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Lobbyists pushing for commercialization of assisted reproduction

January 4, 2018 by Faye Sonier Leave a Comment

There’s a lobbying push on right now to repeal the criminal sanctions of our already stripped down Assisted Human Reproduction Act. Years ago, Canada was declared as having the gold standard of legislation on reproductive technologies. Our Act was stripped down in 2010 with the Reference to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act at the Supreme Court. No more bragging rights.

There are many ethical considerations involved with assisted reproduction that deserve careful consideration. When I see private corporations lobbying for the purpose of commercialization, I get nervous. Even an ethicist at Dalhousie is clarifying that the lobbying campaign may be misleading in its advocacy efforts:

 

Françoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University, agrees that the lack of clarity is a huge concern. But she argues the law can be clarified without getting rid of the criminal sanctions, and Health Canada is conducting consultations to do exactly that. Baylis thinks the real issue for the protesters, despite what they say, is that there is a prohibition on payment, which they want overturned. “They use catchy phrases, but if you unpack them, they are not based in reality,” she says. She is referring to one of the campaign’s slogans — “surrogacy is not a crime” —  pointing out that it isn’t.

And the MP  spearheading these efforts leaves us with this quote:

Anthony Housefather, Liberal MP for the riding of Mount Royal, who supports the lobbying, has made no secret of his desire to see assisted reproduction decriminalized and even commercialized. […] And he isn’t troubled by the prospect of the law being lost altogether. “The abortion law was struck down and not replaced,” he says. “It was no tragedy.”

He should conceded that our status quo has in fact led to tragedy. Due our lack of legislation, in Canada, we know that coerced abortions, sex-selection abortions, and late term abortions, have taken place.  These occurrences should make even the most ardent pro-choicer pause and consider whether being the only Western nation in the world without abortion legislation is “no tragedy.” We aren’t exactly skipping, carefree, through sunny fields on this topic. There are real and life-ending consequences as a result of our legislative void.

Marigold

I hope Housefather’s position for supporting the decriminalization of AHRA sanctions is more carefully considered.

All that to say, if a private members bill is introduced to address the AHRA, as Housefather suggests, I hope we seize that opportunity to have a careful and nuanced discussion about the ethical considerations engaged.

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Reproductive Technologies

Sad celebration of abortion

December 13, 2016 by Faye Sonier Leave a Comment

Celopharma Inc., the drug company bringing Ru-486 into Canada sent out a celebratory press release this week about the drug being available in Canada as of the end of January 2017.

Company President Paula Tenenbaum was quoted as saying “indeed, this is a significant day that promises to improve the lives of Canadian women. By providing a new healthcare option, this medication expands the choices available to women across the country who need early termination of their pregnancy”.

Paula, you do know that for the pregnancy to end, this beauty, at 7 1/2 weeks, has to first be “terminated”, right?

What a sad day, Paula. What a sad day.

PS. Let’s not forget the women who have suffered and died because of these types of drugs.

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts

Making decisions in the midst of the storm

September 26, 2016 by Faye Sonier 4 Comments

Rather, the title of this post should be “making life-changing decisions in the midst of the storm”, but Andrea prefers short titles over long ones, so there we have it.

We may occasionally find ourselves in the middle of a crisis or in turmoil, and we have to make a decision that will likely alter the course of our life. The decision needs to be made and it needs to be made now, for whatever reasons, and there is no other option.

But I’ve found in many cases, the decision can wait, and it’s often best to sit on things for a time to really consider all possibilities. Being someone who hates uncertainty, I have a near primal need to make a decision to just get over with it. Thankfully, I’ve learned from a few mistakes, and now force myself to step away from my laptop and put down my phone in order to wait for the crisis to pass, and to gain a bit of perspective.

Other times, if waiting for the immediate storm to pass isn’t an option, we can gain perspective from others  who have faced what we are currently facing, and who have come out the other side.

And that’s what Veronique Bergeron, a fellow PWPL blogger, offers in this post at her family/motherhood blog.

In her most recent blog, she writes about how many of us make decisions about our family size when we’re in the trenches of parenting young ones. We’re exhausted from sleepless nights, diaper changes, and wondering if we’ll ever eat a hot meal again. Here’s what she has to say about that:

These two conversations had a profound impact on me. On my perspective on having children and making family-centered decisions. It taught me that (1) none of us gets another kick at the can once our fertile years are behind us and once our kids are grown; and (2) that raising young children is the grunt work of parenting, the tiling of the field from which the harvest will later come forth. It’s a use-it-or-lose-it proposition: we don’t get to pour the time, care and affection we didn’t pour into our children once they are grown and we don’t get to have more children once we are older and lonelier. The blessings of children are not the sleepless nights, the bum-wipings and the ear-piercing shrieks. No. Those are the latrines of parenting. The blessings come later, once the field has been tended and nurtured, early in the morning, late at night, in the cold, in the rain, back-broken and exhausted, when you felt like it and when you did not. […]

That said, assuming I live as long or longer than my grandparents, who died between the ages of 80 and 100, I have another 42 years — probably more like 50 — of life without small-kid-insanity on the horizon. Fifty year. I haven’t even been alive that long! That’s what I mean by “another lifetime”: 40-50 years of friendship and support and family meals and visits and help and whatever other amazing things will come out of having a large gang of properly attached people around me.

That’s it! And I love it. Veronique sees beyond the storm, and is choosing to make her decisions that way.

Let’s not forget that storms eventually pass, and there are brighter days on the other side of them. Especially when we make decisions that have permanent, life-changing ramifications.

veronique

(Veronique and her beautiful family.)

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Motherhood

Good news? Abortion facilities fail to meet standards

August 24, 2016 by Faye Sonier 11 Comments

The UK’s Care Quality Commission, the independent regulator of medical services, ran surprise inspections of Marie Stopes abortion facilities. No great surprise to many pro-life readers, the abortion facilities failed to meet medical standards,

The concerns CQC raised with Marie Stopes International relate to poor governance arrangements which have given rise to specific immediate concerns relating to the lack of assurance in MSI, in areas such as consent and safeguarding and the lack of assurance in relation to training and competence in conscious sedation and general anaesthesia.

Marie Stopes international suspended its services in order to correct the problems. So (*sigh*) the NHI shipped the 250 pregnant women who would be affected elsewhere so they could abort their children.

I was kind of surprised at MSI’s measured response. Texas tried to raise the standards for abortion clinics so they’d be comparable to other medical facilities, and it seemed the world collectively lost its mind, with many arguing that ensuring medical standards for clinics violated a woman’s “right to choose” and then SCOTUS overturned the Texan law. Well then.

In Kristen Walker Hatten’s words,

Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt concerned a 2013 Texas law known as House Bill 2, which required two new regulations for abortion clinics: first, abortion doctors would have to obtain admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of the clinic; and second, clinics would need to meet specifications required to become ambulatory surgical centers.

Their objection to HB2 demonstrates that abortion advocates care more about protecting the abortion industry than protecting women. This decision proves what pro-life feminists have been saying for years: the pro-choice position is misogyny in action. Striking down this law will harm women.

So the “good” news? Abortion facilities are being held to higher standards. Bad news? Babies continue to be killed and more women are hurt by abortion.

Woman in Prayer

I appreciate the way the author of the Telegraph article wrapped up his piece:

There were 185,824 abortions in 2015. Some 38 per cent of those who had an abortion last year had undergone a similar procedure before. These figures are enormous, staggering. For the individual involved they represent a very personal choice, and pro-lifers are sensitive to that, but it’s impossible to separate that choice from the social conditions that shape it. This is not a society that encourages the formation of families, either culturally or materially. And if society is not open to the possibilities of life, it is hardly a surprise that some choose to terminate it.

And so the fight continues.

(PS. Prolifers: Research what MSI is doing to meet the standards on “consent”. There’s likely something useful there.)

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, International

Will the lab make sex obsolete?

August 16, 2016 by Faye Sonier 3 Comments

It’s another round of “We can, but should we?” According to this article, a leading bioethicist believes that new research will  lead to people having children via DNA sample, like a skin scraping, which will then be transformed into eggs and/or sperm.

Further, we’ll do this rather than have children via sex altogether, as it will permit us to have control over the process of procreation. Within 20-40 years, the genetic selection process will be quite advanced, permitting parents to screen the embryos and decide which one is the best fit based on traits and characteristics.

Yes, I think we will see an increased and broad use of embryo selection. I would be careful to set the time frame at 20-40 years. I think we’ll actually see a world where most babies born to people with good health coverage will be conceived in the lab. People will make about a hundred embryos, each will have its whole genome tested, and the parents will be [asked … “Tell] us what you want to know and then tell us what embryo you want.”

There are economic arguments for this approach too:

I think it should bring down health care costs, and, in fact, one of the advantages to it is that it would be so beneficial for public health care costs that I think it would be provided for free. If it costs say, $10,000 to start a baby this way, 100 babies is a million dollars. If you avoid the birth of one baby with a serious genetic disease, you’ve saved $3 [million to] $5 million.  […]

The concern about the state or the insurance company or someone else, forcing you to pick particular babies, worries me a lot more than having parents make choices, though that raises its own set of questions.

A few considerations of course. For those of us that agree with science that life begins at conception, the hypothetical 99 embryos that would be rejected would actually mean that 99 human lives are ended. In one fell swoop. (Unless of course they’re donated for parts and research which is another nauseating issue.) And of course we’re now dealing will full-blown consumer eugenics.

As the bioethicist also notes, it’s possible that this process wouldn’t be covered by insurance in all jurisdictions, so a type of two-tier human caste system would exist: those children whose parents had means and/or insurance to ensure their genetic superiority…and the rest.

I recently read a fiction series that dealt with this issue. The books were set in 2060 and predicted that parents who chose to have children the old fashion way were treated as second class citizens, and had a hard time finding doctors willing to treat their families since they brought on their children’s health problems themselves. They should have done IVF and chosen a healthy embryo instead of the child they had through sex.

Further, if their children were born with certain conditions, there was no one to treat them as money for research dried up as these conditions could be screened out in the IVF process.  If the children were treated, they were considered an unnecessary drain on the crippled healthcare system (the book also predicted that the American economy would be in rough shape 40 years from now.)

The series was written a few years ago, but what the author envisioned lines up with what this bioethicist predicts. I can’t help but wonder if the author will be right about the attitudes towards those of us who would not take this approach to family planning.

And I understand part of the appeal – no parent wants to see their child suffer. My 5 month old daughter was born with two heart defects. There was one dark night when my midwife held me in my dark bedroom as we watched my daughter sleeping. I was crying and she promised we’d work through it if she needed heart surgery as a newborn.

But what’s the cost? What’s the impact on the children born and for society as a whole? How are we going to change when we decide that “imperfect” humans are a drain (or at least could have been selectively avoided), rather than co-citizens that we’re called to love and care for?

Sperm

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Reproductive Technologies

Will medical advances persuade us more readily than human rights?

July 5, 2016 by Faye Sonier 9 Comments

There was an interesting article in the National Post this week by Michelle Hauser. Hauser explored medical advances that will make it difficult to blindly accept our abortion status quo. Here’s a taste:

And perhaps the most fundamental question of all: when common medical practice establishes that a 13-week-old fetus is worth saving through surgery, will it not also be worth protecting through the law?

It’s a fantastic piece and I tip my hat to Hauser for all the research she did to pull together such an informative piece. I plan to circulate it to the Physicians for Life’s membership this week.

While I try to remain hopeful, I’m not sure that these advances will change Canadians’ behaviour when it comes to abortion, and I don’t think they’ll influence our legislative stance on the issue. Rather, I think these advances will lead to the “designer babies”(eugenics) that the WHO is concerned about and greater rates of abortion.

national geographic

We already have a consumer mindset about most things, including life, why would this be any different?

What we need is a change in our conception of human life – and a belief that it is unique and valuable.

We’ve dehumanized the unborn or flat out stated that our lifestyles/circumstances are more important than the actual life of our unborn children – I don’t think medical advances will change this.

We have graphic images, incredible ultrasound technology, life-size medical models of the fetus, and prenatal information from every imaginable source (from National Geographic to Pampers). And yet we continue to abort. And American research shows that the vast majority of abortions are for “lifestyle” (such a “bad timing”) reasons. We’re not talking about cases where the mother’s life is at risk, for example. And we’re not talking about the humanity and the human rights of the unborn child. Science has long established that (of course) a human fetus is, in fact, human.

Perhaps if this information is folded into existing and successful apologetics programs and educational resources – perhaps then it’ll play a role in changing hearts and minds.

But right now I think many hearts are hard or afraid, and many minds choose to be willfully closed.

Save

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Reproductive Technologies

How assisted suicide will change Canada

June 30, 2016 by Faye Sonier 10 Comments

Faye Sonier

Faye Sonier

See my piece over at The Cardus Daily. What can we expect now that we’ve decriminalized euthanasia and assisted suicide? In short, there’s a serious risk of cuts to palliative care funding, we’ll see an increase in the rates of suicide (assisted and unassisted), and euthanasia will be performed without “explicit patient consent.”

If our healthcare systems have an inexpensive and quick intervention option compared to a more expensive and time-consuming option like palliative care, an already overburdened healthcare system will likely gravitate towards the former. In Switzerland, after Geneva’s University Hospital decided to permit assisted suicide in extreme circumstances, the hospital’s community-based palliative care service was discontinued, and the number of palliative care physicians the hospital employed was also cut.

Read more here.

Filed Under: All Posts, Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia, Featured Posts

Suicide begets more suicide

June 10, 2016 by Faye Sonier 4 Comments

Hey Andrea,

Yeah, it’s not just you. An article published in the Southern Medical Journal found that rates of all suicides increased in jurisdictions were assisted suicide and euthanasia were legalized. I wrote about it here:

Under Bill C-14, people in Attawapiskat who meet the criteria provided in Bill C-14 will be able to request suicide assistance and end their lives. The argument may be made that few of those suicidal in Attawapiskat would qualify for assisted suicide or euthanasia under Bill C-14. However, as the study in the October edition of the Southern Medical Journal demonstrates, general suicide rates increase, not decrease, after legalization. Overall, there has been an average of a 6.3 per cent increase in suicides (assisted and unassisted) among the states where assisted suicide was legalized.

(You mean you don’t memorize everything I publish? Unbreak my heart, Andrea. Unbreak my heart.)

Maybe we should let the Globe and Mail know. Sigh.

Holding Hands

Filed Under: All Posts, Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia, Featured Posts

What if animals acted like we do?

January 24, 2016 by Faye Sonier 1 Comment

Frederica Mathewes-Green:

This issue gets presented as if it’s a tug of war between the woman and the baby. We see them as mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. But that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? It must be the first time in history when mothers and their own children have been assumed to be at war. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her child.

If you were in charge of a nature preserve and you noticed that the pregnant female mammals were trying to miscarry their pregnancies, eating poisonous plants or injuring themselves, what would you do? Would you think of it as a battle between the pregnant female and her unborn and find ways to help those pregnant animals miscarry? No, of course not. You would immediately think, “Something must be really wrong in this environment.” Something is creating intolerable stress, so much so that animals would rather destroy their own offspring than bring them into the world. You would strive to identify and correct whatever factors were causing this stress in the animals.

The same thing goes for the human animal. Abortion gets presented to us as if it’s something women want; both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric can reinforce that idea. But women do this only if all their other options look worse. It’s supposed to be “her choice,” yet so many women say, “I really didn’t have a choice.”

Read the rest here.
gorilla baby

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Motherhood

Jane Roe’s baby is alive…

January 22, 2016 by Faye Sonier 1 Comment

…and likely doesn’t know how the question of her life was a legal battle:

Norma McCorvey is “Jane Roe.” She claimed then that her pregnancy was the result of a rape, although for over a decade now she has been outspokenly pro-life and publicly admitted that this, and virtually every fact on which her case was built, was a lie. Both McCorvey and Sandra Cano, the Doe of Doe v. Bolton—Roe’s companion case from Georgia decided the same day—[became] outspoken pro-life advocates who have sworn that their cases are built on lies (Cano unfortunately passed away in October 2014). […]

It is unknown to me whether the adoptive family ever even knew that their daughter was the supposedly unwanted child who was the subject of Roe. As far as we know, they raised her not knowing who she was and certainly never telling her.

I can’t imagine carrying the knowledge that the value of my life was a national (and international) debate, and where, in the end, it was justified that I should die. I wonder if Daughter Roe knows, and if she’s pro-life herself. At least, if she has, she has managed to maintain a private life all these years.

Question mark

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured Posts, Feminism

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