ProWomanProLife

You are here: Home / Archives for Tanya Zaleski

Disney in the background

by 2 Comments

Having an endless stream of photos to edit these days, I often plop my pre-schooler in front of a Disney movie for a stead. (I know; I’m a horrible mother.) Colour adjusting away in my basement office-slash-playroom (see, not such a horrible mother), I get to enjoy those easy-to-follow story lines.

We’re on Pocahontas right now (and renting a different one every week). We just got through a Mulan phase, which was preceded by The Hunchback of Notre Dame. At the risk of being told I too am reminded of the pro-life, pro-choice dialogue everywhere (and I’d be in great company), well, they all remind me of the pro-life, pro-choice dialogue.

Mulan conceals her female identity to fight in the Imperial Chinese army and heads the defeat of the Huns, saving China. When it is discovered that she is infact not a man, she goes from hero to zero. Regardless of her accomplishments, the stigma of being a woman is her greatest obstacle. Just as ‘unwanted’ fetuses are stigmatized simply for what they can’t help being.

In The Hunchback, Quasimodo is a malformed man persuaded from infancy that he was among the unwanted of society. For his sake and that of others, he was better off secluded in a bell tower where no one would have to gaze upon his hideousness. Sounds like those who preach that an ‘unwanted’ child is better off never being born.

In Pocahontas, the English refer to the natives as savages, chanting that they are “barely even human,” and asking “do they even breathe?” No need to connect the dots there.

Across the board in this magical world of Disney, the underdog prevails and a valuable lesson is learned by all. You know; happily ever after.

So are we really that blind? Not that I think we should make an animated film about the plight of the unborn child, but is our society not simply allowing the most basic of human lessons to go unlearned? Or is it that, the more civilized we become, the more helpless our victims have to be? You see, these victims now, they can’t even speak up for themselves.

A proverbial ‘nanny-nanny boo-boo’

by Leave a Comment

Said here:

…any researcher who wants to prove that the emotional stress of abortion directly causes mental illness in women is going to have a difficult time teasing apart and controlling for all these potential confounds.

That would be a paraphrase of the APA’s general assessment of “over 150 studies which examine a potential link between abortion and mental health problems.”

What does it all really mean? It means that no matter what results a study comes up with showing the correlation between abortion and mental illness, the pro-choice side of the debate will always have a convenient out. They just have to point out that the woman has a past.

Sort of amazing, don’t ya think, that the APA is able to concretely link mental illness to any contributing factors at all. I know I have a newfound respect for them.

Declining rate of Kodak moments

by Leave a Comment

In case no one has noticed, I haven’t been blogging as much lately. The photo biz is partly to blame for it all.

I capture milestones people want to remember. That’s my self-imposed day-job (besides raising my daughter full-time, that is). I get called on mainly to shoot engagements, weddings, pregnancies, babies, children, and families.

Analyzing stats like these ones here makes me realize: people know what their best memories are – their moments worth capturing in time – yet we insist on having less and less of them.

Funny how that works.

Just a fetish

by Leave a Comment

It’s not the first procedure of its kind, but it still makes the news. ABC News called it surgery on the “tiniest, most fragile of patients; those still in the womb.”

Doctors, using new technology to work inside the mother’s uterus, separate the blood vessels that connect the twins.

[The mother], sedated but awake, underwent surgery during her 22nd week of pregnancy.

During the surgery, doctors entered the amniotic sack using a kind of miniature “telescope.” Occasionally, to their surprise, a fetus will actually grab on to the scope in the middle of the procedure.

It’s the most simplistic reasoning there is to being against abortion. When it’s wanted, the life in the womb is treated by pediatric surgeons at a children’s hospital. When it’s ‘unwanted’, well, you know.

Pro-abortion advocates, though, have a name for recognizing what’s actually in the womb: fetus fetish.

The legislature of South Dakota is insincere and is acting out a fetus fetish to make themselves feel morally superior rather than focusing their scarce resources on child care for working mothers, education, and medical care for children.

(I don’t know about South Dakota, but Quebec has the highest rate of abortion in North America. Yet, we are home to daycares-a-plenty, an impressive array of educational options for women, and three of the country’s eleven children’s hospitals.)

When I think about all the lives snuffed out before they make it out of the womb, I don’t feel morally superior. I might feel a bit like I’m screaming at the top of my lungs in the middle of a crowded room while no one pays any mind to me, but I don’t equate that so much with superiority. In fact, if any one of you is looking for a glamour job – one where others recognize you primarily for your unsurpassed moral standards – skip the pro-life section of the classifieds.

Confidentiality or secrecy?

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been writing the Governor General’s office pretty religiously regarding Morgentaler’s Order of Canada. I received a whole file of identical responses from the GG’s office just recently. I got as many emails as I had sent to [email protected]. The response went:

In order to preserve the confidentiality and integrity of the Canadian Honours System, the Chancellery of Honours does not comment on any decision made by the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, an independent council chaired by the Chief Justice of Canada. This practice applies to all nominations to the Canadian Honours System. The Advisory Council reviews all nominations and transmits its decisions to the governor general. Please rest assured that your comments will be shared with the Advisory Council.

I’ve thanked the Chancellery of Honours for their offer to share my comments with the Advisory Council. I’ve nonetheless expressed my desire to communicate my opinion to them directly, not via a third party. I’m therefore waiting for on them to send me the appropriate contact information. Would anyone like to hold their breath with me?

We are not all on the same page

by Leave a Comment

South Dakota has no more abortion providers. Why?

Starting Friday, doctors in South Dakota must tell women seeking abortions …”that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Women also would have to be told they have a right to continue a pregnancy and that abortion may cause them psychological harm, including thoughts of suicide.

So the only abortion doctor left in the state up and quit. Why? Because he thinks none of that is true. As we’ve covered in the past, medical textbooks assert that a new life begins at the moment of conception. Peer reviewed journals and respected studies teach us that there are infact serious psychological risks associated with abortion.

Don’t know about you, but I don’t want a doctor to come near me if he hasn’t kept up on his reading. I like my doctors smart.

Ignorance is bliss

by Leave a Comment

This is a sad story.

Thirty-two-year-old Krista Stryland, a successful Toronto real estate agent and mother, went to a private clinic for liposuction…

Hours later, court documents allege, she lay in a recovery room for 30 minutes without vital signs after a procedure that drained fat from 23 incisions in six different parts of her body.

She was pronounced dead in hospital on Sept. 20, 2007. Her sister says she was a size 6. She says the doctor should have told her that she did not need liposuction…

Stryland’s family has raised several concerns with the college, including [Dr.] Yazdanfar’s alleged failure to warn of risks, leaving Stryland “with the impression that this was a routine benign procedure.”

I was speaking last week with a woman who, a few years ago, considered an abortion. During her consultation, the nurse asked her if she wanted to be made aware of the risks. The woman said she did, and that answer was received with a look of confusion. “I guess most people don’t care to know,” the woman said during our recent conversation. The nurse granted the request, handing the woman a pamphlet that touched on post-partum depression and what to do in case of excessive bleeding or cramping.

What right is a woman exercising when she chooses not to know? Perhaps it’s the right to cover her ears and sing, “la-la-la!” One thing is certain: informed consent is impossible if the information is optional, and scant at that.

The fathers of abortion

by 1 Comment

Of our most recent comments, one by reader Christy Knockleby hit on something that I feel needs further addressing. She said:

It seems to me that if we claim the decision is between the woman and her doctor, then it would make sense to let the men off the hook, doesn’t it? Of course they were involved in creating the pregnancy, but if they’re not supposed to be involved in the decision to abort…. why are we supposed to judge them for the woman’s decision? Except of course nothing is clear cut.

Indeed nothing is clear cut. What of the men who suggest, pressure, or encourage an abortion to a woman who decides to carry the baby to term? Chris Rock does a bang up job explaining this reality. (WARNING: This is Chris Rock, people. Be ready for some seriously foul language.) To cut to the chase, jump to the 2 minute mark.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjW4i67YC04]

All humour aside, what guilt does the man harbor, watching this unwanted pregnancy develop into a newborn baby; a doting child? How does that affect the father’s relationship with his child? And with his child’s mother? Statistics suggest that more than half of abortions involve coercion, either by a mate or a parent. Translation: Abortion is not purely a choice between a woman and her doctor.

So should these fathers of potential abortions keep silent? Pro-abortion etiquette would tell us so. One big problem with that: women don’t generally equate a man’s silence with love and support. Quite the opposite.

Marginalizing us much?

by Leave a Comment

Not much news coverage to be found on yesterdays protest at the GG’s mansion. I did find this article in the Ottawa Sun.

It describes the crowd in attendance as “mostly geriatric” and “carrying a ceramic baby Jesus, wearing rosary beads and crucifixes and carrying signs.” What image are you getting in your mind’s eye right now? (My first thought: How did people grasping walkers and canes manage to also wield signs and ceramic babies?) Clearly, the writer was attempting to make this crowd seem as abstract as possible. We obviously can’t rely on the media to be objective.

Thank goodness for video, one of which is posted alongside the aforementioned article. It’s worth a watch, and probably provides far more objectivity. One young woman (Faytene Kryskow), after listing examples, states that she’s against abortion primarily “because it has hurt [her] friends.” She was rosary and walker free.

Meta