I can never anticipate which news articles will keep me awake at night. Last night, it was this article about Sherri Shepherd.

Sherri already has a nine year old child from a previous marriage. She’s now going through a divorce with her current husband. Due to infertility, she and her husband sought out a donor egg, a surrogate and used his sperm to conceive a child together. The surrogate is still carrying this child.

I think, due to the acrimonious nature of their relationship, Sherri has now decided she wants nothing to do with that child and is seeking a court order to that effect.

I felt sick reading this article and it still disturbed me at 4 am when I was wide awake staring at my ceiling.

Her desires and actions led to the conception of this child. Now she doesn’t want her anymore. And she wants to legally walk away.

All I could think about was that child. How, in a few years, she’ll be able to Google her parents’ names and learn how she wasn’t wanted. In addition, she may or may not ever know her biological mother.

Is anyone thinking about what’s best for this child?

According to the article, Sherri will likely miss the birth of the child as she has arranged to perform at a gospel festival when the baby is likely due.

Pro-life blogger Pat Maloney and her lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos continue their fight to have generalized abortion stats released to those paying for them, you know, the tax payers.

“I have tried numerous times to get the government to provide me with reasons why they did it. They refuse to. I even met with my MPP Madeleine Meilleur on this issue. She couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell me why abortion services were excluded. She told me to contact then Minister of Health Deb Matthews, which I did. She also refused to provide me with a reason,” she told LifeSiteNews.

Maloney and her lawyer Polizogopoulos argue that the whole purpose of the quietly-passed Bill 122 was ostensibly to “improve transparency and accountability,” not to “be a blanket ban on generalized, non-identifying data for a taxpayer funded medical procedure.”

They argue that the Ministry of Health and the Information and Privacy Commissioner erred in denying the release of abortion stats on the grounds that providing them would contravene the newly enacted law. The error violated Maloney’s right to freedom of information, expression, and of the press, the factum submitted to the Superior Court states.

Read more here.

Silly Andrea. She always seems to be begging for more hate mail:

Noting a mother’s work is actually offensive. Ditto on Father’s Day; simply no need to laud a man for being a father; this at a time when fathers are so desperately needed.

The new post-sexual norms are entirely lost on the Ontario Bar Association set. Many young women today long for marriage; it is unattainable. They long for children; they get to participate instead in a host of expensive and painful fertility treatments. They’ve been working, quite successfully, building careers, and it’s the family piece that doesn’t come together quite so easily. The ideologues who pick apart a perfectly lovely compliment are simply not in tune with the current struggles of many young women.

There are no biological differences between men and women for these ideologues. So steeped are they in a world view that says there is absolutely no difference, that merely mentioning that women are mothers is a no-fly zone.

 

I’ve been following Danielle Walker’s blog for some time now. A few weeks ago, she shared some tragic news with her readers about the daughter she was carrying:

During this appointment, we were told that Aila had severe growth defects and potentially had a life-threatening form of a skeletal disorder. After declining the immediate recommendation that we end my pregnancy, we decided to seek a second opinion at UCSF and get a clearer diagnosis. We were told the unfathomable news that Aila has what’s called Lethal (or type II) Osteogenesis Imperfecta. It’s a genetic mutation that causes a lack of collagen in her bones so they do not grow properly and break over and over again in the womb. Only .19 in 10,000 of these babies are born alive, and the ones that are only live for a few minutes to 24 hours.

She chose to carry her daughter and treasure every single moment she had with her:

Our darling Aila was born Tuesday night June 24th at 7:53pm and passed peacefully in my arms at 8:39pm. She weighed 1 pound 5.8 ounces and had her brother’s nose and daddy’s lips. She was just the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

We had the immense joy of knowing her on this earth for 46 minutes before she went to be with Jesus. I was able to hold her for 12 hours and study her sweet face all night long. The pain that we feel from missing her each day is inexplicable. I ache for the day when I can kiss her forehead and hold her in my arms again.

She goes on to share about the joy they are experiencing, even in the midst of all the pain. This little one was their daughter. And she was deeply loved. And they are thankful for each moment they had with little Aila, inside and outside the womb.

The pictures taken of these precious moments are tender and beautiful. Follow the link to view them.

I’m praying for Danielle Walker and her family.

Rock star PWPL friend Andre Schutten helped writer Tim Challies put together a Pro-Life 101 apologetics page here. It’s a great summary of the basic pro-life argument.

The only thing I would add is the counter to the sovereign zone argument, but you can get that here. But I’m not sure how often that argument comes up.

Rock star Andre Schutten

If not, let the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario know. Vote here (right hand side). There is reason for serious concern that they are heading in that direction.

They also have a survey on that same page that I’d encourage you to complete.

I don’t want to see my pro-life doctors forced to leave the province because the College will force them to perform acts that violate their beliefs and conscience.

MP Maurice Vellacott found this quote and circulated it this week:

“You know, at some point you are killing life in the foetus in self-defence – of what? Of the mother’s health or her happiness or of her social rights or her privilege as a human being? I think she should have to answer for it and explain. Now, whether it should be to three doctors or one doctor or to a priest or a bishop or to her mother-in-law is a question you might want to argue …. You do have a right over your own body – it is your body. But the foetus is not your body; it’s someone else’s body. And if you kill it, you’ll have to explain.”

The Rt. Hon. Pierre E. Trudeau, PC, QC, MP
Prime Minister of Canada
The Montreal Star, Thursday, May 25, 1972

Justin Trudeau has been relying in part on his father’s Catholic/pro-woman/pro-choice/human rights records to justify his own position. The above quote doesn’t leave Pierre Trudeau quite the pro-choice hero, does it?

After reading this rather shocking Globe and Mail piece, it’s quite hard to position Pierre Trudeau’s legacy within either a Catholic or a pro-woman framework. Read it for yourself. My jaw dropped.

A warm letter to “the pregnant woman without options”:

Last night, as I lay in bed completely uncomfortable, I thought about her… maybe about you. I thought about the pregnant mom who is all alone. I thought about the woman terrified by tiny feet and everything that they will mean. I thought about the woman who has no options.

I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to not only be uncomfortable, but also so afraid. […]

My prayer is that you would choose life. My prayer is that those squirms and moving feet would not bring fear, but each day would remind you of the beautiful choice that you continue to make.

Thank you to those who have chosen adoption, those who have adopted, and those who will make that choice today. Your decisions will ripple across eternity.

Inspired by this post.

A great blog post over at Secular Pro-Life by Roni Cairns:

How is it pro-woman to say that we must be allowed to kill our children in order to be successful, to be “equal citizens,” to avoid being “inferior” or “subhuman”? That there is a human within my uterus does not make me less of a human, does not reduce me to such a state that I cannot accomplish anything, that I cannot think or vote, does not “ruin my life.” Those who believe pregnant women are inferior do women a serious disservice.

As a woman, I neither need nor want the right to kill humans to be equal as a human being. I am a woman. I am strong. I am capable. I am not inferior. And I don’t need the right to kill to be equal.

Some of the comments that follow the post are interesting as well:

It is misogynist to say women need abortion to be equal to men. It assumes that women aren’t equal to men already. It also holds male sexuality to be the standard against which women just don’t measure up.