Interesting look at one Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer.

Dr. Storer was a Boston physician who lived from 1830 to 1922. He obtained his M.D. from Harvard in 1853 and studied in Scotland for more than a year with Dr. (later Sir) James Young Simpson. He began practicing medicine in 1855 and found that the medical problems of his married Protestant women patients frequently were related to their having had abortions. He learned that many other physicians were experiencing the same phenomenon. He carried out extensive research and concluded in the 1859 American Medical Association Report that “thousands and hundreds of thousands of lives are… directly at stake, and are annually sacrificed” as a result of abortion.

A story of redemption told in a three minute ad.

Linda Gibbons was sentenced yesterday. (Linda protests inside injunction zones around particular abortion clinics in Toronto.)

It appears the judge sentenced her more harshly based on a personal bias against her:

She has indicated no remorse to the court,” Bhabha said angrily. “She believes in the rightness of her cause … (but) abortions are legal. Miss Gibbons does not appreciate that it’s a legal right.”

Of course she’s not remorseful. And of course she doesn’t appreciate that it is a “legal right.”

The bubble zone laws, protecting a couple of clinics in Toronto from peaceful protestors and sidewalk counselors are unjust, and I’m grateful to Linda Gibbons for being willing to go to jail for this.

You might like to get your speakers going and play this song while reading this post.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bRmuP-kQY]

I am generally against taking every issue and making it about abortion.

But someone sent me this short piece about how a man’s life was changed by 9/11. And yes, his personal story has to do with abortion. The abortion he wanted. The abortion his girlfriend did not have.

The year prior to 9/11, when word was received of the pending birth of my first child, my reaction, much like the autumn breeze, was a bit chilly. I went so far as to heavily promote the idea of an abortion to my girlfriend. I had failed to recognize the value of life, and though my girlfriend fortunately had, she was unable to instill this in me.

9/11 caused him to reconsider.

On September 11th, I drove home from work, having been released early due to the attack and subsequent security concerns. While driving home on the highway, mind numb in trying to process the day’s events, I passed under a bridge. Looking up, there was a man who looked more than a bit ragged, as if he had just awakened to hear the news of the attacks, and walked out of his house. Wearing disheveled clothes and a weary face, he somehow found himself standing on this bridge, arms raised skyward, holding the American flag.

Nearly four hours later, needing to clear my head, I decided to get back in my car and take a drive. My route brought me to that same highway, with that same bridge. Four hours later, the same man was still standing there, holding the flag up as high as he possibly could.

He decided to meet his daughter:

Shortly afterward, I brought my daughter home for the first time. I sat alone with her in a recliner in my apartment, when she began to cry. Her father was truly petrified, as nothing was putting this baby at ease. Thinking back to the man on the bridge once more, I knew that I had to do something.

Just then, a frightened man with a wretched voice began to sing. The song was The Luckiest, by Ben Folds, and it meant the world to this little girl. If the song stopped for even an instant, she would begin to cry again. She needed me to sing that song for her in that moment. She needed me to embrace her, but nowhere near as much as her father needed the same. The ‘culture of life’ had found us both. And on that day, I had become – The Luckiest.

A nice reflection on how great things can arise from tragedy.

Why read Anna Karenina when you can learn to Enjoy the Decline? Although this book is focused on America, I do believe it could be useful here, too.

The “End of America?” Most likely. The “Demise of liberty?” You betcha! The “Destruction of Western Civilization?” Of course! But why let all of the above get you down? Learn to “Enjoy the Decline!” “Enjoy the Decline” is mandatory reading for all conservatives, libertarians, Americans, and lovers of freedom who are mourning the slow, but sure death of their culture and their country….Dark, macabre, and morose, but truthful, helpful, and practical all the same, it is guaranteed to make you happier than your socialist counterparts even though they have everything they want.

…All Mike wanted was to pick up a bottle of wine. Instead, he is confronted with an image that is jarring, to him, but no one else. I’ve been there, Mike. I think the solution is to…buy more bottles of wine? Seriously, though, our public health campaigns do send conflicting messages. The messages hinge on the arbitrary notion of “wantedness.” If the child is wanted, there will be a long list of dos and donts. If unwanted… well, you know what happens in one of four pregnancies…

I went to see The Butler with friends over the weekend. Interesting movie, particularly for someone intrigued by politics and history. There are moments I liked more than others, but generally, I enjoyed it. I definitely need to read American history more, as I certainly refuse to let Hollywood “teach” me anything. But it was good entertainment.

It left me sitting there grappling with the different approaches to fighting for civil rights portrayed in the movie. The Butler himself adopts a slow and steady, hardworking approach and engages his superiors politely and earns their respect. His son goes on the offensive, sitting in cafeterias to break down racist laws telling him he can’t be served at a particular spot. He rides the “Freedom Bus,” which is bombed out at one point in the movie by members of the Ku Klux Klan. (By the way, they show real images of this, terrifying, and graphic, I might add.) He lands himself in jail on many, many occasions.

His father is dismayed and disappointed, with good reason. (The son’s attitude toward the dad is condescending.)

I see fighting against abortion as the civil rights struggle of our time–representing people who don’t and won’t ever have a voice. (There are other hugely important battles being waged, of course, but in my hierarchy of problems Canada faces, this is certainly a big one.) I struggle with the fact that I don’t do enough. Then I struggle with some of the tactics of those doing a lot more than I, for example, postcard drops or graphic images on the side of the road. I struggle with those tactics while admiring them at least a little (and, full disclosure, supporting them with a monthly donation).

At the end of the day, we all work to advance this cause. The Butler is a good movie for examining your conscience and ensuring that you do indeed pick one method of protesting this injustice, be it a more quiet diplomacy, or riding buses across the country and provoking people to re-think where they stand. Not everyone will be converted but everyone deserves the opportunity to turn away–if that is what they must do. I am reminded of the Wilberforce quote: ““You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

That’s one inspirational beer commercial. Yes, beer commercial.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwndLOKQTDs&feature=player_embedded]

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Faye adds: Yeah, I cried too.

Doctors in the UK who did sex selection abortions will not be prosecuted, in spite of there being enough evidence to do so.

There’s a new book out about the Pill. This review pans the book:

In her new book Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, Holly Grigg-Spall offers what she calls a “feminist critique” of hormonal contraception. She argues that the so-called liberating force  of the pill has been illusory. She claims that the pill keeps women in the thrall of patriarchal capitalism and destroys their health in the process. The addiction allusion in the title is not a metaphor—Grigg-Spall is convinced that the pill is an addictive drug.

I don’t think it sounds like I would much like the book, either, based on some of what the review says. I have not read it. That said, I do not like the Pill and it’s true, I believe it is anti-feminist, for lack of a better term. Nothing reduces a woman to mere physical/biological function more than taking a Pill every day that suppresses her natural cycle. Furthermore, there is nothing quite so empowering as knowledge. Knowledge of how your cycle works, what it says about your overall health, and having control over that cycle without Big Pharma’s assistance.

The review asks some valid questions, however. One of which is why is the Pill so popular? I believe it is because it is very much promoted in med schools which look to pharmaceuticals for solutions. Doctors are schooled first, later wined and dined by pharmaceutical companies. They are not schooled or wined and dined by Creighton practitioners, for example.

But still, word is getting out there. Any when women discover the many myriad benefits of actually learning more about their own bodies, I believe they will leave the Pill behind. It won’t be because it is capitalist, or anti-capitalist. (Please.) It will be because it improves our overall health. And because it feels good to be able to take care of yourself and be treated like a human being by someone who actually cares about what your cycle is doing, rather than simply suppressing it.