Research proves pregnant woman are forgetful. Why, anything on their minds?

A group of researchers from Australia and New Zealand have proven the long-held stereotype that pregnant women are forgetful is true. The memory tests involved 30 women in their first trimester, another 30 in their third trimester and 30 women who were not pregnant. While no change was found in measurements of the pregnant women’s visuospatial memory—they performed worse when measuring their auditory memory. Pregnant women scored an average of 10 points lower than those who weren’t pregnant for a combined memory score. Researchers say the findings are important because clinicians need to be aware that information given to pregnant women orally may not be retained as well as written information.

A heart-wrenching story in today’s Citizen:

Re: My vigil at abortion clinic is to help women not end a life, March 26.

I wish someone had been standing across street from the abortion clinic on that gloomy day in 1980s, offering an alternative. Perhaps, my girlfriend and I would have changed our minds about the worst mistake of our lives.

I had a successful movie acting career and my girlfriend was a medical doctor. She was on the pill but it failed and she became pregnant. We decided together not to keep our baby because our careers were beginning.

I thought I was being a responsible and loyal boyfriend for helping pay for the abortion and going to the clinic with her. I sat in the waiting room, hoping to escape the responsibility of being a father. She came out of the operating room a changed person and tumbled into an intense depression. No amount of medical training could have prepared her for what she experienced on that operating table.

I was also devastated and tried to avoid the pain by overwork and addiction. Like many couples who have abortions, we broke up.

I lost the two things I tried to protect with the abortion — our relationship and my career. But most importantly we lost our precious child, who would now be 25 years old, and the pain is still with me. Abortion affects men, too.

David MacDonald, Ottawa

It must have taken a lot of guts to write this letter and send it for publication. I hope it will help change the minds of other people who may now be in a similar situation.

Leonard Stern writes about us.

________________________

Andrea adds: Hmmmm. I may have to up the ante:

Last year, a new voice emerged — a curious voice, because it is distinctly female but at the same time willing to express discomfort with abortion.

“Willing to express discomfort”? More like a complete and total emotional, intellectual and spiritual rejection of abortion, because we don’t kill to solve our problems and then pretend they serve the grander purpose of women’s rights. Anyhoo. Bygones. I’m glad to get the press, and to see people taking this topic on.

_______________________

Tanya’s trying to believe the best about people: I think Stern thinks he’s doing us a favour.  He’s sketching us as open-minded, moderate, secular, intellectual women.  If the blog gets more hits over the weekend, we’ll know why!

_______________________

Rebecca recalls that any publicity is good publicity: Nonetheless, there is a distinctly patronizing flavour to the column, which is built on some rather, shall we say, outdated perceptions. The pro-life movement is mostly led by Christian fundamentalist men? (And, abortion advocates are all women? A significant current in the abortion movement is the fact that abortion cuts the links between men’s sexual activity and its consequences.) Pro-life women are “church ladies”? I don’t know if that was even true in the 1970s, but it’s certainly not the case now.

I have yet to meet a pro-lifer who wants to put women who have abortions in jail. The number I have met who think abortionists should be jailed I can count on both hands. Rather, the vast majority see abortion as something that destroys an innocent baby, while also harming the mother, and on a broader basis contributing to a culture of death. It’s a moral, cultural and philosophical problem inextricably tied to our views about sexuality, motherhood and marriage – it’s not a criminal problem, like drunk driving, to be solved by ramped up penalties and fervent prosecution.

Religious Jews have long taken the kind of nuanced position that Stern suggests is a strange new hybrid surfacing for the first time today. (And as with lots of aspects of Jewish law, “long” is measured in centuries, not in years.) Abortion, in Jewish law, cannot be banned full stop, because when the pregnancy constitutes a mortal threat to the mother, we are obliged to put the life of the mother before the life of the unborn child. (Note that this refers to mortal danger, not mental duress, or even minor physical harm.) At the same time, halacha recognizes that a fetus is a developing human, in the image of God, and therefore sacred, and not to be harmed for any reasons but the most dire.

(Disclaimer: I am not a rabbi, some individual rabbis dissent about the permissibility of abortion in the first 40 days of pregnancy, and rabbinical positions on oral contraceptives, the morning after pill, IVF and the treatment of embryos vary widely.)

Hey! Spring is here! (“Here” being Ottawa, where I sit.) This is the first really nice weekend of the year and I am SO ready for it… Thoughts turn to t-shirts (don’t forget to buy yours), running shoes, sunshine and flower pots. Nice change, isn’t it?

___________________

Andrea asks: Buying flowers–but did you buy the chick too? Because if so, I’m on my way over. The last bit of snow from the five foot pile in front of my house is gone now, too. Things are indeed looking up.

___________________

Tanya says: I still have a sad, gray pile of snow on my front yard. I think I shall indeed be one of those weirdos to shovel it onto the street this weekend.
Then I’ll take my daughter outside, barelegged, and snap her annual Easter photos. We always like to involve our pet bunny. But a chick would do nicely, too…

But we did! We heard from enough guys who said they, too, would like a People for the Ethical Treatment of People t-shirt so we made one. Same price ($25, which includes all applicable taxes and shipping anywhere in Canada or the United States), same logo, different colour. And yes, girls are allowed to wear that one, too.

Pre-order yours today. Orders are expected to ship around April 5.

We will never – EVER – do anything as crazy as this. That’s a promise.

The founder of the world’s largest animal rights organization wants to give Canada’s parliamentarians an earful, in a bizarre online will.

Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said that upon her death, she wants one of her ears “removed, mounted” and sent to Ottawa to help the government “in hearing, for the first time perhaps, the screams of the seals, bears, raccoons, foxes and minks bludgeoned, trapped and sometimes skinned alive for their pelts.”

_______________________

Andrea adds: You know, there are moments when people give animal rights activists more sympathy than human rights (pro-life) activists, hence People for the Ethical Treatment of People (buy a shirt).

This is not one of them. That’s just disturbed, and I’m quite sure most will view it that way.

_______________________

Rebecca says: You know, I completely agree that cruelty to animals is wrong. One of the theories about the laws of kosher food is that the complicated rules mandate humane slaughter and make us aware that, even as we consume meat, we have to remember it came from a living animal. Jewish law emphasizes animal rights in other ways – meat that is hunted is never kosher, because we’re not meant to take pleasure in killing animals. (Note: I’m not anti-hunting. NRA enthusiasts, please keep your fan mail to yourselves.) And one of the things that is permitted on the Sabbath, when almost any form of work is forbidden, is feeding livestock and caring for them.

But the solution to the very real cruelty to animals that does go on is NOT to treat human life as cheaply as animal life. That’s what Newkirk is trying to convey, but the effect of saying “a dog is a rat is a boy” is to demean humans, not uplift animals. This also applies to PETA’s offensive KFC/Holocaust ads.

We can’t really be considered dangerous for opposing abortion, right?

If you’re an anti-abortion activist, or if you display political paraphernalia supporting a third-party candidate or a certain Republican member of Congress, if you possess subversive literature, you very well might be a member of a domestic paramilitary group.

That’s according to “The Modern Militia Movement,” a report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), a government collective that identifies the warning signs of potential domestic terrorists for law enforcement communities.

________________________

Tanya adds: It just goes to show how very elite the pro-choice stance really is.  Pro-life?  Possible terrorist.  But if you’re pro-choice you’re a real patriot.  (When are they putting out those propaganda videos?)

_________________________

Rebecca adds: To me this illustrates the accelerating (thank you Mr. Obama) trend toward vilifying those with whom you disagree.  In a healthy democracy, people recognize that men and women of good will may reach different conclusions, and can respect that, even as they disagree.  If we can’t distinguish between “this is a thoughtful person whose values differ from and and with whom I disagree” and “this personal is evil and dangerous,” we’re in a very bad place, as a civilization.  And while there are pro-life people who see the world in Manichean terms, the “if you’re not with us, you’re evil” worldview shows up way more often in pro-choice, feminist, and secular liberal circles more generally, in my experience, than on the right.

________________________

Tanya updates: Reassigned?  Love that terminology.

Hitting it on the nail:

ANGOLA, March 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an address to the civil authorities of Angola on the last day of his trip to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI noted the “bitter irony” that, in the light of the “the crushing yoke of discrimination that women and girls so often endure,” including “unspeakable” sexual violence, abortion should be presented as a solution by international “human rights” groups.

“How bitter the irony of those who promote abortion as a form of ‘maternal’ healthcare!” the pope said. “How disconcerting the claim that the termination of life is a matter of reproductive health!” Pope Benedict said.

I’ll say.

______________________

Andrea adds: And let’s be honest, it helps when non-Catholics stand up and say he is absolutely right. So let me add my voice of agreement to Brigitte’s!

______________________

Tanya says: Make that 3 non-Catholics agreeing with the Pope right here. Very well said, indeed.