in the New York Magazine, that number appears to be much higher, perhaps somewhere around 50%.

They call it “26 Women Share their Abortion Stories.” But I’d call it “The Unhappiness we Nurture in the Name of Choice.” Whatever abortion is, it is not female empowerment by a long stretch.

PS. I really want someone (other than those fanatically dedicated to keeping abortion legal) to do the math on this notion that one in three women will have an abortion by age 45. I’d like to see it broken down by state/province. I’d like to see repeat abortions factored in. Any takers?

So sad. I would say this is not to read if you are yourself pregnant, at whatever stage. But this story gives an idea of the beauty and power of the human soul, no matter how shortly lived.

I felt an unholy storm move through my body, and after that there is a brief lapse in my recollection; either I blacked out from the pain or I have blotted out the memory. And then there was another person on the floor in front of me, moving his arms and legs, alive. I heard myself say out loud, “This can’t be good.” But it looked good. My baby was as pretty as a seashell. He was translucent and pink and very, very small, but he was flawless. His lovely lips were opening and closing, opening and closing, swallowing the new world. For a length of time I cannot delineate, I sat there, awestruck, transfixed. Every finger, every toenail, the golden shadow of his eyebrows coming in, the elegance of his shoulders—all of it was miraculous, astonishing. I held him up to my face, his head and shoulders filling my hand, his legs dangling almost to my elbow. I tried to think of something maternal I could do to convey to him that I was, in fact, his mother, and that I had the situation completely under control. I kissed his forehead and his skin felt like a silky frog’s on my mouth.

Read here.

When we look at the extraordinarily high rates of single motherhood in some places, we can see that fathers are indeed “opting out.” This has been happening for a long time.

So when I saw this article in the weekend National Post I was actually somewhat pleased to see feminists catching up with the logic of it all.

I remember once doing a radio debate with some pro-choice feminists and I raised the point that if women have the choice to abort, then men have the choice to walk away. And I was surprised that they didn’t buy it. They wanted it both ways, ie. we choose to abort, c’est la vie, and we choose to keep the baby and the man does what we want. That just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Good satire makes me laugh, and this is good satire. Et voila. Namaste.

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Faye adds: I just about died from laughing reading this. Awesome.

I also want my child bathed in San Pellegrino. But I want the fluoride removed first somehow. There’s a few parts per million per bottle.

Really, is there any other way to bathe my newborn? He deserves nothing less.

So I was at the gym this evening. As I did some floor exercises, holding a side plank, I had nowhere to look but at the girl in front of me, who had a tattoo. It said on her shoulder, “May I have joy, peace and happiness,” complete with the person who said this quote, like a footnote. Which made me laugh, a little anyway. What if you got a quote on your shoulder with the footnote on your ankle. Very academic! Anyhoo. Where was I? Oh yes, her tattoo. It wasn’t altogether terrible so far as tattoos go, but I did note the “I” at the centre. Hebrew blessings, just by way of example, tend to use “you” as in “May the Lord bless you and keep you…” Which, mid side plank, I could have used. Some blessing and keeping, as I haven’t done one in a very long time.

My point, you are wondering, is that we live in an egocentric age.

That’s my thought of the day. And now yours may be something like hey, that Andrea needs to work on being less judgemental. Indeed.

Margaret Somerville does a good job in this piece of describing why and how two people could watch the same movie and come to very different conclusions. In short, she saw a movie intended to be part of the “Death with Dignity” movement and found it to be a powerful statement against assisted killing. I personally wonder what on earth it would do to us as a society if we sanction killing as care. It’s a bleak enough world out there without adding in this particular macabre concern. I don’t like hospitals right now. I don’t know that I’d be able to set foot in one, or see a loved one cared for there, if I knew doctors were in the killing business as a legally sanctioned enterprise.

Watching the physician euthanizing her is a chilling experience: The lack of any human warmth. The lack of any sense of the momentousness of what is being done – one human being, and a physician at that, intentionally killing another human being who is his patient. The mundaneness of it all, which is reinforced by the scenes of the physician sitting at Eva’s kitchen table, after he has killed her, routinely filling out the necessary reporting forms. I was puzzled by what stance on euthanasia the film makers were taking, but my overall impression was it was probably one of neutrality and, I thought, the film might function as a very powerful cri de coeur against euthanasia.

…Affordable? The pro-choice mantra used to be “safe, legal and rare.” Now a new group wants to further normalize abortion. Check this link out. There’s a video there…women telling their story on camera. Now you would think that for their video they would choose really compelling stories… women who tell bold tales about how their abortions were good for them. Instead, and keep in mind this is their promo literature, we have one woman who asks the question of “whether she is a bad person.” And the other wants to talk about it, not make it hush hush, but she doesn’t say anything good about it.

I say bring on the discussion. I always do, and this moment is no different. Pro-lifers need to compassionately get in on discussions with women who have had abortions. Who are, in many cases, one and the same women. (Pro-life and post-abortive. Pro-life women get abortions, not being any more immune to the seduction of our culture than anyone else. This is not hypocrisy, this is life.)

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Faye adds: I’ve noticed in recent years that ‘professional’ pro-choicers have dropped the “rare” from the “safe, legal and rare” mantra. They were challenged as to why they believed such a procedure should be rare, when it’s just another, everyday practice. Declaring that it should be rare indicated that there’s something not so awesome about it. Otherwise, it shouldn’t be a rare procedure.