Is ignorance really bliss? On June 17 The Guardian ran this article,

In 1979 China signed a $50m four-year deal with a UN body designed to help it control its spiralling population through family planning. It was the largest foreign aid package Beijing had accepted in almost 20 years.

But the funds became entwined in China’s one-child policy that was just taking hold, and instead of sponsoring an education drive for small families, the money was used to pay for posters in Chinese villages proclaiming “You can abort it! But you cannot give birth to it.”

The story of the complicity of the UNFPA, the UN’s main population agency, in the tyranny of China’s forced abortion policy is just one of the examples given in a book that explores western involvement in what has become a modern scourge: sex selection.

Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl charts how the trend towards choosing boys over girls, largely through sex-selective abortions, is rapidly spreading across the developing world.

While the article highlights some excellent points, Mara Hvistendahl was unhappy with her books misrepresentation. This is perhaps due to the fact that the UNFPA responded with their own letter refuting the claims of the original article. On July 20, Hvistendahl wrote the following:

I did not argue, furthermore, that the United Nations Population Fund was complicit in these abortions – rather that the agency provided $50m in funding ahead of the one-child policy’s unveiling, and then looked the other way when foreign press reports made clear that forced abortions were occurring. There is a difference between outright funding an injustice and ignoring injustice once it occurs.

UNFPA responded to the article with a letter contesting my supposed claims (Sex selection, China, and human rights, 25 June). The letter may not have been necessary had the article veered more closely to the message of my book.

Sex selection is an important issue, perhaps the most impacting issue on the female population to date, and I just hope that authors and reporters aren’t feeling intimidated because the agencies they’re reporting on are so well financed and multinational. It’s always frustrating to be misquoted, but especially when you just might get a letter from one of the largest agencies in the world.

I’ve had a week chockablock with illness, summer camps and puppy ownership. Inevitably during my downtime, I was watching mind numbing telly to escape the circus. Enter Rosie Pope of Pregnant in Heels, who proclaimed… “I’m happy you’re not for time-outs. A lot of people think time-outs humiliate a child.”

Now, I use time-outs, and I naively thought this was the social norm for discipline. Our western world doesn’t fully accept spanking anymore,

Those who oppose spanking as a form of discipline say that, in modern democratic societies, hitting a child — in any circumstance — is unacceptable. Not only does it encourage violence, they argue, it is an affront to human dignity.

Was I spanked? Of course, but did some parents abuse the power they had? Yes. It seems that now the same thing is happening with time-outs.

Parents are posting their child’s time out videos on the Internet. All of these children are all under 24 months of age- still in diapers. […]

This is a clear example of where American parents are failing their children and our society. It’s humiliating enough for a child to be disciplined in private, but then to post it on the Internet? What purpose does this serve?

The point is, any form of discipline can be misused, but older children and grown-ups should feel bad when they do something wrong. Discipline achieves that, and we shouldn’t let a handful of parents who use more than reasonable force set the bar for the rest of us. I’m assuming Rosie Pope has a lot of followers who may take her advice without any salt, but I’m keeping my time-out step.

___________________

Andrea adds: Thanks, Jennifer for this post. This is one I must add to before it imports to Facebook where people will think I’ve been sick, at summercamp and that I got a puppy. So. My two cents: any child discipline can be abused, be it spanking or time-outs.  I’m not opposed to parents using either of those things, done appropriately.

The tragic shootings in Norway have the country mourning not only the lost lives of so many young people but also the loss of the people they could’ve become. More from The Guardian,

Lejla got involved in politics, convinced that words and not weapons were a way to make the world a better place.

That’s how the 17-year-old came to be on the island of Utøya last Friday when Anders Behring Breivik arrived dressed as a policeman with a pistol in his belt and a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, telling the campers he was there to protect them following the bomb in Oslo – only to open fire over the course of 90 minutes, killing 68 people.

Lejla was attending the youth convention on Utøya as head of the Fredrikstad branch of Norway’s youth labour movement, Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, or AUF. On Thursday night she sat with friends around the campfire as they practised a pop song they hoped to perform for the rest of the group the following night. The performance never happened.

Now Lejla is missing, presumed dead at the bottom of the Tyrifjorden, just one of dozens of young activists tipped for the top of Norwegian politics who will never reach adulthood, let alone the Stortinget, Norway’s parliament.

Obama said it as best anyone can in response to such a devastating loss, “To the people of Norway- we are heartbroken by the tragic loss of so many people, particularly youth with the fullness of life ahead of them. No words can ease the sorrow but please know that the thoughts and prayers of all Americans are with the people of Norway, and that we will stand beside you every step of the way.”

What kind of thing gets you on “The List”? Forced marriage, human trafficking, not providing your women with a hospital to give birth in, rape, female foeticide, and frighteningly, female infanticide. Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan are at the top. Read all about it, here.

Pharmaceutical companies are first and foremost companies. It’s not in their best interest to make one-shot wonder drugs that get you sorted out for life, so they aren’t on the market. Contraceptives are no different. With over 50% of women in the US using “The Pill”, that is big business. Multiply that by their average length of usage, which from the women I’ve spoken to can be anywhere from 5 to 35 years, and you’ve got yourself a money making scheme with serious longevity. So will this new male contraceptive see the light of day?

After a more than 30-year struggle, an unassuming Indian engineer named Sujoy K. Guha is on the brink of what could well be the most revolutionary contraceptive technology since the pill — and this time it’s for men. […]

So what you get is a one-time, hormone-free sperm blocker that you can turn off whenever you want. […]

“We had no support from industry,” Guha said. “And basically neither I nor my colleagues were really knowledgeable and experienced with respect to new drug development.”

Part of the problem was the elegance of Guha’s design, which from a marketing perspective was, frankly, too effective.

“To men, an ideal method would be cheap and long-lasting. To company shareholders, an ideal method would be expensive and temporary,” Lissner explained by email.

“Pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to develop a cheap long-lasting method, and we can’t expect them to take the lead. Men will get one if, and only if, they demand it of their governments,” she said.

I’m not in favour of this drug, but this article exposes the problem with pharmaceutical companies not wanting to make anything “too effective”. What’s worse is that they tie themselves to social issues in a way that has sway on public opinion (throwing a few million to advertising for Marie Stopes is going to have big impact). They simply won’t manufacture a product or support an organization that won’t make them serious bank, social impact be damned. And this is a problem, because the consumer/patient ends up with a product that they’re told is in their best interest when it’s really in the best interest of the company. I’m not sure we can have it both ways.

When I learned about a local charity and support group for young mothers, SHYM, I was astonished that no one had thought of this before. While SHYM does wonderful work here in Nova Scotia, there is another group in the US. What’s astonishing about this article is that in the whole of a country nicknamed by Michael Moore as “The Big One” they’re the only one.

Americans enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Swaddled within those precious rights is the freedom to be born. Debate rages about a woman’s right to choose, yet many would choose to have their babies if only they had a place to live. For 27 years, Friends of the Unborn in Quincy has given pregnant, homeless women the freedom to keep their children.

Marilyn Birnie, FOTU founder and executive director of the pregnancy crisis center and shelter, has helped more than 2,000 women with this choice. Up to 16 pregnant women, ages 18 and older, can stay for about two years, rent-free, to develop self-supporting skills at the multiroomed Victorian in Quincy. Getting a GED is mandatory. Also offered are additional educational classes and resource assistance. […]

For close to three decades, FOTU has stayed open through private donations that average $25. Each month is a miracle since the annual expenses exceed $350,000.

“We are never ahead. It’s always month-to-month,” said Penny Romano, a 20-year employee at Friends of the Unborn, the only such private organization in the United States.

[…]

The women are here because of an ultimatum from their families, “Get an abortion or get out.”

Boyfriends abandoned them. A logical option loomed – get an abortion – but they didn’t want to. They found FOTU through hospital or agency referrals, or word of mouth.

[…] Some women endure a long, fierce journey. “Esther,” a married woman with three children, was brutally gang raped by soldiers in the Congo. She and her husband were taken to two separate prisons and her children were lost. She escaped alone and after arriving in the US, she eventually found her way to Birnie’s door.

“Esther came to us with nothing more than the wrinkled yellow dress she was wearing. She didn’t know if the baby was her husband’s or the three men who raped her, but she didn’t want to abort her husband’s child. We took care of her. Later a Congolese priest was able to locate her mother in the Congo who was caring for her three children. Esther was able to talk to them, but we were never able to find her husband.”

Now Esther has a daughter and has moved to Lynn.

This from the NY Times,

In three new rulings, federal judges in different states have acted to block immediate enforcement of measures that restrict abortion rights and women’s access to affordable contraception, lifesaving cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. These rulings are important victories for women’s health and reproductive rights. […]

On July 1, Judge Carlos Murguia, a federal district judge in Kansas, blocked immediate enforcement of a new Kansas licensing law and health department regulations imposing extensive, medically unnecessary requirements on the state’s three remaining abortion providers — like mandating 50 square feet of storage space for janitorial supplies — with the obvious goal of shutting them down.

While these rulings are preliminary, each is a determination that enforcing the law would cause irreparable harm and that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail at trial. They do not, however, address other threats to women’s health. Those include the slashing of state support for family-planning services by governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey, and attacks from Congress like the bill Republicans pushed through the House in May that would use the nation’s tax system as a weapon to end abortion insurance coverage in the private market.

Still, these rulings serve as a reminder that courts have a vital role to play in blocking the extreme anti-abortion, anti-family-planning movement accelerating in the states and in Washington.

This from New Brunswick,

The New Brunswick Right to Life Association has filed a police report on yet another act of vandalism to its Mother and Child House on Brunswick Street.

“It happened on three successive nights, three different incidents,” said association executive director Peter Ryan. “One night they painted the word ‘Choice’ on one side of our building in large black letters and came back two other nights and ripped off our wooden flower boxes attached to the front of our building which dress it up nicely.

[…]

The property has been the target of different types of vandalism.

“We’ve had quite a few incidents in the last four or five years. I think it’s intensified,” he said.

The Right to Life Association opened its women’s care centre on Brunswick Street in 2000.

The pro-life facility provides support for women who are pregnant and encourages those pondering an abortion to consider keeping their baby.

“We’re appealing to whoever this is to please leave us alone and respect our choice to do what we do here, which is to help pregnant women in need. We don’t do it the way they want us to do it which is to give women abortions.

“We do help these women both before they’re considering abortion and after they’ve had abortions. We help these women just by offering compassion and support and information. We think that’s not a terrible thing,” Ryan said.

“There’s an alternative next to us and we’re the other choice.”

Social norms go in and out of fashion like anything else. Some are explicit, others are implicit. Everything from the tip percentage for a waiter to how you raise your children is subject to the scrutiny of acceptability. Unfortunately, adoption too has fallen victim to the whims of social normality, and for many people “giving up” your baby for adoption is simply not a social norm. Martin Narey is looking to change all that.

Teenage girls and women pregnant with unwanted babies should be offered the ‘golden option’ of adoption alongside abortion or struggling on to raise the children, a Government adviser said yesterday.

The call from Martin Narey, the Coalition’s new adoption tsar, will pile fresh pressure on social workers to end three decades of hostility to adoption as a way of finding homes for children with troubled mothers.

Ministers have already tried to clear the way for thousands of children to find new families by ordering social workers and their managers to scrap race rules that have prevented white couples from adopting black children, and barred people in their 40s and older from adoption.

The suggestion by Mr Narey, a former chief executive of Barnardo’s, would mean a return to the practices of the 1970s, when mothers who could not keep their children often offered them for adoption. Since then, adoption has gone out of fashion with social workers, and the number of children adopted from state care has dropped from more than 20,000 a year to around 3,000.

In a report into the state of the adoption system, containing 19 suggestions for improvements, Mr Narey said social workers should no longer press pregnant women with personal difficulties to bring up their children.

And he suggested it was wrong to tell teenagers they would make good mothers.

‘For six months we are all over her telling her how well she is doing – and then she is on her own. What we are doing is cowardly,’ he said in the report, commissioned by The Times.

‘Adoption should be a third option to abortion or keeping the child. It is an attitude that must be allowed to grow.

‘In the U.S. mothers who give their children up for adoption believe they are giving them a great start.

‘Here it is viewed as a success if we talk them out of it..

Changing attitudes: Mr Narey said that pregnant women should follow the American example and believe that if their child is adopted it is being given a good start in life 

‘I am afraid some people just don’t like adoption. They think it is social engineering, allowing middle-class people to bring up working-class children. Where there are successes, professionals are apologetic about it, like it is some sort of tragedy.

It’s controversial to want to encourage young mothers to routinely consider adoption, but the alternative is that they routinely consider less positive options. Wouldn’t it be great if all young girls had it in the forefront of their minds that if they did get pregnant, they could always choose adoption?

Let’s just hope Planned Parenthood doesn’t feeling like suing anyone over it. I don’t know anything about Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, but after reading this article, he’s got my support.

The law requires that signs be posted around abortion facilities and include pertinent information about a woman’s rights, including the fact that it is illegal to coerce a woman into getting an abortion, that the child’s father must provide child support, that certain agencies can assist them during and after the pregnancy and that adoptive parents can pay some of the medical costs.
[…]
“Women deserve to know their legal rights and the protections already afforded to them under the law,” he said. “We are confident that the more they know, the more they’ll choose life and alternatives to abortion.”
[…]
Benjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, said a study conducted in 2004 indicated that 64 percent of women who have had an abortion felt they were coerced into making the decision.

“Our society promotes the idea that abortion is a free choice, and statistic show completely otherwise,” he said.

Jindal said the new law is a significant step, but that it wouldn’t be the last.