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How often does this happen?

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-cJZrBlzE]

More often than we’d like to think. Often enough for there to be an organization dedicated to the cause.

Our undercover investigation obtained over 800 taped conversations with Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation clinics all across America, which prove that Planned Parenthood and NAF fail to comply with the law. They ignore the law even in cases of child sex abuse where child rape is disclosed and acknowledged – not just suspected.

Now, does Planned Parenthood ignore the law because they so strongly believe that every girl deserves unfettered access to abortion? Maybe every counselor we see in these undercover tapes is a gung-ho feminist willing to risk legal repercussions for the cause. Maybe they’re just that devoted to what they consider “women’s rights.” But would a real feminist, one who cares about more than just abortion, not shudder in the face of statutory rape on an epic scale? It’s been suggested that when girls 15 or under get pregnant, over 60% of the time it’s by an adult.

We have also uncovered data showing that as the age of the victim goes down, the age of the perpetrator goes up.

But maybe Planned Parenthood isn’t just a billion dollar oxymoron. Maybe they’re only in it for the money.

The world is sick

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I have nothing really to add to this article. No snarky remark. No 2 cents. No elucidation. But in case you can’t get around to reading the full column, I’ll highlight this one bit:

In 1998, 12 per cent of PAS patients in Oregon said they chose this irreversible course of action [euthenasia] because they didn’t want to burden their family. That rose to 26 per cent in 1999, 42 per cent in 2005 and 45 per cent in 2007, the last year figures are available. If that were a company’s bottom line, champagne corks would be popping!

In other words, for the infirm and disabled, the right to die quickly becomes the duty to die. Wanting to live despite being frail or ill increasingly is viewed as selfish in places where euthanasia is the law.

That’s not empowerment, it’s coercion, guilt for living, pressure to die.

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Rebecca adds: And so few people discuss this. The percentage of people euthanized in the Netherlands without their own consent or that of their next-of-kin rose along similar lines. And countless young women are pushed into abortions against their own instincts and judgment by pressure from parents (we’ll kick you out of the house, you’ll never be able to get a degree, it’s selfish to have a baby when you’re too young) and boyfriends (I’ll leave you if you don’t abort, I’ll never leave you/love you forever if you will). There is a debate to be had about whether abortion and euthanasia are moral. But even if we were to stipulate that they are entirely morally acceptable, there is a whole different debate about what constitutes informed consent. The standards applied to any other medical decision are waived, when assisted suicide and abortion are the issue.

Priorities

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Came across an article today regarding ulcer medication being used to induce abortions without the help of a doctor.  The comment at the bottom caught my eye.

Does anyone realize that this drug is also called Cytotec and is being used ALLL [sic] over the country to induce women? Women and children are dying because of this drug it is a silent epidemic. [sic] Try googling Cytotec Inducing Woman. Then make a news story.

So I did Google it.

Not that I’m surprised, but here’s how the pro-choice side prioritizes the health of the woman:

While Cytotec is hardly a household name, its availability as an underground abortion drug poses a dilemma for women’s health organizations that don’t want to draw attention to self-induced abortion, which is illegal in 39 states. Nor do they want to give pro-life groups another target. “All of us kind of recognize that keeping it a little below the radar may be the best in terms of advocacy right now,” says Silvia Henriquez, director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. [emphasis added]

So the ‘if -you-ignore-it-everything-will-go-away’ method.  Proven very effective time after time.  Let’s also ignore the fact that Cytotec is an older drug, no longer actively promoted as an ulcer medication, and still rakes in $180 million annually.  (Not bad for a $2 pill.)  Pfizer considers those sales “very small.”  It should be noted that Pfizer repeatedly insists it does not support the off-label use of any drug.

So if these measly profits are being made mainly from the drugs off-label applications, why don’t they pull the drug?  Maybe they just haven’t heard enough stories like these:

In 2007 in Massachusetts, an 18-year-old Dominican immigrant named Amber Abreu took misoprostol in her 25th week of pregnancy and gave birth to a 1-pound baby girl who died four days later; a judge sentenced her in June to probation and ordered her into therapy. In South Carolina in February, a Mexican migrant farm worker, Gabriela Flores, pleaded guilty to illegally performing an abortion and was sentenced to 90 days in jail for taking misoprostol while four months pregnant in 2004. A Virginia man, Daniel Riase, is serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to slipping the pills into his pregnant girlfriend’s glass of milk.

Or maybe, contrary to what it says, Pfizer is aware that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers commonly use this drug.  Like during late term abortions:

If the pregnancy is over 18 weeks, a medication (Cytotec) will be placed in the cheeks of your mouth to help the osmotic dilators open the cervix.

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Rebecca adds: There are also some rare but spectacularly bad side effects to Cytotec for labour induction, such as uterine rupture. I have mixed feelings about off-label prescribing, but this is more like an issue of informed consent. Perhaps off-label prescribing is fine, if you’re honest about the risks and unknowns when you’re prescribing that way. I’d like to discuss this with medical friends, and hear what they think about the whole issue. And I can’t help but think that if, say, Viagra came with such horrific potential complications, it’d be a much bigger deal.

That delicate balance

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Environmentalist are always going on about how, when we as humans fiddle with one thing, there’s always an unforeseen and often negative chain reaction.

Like antibacterial soap.  Because we’re so obsessed with being clean, we’ve managed to aid in the evolution of antibacterial resistant strains.  Next step:  we invent stronger antibacterial soap, and bacteria in turn becomes resistant to that (and so on until it becomes the stuff of Dr Who episodes).

So what happens when we try to control the sex of our offspring (through, say, sex-selection abortion)?  Wouldn’t you know that we’re all wired up to keep that male to female ratio pretty much even.

When females are in short supply, they have a better chance of snagging a mate, and are thus more likely to pass the gene for fathering daughters on to their offspring. And when men are scarce, they have a better chance of mating and passing along the gene for having sons.

“It’s kind of a counterbalancing mechanism,” Gellatly explained in an interview. “You can’t get a population that becomes too skewed toward males or too skewed toward females.”

Makes for an interesting scenario in a country like China where there are 120 males for every 100 females.  If the science is accurate, more women will become pregnant with girls than boys.  And if the Chinese stay true to their traditions, the increase in number of abortions performed will be exponential.

That Bill C-484 was a close one!

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Did we ever dodge a bullet there. I’m so grateful to all those who fought to keep that amendment to the criminal code outta the books. Just look what could have happened in Canada:

Charges against Frederick Beach, accused of beating his pregnant girlfriend to death, include one under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act… He is accused of beating to death Verlinda Kinsel, 29, in September and killing the fetus she had said was his. Authorities say the victim’s 9-year-old son witnessed the assault.

If convicted, Beach faces life in prison.

If you ask me, the crying shame in this story is not the fact that the guy’s gonna get charged under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

What IS the status quo?

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That Joyce Arthur! She’s so quotable:

Canadians don’t want to go back to the abortion debate. People are happy with the status quo. It’s working well.

I just changed my cell phone plan. I had the same plan for years, and I thought it was a great deal, mainly because it was a great deal back when I got my first phone. I’d tell everyone how great my plan was, and in 2002 I wasn’t lying. But in 2008, I was sorely misled. After doing a little homework, I learned I could get all the same services with the exact same cell phone provider for about half the price. All this to say, I was happy with the status quo until I got all the facts.

Most people I speak to about the abortion issue don’t realize abortion is legal in Canada right up to month 9. Most don’t know that women are exposed to a procedure (vacuum aspiration abortion) that has never been tested on animals and that it is alone in that category among all medical procedures performed in Canada. Most don’t know that, in 1988, when the Supreme Court struck down the law regulating abortion, it handed over to Parliament the responsibility of enacting a new law. And, yes, most don’t realize that a kidney has more rights in Canada than a fetus. Let’s be honest. There’s something Canadians don’t know.

The very phrase “We won’t go back!” so commonly chanted by those who are pro-abortion, confirms that they’re unhappy with the way things once were, but it says nothing about today’s status quo. To say that Canadians are happy with the current state of affairs is to assume we are all aware of that state. But, mostly, we are not. So let’s not muzzle the discussion. Then we’ll see if people really are happy with the status quo.

Before Breakfast

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Charlotte's Web

My daughter got Charlotte’s Web (the book) for Christmas.  She may be only three and a half  but, at bedtime, she sat attentively through Chapter I: Before Breakfast.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, it starts out with a litter of pigs being born.  The runt among them is about to be put to death when Fern, an eight-year-old girl, steps in.

“Please don’t kill it!” she sobbed. “It’s unfair.”

Mr. Arable stopped walking.

“Fern,” he said gently, “you will have to learn to control yourself.”

“Control myself?” yelled Fern. “This is a matter of life and death, and you talk about controlling myself.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she took hold of the ax and tried to pull it out of her father’s hand…”it’s unfair,” cried Fern. “The pig couldn’t help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?…This is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of.” [emphasis added]

Now I know we all need to function within a civilized society, but perhaps we’ve all learned to control ourselves a little too well.  No, I’m not advocating we all behave like eight-year-old girls — heavens knows they can get away with worlds more than a 30-something woman like myself can — but I do suggest we remember that this cause, the pro-life cause as we typically call it, is indeed a matter of life and death.

I feel a New Year’s resolution coming on.

And it begins…

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beluga2008

2008 is drawing to a close and the “Best of” lists are trickling in. I came upon the Canadian Press’ 5 best photos of year. Right up this photographer’s alley. My pick would have to be this baby beluga whale as it exits its mother’s birth canal. (I wonder if anyone argued that it was only a baby whale once it had fully emerged from its mother. Nah! That’s ridiculous!)

Conversation with the previous generation

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Met a lovely 60-something woman last week and we ended up on the issue of woman’s rights on a global scale. I could never have planned to get on such a topic with someone I’d only just met. But there we were, talking, over tea, about the self-oppressive mindsets of women in other countries. Did it ever remind me of this article and this post!

I dared: North American women share in this phenomenon. We are plagued with an awful oppressive social mentality here.

She: What do you mean?

I: Well, unless a couple is actively trying to have a baby, any woman getting pregnant in this country is forced to consider having an abortion.

She (sincerely): A woman can’t be forced to have an abortion. It’s up to her! That’s what we fought for! Who forces her to have an abortion? (Perhaps she thought I’d finger the government for snatching girls out of their beds in the middle of the night to perform abortions on them.)

I: Usually, her mate. Many times, a parent. But it’s to be expected. We, the women of North America, expect to have to make that choice. All too many of us are pressured into having an abortion.

There was obviously far more to this conversation than that. What I learned? Women of that generation watched as their fellow women fought and picketed for easier access to abortion. It was a fight women were fighting passionately and finally won. It was women of the baby boom generation getting their big victory. It seemed to rank alongside victories of the suffragettes at the turn of last century. There’s a feeling of pride in that. There’s sense of camaraderie in that.

The hype is louder than the stories of women coerced into abortion. And coercion can be subtle. If a woman is scared her mate will leave her unless she has an abortion, she’s being coerced. If a woman is made to feel guilty, as though she’s choosing an unborn baby over the man she’s currently with, she’s being coerced. And it’s a silent suffering.

We as women in this country can’t admit to being forced into having an abortion. Abortion is supposed to be about a woman’s choice, and we are all supposed to be strong and independent. Admitting we were coerced is admitting weakness.

And if we went ahead with the pregnancy, we sure can’t tell our story: that’s the new baby’s father or grandparent. Sure makes for awkward family dinners, knowing daddy once wished you’d never be born.

I had dinner with the same lovely lady a few days later. She took me aside and said, pointing to her noggin, “you sure had my wheels turning for hours the other night.”

There’s a conversation to be had. We need to talk about abortion.

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