June 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A UK couple recently lost their last IVF embryo when it was mistakenly implanted in another woman, who aborted the baby when she discovered it was not hers.
If we agree that abortion is a personal decision for the woman who’s pregnant with the unborn child, then this embryo’s biological mother had no way of preventing her baby from being terminated. I am very sorry for her (and for her husband).
Here is a story about New York City moms suing the makers of a baby sex test that apparently gave them wrong results despite being advertised as “infallibly accurate”. I’m reading it, rolling my eyes all the way to my shoulder blades, thinking about how crazy this world is that people would sue because of something like that. Aren’t there more important things, like your baby being healthy, to worry about?
And then, lo! I had a look at the comments. Full of good old common sense they were. What a relief! I especially like this one:
Corinne
The fact that they paid $275 for these tests actually says a lot about these ladies!!!
Go read them if you’re in need of a smile.
And no, I don’t mean drug-free. I just mean this:
Leaders of Canada’s pregnancy specialists are urging doctors not to induce labour unless there are compelling medical reasons.
The call is part of a campaign to “normalize” childbirth and efforts to reduce Canada’s soaring cesarean section rate. Some studies suggest inducing labour in a first-time mother significantly increases her risk of a C-section.
It’s great to have modern drugs and medicine at one’s disposal. But it can be taken too far. I’m not much of an expert, but I always thought babies came when they were ready and that nothing could really get them going before their time (as any 40-week-pregnant woman can tell you). Forcing Mother Nature’s hand may sometimes be the best, or least worst, option available. But doing it routinely just for convenience’s sake can’t be a good thing.
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Rebecca adds: In normal cases, though, a C-section is riskier for mother and baby than a vaginal birth, with or without medication. I really see this as an issue of how we frame childbirth, what we believe about women’s bodies, and once again, the illusion that we can control everything.
When something goes wrong after an intervention, the assumption seems to be that the intervention was necessary and carried some risk, whereas when something goes wrong with no intervention, the assumption is that an intervention would have fixed it. In urban Brazilian hospitals C-section rates are around 80%. There is no question that the great majority of these are not medically indicated, and that a large number of these women and children suffer avoidable problems.
The fact that so many women and doctors opt for C-sections when, by any rational medical standard, the risks outweigh the benefits, is a serious problem.
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Véronique adds: I love those professional associations’ statements. They have such an ability to state the obvious. The problem with the medicalization of childbirth is not that interventions are performed for no good reason but that women and their caregivers really think they have a good reason even when they do not. And who will challenge them? My last labour – baby is 3 ½ months – was induced because labour didn’t start spontaneously after the membranes ruptured. What I found difficult to accept was that labour had to be induced right away. Surely, they could give me a couple of hours? It’s not like my body had never done this before, right? Not only that but 9 years ago, when I had another pre-labour rupture, they – the medical practice guidelines – gave me 18 hours to deliver safely after the rupture. But there’s nothing like a couple of aptly quoted statistics on transmission levels of nasty group B strep to get an expecting mother – and fathers are probably worst – going medical.
The same goes for levels of c-sections. Yes, there is increasing momentum for c-sections on maternal request — a topic I have published on in 2007 – but those c-sections are still marginal compared to the “medically needed” ones. When you start scratching a little however, you see that while most c-sections are medically needed, the need is often created by other medical interventions such as inductions, epidurals, continuous fetal monitoring or non-physiological position (i.e. lying on your back as opposed to letting gravity be your friend). That’s one side of the c-section epidemic. The other side is increasing maternal age causing complications (things the women’s liberators didn’t tell you), increasing rates of medically assisted reproduction (or what I call “Your body didn’t really think it could handle it…”) causing complications such as multiple gestations and premature childbirth and increasing maternal girth causing blood-pressure and diabetes-related complications.
I had five natural drug-free deliveries – including one breech birth and 3 homebirths – and one induced but otherwise drug-free delivery. I should have had drugs the last time. But despite the complications, the pain, and the fact that I always promise myself never to do this again, childbirth remains the most empowering of experiences.
The march for progress continues:
Ontario parents of 4- and 5-year-olds should be able to leave their children at school from 7:30 in the morning to 6 p.m. as part of sweeping changes bringing daycare and kindergarten under one roof, the Star has learned.
A long-awaited report by Charles Pascal on full-day learning, to be released tomorrow, calls for a massive shakeup in children’s services that would see the Ministry of Education take full responsibility for learning from birth to young adulthood, sources say.
For families, it would mark the beginning of the so-called “seamless day,” where parents drop off and pick up their children in one location; kids then spend the day in one building, their school, instead of being ferried back and forth between class and child care. Research has shown that especially for younger children, the fewer transitions, the better.
How perfectly ghastly. This isn’t about what’s best for the kids. It’s about what’s more convenient to adults. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
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Andrea adds: Probably has a whole lot to do with what’s beneficial for the Ministry of Education, too. Declining demographics means they have fewer students–schools are closing. How better to expand than to get themselves into the costly and time-consuming daycare business?
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Rebecca says: “A long-awaited report by Charles Pascal on full-day learning, …” Oh for heaven’s sake. Support or oppose this notion (and I think it’s dreadful) can we at least please acknowledge that it’s day-long daycare, and nothing to do with education? If we talk like Orwell’s characters, the terrorists have won.
Did we remind you to buy a t-shirt lately? Guaranteed to make an impact and get you noticed on that fashionable patio.
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Andrea adds: I was out walking with a friend the other day, and she was wearing her PET-P shirt. And a woman jogged by and said “Nice shirt!” No word of a lie.
When we write the biography of ProWomanProLife (and why shouldn’t we?), my part will read something like: “I wasn’t wild about abortion, but I’d never really felt like joining the usual pro-life groups. I found them either too religious or too preachy or too shrill or all of the above. But when Andrea asked me to join a group devoted to trying to change the culture – trying to end abortion by influencing the culture in a way that would make demand for abortion dwindle without resorting to legal threats and harsh punishment – now that was different.”
That was the one thing that made me join and want to help launch this website. The idea that we could end abortion by choice. Now other people are doing something similar, and – hooray! – the mainstream media is starting to pay attention. I knew Andrea was onto something…
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Andrea adds: The headline of that article made me laugh. (“Born again”). There is a small mistake, though, insofar as the ProWomanProLife slogan is attributed to Signal Hill. Anyways, I’m hopeful with all these groups working hard, even including those who want to change the law, that we’ll see some change.
Your funny video for today.
We may never find out what happened or why. Read the story and shake with horror like I did. Then remind yourself that it is not a crime in this country to kill a viable child who isn’t born yet and throw the remains in the garbage.
The woman who is charged with concealing the bodies of three babies in a London, Ont. basement is believed to be their mother, reports say.
According to a charge sheet filed by police in court, investigators estimate the infants died in the years 2001, 2002 and 2006.
Jennifer Sinn, 32, faces three counts each of concealing the body of a child and offering an indignity to a dead human body. Court documents reportedly identify the woman as the babies’ alleged mother.
The remains were found on Saturday by the woman’s boyfriend, who told neighbours he found bloody blankets in a box in the basement.
He also said his girlfriend had been carrying around the boxes for two years, neighbours said.
Great column in today’s Post, about the dangers of induced abortion, especially with regards to premature birth in subsequent pregnancies and the risks associated with that:
Given the accessibility of these studies to abortion providers, if I were the mother of a post-IA, PTB [preterm birth] infant or toddler with autism or cerebral palsy, and had not been informed as a matter of regulatory course of IA’s [induced abortion] risk for a future PTB, I’d be angry. Litigiously so.
Perhaps it’s time we stepped back from the ideological “whether” of abortion, and introduced the evidence-based “whither” of abortion into the national discussion. As an ice-breaker, we might begin at legal abortion’s beginning by asking why, uniquely amongst surgical interventions, suction abortion — the most common method — has never been animal-tested, a clear violation of the Nuremberg Code for research ethics in human experimentation.
Abortion on demand: empowerment — or bamboozlement — of women?
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Andrea adds: Oh that Barbara Kay–if only she would stop engaging in pro-life fear mongering. As we all know abortion is the safest procedure one could ever get!
Seriously though, people involved in the pro-choice movement genuinely believe this “abortion is safe” sentiment to be true. Ie. they are not informed, so they can’t possibly offer information to women seeking advice. I’m going to sound a lot like a feminist when I say this, but women’s health really has been so substantially politicized in this regard that one can’t get simple answers. The pro-choice people–those who meet face to face in the clinics with women getting abortions aren’t aware of the body of literature and view any awareness as a pro-life conspiracy. The other point is that abortion and any health effects on women is a substantially under-researched topic. We’ll never know when and how complications exist if we don’t connect the dots between a visit to a private abortion clinic and subsequent trips to the hospital. It’s really quite devastating when you think about it.
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Rebecca adds: I am not so sure that workers in abortion clinics – the doctors performing them, the counsellors advising about them – don’t know about these studies. I have had conversations to this effect with people who’ve filled these roles and others in the elective abortion business, and none of them are dumb, or fail to stay current on the research.
They tend to take one (or more) of three attitudes toward this work.
1) “The research is based upon faulty premises, or carried out in poor faith, since the researchers clearly have “an agenda”. This is nonsense; clear methodology discloses what the premises of a study are, and if it’s a solid approach to sound data, the intention of the researchers is irrelevant. But there is lots of evidence of people choosing to believe nonsense when it backs up their position.
2) “Women are in acute distress when they seek abortions. They know that all medical procedures carry some risk, just as all medications do, and belabouring this point to women in distress is a disservice to them.” This runs contrary to accepted practice in every other aspect of medicine. Short of an emergent life-or-death crisis, informed consent must always be obtained before any treatment is carried out.
The fact that this isn’t always followed scrupulously, and that far too little counselling about the risks and benefits of routine treatment is provided, doesn’t excuse failing to inform women seeking abortions of the demonstrable medical consequences of that choice.
3) “Women are in acute distress when the seek abortions, and don’t need or want to know if there is a long term cost to the short term cure they so desperately want.” It hardly needs to be said that, were this attitude taken toward women seeking any other form of elective or urgent surgery, it would (rightly) be decried as sexist, patriarchal and offensive.
Apparently, I need it to be the perfect Bond Girl. Well, I also need a few other things, like turning 26 again, but, um, why ruin an otherwise perfect Sunday morning? After all, I do have longish dark hair and I can talk Southron some…
Academics who set out to discover what makes the ideal Bond girl found that apart from having long dark hair, she is likely to have an American accent – and to carry a weapon.
[…]
Their report says: “The women of Bond are eternally attractive. Their typically slender body type … is unchanged over time.
“The women of Bond continue to be portrayed in a rather limited and sex-stereotyped manner. The ultimate penalty for a woman in a Bond film – death – seems to accrue from promiscuity and daring to threaten the ultimate iconic masculine hero, James Bond.
“This study provides further evidence of the continued sexualisation, marginalisation, and disposability of women within Bond films. The Bond films glorify the sometimes chauvinistic persona of Bond.
Whadayamean, sometimes chauvinistic? It’s not like we hadn’t noticed, you know? Bond is Bond, and those of us who like him like him anyway, so there.