This sounds like a great event:
Country music star George Canyon will be singing for a good cause Saturday when he pays a visit to Lethbridge.
Canyon will perform in concert at Southminster United Church starting at 7 p.m. in support of the Lethbridge Pregnancy Care Centre.
The centre provides emotional and practical support for those facing an unplanned pregnancy or pregnancy-related challenges.
I’m saddened for Brittany and her family. Both battling cancer and losing a loved one to cancer is so very difficult. I’m sorry for their loss.
The coverage of Brittany’s death has addressed the national and international debate regarding assisted suicide. I thought this piece was quite balanced.
One of the interviewees noted the actions of an insurance company with offices in a state that had legalized assisted suicide.
Tim Rosales, spokesman for Patients Rights Action Coalition based in Princeton, N.J., said that for every Brittany Maynard, there’s a Barbara Wagner, an Oregon woman who fought her insurance company when it said it would cover drugs for her suicide but not for chemotherapy to fight her lung cancer.
“We have to look at assisted suicide in much broader terms,” Rosales said in a phone interview Sunday evening. “Obviously, we’re very saddened to hear the news about Brittany Maynard. However, that being said, suicide or assisted suicide sends the wrong message to a lot of young people are the country, particularly those who are dealing with psychological or physical challenges or serious illnesses.”
I hope this was an isolated incident. And if assisted suicide is decriminalized in Canada, which it may very well be, I hope we don’t see insurance companies mailing out letters like these to Canadians. As someone who has struggled with cancer and chronic illness, these actions hit far too close to home.
Saw this tweet from Jill Stanek this morn about the StanekReport. Check it out. It looks promising.
It’s live! http://t.co/dRzrMELjyB@StanekReport#prolife… Think Drudge for pro-lifers!
— Jill Stanek (@JillStanek) November 3, 2014
This is a message you don’t hear very much anymore: men and women need to take equal responsibility for their actions.
From Rosemary Bottcher, in her essay, Feminism: Bewitched by Abortion, which was published in 1987:
Women who think they can’t be equal without their abortions forget that the law expects and requires that a man provide for his children, even though doing so may cause him much inconvenience. A man cannot demand that he be excused from his duty because his career might suffer. He can’t say, “I’m not ready for children,” or “I have enough already,” or “I don’t want that child.” He knew what he was doing when he did it and he should expect to be held accountable. Men are expected to be mature, and the mark of maturity is the willingness to accept the consequences of one’s actions, even though doing so may cause sacrifice and even hardships. Women who want equality can demand no less of themselves.
Rather, we now hear that men and women should be equally irresponsible for their actions.
From Elizabeth Brake, in her essay, Fatherhood and Child Support: Do Men Have a Right to Choose?, published in 2005:
The main point will be that if women’s partial responsibility for pregnancy does not obligate them to support a fetus, then men’s partial responsibility for pregnancy does not obligate them to support a resulting child.
It seems that we’re willing to sacrifice ourselves and our children in the name of sexual autonomy. We’re killing our children through abortions, shirking our responsibilities as adults and parents, and forfeiting our character, just to ensure that we can have sex any time with anyone. We do this in order to pretend that there are no life-changing consequences that can result from each sexual encounter, such as pregnancy and STDs.
You’ll likely notice that the blog has been fairly quiet in the last week. We don’t usually go dark this long.
I’ve been struggling to blog, even with the writing of very short posts.
I was overwhelmed by the terrorist attack in my city, Ottawa.
I’m sick. My husband is sick. My son is sick. We’re all tired.
I just finished writing an essay about abortion for a publication. It required considerable academic research and spending days reading about the conclusive evidence that abortion hurts a significant number of women and their partners. (Informed consent, anyone?) That left me emotionally drained.
And doing pro-life work, even volunteer activities while on mat leave, is harder for me than it was in my pre-motherhood days.
Last week, I came across an article regarding the ethics of killing children who survive abortion procedures. I was nearly sick. And I was nearly sick every time I looked at my precious baby that day. I was gagging. The revulsion was real and it was physical.
In Western society, we apparently need to debate whether, looking into the eyes of a living, breathing, screaming child, we should kill him/her. Because the child survived our initial attempt at killing him/her.
I could swear and scream right now still thinking about that article. I’ve been doing pro-life work for some time. I know this isn’t the first time that issue is raised. But it’s the first time I’ve really had to think about it since giving birth to my son a few months ago. I look at him and think about all the little boys and girls like him who have been killed, who will be killed, and who are being killed right now.
I’m angry. I’m sad. And I feel sick.
We live in one of the best countries in the world, and I’m proud to be Canadian. But we’re legally killing 100,000 of our little Canadians per year.
[TWEETBLOCK text=”Tweet this”] I’m proud to be Canadian. But we’re legally killing 100,000 of our little Canadians per year. [/TWEETBLOCK]
There are some days that I cannot wrap my head around that stat. Today is one of those days.
Canada is one of the great defenders of human rights. For everyone, except those of their own citizens who happen to be at an early stage of growth and development. They have no recognized human rights.
So here I am tonight, without much to blog about but feeling PWPL really ought to produce something. I’m down and frankly a little depressed.
I’m digging through my email and checking my listservs for something to write about. I follow a few links and then land on the page for National Abortion Federation (NAF). Who are they?
The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is the professional association of abortion providers in North America. We believe that women should be trusted to make private medical decisions in consultation with their health care providers.
For some reason, it never occurred to me that there would be a national association for abortion providers. Pretty dumb eh? And you know what my mind went to? I thought, “My gosh, their conferences and Christmas parties must be so depressing.”
Really. That was my first thought. Why? Because killing children as a career strikes me as a depressing job. So getting together to talk about it would only serve to emphasize the loss and sadness associated with that chosen career.
But their parties probably aren’t all doom and gloom. Because they believe on some or maybe all levels that they are helping women by helping them kill their children. Well-meaning health practitioners and doctors are dismembering and killing babies in the hopes of helping women. They are doing so even if studies from Canada, the United States, and Sweden clearly show that there are negative outcomes for a significant number of women and their male partners following their abortions. And of course all the dead babies whom they did not consider their patients.
All these stories and articles and heck, professional associations, break my heart. My heart breaks for the children lost, but also for the women and the men involved, and even for the professionals who participate. Abortion is a tragedy for all.
I can’t look at my son and not be more convicted about the good, the necessary and the vital work that pro-lifers do every day. I need to find some way to battle the staggering sadness and revulsion. And I need to keep hoping and loving and suggesting that there is a better way forward for our society.
One that is pro-woman, pro-child and pro-life.
For those of you who pray, please pray for everyone impacted.
Let’s start the morning off with some controversial and depressing news:
Unfortunately for the more than 10 million American women who take oral contraceptives, hardly anyone reported that the World Health Organization also classified the combination Pill as a carcinogen. In fact, the Pill continues to be the most popular method of contraception in this country, particularly for women under the age of 30. A little over a year after the World Health Organization announced its findings, the prestigious medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings published an article called “Oral Contraceptive Use as a Risk Factor for Premenopausal Breast Cancer: A Meta-analysis.” This analysis assessed the results of 34 studies conducted since 1980 to examine the possible association between oral contraceptive use and breast cancer risk in women younger than 50, and came to following conclusion: “Consistent with the recent International Agency for Research on Cancer classification of OCs as group 1 carcinogens, this meta-analysis suggests that OCs are associated with an increase in premenopausal breast cancer risk, especially among women who use OCs before FFTP [first full-term pregnancy].”
Even more recently, a 2009 study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that “a year or more of oral contraceptive use was associated with a 4.2-fold increased risk of triple-negative breast cancer for women 40 and under.
This spring marks the 55th anniversary of the birth control pill. I think it’s a good opportunity to talk about the link between the pill and breast cancer. If we’re truly pro-woman, we need to be pro-informed consent. Being left in the dark about the pill’s very real side effects isn’t empowering or liberating.
I love this quote from John Dixon:
At stake is whether the University of Victoria student society (UVSS) has the right to punish student clubs for pro-life activities and whether the University of Victoria has the right to enforce those punishments.
While the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is officially pro-choice, it is supporting YPY because it believes universities have to obey the Charter.
“Are those of us who are pro-choice so frightened of civil, peaceful speech against our conviction, that we must take refuge in quasi-legal antics to harass, frighten, and ultimately punish those who dare to challenge them?” asked BCCLA spokesman John Dixon, when the BCCLA first took the case last year.
Are they?
So more news and confusion about abortion and the law in Canada:
Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau thinks Prince Edward Islanders should be asking questions to make sure the Canada Health Act is being respected in regards to a recent decision to cut short planning for an abortion clinic on the Island. […]
“I think people are going to be rightly asking questions to make sure the Canada Health Act is being respected, and that Canadians have the opportunity to make choices about their own reproductive health,” said Trudeau.
For the record, the Canada Health Act does NOT require provinces to provide or fund abortions. For details, you can read this short paper on this very topic.
photo credit: RobertCiavarro via photopin cc
I came across Brain, Child Magazine this summer. Someone sent me a link to an adoption article they published, and I was hooked. The article was a quality piece and I was challenged by what I read.
Today I received my first email newsletter and it included a link to this article. I think it’s important to read the author’s note before reading the article itself:
I recently held my first grandchild in my arms and looked at his mother—my daughter and the subject of this essay. Although we talk constantly, there is a point at which no words can convey what we have been through. My daughter is experiencing her own version of that incredible connection of mother to child. Seeing her as a strong, loving adult fills me with a hope that I want to pass on to other mothers with troubled children. With my daughter’s encouragement, I have submitted this essay for publication.
I’m not sure why I’m sharing this article. It’s a sad read. It’s not about abortion. It’s about a mom dealing with a reality she never thought she would have to face with and for her daughter. It ends on a hopeful note.
I take a deep breath and ask why. She fiddles with her hair and says she is tired of part-time, minimum wage jobs that require the intellectual capacity of a mentally challenged baboon. She says she has an obligation to strike a blow for Third Wave Feminism. She says she is morally responsible to use her sexuality as a weapon against the property owning capitalist powers that would subdue the proletariat. She says this is something she has to do—to feel in control. She says she doesn’t know why.
We’re living in such a broken world.