I heard Jason Jones share his story in person a few years ago. Today, you can read it here.

A friend came running in and said, “Jones, your girlfriend’s on the phone and she’s crying.” So I ran out, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to leave my station or answer the phone. But I picked it up, and she was crying, as I have never heard a woman cry before. Ever. The only way that I can explain it is that her soul was crying. And she kept saying over and over and over again, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It wasn’t me.” And then her father said, “Jason,” over the other line, “I know your secret, and your secret’s gone. She had an abortion.”

As soon as he’d said that word, a sergeant reached over my shoulder and hung up the phone. So I punched him. Another drill sergeant grabbed me, but he saw that I was crying, just saying over and over again, “He killed my baby! He killed my baby!”

Very early on in my pro-life journey, I didn’t think twice about the impact of abortion on men and the fathers of aborted children. Women and babies were at the forefront of my mind. And then I read something by Randy Alcorn where he described support groups for men whose children had been aborted. And I was floored. This was, sadly, something I had never heard of, nor considered. I think this is something we need to talk about more. I’d like to share men’s stories more frequently, and I will do so when I come across them.

Anyway. Today’s thought of the day.

Julie Desjardins joins us for part 2 of her interview. Today she’ll talk about her post-abortive recovery and healing, and what she would share with women considering abortion. Check out part 1 here.

Faye: Thanks for joining us again, Julie. Let’s pick back up where we left off yesterday. I understand from reading your blog that you regret the abortion. Is this something you felt immediately after undergoing the procedure? Or was it sometime later? How did you process the abortion?

Julie: Immediately after the abortion I was desperate to become pregnant again.  I remember thinking how strange that was but as I already mentioned, I wasn’t thinking very rationally at that time.  My boyfriend however did everything he could to prevent me from becoming pregnant again. 

I remember shortly after the abortion a maternity shop calling to say an order I had placed previously had come in. The recollection of how I felt is indescribable.  How can I describe what it is like to grapple with the reality that you deliberately paid for someone to suck your baby out of you.  The mind cannot handle that kind of torture. 

I don’t think I consciously dealt with it for very long before I had to suppress the memory.  No one other than my boyfriend and his mother knew about the abortion and I was living overseas in a country with no family or deep friendships. I stayed for another 18 months but ultimately the relationship ended and I returned to Canada. 

[Read more…]

As part of our new, on-going series of interviews with lovely pro-life women, today we’re interviewing Julie Anne Desjardins. Julie will share about her post-abortive journey, her faith and what healing means to her. Check back tomorrow for part 2.

Faye: Thanks for joining us today, Julie. We always start out our interviews with a few “get to know you” questions. Why don’t we jump right in? How do you spend your time?

Julie: I work as a registered nurse in primary care in northern Manitoba.  I am married to a wonderfully supportive and long-suffering man and we have a very active five year old who is the light of our lives who challenges even when we would prefer not to be challenged! 

A couple of years ago I read several books that inspired me to adopt a whole-foods, plant-based diet and I have become very passionate about good tasting, nutrient-dense food.  I love to talk about food almost as much as I love to eat it!  I am not a nutritionist or a recipe-creator but when I am passionate about something I tend to throw myself into it 110% so I started a small group on Facebook called Watch Your Mouth where we share ideas, recipes and links related to eating great unprocessed foods and plant-based foods. 

The only other passion in my life that trumps family and food would have to be my love for Jesus Christ.  He rescued me when I didn’t seem to be worth redeeming and I love Him because He first loved me.  At the end of August I started writing a blog called Dose Dependent: Real Life, Well Lived (dosedependent.me) where I write about faith and food.  I am also in the middle of creating and delivering a monthly series of messages entitled Faith & Food: Are YOU Getting Enough. 

[Read more…]

Picking up on Natalie’s last post regarding informed consent when it comes to RU-486, here’s the latest from our Supreme Court on that legal concept:

Ediger thus reinforces an obligation of the medical community to practise within such standards of care that are responsive to the risks that treatments carry and for which informed consent is sought. It reinforces a common-sense and intuitive notion that a patient needs to be advised not only on the risks of a proposed procedure, but also on the consequences if such risks were to materialize…

The court concluded that simply conveying the statistical probability of the risk to the patient is not in itself sufficient to meet the standard of care with respect to disclosure — the patient must be advised of not only the risk, but also of the consequences if the risk is to materialize.

Seems like a high standard to me. Think it will be met it if RU-486 is permitted in Canada?

Last year, Canadian Physicians for Life released a compelling statement declaring that abortions are not medically necessary procedures and that they should be defunded. The statement is now available online. Here are a few excerpts. Go read the document and bookmark the page. It’s a great resource.

In these times of strained health care resources, it is more imperative now than ever that government be streamlining spending in the health care sector. A necessary step in doing this is to identify those services which are not medically necessary and delist them. It is our opinion that abortion is never medically necessary and should be defunded provincially…

There are infrequent cases in which pregnancy can place the physical health of a woman in jeopardy. Although induced abortion is often heralded as the sole treatment for these conditions, invariably it is not the only option. Rather, treatment of the underlying condition should be the course of action, and although it may result in the loss of the pregnancy, this situation is far different from an induced abortion which targets destruction of the fetus as its end. So even in these difficult situations, abortion should not be considered as a medical necessity, given that other treatments exist which also preserve the physical well-being of the mother….

When it comes to instances of fetal abnormalities detected during pregnancy, an important comment needs to be made: In any pregnancy, there are two patients. One being the woman, and one being the fetus that she is carrying. This principle should be self evident to any physician involved in prenatal care. The practice of terminating pregnancy based on the characteristics of the fetus is tantamount to eugenics and should no longer be accepted.

I wrote about this issue over at the ActivateCFPL blog:

Over the last few weeks, public comment on the issue makes it apparent that there is still confusion surrounding the funding of abortion procedures in Canada.

Joyce Arthur wrote a piece at Rabble.com where she lambasted Campaign Life Coalition’s Defund Abortion campaign; painting the protestors as naïve, uninformed activists fighting for a hopeless cause. Two weeks ago, a letter written by Health Minister Deb Matthews was made public and also garnered attention…

Contrary to the arguments that some pro-choice advocates advance, determining which medical procedures may or may not be considered “medically necessary” in Canada is no easy task. Actually, it’s a bit of nightmare for everyone, from seasoned judges to patients simply seeking medical care.

Read the rest here.

ProLifeWire. More information about the source here.

Hmmm. I wish they had more international content.

In yesterday’s Globe and Mail, Leah McLaren wrote an article entitled Miscarriage: polite society’s last taboo. In the article, she asks the following:

We all know that miscarriages can be devastating. So why do we resist discussing them? Why do so many of us behave as if this common horror simply doesn’t exist?

And she provides two answers:

The answer, of course, is cultural shame….Miscarriages, like abortions and menstruation, are distinctly vagina-related, and that freaks us out.

and…

Part of the problem, I think, is that people (particularly nice, educated, middle-class, pro-choice people) are not sure what to make of the death of a fetus. Legally speaking, a fetus isn’t really a person but a part of a woman’s body. But that doesn’t mean a miscarriage doesn’t feel like a death. When a wanted pregnancy ends, a world of desired possibility is destroyed. A doorway to an imagined future of laughter, music and silly dancing is slammed shut.

To address the second point, she relies strictly on the legal definition of human being, rather than the scientific and medical understanding (as found in medical textbooks) that new life starts at conception. When an abortion or a miscarriage happen, in both cases, it is a matter of death. Not just the death of a world of “desired possibility.” An actual death. Life ends. And when a life ends, mourning and family and societal support are correct and human responses.

Due to personal circumstances, I’ve had “worlds of desired possibilities” be “destroyed” or put on hold indefinitely. I needed to mourn that. It was tough. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I got counselors and good people to walk through that reality with me.

But that loss must be, and I can’t imagine it otherwise, very distinct from losing a son or daughter. I can’t compare or reconcile the two circumstances as being similar. To describe a miscarriage as the death of “desired possibilities” is dehumanizing and doesn’t assign the proper gravity and loss to what has just been experienced by the mother and her loved ones. A life was lost.

But if you’re going to rely on Canada’s pathetic legal definition of “human being,” as McLaren does, I guess that’s the only way to reason out the tragedy. Something that was part of the woman’s body was here but no longer is.

Miscarriage is tragic. Abortion is more tragic. And very tragic indeed is this flawed perspective on human life.

More commentary on China’s tweaking of its one-child policy:

“The problem with the One Child Policy is not the number of children ‘allowed.’ Rather, it is the fact that the CCP is telling women how many children they can have and then enforcing that limit through forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide,” said Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.

“Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, even up to the ninth month of pregnancy.”

Government force and the cultural forces that lead to gendercide will continue apace, she said.

Last year I wrote about Stephen Woodworth’s talk on human dignity being shut down due to protestors.  Protestors included student Ethan Jackson who dressed up in a giant vagina costume he named Vulveta.

The talk was rescheduled for this week and Mr. Woodworth was able to get through his talk about when Canadian law says life begins. I’m a little astounded at how much security was needed. Seriously? A talk about a social issue? It shouldn’t require this much effort to ensure a fair exchange of ideas on a college campus. Le sigh.

This time, things were different. The man in the genitalia — Ethan Jackson, a fourth-year women and gender studies and religion student at nearby Wilfrid Laurier University — is banned from the Waterloo campus, as was a fellow protester.

So Mr. Woodworth’s rescheduled talk went ahead Thursday night under heavy police protection, as officers patrolled empty hallways and medics sat at the ready outside a poky little second-floor classroom, half-filled with the school’s anti-abortion club.