I have no words. Simply no words.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.

“So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief,” said Rep. Jim Boyd. “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

“We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow. […]

“I think that at that point the patient would be the child struggling on the table, wouldn’t you agree?” asked Oliva.

“That’s a very good question. I really don’t know how to answer that,” Snow said. “I would be glad to have some more conversations with you about this.”

Watch the video and read the rest of the article here.

H/T Wesley J. Smith

With all the talk of democracy this past week, this video is fitting.

Yesterday, Mr. Warawa issued a press release explaining what his options are now that the Committee rejected his appeal:

Warawa disappointed with Committee’s decision

Ottawa, ON (March 28th, 2013) — Today, following the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs’ decision to reject Langley MP Mark Warawa’s appeal on the votability of Motion 408, Warawa stated that he is very disappointed with their decision. Warawa will announce his next step when the House returns.

“I have three options. I can accept the decision of PROC, appeal to the House, or introduce another motion or bill,” stated Warawa. “I want to make sure that I take time to consider what is best for the issue of discrimination against women and girls.”

The United Nations estimates that 200 million women and girls are missing due to gendercide, and stated: “Renewed and concerted efforts are needed by governments and civil society to address the deeply rooted gender discrimination which lies at the heart of sex selection.”

“92% of Canadians want the practice of sex selection condemned,” said Warawa. “I need time to consider how best to move this issue forward.”

Mr. Warawa must make his decision by April 19th.

This is all so very disappointing.

And really, as someone mentioned to me yesterday, on what other issue do 92% of Canadians agree with each other?

Andrew Coyne on yesterday’s M-408 appeal and democracy in Canada:

Warawa’s appeal to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs was heard without a single question, and decided in camera. But meantime, it is important to understand what is really at stake here. Members’ statements are hardly the most important thing that goes on in Parliament. But Warawa’s muzzling comes at the end of a long train of other abuses, not just to his own rights as an MP, but to those of MPs generally.

This is not about abortion, in other words. It is not even about the right to discuss abortion, though it is absurd and insulting that members of Parliament should be forbidden from debating the issue, if they so wish. Neither is it about divisions within the Conservative party, nor the leadership of Stephen Harper. This is about the rights and responsibilities of MPs of all parties, and whether they have any role but to say and do exactly what their leaders tell them to.

Here’s the info. It’ll live stream audio from 3.30-4.15 pm EDT and then the audio will cut out as the members deliberate.

(Perhaps let the committee members know you’ll be listening in…)

I just received an e-blast from Physicians for Life that clearly explains what’s happening with M-408 and what you can do.

UPDATE: Mark Warawa is appealing the non-votability decision on M-408 to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) this Wednesday at 3:30 pm.

In addition to the emails you have been sending to your MP and letters to the editor of your local/national papers, there are some other ways you can respond:

[Edit: Contact Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister.] It’s always best to craft your own brief note.

You can also use a fantastic tool for writing to your MP and the MPs involved in this issue at the WeNeedALaw site. The form finds your MP’s contact information based on your postal code. Click here to send a customizable email.

Second – write or call your own MP and the Prime Minister’s Office: 613.992.4211. When you call, you will be able to say that you are calling regarding Motion 408. You will be redirected to a voice message system, where you can leave a message with your title, name, and a polite message indicating that sex-selection abortion is an issue that concerns you.

Third – if you are a Twitter user, you can tweet about it using the hashtag #M408. You can also let @MPmarkwarawa know that you support the fight against female feticide, and communicate with the following key people in the M408 conversation:

@CraigScottNDP (on the subcommittee that blocked M408)

@nathancullen

@NycoleTurmelNPD

@Armstrong_MP (on the subcommittee that blocked M408)

@ParmGill

@TomLukiwski

@CostasMenegakis

@ScottReidCPC (on the subcommittee that blocked M408)

@pmharper

We’ve been writing about the “Vagina Warriors” for over a week now and, in particular, about Mr. Ethan Jackson who dressed up like a vagina to shout down MP Stephen Woodworth.

Rex Murphy weighed in yesterday, and his article is hilarious:

And was not his — sculpture? puppet? tent? — a feeble thing? Those who’ve scorched their retinas with actually viewing it, either in person or in the news, unanimously agree it was, both architecturally and structurally, unpersuasive. One lady I spoke too confessed she first believed it was a large peanut, and kept checking to see where the “top hat” was.

Those of us who belong to the realist school of vagina impersonation, who believe private parts should be at all costs mute (and we are legion), were seriously nonplussed. A voluble vagina — and this one was chatty to the point of incontinence — was seen as a fanciful add-on, an app if you will, that seriously distorted the fidelity that should exist between art and its object. Not to mention that the implicit ventriloquism on display was feverish and amateur. Stay away from Yuk Yuks young man, unless they’re looking for a janitor.

Read on.

New York magazine recently ran an article entitled “The Retro Wife“:

This is not the retreat from high-­pressure workplaces of a previous generation but rather a more active awakening to the virtues of the way things used to be. Patricia Ireland, who lives on the Upper West Side, left her job as a wealth adviser in 2010 after her third child was born. Now, even though her husband, also in finance, has seen his income drop since the recession, she has no plans to go back to work. She feels it’s a privilege to manage her children’s lives—“not just what they do, but what they believe, how they talk to other children, what kind of story we read together. That’s all dictated by me. Not by my nanny or my babysitter.” Her husband’s part of the arrangement is to go to work and deposit his paycheck in the joint account. “I’m really grateful that my husband and I have fallen into traditional gender roles without conflict,” says Ireland. “I’m not bitter that I’m the one home and he goes to work. And he’s very happy that he goes to work.”

A lot of the new neo-traditionalists watched their own mothers strain under the second shift, and they regard Sandberg’s lower-wattage mini-mes, rushing off to Big Jobs and back home with a wad of cash for the nanny, with something like pity. They don’t want a return to the confines of the fifties; they treasure their freedoms, but see a third way. When Slaughter tours the lecture circuit, she is often approached, she says, by women younger than 30 who say, “I don’t see a senior person in my world whose life I want.” In researching her 2010 book The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work and Family, New York University sociologist Kathleen Gerson found that, in spite of all the gains young women have made, about a quarter say they would choose a traditional domestic arrangement over the independence that comes with a career, believing not just “that only a parent can provide an acceptable level of care” but also that “they are the only parent available for the job.”

The harried, stressed, multiarmed Kali goddess, with a laptop in one hand and homemade organic baby food in the ­other, has been replaced with a domestic Madonna, content with her choices and placid in her sphere…

There are a number of interesting research findings referred to in the article. It’s worth a read.

We’re pro-life women, yet were not severe and angry-looking! Shocking! And even if Parliament won’t permit a democratic debate about sex-selection abortion and discrimination against women, you can bet that we will.

(Andrea Mrozek, Faye Sonier, Rebecca Richmond of National Campus Life Network)

Thanks to Rebecca for the awesome DefendGirls.ca t-shirts.

Did you know Andrea Mrozek is an award-winning model? She won the 2011 Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest and left the competition in her dust. Below, she models Blue Steel.

She recently confided in me that Zoolander’s Blue Steel is her main modelling inspiration. She clearly nailed the look. You go girl!

____________________

Andrea adds: For the sake of accuracy, our readers should know it was in 2012 that I won an ugly sweater competition. This big win was won largely through use of my Blue Steel look on the ugly sweater runway.

Motion M-408, the motion introduced by MP Mark Warawa, was deemed non-votable by the Subcommittee on Private Members’ Business this morning. By a unanimous vote.

I’ve examined the votability criteria in the past and I’m astonished that the Subcommittee found that M-408 failed to meet the standards.

This is the entirety of the motion’s text: “That the House condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination.”

What happens next?

As a result, the government has won the first in what will likely be a series of procedural battles that will be waged in pursuit of its ultimate goal: avoiding a reprise of the internal caucus divisions brought on by Stephen Woodworth’s bid to strike a committee on the legal definition of ‘human being,’ which did, of course, eventually go down to defeat — but not before garnering the public support of a majority of backbenchers, as well as several high profile ministers, including Jason Kenney and, most unexpectedly, Rona Ambrose.

In any case, Warawa has the right to appeal the decision of the subcommittee — which, I’m told, he will all but certainly do — by making the case for reconsideration before the full procedure and house affairs committee within five days of the subcommittee report being tabled thither.

If he fails to persuade the committee to overturn the ruling, Warawa can put the question to the House of Commons as a whole — provided, that is, that he has the support of at least five MPs — by filing a motion with the speaker, who will then proceed to call for a vote, which is conducted via secret ballot over the next two days.

Read more here and here. Learn more about M-408 here.