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Worrying about a vaccine

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I am no medical specialist. But something about the rush with which some people are intent on giving Gardasil to every young girl bothers me. I’m all for trying to prevent cervical cancer, but not at any price. Stories like this one should, I think, warrant more than a casual shrug and mild assurances that trying to avoid cervical cancer outweighs adverse reactions.

THE new cervical cancer jab is believed to be behind a huge jump in the number of women and girls suffering bad reactions to vaccinations .

The first annual vaccination statistics for New South Wales to include Gardasil reveal a 1600 per cent surge in reported adverse side-effects among young females who were immunised last year.

These include allergic reactions, collapsing, dizziness, nausea and unexplained illnesses.

New female cases pushed the total adverse reactions to immunisations last year to the highest on record. NSW Health says it is monitoring the situation closely, but said the results did not outweigh the benefits of the vaccination program.

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Most of the adverse reactions were recorded by nurses during school-based immunisations and none were life-threatening, he said. NSW Public Health data reveals that there were 224 official reports of adverse events linked to immunisation last year — 133 of which were in females aged between five and 24.

In comparison, there were only 70 in total the previous year, with just eight recorded in young females. This is a 1662.5 per cent rise in reactions among young women. The statistics do not break down which vaccinations cause the side-effects. But nationally, there have been 1013 reports of adverse side-effects from Gardasil from doctors, parents and patients to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

But the real number of reactions may be significantly higher, according to Women’s Forum Australia director and health researcher Melinda Tankard Reist. She said: “I am not surprised that there has been an increase in reported reactions.

“Most adverse reactions are never reported so you have to multiply it by many times (to get the real figure).

As I say, I’m no medical specialist. And while I do on the whole resist unncessary medical procedures, I am not an anti-vaccine crank. But I don’t like these stories, and I sure wouldn’t like to be one of the girls testing this vaccine, or have a daughter of that age and seeing her experience adverse reactions after receiving that shot.

Hey, I thought ‘controversial’ wasn’t an obstacle…

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From today’s Ottawa Citizen:

[Margaret] Somerville is not a member of the Order of Canada. A nomination submitted a few years ago by Anglican minister and preaching professor Carol Finlay was unsuccessful. Ms. Finlay was told it was because Ms. Somerville was too controversial.

Or, as Andrew Coyne pointed out a few days ago about the idea that controversial or divisive figures should not necessarily be banned from receiving civilian honours:

I would have more sympathy with the argument if it ever applied in the opposite direction. But it never – ever – does. A figure as controversial as Morgentaler, but of the opposite convictions would, if he were not behind bars, be shunned by all of the organs of polite society.
This is not confined only to the abortion issue. It applies across the board. The arbiters of orthodoxy are not content with perpetually skewing every debate to one side. It is necessary also to pretend, wherever possible, that only one side exists.
Thus, for example, a Rosalie Abella of the right, should one exist, would have no hope of ever being appointed to the Supreme Court. The chorus that would rise up against such a “divisive” debate would be made up of exactly the same people who burbled contentedly at her appointment, and quite unaware of the irony.
I say this as someone who subscribes to many parts of the orthodoxy. But the smugness of it, the heedless insensitivity to other points of view, can be a little hard to take.

A fence-sitter writes…

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Gazette columnist Henry Aubin should not be counted among the tiny minority of Canadians who want to make all abortions illegal. Yet he is offended by the Morgentaler award.

Columnists are supposed to have strong opinions, but on the abortion issue I’ve been on the fence. The arguments on both sides of the question have left me torn.

As I see it, it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for women, many of them in trying personal situations, who seek abortions. As well, it’s impossible to wish to outlaw abortions when that would mean returning to their back-alley substitute, with all its inherent health risks.

Still, it’s impossible to ignore that the fetus is an incipient human being. And it’s impossible to shrug off the time-honoured view that human life is sacred.

So call me confused.

On the Morgentaler’s membership in the Order of Canada. however, I feel no ambivalence whatever.

The membership of the abortion-rights crusader, announced Tuesday, is not only an affront to his pro-life adversaries, it’s also offensive to a middle-ground type like myself.

How many more like him, I wonder?

For the record…

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Listening to CFRA, where Andrea is about to be interviewed again (that’s twice this morning), and Judy Rebick is on saying that the people speaking out against the appointment of Dr. Morgentaler to the Order of Canada are the small minority who want abortion illegal in all cases. Well, just so we all know, there are some people who do NOT wish to make abortion illegal in all cases who STILL object to honouring Dr. Morgentaler. I am one of them, and so is Andrea. Anybody else?

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Tanya adds: Brigitte, I’d have to answer that 70 to 80 per cent of Canadians may feel that way, too.

If Morgentaler cared so deeply about the legality of abortion, should he not have stuck around long enough to see an actual law be enacted in our country? Here we are, the only civilized country in the world to have no law regulation abortion, and he’s being honoured for it. For Pete’s sake, a woman may legally get an abortion later on in pregnancy than he is morally willing to perform one.

70 to 80 per cent of Canadians feel we need some sort of law (in the very least, to prevent very late term abortions). I’ve never seen him lobby for a law…and he’s had 20 years to do it. Unless Canada likes to honour people who do things halfway…

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Patricia adds: I’m trying hard to fight off complete despair for my country as a result of yesterday’s news. But it’s hard work.

The best spin I can put on it is as follows: why the push to honour this man now and why bestow the “honour” in such an underhanded manner?

Now, it may be that our elites are so used to dealing with a complacent and supine population that they figure they can do pretty much anything they want, particularly on a long weekend in July. From human rights tribunals to the Advisory Board of the Order of Canada, Canada’s elites are still counting on the fact that they can tell Canadians what to think and what to say; the fact that 300,000 people voted against conferring such an “honour” on Morgentaler as recently as February, with a laughable 26,000 in favour, matters not a whit to their view. Thanks for your input, Canada, but we’ll decide who was on the side of the angels on this issue and who isn’t, who is a hero and who isn’t.

Think about that: 300,000 people participating in an online poll. I wonder what other online poll on this country has attracted such numbers and such a disproportionate response.

I’m sure that some of the cloak and dagger theatrics of this weekend will be attributed to the security issues posed by all those “radical pro-life terrorist assassins” out there.

But (and here is the meagre shred of hope that I mentioned above), I don’t really think that anyone will buys that ruse. So the questions remain: why now, why the deviation from the usual process and why the secrecy. Did they realize that this was the only way they could pull it off, even in complacent old Canada? Is it just possible that they’re feeling that their moment is over; their movement is as old as “Dr” Morgentaler himself.

And for the record, I am against abortion in all circumstances. The usual “humane” exceptions don’t make sense to me. Abortions for reasons of “serious genetic conditions” (i.e., of the disabled because they’re disabled) horrify me. And if we argue that abortion is an assault on women as well as the unborn, then how do we justify offering it to the victim of rape and incest? Is it supposed to be part of their “recovery”?

They didn’t go out of their way to publicize it…

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The Canadian Human Rights commission has quietly dismissed the case against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s. That’s semi good news. As Ezra points out:

… the sooner they can get the public scrutiny to go away, the sooner they can go about prosecuting their less well-heeled targets, people who can’t afford Canada’s best lawyers and command the attention and affection of the country’s literati.

What we need to is to shut down all institutions of thought-control in this country, period. There’s nothing like free and open debate to sort out truth from falseness, and good from evil.

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Andrea adds: And that’s the truth of it–the HRCs can now go and target the little guys with the wrong opinions. Some day that might be us. And that’s just fine by me seeing as a lawsuit against me means someone could come into possession of a very fine hybrid bicycle. I ponder the limitations on freedom of speech often enough. Just recently had a conversation with a well-read individual in a position of power who declared one of the most tumultuous and ongoing debates of our time (over the definition of marriage) to be a “closed question.” I’ll not get into details here, but that’s another way to stymie free speech–to declare unpopular debates closed and decided.

Try this for really crazy

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Stuff I wish I’d made up:

Saudi marriage officiant Dr. Ahmad al-Mu’bi told Lebanese television viewers last week that it’s permissible for girls as young as 1 to marry — as long as sex is postponed.

Al-Mu’bi’s remarkable comments also included an explanation that “there is no minimal age for entering marriage.”

“You can have a marriage contract even with a 1-year-old girl, not to mention a girl of 9, 7 or 8,” he said. “But is the girl ready for sex or not?” What is the appropriate age for sex for the first time? This varies according to environment and tradition,” al-Mu’bi said.

Actually, crazy may not be the best word to describe this nonsense… And these are the same clowns who call the West decadent?

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Tanya thinks he’s crazy, too: Marriage in Islam is considered a covenant, or “mithaq.” And a covenant “requires the total commitment and awareness of each party.”

“Muslim religions approve of arranged marriages as long as mutual consent exists. By definition, therefore, Muslim marriages are a voluntary and willing union of two people. Without the consent of both parties, the marriage is not valid.”

How can a one-year-old knowingly consent to anything? What a joke!

So maybe you wish you’d made it up, Brigitte, but this guy, this Dr. Ahmad al-Mu’bi guy, beat you to it. I’m sure he has many Muslims up in arms, too.

We’re all pro-choice now: discuss

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That’s what they seem to claim here:

An overwhelming majority of Canadians continue to support women’s right to abort pregnancies, but a recent national survey found the country is split when asked who should foot the bill.

The online Angus-Reid poll — conducted June 4 and 5 of 1,000 adult Canadians — found 91% of respondents supported abortions under certain circumstances, and only 5% would outlaw it altogether.

There are more details on the way poll results are distributed if you follow the link. You decide whether support for abortion is somewhat inflated in the story. (Hello? I’m anti-abortion but would not count myself in the 5% who “would outlaw it altogether”, am I to be tabulated as “pro-choice” regardless of what I believe simply because I wouldn’t outlaw abortion altogether?) What I find particularly interesting is the comment by Carolyn Egan, of the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics:

Canada is very solidly a pro-choice country. There is no doubt about that,” she told the Sun yesterday. “I think there is a minority in this country who feel abortion is wrong … but I think we’re moving beyond (the debate).”

If that were as true as she claims, why would so many pro-choice activists be so shrill so much of the time?

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Tanya adds:

Also, denying those women publicly funded abortions would force them to either go through a pregnancy they aren’t prepared for, or look for illegal abortion sources, she said.”

 

The US has a similar per-capita abortion rate as Canada does, and last time I checked, they don’t have publicly funded abortions. They do, however, have privately funded abortions, which would likely happen here through collective insurance.

 

All that aside, I’m amazed at how often pro-choice advocates like Egan bring up the issue of illegal abortions. They’re all about keeping visions of coat hangers dancing in everyone’s head. I dare say this is a ridiculous argument, and I’m calling it out as a scare tactic. There, I said it.

 

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Andrea adds: Well then. That does it. This here debate is clearly closed. Over. An Old Question, one not worth discussing. We’ve moved on. Everyone thinks abortion is OK. (Sometimes when people have to repeat themselves over and over, and strenuously, one wonders if they are protesting too much.)

I liked Juno too

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But this is ridiculous:

As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there’s been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, “some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head.

I’ve heard about this before; girls so desperate for real love they are ready to do just about anything, including jeopardizing their future by having a child WAY too early. Yes, I said jeopardizing.

Look: I’m pro-life (or at least, anti-abortion), which means I prefer women and girls keep their babies even if it means giving them up for adoption. It’s not the babies’ fault their moms goofed, and once they’re conceived and growing, they’re human and as such they deserve a chance. But I would NEVER go so far as suggest a woman or a girl have a baby before she’s ready for that kind of commitment. That’s just crazy.

And here as in so many other cases, I blame the parents. What a wretched job some of them do – come on, people, can’t you see your children are crying for love and attention? Are you too wrapped up in your own selfish concerns to notice?

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Tanya adds: One thing that left me torn here was how the high school was handling the rising teen pregnancy rate.

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. “We’re proud to help the mothers stay in school,” says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.”

I’m all for these programs, and yet maybe not. Not to the degree where it would encourage young girls to get pregnant, facing single motherhood, and while still in high school no less.

The flip side of this scenario is kicking girls out of high school if they are pregnant. That’s how poorly they handled it in my day, not so long ago.

Some balance in this area would be essential. Maybe we could start at the University level, since very little is done to accommodate motherhood on Canadian campuses. There’s a great pro-active project for all the campus pro-life groups out there.

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Rebecca adds: I share your reservations, Tanya. On the one hand, kicking pregnant girls out of school, or otherwise making it less likely that they’ll finish high school and move on, hardly serves their children, who are already a reality by the time schools find out teens are pregnant. On the other, lessening a taboo lowers the social cost of an act, and the lower the cost, the more people engage in it.

How about a separate school for teenage mothers (and fathers, for that matter, if they are still school age and involved with raising their children)? Such a school could provide daycare on site, to help get young mothers to finish high school (and keep nursing if they do, which is pretty much impossible if the children spend the workweek far from their mothers), and could also provide some guidance about parenting, infant nutrition, and so on. But it would differentiate these young mothers from their classmates, which isn’t entirely a bad thing: like it or not, by becoming mothers, they have left a portion of their childhood behind, and it serves nobody to pretend this isn’t so. And it would perhaps lead fewer of their peers to think that teen motherhood is easy or desireable.

If you didn’t like C-484…

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You sure won’t like this:

OTTAWA, June 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the Quebec government prepares to present a bill to the National Assembly that seeks to end the practice of hospitals treating fetuses under 500 grams as biomedical waste, Ontario is, according to an as-yet unconfirmed report, gearing up for a newly instituted “Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day”, which will take place annually on October 15. The October 15 Awareness Day is already recognized nationally in the United States, but will be a new innovation for Canada if the tip received by LifeSiteNews.com is well-founded.

As reported by Cyberpresse.ca, Quebec’s Department of Health and Social Services intends on tabling a bill before the National Assembly as early as September.  The department’s action will amend the law concerning hospital funeral practices for fetuses under 500 grams.

Currently, most hospitals dispose of such fetuses by incinerating them along with other waste tissues. The government initiative, however, seeks to propagate a practice that is becoming more popular in several Quebec Hospitals.

The hospital-Pierre Boucher in Longueuil, has a funeral director incinerate all fetuses, including embryos, and place them in an urn in a columbarium.

Likewise, the Hospital Sainte-Justine, pending ratification by its board of director, has recently revised its policy on the matter, electing to direct all “identifiable fetuses” to the Mont-Royal cemetery, regardless of weight or length of life.

Losing a child before he or she is born is traumatic enough without finding out weeks or months later that the remains of said child had been thrown out with the trash without the parents’ knowledge or permission. I don’t know how anybody could object to proposals that would put an end to such a harsh practice without sounding extraordinary callous, but I’m sure some will try anyway.

I am woman, watch me spend?

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OK. So I’m not a tax expert, despite having aced fiscal in law school. I pay professionals to do my taxes, in part because they do it way better than I could but also because life is too short to clutter up your brain with such regulations, unless you’re going to make a career out of it. While I’m willing to believe there are measures in the various tax systems that may be unfair to men or women because of their gender (the way, for instance, one-income families are disadvantaged compared to two-income families, as Jack Mintz explained here), I have a lot of trouble believing Canadian tax laws are so inherently unfair to women as to require special, broad-based and forceful action instead of a few tweaks here and there as needed.

So when I see newspaper articles like this one, I shake my little head in dismayed protest.

OTTAWA – Canadian women will be at a disadvantage until federal taxing and spending decisions are made to advance women’s equality, a parliamentary committee concludes in a new report.

The committee on the status of women unanimously recommends forcing the government’s hand on the issue by requiring the Finance Department to publish a separate analysis on how the measures contained in all future budgets will affect men and women.

A majority on the committee — all opposition MPs — also recommends passing legislation by next April to enshrine in law the gender-based budgeting obligations of federal departments and agencies; and the appointment by December, 2009, of a commissioner for gender equality, which would be modelled along the lines of the commissioner of official languages, to audit and analyze government behaviour.

Gender-based budgeting obligations? Does anybody even know what those might be? And, er, aren’t elections already supposed to be audits of government behaviour?

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