NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said last week that,

“Women who are victims of criminal sexual violence in those countries have a right to get care and help, including a safe abortion,” Mulcair said.

“We find it simply unacceptable that Stephen Harper is sending out his ministers to stake out that type of ideological position instead of helping victims who need and deserve our help.”

Now, obviously Tom Mulcair can’t possibly be thinking that abortion is any kind of solution during times (years and decades) of continuous grotesque violence against women. To think that he would have to believe that women being held captive and brutalized have the kind of so-called “free will” that Canadian women enjoy on a daily basis. He would have to believe that a woman can be a prisoner of war in her own home and yet still have the luxury of an idea we call choice.

To think that he would have to believe that advocating an abortion-access policy in Africa is less “ideological” than trying to implement programs that aid women in coming up with their own solutions to crisis pregnancies, solutions that are in keeping with their beliefs and their values.  Tom Mulcair can’t possibly be thinking that the colonialism of telling African women, of which the majority are Christian (40%) and Muslim (45%), that they are wrong and that Canadian women are right is the best option, can he?

Tom Mulcair must be aware of the failures of the Canadian Indian residential school system, failures that resulted in children being deprived of their native cultural heritage and are best not reenacted in our policies abroad. I can’t believe that Tom Mulcair actually meant what he said, because to believe that would be to think he believes prisoners have choices and that Canadians (namely himself, and a handful of very aggressive abortion advocates) know better than everyone else.

Yesterday, cities across Canada held Defund Abortion rallies. Of course, you might not hear too much about them in the news, but each Campaign Life Coalition office will be publishing their own coverage of the event. You can check out the audio of our speeches here in Halifax at this link. 

Finally, something I can be pro-choice about. Should nursing moms be asked to cover up in public? Of course not, but it’s entirely up to the mother whether or not she wants to “go commando” while breastfeeding.

Before I began nursing my oldest child, I imagined I would be freely breastfeeding, onlookers be damned, with my head held high. But after a failed attempt to nurse while covered at a Starbucks, I quickly learned that the bold nursing image of myself wasn’t the reality. I felt embarrassed while my daughter kept fussing and pulling away, leaving me exposed and uncomfortable. Until my second and third daughters came along, I nursed exclusively at home or in the car. These days however, I can nurse my third child quite easily while covered, though I do from time to time go uncovered when I feel it’s too hot for her otherwise. Covering up has not come without it’s own share of controversy either. Other women have felt the need to inform me that I am not championing the bare breasted movement because I often use a cover, as if breastfeeding itself wasn’t stressful enough! From what I’ve experienced, Canadians are blessed with a fairly lax attitude toward uncovered breastfeeding in public places. In the United States (my homeland), that is not always the case, as this viral video from Texas has exposed.

My opinion? It’s up to you, and whatever the effects are of witnessing bare boobs doing what they are intended to do, they pale in comparison to the impact the other kinds of nudity we’re faced with on a regular basis have. So if you happen to see a mother nursing in public (covered or not), give her a thumbs up and let her figure it out on her own.

…literally, anything. I’ve got mixed emotions about capitalizing on a girls’ first period, but as a mother of three girls, I guess I like the idea of making the whole experience less scary than the nightmare gym teacher presentation I had when I was a kid. What do you think? Watch the HelloFlo Ad here.

I’m a  big fan of Anthony Bourdain, so when I saw he was going to the Democratic Republic of Congo on CNN last night I stayed up far later than a new mother of three is physically capable in order to watch. All I can say is, I’m really disappointed, and I could have used the sleep. CNN and Bourdain had a real opportunity here to show people, in a good full hour show, what is happening and has happened in Congo and how the West has pretty much been ignoring it for decades.

Countless Congelese women whose lives have been destroyed by assault, rape and murder remained in the political shadows, untouched by cameras, while Bourdain and his team (which included a heavy drinking so-called documentarian) journeyed overnight down the Congo River so he could make a painful DIY version of coq au vin at 2am then visit an abandoned Belgium research library the following day. Bourdain concluded that in Congo he met people still “waiting for something to be done”, and in the end, he too left them still waiting.

As the partner in my marriage who fixes the running toilets, I’m happy to say that Canada’s Handyman Challenge winner is the well deserving Maria! The challenge was a running series this year, starting with auditions from around Canada and elimination rounds involving completing various handy tasks (building a tile table for Subway restaurants, pop quizzes about tools, deck building). Maria, a construction worker, remained a committed and humble individual throughout the show. It can’t be easy to be a women in the construction industry. I’m happy that she’s won, not just because you can be a girl and kick ass with a circular saw at the same time, but because she seemed like a really sweet person who could use the win.

Dr Lyn, as we all knew her, together with her husband, Dr John Billings, founded the Method of natural fertility regulation which bears their name.  Her studies on breastfeeding mothers and women approaching menopause made a major contribution to the work.  For half a century they traveled the world teaching and promoting their Method […]

She was the author of the best selling non-fiction book The Billings Method, first published in 1980. This book was reprinted 16 times with 7 new or revised editions. The latest completely revised edition was published in 2011.  Access to this book, published in 22 languages, made the Billings Method a household name and gave hope to millions of couples throughout the world.

Affirmative action refers to policies that aim to insure that all groups of individuals are represented in various environments (schools, governments, corporations, etc), policies that sometimes attempt to make up for past discrimination. A new proposal in Vietnam seeks to do just that. In an attempt to make up for the gender imbalance caused by sex selection, the proposal would give financial incentives to families with “only two baby girls.”

Under the plan, the Government will provide a number of benefits to those who have two daughters and comply with the policy that every family should have no more than two children.

The benefits include a payment when a family has a second daughter and support for school tuition and health insurance for both daughters when they grow up, Trong said.

According to an officer of the General Department of Population, in fact, a number of provinces have implemented this policy. For example, Thai Binh Province presents gifts for the families having two daughters while Hoa Binh Province encourages and supports women and girls, especially families that have only daughters.

I will admit, finding out I was pregnant with our third child was initially less than thrilling for me (though I’m now celebrating and eagerly awaiting the birth of our third daughter). With my older children starting school, I daydreamed about all the free time I would have to write and work and finally get our house organized. As I started to show, another parent at the morning bus stop half in jest remarked, “What were you thinking? You were almost free!” With comments like that, it becomes easy to set the table for one in the pity party you’re about to throw yourself. In the midst of the party, I had almost forgotten how incredibly lucky I am to be able to conceive without any issues, even though both of my sisters have suffered infertility and ectopic pregnancy. They’re too couth, even though they’re fully entitled, to scream that I stop complaining when I’m whining on the phone about weight gain, itchy skin and a baby kicking me in the ribs. Too busy selfishly mourning the loss of my imagined “me time,” I had almost forgotten that 16% of heterosexual couples experience infertility. And when you think about that number compared to the number of women having their children aborted, the frustration and pain those couples feel becomes even more heartbreaking. You can read in full here a great, and very personal, piece by Kristen Walker Hatten, vice president of New Wave Feminists, about just that.

I have a disorder called PCOS, or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I’ll spare you the juicy details, but it basically means I don’t ovulate, and if you don’t ovulate, if there is no egg to fertilize that will become a zygote-embryo-fetus, you obviously can’t get pregnant. […]

I’ve seen it as the world’s most terrible tragedy for about six years now, but never before has it packed the personal punch it does now. In the United States alone, there are millions of women like me, spending at least some of their waking life in an agony of anxiety and longing and hope and prayer and grief, trying everything from herbal supplements to special lubricants to expensive pills to having holes drilled in their ovaries to get pregnant. They obsessively pee on sticks to the point that it becomes a literal addiction, and many of them suffer repeated, heart-wrenching miscarriages.

Meanwhile, every day, 125,000 women a day pay a doctor to murder the miracle we would literally give our right arms for.

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Andrea adds: This is partially why I posted the “missing tile” post of yesterday. It seems the human condition is to be chronically obsessed with what is missing, rather than being happy with what we have. Sigh. Thanks for this reminder, Jennifer. PS. Some of us are childless aspiring writers who never find the time to get the book started, anyway!

In a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen, Dr. Gretchen Roedde, a Canadian advocate and practitioner for international maternal health, describes why Canada is getting a bad reputation when it comes to international development.

“I haven’t worked for Canada for some time. We used to have a good reputation internationally. We don’t anymore,” she said bluntly in a telephone interview.

It’s something Julian Fantino should pay attention to. The minister in charge of the Canadian International Development Agency has been in the public spotlight in recent weeks sketching a significant shift in Canadian foreign aid toward promoting and strengthening ties with Canadian companies overseas. CIDA’s strategy, he has said, will include helping Canadian business become more competitive in the developing world.

Roedde notes that such a policy means countries get Canadian aid based on their natural resources. Countries without Canadian business interests, despite needs, are less likely to get the timely attention of Canadian aid, even if maternal death rates are high. “We are giving money to groups and countries where we have business interests, not where the maternal mortality rate is high.”

Still, she says, Canadian companies can play a role in helping to improve health and mitigate the negate health effects they have on developing countries. The spread of HIV, she says, is often a byproduct of mines in the developing world, something that extractive companies should focus on.

“Mining equals AIDs,” she says. “(You have) the dynamic of having a bunch of men away from their families and sex workers crowding around.”