Yes we do, need clarity on this important point.

The child’s mother, Ivana Levkovic, was charged with contravening section 243 of the Criminal Code in that she “disposed of the dead body of a child (her newborn daughter) with intent to conceal the fact that its mother (she) has been delivered of it.” The trial judge acquitted her on the grounds that the offence was too vaguely defined, in that he “could not identify the point when a fetus becomes a dead body for the purposes of the law in question.” The Ontario Court of Appeal overruled the trial judge’s decision and sent the case back for retrial. The Supreme Court of Canada has just upheld this decision.

A central issue is what a “child” means in the law and the uncertainty which surrounds this.

Brad Pitt loves the chaos of a large family:

“I have a handful of close friends and I have my family and I haven’t known life to be any happier. I’m making things. I just haven’t known life to be any happier.” Of course, having a big brood makes it hard to become lonely. “I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big,” shares Pitt. “I wanted there to be chaos in the house … there’s constant chatter in our house, whether it’s giggling or screaming or crying or banging. I love it. I love it. I love it.”

Something about repeating “I love it,” three times makes me think he must really love it.

I will add this, that for my friends who have large families, I don’t find visiting their homes to be any more chaotic than families with two or three. Just saying. Yes, the little kids are noisy, but the big ones aren’t, and it all evens out. I spent time with just two small people over the weekend and they weren’t particularly quiet. In a couple of years, the excitement: Jumping up and down, yelling, etc. will likely stop, and for that I will be very sad. There really is nothing quite like the excitement of the three-to-six-year-old set.

Also, the husbands of my friends with large families look Just. Like. This. All the time.

There is a case coming before the BC Supreme Court, to decide whether a program that allows women who are in prison for less than two years, who have kids while in prison, to keep their children. I would hope that the BC government would reinstate the program. Prison time ends, and ideally what we want are people who are able to get back into normal life. It appears that this program accomplished that:

It was of the things I was most proud of,” Tole says of the program. “When these moms got out [of prison] they didn’t come back. They made a life for their kids. I don’t think that would have happened otherwise.”

I do think having children has the capacity to change people and give them hope. I can’t see the benefit of giving up an infant to foster care, if the mother is going to be out in a short amount of time and wants to parent.

Rachael Clark is graduating from university and getting married this summer. Read the emotional journey, here.

Her issues stem from the way her life began. On Sept. 27, 1989, the day Rachael was born, she was sealed inside a dark garbage bag with her umbilical cord and placenta still attached. The trash bag was then thrown, hard, into a dumpster. Minutes before she ran out of oxygen, someone heard her cries and saved her. Her abandonment and rescue in Temple Hills, Md., became one of the most widely publicized stories of its kind — so well-known, in fact, that Rachael overheard people talking about it in front of her when she was about 2.

If you find yourself in Quebec City this sunny, spring long weekend, consider marching against euthanasia. Please click here for more info.

This sad story highlights the hypocrisy of a pro-choice movement that can’t ever have consensus on what a pregnancy is, because “choice” trumps logic.

This woman wanted to have a baby, so the pills her boyfriend tricked her into taking took her baby’s life.

However, had she chosen to take them of her own free will, there would have been no baby to speak of and no court case and we wouldn’t have heard a whisper about it.

TAMPA BAY – Federal authorities arrested a local doctor’s son, who they say tricked his pregnant girlfriend into taking an abortion pill, killing their unborn child. John Andrew Weldon, 28, is now facing first-degree murder and interfering with interstate commerce charges. According to a federal arrest affidavit, Weldon swapped out his girlfriend’s antibiotics with abortion pills, specifically Cytotec. “I was never going to do anything but go full term with it, and he didn’t want me to,” explained Remee Lee, 26, Weldon’s now ex-girlfriend.

Be it resolved that “greater love has no woman than this, that she lay down her life for her friends.”

I noticed in all the discussion over at this post that some guiding principles appeared to be lacking. I think the above sentiment is a beautiful one. Of course, we can never force a woman to lay down her life for her friends, but do we aspire to this value that it might be honourable to do so? And who are our “friends”? What about losing your life for your enemies? More or less honourable?

I would think it would be a good way to go, though, if I could show myself to be so courageous and so loving that I died for someone else to live. But perhaps that’s my melodramatic side talking. And ever so easy to say in the theoretical.

So much to discuss, so little time.

Someone sent me this story with the comment, “Ain’t feminism grand?”

Here we have a case of female jail guards getting into relationships with inmates:

White, 36, showered three of the guards with expensive gifts, including luxury cars and jewellery. The four women — Jennifer Owens, 31, Katera Stevenson, 24, Chania Brooks, 27, and Tiffany Linder, 27 — are among 25 people, 13 of them female prison guards, who face federal charges that include drug conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering.

They are now, belatedly, asking whether it’s appropriate to have women guard men:

Instead, the scandal has raised questions about why female prison guards would become intimately involved with their charges and whether it was appropriate to have women corrections officials guarding male inmates in the first place.

Today is the day we call Mother’s Day. A tricky subject for a blog that reflects on the nature of what abortion is and does. For the record, I think it is a very barbaric culture that sets up special clinics in which we kill people at the sole discretion of the one person who should protect them. It’s this reality that so many women are grappling with this Mother’s Day. So what to do?

I suppose in each and every circumstance I see the possibility of redemption. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t bother with this pro-life stuff. I am not in the business of ranking mistakes. I am not in the business of shaming people for things they have done or are doing. I am in the business, in some odd, idealistic way, of letting light shine brightly where it can. Perhaps I have no success with this whatsoever but apparently I can do no other.

Lots of women who were mothers aren’t anymore. Lots of women who are mothers, wish they weren’t. Lots of women wish they could be mothers, who aren’t. Lots of women are pretending they don’t want to be mothers. Lots of women say they never want to be mothers at all, and then are the very best kind and are totally thrilled with it.

At the end of the day, the pro-life story is one of redemption and hope. It’s the epic story that can be told because the story does not end with death–neither that of the mother, nor the child. I believe women can and should lean into their own best versions of themselves. That they can and do overcome the short term suffering of an unplanned pregnancy to do good for another. They can live, not as a “prisoner to their biology” but as a person who does what is selfless and hard for her child, no matter how accidental.

At the end of the day, my life philosophy is simple. Some things are not a choice. And we see this very clearly in almost every instance but abortion.

A blog like this can’t have a happy-clappy, Hallmark Mother’s Day greeting. Yet I’d hazard to say there are many women out there today who are not looking for that, but rather, since they have their own hard pasts and presents to deal with, might do better with a more sombre reflection. I suppose the less sombre thing is to look to a brighter future. And on the life file, I am hopeful like on no other.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Hey pro-choice people: Pictures of small, vulnerable babies lying on their parents’ chests are not images that support your cause. I am seeing photos like this one and thinking, woah. That’s not a choice. That’s a baby.