I’m always surprised when I come across this type of language in Canadian court decisions.

20        T.G. requested financial compensation in her victim impact statement, which was entered as an exhibit during the Crown’s submissions. She had no child support from D.G. and justifiably felt she was owed some compensation. In response to this, D.G. offered to make some financial reparation. He said, through his counsel, that he would be able to pay $500 within 90 days. The sentencing judge concluded that this offer demonstrated limited insight into his offence and lessened the remorse D.G. expressed. He said:

 [24] … Through his counsel, [D.G.] offered to pay reparations, in the amount of $500, to his victim. That offer exacerbates my concern that [D.G.] has not yet grasped the enormity of his offence or its impact upon his victim. To state the matter bluntly, he repeatedly raped an innocent and helpless child over a period of years, impregnated her three times, stood by while she underwent two abortions (having in mind the emotional trauma suffered by any woman who undergoes an abortion for any reason), abandoned her and left her penniless to raise their son. He regards $500 as appropriate reparation for that conduct. I appreciate that [D.G.] is a man of limited means, but such an offer can only be seen as an expression of contempt for his victim.

Seems this one BC judge recognized that there’s often an emotional toll associated with having an abortion.

Source: R. v. G. (D.),2014 CarswellBC 531, 2014 BCCA 84

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Andrea adds: For your “surprising passage in tragic case” files… I almost blogged about this story when it came out last week, but didn’t. But I will now:

The Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously upheld the sexual assault conviction of a Nova Scotia man who tried to trick his girlfriend into becoming pregnant by poking holes in her condoms.

Craig Jaret Hutchinson was sentenced to 18 month in jail in December 2011 after he pierced his girlfriend’s condoms with a pin in 2006 so she would get pregnant and not break up with him.

The Halifax-area woman became pregnant and had an abortion, but later suffered an infection of her uterus that required treatment with antibiotics.

Leaving aside all other possible commentary on the horrible nature of this “relationship,” this appears to be the one moment when the media reports on negative physical health effects after abortion.

At CPAC last week, Brian Lilley interviewed Live Action President Lila Rose. Rose talks about the gruesome nature of late-term abortions, the women who die from them, and how pro-choice activists argue for “safe” abortions but fight every single proposed bill or measure that would raise the standard of care at abortion clinics.

I do think a number of people who hold themselves out as pro-choice (to whatever extent) would support measures that would raise the standard of care at abortions clinics. But I think they get shouted down or shouted out by the pro-choice activists who see any measure that would better protect women having abortions as an attack on “women’s rights” – even if those measures protected women from harm, or death.

I just watched Brian Lilley interview Mike Schouten on WeNeedaLaw’s new Saskatchewan campaign. The goal of the campaign is obtain legislation requiring parental consent for abortions.

And it turns out, a lot of Canadians are a-okay with parental consent laws. An Angus Reid poll showed 55% of Canadians supported a requirement for parental consent for a minor’s abortion.

From Wesley J. Smith,

There was some sturm and drang at The Corner yesterday. Andrew Johnson’s posted an entry noting Planned Parenthood’s abortion honcho sniffing that the humanity of the aborted fetus is irrelevant. Many angry comments ensued and Drudge put it on his front page. From the quote:

The president of the country’s largest abortion provider said she didn’t think the matter of when life begins is pertinent to the issue. “It is not something that I feel is really part of this conversation,” Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood told Fusion’s Jorge Ramos on Thursday. “I don’t know if it’s really relevant to the conversation.”

Why is anyone surprised?  Planned Parenthood is really in the “right to a dead baby” business. Recall, for example, a lobbyist for Florida’s PP refusing to rule out infanticide after a botched abortion if that is what the mother wants.

This is the American branch of Planned Parenthood, but I do think this a blog post worth reading.

If the humanity of the unborn child isn’t at issue, what is?

A newly born child already so tightly bonded to his mother. A powerful video.

…who think the birth control pill isn’t the be all and the end all…

Want to avoid pregnancy? Kindara, an iPhone app created by a husband and wife team in Boulder, Colo., promises that it can be your birth control, too, letting women get off the pill.

While it’s hard to track how many women avoided pregnancy with Kindara, in the last year alone, the app has helped 10,000 women conceive, co-founder William Sacks tells Business Insider.

I love this quote:

William Sacks: We actually founded the company because we were looking for effective birth control that wasn’t the pill. Kati had been on the pill for 10 years and she didn’t like the side effects. She introduced me to the fertility awareness method and I was blown away by how little I understood about female fertility. I was actually outraged that I had never been taught how reproduction actually works.

Once we started tracking her fertility signs I learned all about how her body worked and also discovered an added intimacy in our relationship. We wanted to share this with other couples, so we started Kindara out of our own desire to give women and men tools that help them take control of their health, understand what’s happening with their bodies and meet their fertility goals.

Maybe this year pro-choice demonstrators won’t throw condom packets at our faces! Ah, a girl can dream. That’s right, a girl. Nothing screams ‘women’s rights’ like violence against women.

Someone flipped me this Christianity Today article:

It sounds pretty basic. A lovely young couple wants children, and they want those children to prosper and grow. They want to do as much as they reasonably can to ensure that those children have good, full lives. Happy lives. Lives that are as free from suffering and pain as possible. The problem is that they run the risk of bearing children with a gene that will probably cause a slow and painful death, albeit a death many decades in the future.

What should they do? Never have children? Adopt? Take the risk and conceive, come what may? Take the risk, conceive, and then terminate the pregnancy if the gene is present? Or try preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which involves creating embryos and testing them for the problematic gene and only implanting embryos free of the gene?

The writer then proceeds to ask some tough questions – questions we should be reflecting upon as members of the pro-life community:

Is near-certain physical suffering a good reason to cut short a human life? Can there be value in suffering?

What are the larger social effects of these technologies? …

What are the larger spiritual implications of these technologies? In a world of instant gratification, diversion, and entertainment, what place is there for waiting, for longing, for the brokenness and potential openness to grace that can come with dreams deferred?

The beautiful story of another woman who chose life:

I was once like you. “It will ruin your life,” they said. “You’re a child yourself”, they said. That’s the strangest. As I lie in this hospital bed, at risk of death, I have no fear. I am 26 years old, and have absolutely nothing more that I could ask for to make me happier. If keeping my son ruined my life, then why do I have everything I want? Why am I so content with my short life, if it was ruined the day he was born? The love and happiness I have experienced in my short life, is enough to feel fulfilled, complete. My life is beautiful, and my children were the ones that made it that way.

When I cry, my children burry their heads on my chest, wipe my tears with their tiny fingers. When I smile, they run to me, wrap their arms around me, lean back and giggle. What have they destroyed in my life besides all that was bitter, hateful and selfish? Besides all those awful parts of me they peeled away with their tenderness, and gentleness.

I’m sorry that when you terminated your pregnancy, you felt nothing, and I’m afraid that is where we are different.

So what does Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries do?

Rachel’s Vineyard weekends for healing after abortion are offered throughout the year in locations across the United States and Canada, with additional sites around the world. Rachel’s Vineyard is a ministry of Priests for Life.

The program is an opportunity to examine your abortion experience, identify the ways that the loss has impacted you in the past and present, and helps to acknowledge any unresolved feelings that many individuals struggle with after abortion. Because of the emotional numbness and secrecy that often surrounds an abortion experience, conflicting emotions both during and after the event may remain unresolved. These buried feelings can surface later and may be symptoms of post abortion trauma.

I just watched an interview with its founder Dr. Theresa Burke – and learned a lot about post-abortive care and engagement. Super interesting.