A letter in today’s Ottawa Citizen:

In his letter, Robert Riordan disputes letter-writer David Morse’s statement that there has been a tenfold increase in the rate of abortions in Canada since 1970. He takes Morse to task for using the word “rate” rather than numbers.

The statistics show a tenfold increase in the numbers of induced abortions performed on Canadian women from 1970 to the present. However, Riordan’s claim that the number of abortions “became reasonably stable within a few years” after 1970 doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Using data from Statistics Canada, we find 11,152 abortions in 1970, with the numbers increasing almost yearly and reaching a high of 111,709 abortions for the year 1997. These are the numbers that Riordan calls reasonably stable.

From 1998 to 2004, the abortion numbers did decline slightly, but continued at over 100,000 a year, from 110,331 abortions in 1998 to 100,039 abortions in 2004.

If we examine the rate of induced abortions per 100 live births, we also find a tenfold increase. Statistics Canada reported the rate of induced abortions per 100 live births was 3.0 in 1970 and 31.0 per 100 live births in 2003.

The statistics for the year 2006 showing 91,377 abortions for the country seem to indicate a decline but data are missing. As Statistics Canada cautions the reader, abortion clinics in British Columbia, New Brunswick and Manitoba did not submit their numbers.

Additionally, the Canadian Institute for Health Information estimates that as of the data year 2000, “the Therapeutic Abortion Survey database represents approximately 90 per cent of all abortions performed in Canada on Canadian residents.” At the very least, the abortion numbers hover at 100,000 annually.

Louise Harbour, Ottawa

Executive director,

Action Life Ottawa

Forgive my crankiness, but this stuff drives me batty (short trip, I know):

Babies born to couples who had fertility treatment have a greater risk of birth abnormalities and doctors should be prepared to warn potential parents about these risks, French scientists said on Sunday.

Clinical geneticist Geraldine Viot said couples considering undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment should be told that the risk of birth defects is around twice that of babies conceived naturally.

Question: Once you start treating babies like commodities, where do you stop? I mean, if you’re going to spend a lot of time and effort and money to conceive, you don’t really want to hear about defects, right?

So much for the “abortion isn’t used as birth control” rhetoric. In Britain:

Government data have disclosed that 89 girls aged 17 or under who terminated a pregnancy last year had had at least two abortions previously.

[…]

The Department of Health figures for 2009 show that, for the first time, more than a third (34 per cent) of abortions were performed on women who had already ended one or more pregnancies.

Across all ages, more than 1,000 women or girls were on at least their fifth termination, including 214 on their sixth, 70 on their seventh and 48 who underwent the procedure for at least the eighth time.

[…]

The total number of abortions in England and Wales last year, 189,100, fell slightly on the previous year. Of those, 63,390 involved women who had previously ended a pregnancy, compared with 51,987 a decade ago — a rise of 22 per cent.

Almost 18,000 abortions were carried out on girls aged under 18, including more than 1,000 on girls aged 14 or under.

I dislike government handouts, but if you’re going to pay parents to have children maybe you ought to focus on the first few years?

New mothers should get a quarter of all their child’s benefits in just the first two years of a baby’s life to reduce the pressure on them to go back to work, it has been suggested.

The move for bringing forward the payments and letting mothers stay at home and let them bond more easily with their babies, according to the Government’s poverty adviser.

Currently, poorer parents are eligible to be paid as much as £100,000 in benefits and tax credits in equal instaments over the first 19 years of a child’s life, if he or she stays still in full time education.

However, Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead, suggested the Government should tailor the system of child benefits so that it better suited parents’ lives.

This could see a quarter of this total – £25,000 – paid out in just the first two years of a child’s life, to take the financial pressure off young mothers to go back to work and encourage them to spend more time with their babies.

Scary numbers from Belgium:

Almost half of deaths by euthanasia in Belgium have involved patients who have not explicitly requested their lives to be ended by a doctor, a study has suggested.

A fifth of nurses interviewed by researchers admitted that they had been involved in the euthanasia of a patient based on the “assumption” they would want to die. Nearly half of the nurses – 120 of 248 – admitted they had taken part in “terminations without request or consent”.

Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002. It accounts for two per cent of all deaths annually. The law states that patient consent must be given and that doctors must carry out the procedure. But the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that the rules are routinely flouted and shows how doctors often delegate the administering of fatal drugs to nurses.

Well, who knows? Maybe that’s not even close to as desperate as some people can get. Imagine that: Rumours suggest Sarah Palin might have had breast implants. As in, we don’t really know this. We just think she looks slightly bustier. So obviously that must mean…

BREAST IMPLANTS!!!!

The world may never recover.

Here’s a fun item to get your blood moving on this chilly morning (scroll down to “Let’s have grandchildren”):

Some studies have found that having more daughters makes people more liberal,” Kevin Lewis reports for The Boston Globe. “The theory is that parents perceive conservative policies as constraining the freedom of women. A new analysis by sociologists at New York University contests this finding. Controlling for gender, religion, age, education and marital status, the analysis indicated that having a higher proportion of daughters relative to sons was associated with being Republican or conservative. The authors of this latest study suggest that conservative policies ‘support the genetic fitness of women by capitalizing on each pregnancy, reducing male promiscuity and increasing paternal investment in children’ and ultimately maximizing the number of grandchildren, despite restricting the freedom of daughters.”

OK. I’ll bite: Aren’t those generally associated with an acute concern for the “genetic fitness” of women more worried about encouraging the “good” pregnancies over the “bad” ones, instead of “capitalizing” on each? Oh, and how is it that a desire to reduce male promiscuity and increasing paternal investment in children is considered bad and restrictive for women? By whom?

Apparently, people say they have sex even if they’re not quite married yet. Who knew?

Deaf child hears his mother’s voice for the first time:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDD7Ohs5tAk&feature=player_embedded]

[h/t]

… gives us Andrea Bocelli (aka the “blind tenor”). It matters what we choose. As he says, maybe he’s partisan, but there is no question for him that his mother made the right choice.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QfKCGTfn3o]