According to this poll by Angus Reid, Canadians (as compared to Britons and Americans) are more in favor of controversial sexual education topics in classrooms and that it should occur at a younger age. Lucky Canada, eh?

This article from CNN is difficult to read, you might even be unable to look at the written words of rape survivor Masika. But what I hope you will see is that the situation in eastern Congo is beyond war-time, it’s beyond temporary, and it’s a humanitarian crisis of horrific proportion. Fiona Lloyd-Davies writes,

Rape has now become generational.

Davies has spent 10 years in this region, and her recount of her time there illustrates just how unimaginable life has become for these women. Women in the west, thankfully, have never walked in these women’s shoes, and our priorities simply do not apply here. In no one’s mind should abortion access be at the forefront after reading this. Abortion will not make the Congolese women “on par” with their male counterparts. Abortion will not promote equality, and it will not save lives. What the women in eastern Congo need is help, whatever we can give them, as much as we can give and as soon as possible.

The pressure to be sexually active comes at us all from various angles. The ads we see each day run the gamut from subtle ads for “performance enhancing” drugs to use later in life (when some of us may not even want to be all that sexually active) to the more aggressive ones, continuously targeting younger and younger audiences. You can’t escape these images, they’re on bus stops, locker rooms, in a banner on a website, in fact they’re so common that they hardly seem to stand out. As adults, maybe our life experience can buffer some of this imagery, but what about kids, teens who are in the process of figuring themselves out as people? A survey by ESSENCE magazine revealed that,

Black youth report considerable pressure to have sex, according to a new survey of 1,500 Black youth ages 13-21 released by ESSENCE Magazine and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Of those who have had sex, 47% of those 13-21 (including 21% of those 13-15) say they have been pressured to go further sexually than they wanted to. […]

Overall, the survey found that almost half of Black teens ages 13 to 21 reported that they have lied to get out of a sexual situation, and 54% of Black males said they feel pressure from their friends to have sex.

But some of the findings in the survey are hopeful. Nearly half of younger children (13-15) say they value their parents’ opinions and that their parents influence whether or not they will be sexually active. This gives parents an opportunity to express to our kids that they’re not expected to have sex.

On November 30, Jamiel Terry died in a car accident. He was the adopted son of Operation Rescue founder Randal Terry, and he happens to have been an out homosexual. I’m posting this today as my thoughts are with the Terry family during their time of loss, but also because Jamiel was an example of how a person’s sexual orientation doesn’t define them as a person. No one can assume your beliefs or political views based upon it, and I hope that everyone in the LGBT community is aware that no one expects them to be one monolithic group of people. Anyone can be pro-life.

Mr. Terry states:

“We are all in a state of shock, and unthinkable grief. I loved him dearly; we all did.

“Jamiel had a brilliant mind, and was a gentle soul. And as anyone knows who has spent time with him, he was funny, articulate, and a formidable debater on many topics.

“I thank God that Jamiel and I spoke regularly, and texted each other about a wide variety issues, frequently discussing and debating elections, politics and policy, to which we have both dedicated our time and talents.

“While we remained irreconcilable on the issue of ‘homosexual marriage,’ Jamiel remained firmly pro-life, and recently helped convince a young woman to not kill her child by abortion. There were many other issues that we kicked around — with laughter and good humor.

“We had recently agreed to hold joint speaking events at colleges and other venues, to discuss and debate the issues that are dear to us as a ‘father and son’ lecture team. I wish to God we had been able to do even one of them. […]

This sad case of “self-abortion” from New York, where two out of every five pregnancies end in abortion, seems to illustrate the effect of legislation when what is legal and common in clinics is done at home. Charges are usually dismissed, but unfortunately these women don’t end up getting any kind of help, psychiatric or otherwise. It’s okay if the term “self-abortion” upsets you, because of course the woman isn’t aborting herself. However, I do appreciate the tone of this article from the NY Times.

A superintendent in Washington Heights was tying up a garbage bag on Tuesday evening when he felt an errant piece of plastic. He reached into the bag to put it in the recycling bin, and to his horror, he said, “that’s when I saw the baby.” […]

The police said Thursday that they had charged Yaribely Almonte, 20, who had lived in the building, with self-abortion in the first degree, a misdemeanor charge that has been used only a few times in New York State. Although it was unclear how old the fetus was, the charge applies when the abortion occurs after 24 weeks of pregnancy, when it is legal only if a woman’s doctor says her life is in danger.

“When I found the baby, I didn’t know if it was real at first,” said the superintendent, who declined to give his name. “It was so bad.

“After that happened, I just stayed in my apartment for a while because I didn’t feel well.” […]

“This woman has my sympathy,” Greg Pfundstein, executive director of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, an anti-abortion group, said Thursday. “This appears to be a clear case of desperation.

“I wish she had known there are people who would have helped her through this, including the New York Catholic Archdiocese.”

He added that the archdiocese, through Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, “recently renewed its pledge to help any woman who finds herself pregnant and in need.”

What is the appropriate age to discuss abortion? Is there such an age? These were my questions during public pro-life events, and to be honest, I don’t know the answers. It is troubling though to think that discussing oral sex with 12-year-olds might be found appropriate while handing them plastic fetuses is seen as “disgusting”.

Jane Hannam, 12, was walking home from Heretaunga Intermediate with a friend last Thursday when they were approached by a female protester outside Hawke’s Bay Hospital and given a rubber foetus and information card about foetal development.

Her parents, Brian and Zarlene Hannam, said it was disgusting that protesters would target young school-aged children and made a complaint to Hastings police.

“We just found her playing with this toy foetus,” Mrs Hannam said. “It was sort of like a really soft spongy flesh-coloured foetus. I just think that’s disgusting.

“Everyone is allowed to protest and I don’t have any problem about that, but what they gave out was really inappropriate.”

_____________________

Andrea adds: I think it’s fair to find handing out plastic fetuses weird. I do. Just being honest. The first time I was handed one, can’t be helped, that was my feeling: something along the lines of “ok, so this is weird.” But “disgusting?” “Really inappropriate?” Comments like that reflect on the pro-choice views of the parents. Nothing more, nothing less.

The catch-22 in Heller’s novel of the same name is this; you can get out of the army if you’re crazy, but if you act crazy they’ll just think you’re trying to get out of the army. I feel the same about this situation concerning the Planned Parenthood criminal case in Kansas. The evidence of poorly maintained and later forged records has gone missing. You’d be crazy to think this isn’t a conspiracy, but if you say this is a conspiracy, they’ll call you crazy.

As the case was being prepared for trial, Steve Howe, the Johnson County prosecutor who took up the case in 2009 after defeating Kline in a Republican primary, discovered that the records that were to be used as evidence had been destroyed years earlier, the originals by the Department of Health and Environment and the only authenticated set of copies by the attorney general’s office. Howe told a judge this month that there was no longer enough admissible evidence to proceed with 49 charges, including 23 felonies.

…Or completely out of touch with yourself? I’d heard rumors, water cooler stories, of celebrities who had elective caesarean sections. They didn’t want the inconvienience of giving birth suddenly, they had busy lives, they didn’t want to ruin their stage exposed flat tummies, but until I read this article I just chalked it up to being out of touch with reality.

The medicalisation of life continues apace with new National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) guidelines proposing caesarean section as, effectively, a lifestyle choice for all mothers, not just those who were only recently scorned as “too posh to push”.
There is so much worryingly amiss with this that it’s difficult to know where to start. From the point of view of medicine, the inherent risks of having an elective caesarean are becoming ever less of a concern – as long as you are only going to have two or three children. Have a larger family via major abdominal surgery and you risk rupture of the uterus and severe bleeding. Then there is the cost: some £800 over that of having your baby naturally, and this at a time when NHS services are being cut back so drastically. […]
The choice is problematical, though. Should women shun medicalisation or should they demand even more medical attention for their particular needs? Should women aim to control their own bodies or seize an apparently greater power with the help of surgery – cosmetic or otherwise? As the eminent surgeon Sir Spencer Wells remarked in 1891, “Wonderful indeed, is woman’s hydra-like tolerance of sections and mutilations.”

Recently, on a flight back from the Life 2011 conference, the woman sitting next to me asked me a few good questions.
Firstly, she asked me what kind of conference I had attended, something I think I would have hesitated to answer prior to the conference. It was either the lack of sleep (I was on the red-eye) or the weekend of communion with inspiring, openly pro-life people, or maybe some cocktail of both, that emboldened me that morning (and for the rest of my life) to answer confidently and without pause. She was older, obviously wondering what to ask next, when I asked her why it was she was away. She was working with at-risk youth in urban areas. “That’s amazing!”, I replied.

Then we went on to talk about how building confidence, having role models, all of things are the origins of preventing the abuse and sexualization of our youth, as well as a crucial part in preventing crisis pregnancy situations. Ultimately, we were working towards similar goals. I told her about the various charities in the area she could connect with, some expressly pro-life, some not, some simply community oriented that could provide her and her team support. I gave her names, phone numbers. Then she asked me a very interesting question. She asked, “Since you do all this work with women, youth and children, do you work with any pro-choice groups?”

I thought about this for awhile. I’d never been asked that before. Finally I said, “As far as I know, no pro-choice advocate groups are doing that kind of work.”

…doctors may not tell you. Last night I saw a documentary on Rock Center about women from North Carolina that were unknowingly sterilized in the 1960s. While it was heartbreaking to hear each woman recount her experience and the loss of her ability to conceive, it was the stories of women who were told they were being sterilized but were not fully aware of what that meant that haunted me. The doctors spoke in terminology those young girls didn’t understand, but the outcomes were irreversible. I imagine there are many parallels between these stories and those of women who have undergone abortions, the women felt “butchered” and violated.