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Medical opinionist to the stars

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Do you have to be as brash as a punk rocker to sift through opinion and get to medical fact?

the doctor tried to give clinical advice, suggesting to Courtney [Love] that it was not a great idea to have a baby while dealing with [heroine] addiction.”

“… Courtney, who was only six weeks pregnant, went into a confrontational mode, saying: ‘Is that a medical fact, or is that just your opinion? I want to see it in a medical book…’”

“He sheepishly acknowledged that at this early stage of pregnancy a woman could discontinue heroin use with no physical or psychological damage to the fetus.”

“Courtney looked triumphant as she towered over the doctor seated at his desk.”

Courtney stopped taking heroin and daughter Frances Bean was born in perfect health later that year.

How often do medical professionals offer abortion up as the quick-fix? We can be sure it didn’t only ever happen to Courtney Love.

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Andrea adds: Let me first say I think that doing drugs while pregnant is bad. But a heroine drug abuser can more easily quit their habit than an alcoholic. Read about this little known fact here (and consider “harm reduction strategies” while you do.) If doctors can’t be bothered to help a heroine addict through simple flu-like withdrawal symptoms over a couple of days, how much less will they be prepared to help a woman through a nine month unexpected pregnancy?

The pink elephant

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Here’s another fine example of why the pro-abortion mentality wants the abortion rate to continue decreasing:

We’d like to see a figure go way below 50,000 [abortions annually] because that means … men and women in this country would protect themselves and decrease or eliminate unwanted pregnancies,” he [Andre Lalonde of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada] said.

Unwanted pregnancy is what Mr. Lalonde wants to eliminate. Sure! Of course! Unwanted pregnancy, if left unchecked, leads to a child. And we all know what happens when you have a child!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzmOWC-5DKw]

It’s evident that more than one important factor is still being ignored: the act of abortion itself, and the serious mental and physical repercussions to the woman. Talk about a herd of pink elephants!

Life begins at conception…

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Maybe I’m sheltered, but I never heard that expression called ‘Christian’ before. So this was a bit of a first for me:

The law added a strict Christian construct to the preamble of the Missouri constitution — that life begins at conception and therefore unborn children have protectable rights.

Instead of going into a list of medical professionals willing to profess that human life makes its beginnings at the moment of conception (and I could), I have a question instead.

When does it begin, then? If it is not conception, when is it? At birth? Whose birth? The child born at 40 weeks gestational age has more rights, then, than a child of 40 weeks not yet born. And what do we then make of premature children? Is it at the age of viability? Does the definition of life then change depending on how advanced medical technology is? Should not something like when life begins be unwavering and unshakeable?

Okay, so that was more than one question.

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The 11 pm update: When asked, “When DOES life begin, then? Scientifically speaking, of course,” (in the comments section) there was no actual answer.

There was this:

…is abortion really murder if the women is never charged with murder?

And this:

Let’s acknowledge the life in front of us, instead of the debatable “life” which we cannot agree is a murder victim.

So apparently, nothing is wrong unless it’s a crime. Abortion, therefore, was wrong only when it was illegal. Try to get a pro-choicer to agree to that one!

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Andrea adds: There are avenues of questioning that pro-abortion people are completely unwilling to address. They pretend the question of when life begins can’t be answered, or that the answer is personal. But medical textbooks, too bad for them, are fond of that pro-life myth that new life begins at conception. Now the disturbing thing of course is that pro-abortion people are beginning to address this. The new response: Yes, we know it’s a child. But we don’t care.

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Rebecca adds: “…is abortion really murder if the women is never charged with murder?”

As Jonah Goldberg brilliantly pointed out in Liberal Fascism, the left, which is where most most pro-choicers fall, is characterized by a creeping totalitarianism which wants everything bad to be criminalized and everything good to be mandatory. To someone so inclined, morality outside the law doesn’t exist – so if it’s not illegal, of course it’s not wrong!

A Jew living under Antiochus, or a Christian in pre-Constantine Rome, would not have been at all surprised at the idea that something could be both legal and abominable. One of the pitfalls of living in a civilized country that is an heir to the Judeo-Christian tradition is that it is easy for us to forget how barbaric life can be in the absence of these influences. Are honour killings immoral? They are de facto legal in Jordan, where the authorities winkingly impose minimal sentences in cases where they involve themselves at all. How about honour killings in Canada? Or was Aqsa Parvez’ father just exercising his right to choose?

A lesson in prevention

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Evan Harris from the UK, Monday, had this to say to the press.

What, really, the number of abortions tells us is the number of unwanted pregnancies. That’s the fundamental issue. And the best way to tackle that, as other countries have shown, is to have much better sexual relationships education than we have and much better access to … contraception. (emphasis mine)

He seems, like so many other pro-abortionists, to bring up the issue of unwanted pregnancy like it’s a sort of illness to avoid. Usually, government will offer the obvious methods of disease prevention. Don’t want lung cancer? Quit smoking. Don’t want to be obese? Eat sensibly and exercise. Don’t want to be pregnant? Here’s the kicker. The answer should be ‘refrain from sex outside of a committed relationship.’ But this simple solution evades us. Instead, a more complicated answer is offered, and this cleverly disguised as ‘comprehensive sex education.’

It’s a bit like if government were to say, “Well, the people are going to eat poorly anyways, so let’s start endorsing the latest diet craze or weight-loss pill.”

Woman, if you want to get pregnant, why are you on birth control?

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A recent study explains that a considerable portion of the female population is both using birth control and desiring to get pregnant.

The researchers also found that many women who are lax about birth control are simply ambivalent about preventing a pregnancy and confessed that they would be very pleased if they found out they were pregnant.

Of course, this article doesn’t claim these women want to get pregnant. It refers to them instead as “women who are the least motivated to avoid pregnancy.”

So why are these women on birth control? Is it trendy? Is it fun? Am I missing something?

Perhaps it has to do with a social imposition. Generally, men expect “their” women to be on birth control within an unmarried sexual relationship. However, a woman generally has an innate desire to have a child. Try as we might, biologically, we can’t successfully separate sex from procreation. Thanks to modern feminism, our gender-image has been so warped that a sexually active woman wanting to get pregnant (out of that perfect context) is unreasonable, flighty, and even creepy.

So here we have loads women happily getting pregnant from intentionally inconsistent birth control use. Now they need to tell the new, clueless father-to-be. The result of this mix? Perhaps it’s this:

…up to 64 percent of abortions every year are a result of violence and coercion – a practice… that brings unbearable and life lasting trauma to thousands of women.

Way to go, modern feminism! Just look how well the sexual liberation of women is working out.

They’re playing politics again

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Liberal MP, Brent St. Denis must not have read Ken Epps’ recent document. (If he’d visit our blog more regularly, he’d be on top of these things.) He “tabled a Bill today that would increase penalties for those who knowingly abuse pregnant women.”

The press release states:

Mr. St. Denis believes that the risks associated with C-484 are too dangerous as the potential repercussions are still unknown.  There is a concern that the Bill may establish legal rights for the foetus, which could begin to reverse a woman’s right to choose and punish behaviours and conditions for women that are not criminalized for other people, such as drug or alcohol abuse and mental illness.

As mentioned in Ken Epps’ release:

Only South Carolina has upheld convictions of women under child abuse and endangerment laws, citing South Carolina’s unique judicially enacted “fetal homicide” law of 1984 as a precedent.

There were a few isolated incidents in other states where cases were brought by prosecutors under “fetal homicide” laws… but these cases were later dismissed or distinguished on their facts and are in no way representative of applications of the legislation in the 37 states with these laws.

But the above are mere details. When you get down to it, our politicians are playing chess. Obviously the goal of this newly tabled bill is to draw support away from Bill C-484. If that happens, the subsequent (and nearly inevitable) passing of this new bill will be incidental.

Myself, I’d prefer our laws be formulated based on genuine concern for victims, not on political stratagem.

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Rebecca shakes her head: Good grief, what a tangle of poor logic and silly syllogisms.

I have very mixed feelings about criminalizing substance abuse for pregnant women. On the one hand, exposure to alcohol and drugs in utero can inflict a terrible burden on the fetus, and a wholly avoidable one. On the other hand, I’m not generally keen on giving the government or its agents more opportunities to interpose themselves in our lives, and am of the opinion that there are few problems so bad that state intervention can’t make them worse.

But this is just nonsense:

There is a concern that the Bill may establish legal rights for the foetus, which could begin to reverse a woman’s right to choose and punish behaviours and conditions for women that are not criminalized for other people, such as drug or alcohol abuse and mental illness. (emphasis mine)

First of all, how could this criminalize mental illness in pregnant women, for heaven’s sake? Second, the point would be to punish drug or alcohol abuse that harms another person, in this case the baby. We already punish non-pregnant people who use drugs and alcohol in a manner that harms other people. In fact, we punish non-pregnant people who use drugs or alcohol in a manner that has the potential to harm other people, without waiting to see if actual harm occurs; this is the whole concept behind charging people with drunk driving.

I’m all for an honest discussion of how far society can go to protect an unborn baby’s health at the expense of the mother’s liberties. I’m certainly open to objections that, even if we all agree that an adult’s right to abuse their own body is suspended when doing so harms their unborn child, there is no way to criminalize such behaviour without massive unintended consequences. But when the debate stays at this level, I’m forced to wonder if the other side is congenitally incapable of an honest, good-faith debate on the subject.

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Véronique wonders: How can you recognize that abusing pregnant women is somehow worst than abusing a non-pregnant one without recognizing what makes a pregnant woman different from a non-pregnant one? Are people that shortsighted?

That being said, I stood up and clapped when I read in the press release:

“The goal of my Bill is clear: to protect a foetus lawmakers must protect the carrier of the foetus which is the pregnant woman.”

Indeed. You can’t protect a foetus without protecting the woman. You can’t hurt a woman without hurting the foetus. When a foetus is aborted, you have to hurt the woman to hurt the foetus. This is why we are prolife because we are prowoman.

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Tanya adds: Exactly what I was thinking, Véronique. Is the law now to elevate a pregnant woman above a non-pregnant woman?

If we ignore what is so particular about being pregnant (being with child) then we are simply elevating the importance of one individual above another. What sort of dangerous precedent is that?

Happy belated Birth-Mother’s Day

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The special day… celebrates women who chose to carry their baby full-term, but who made the difficult decision to have the child adopted.

Adoption (of the non-celebrity kind) is not discussed nearly enough in the media. A rare read of a birth-mother’s story here.

It really is a life-altering experience. There is so much loss involved,” says Johnson who, when she was 15, gave birth to a baby boy…

“If I had to go back again, I would still do it and I would choose the same family. Seeing Max and how happy he is . . . I could never take that away from him,” she says.

The pill kills

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American Life League is organizing Protest the Pill Day ’08: The Pill Kills Babies. They are clearly referring to its abortifacient capabilities.

The pill also has a long list of admitted health risks to women (heart conditions, circulatory illness, and eye disease, to name a few). Then there’s the kooky idea that it contributes to breast and cervical cancer. I’ve also recently come across an unverified statistic that a teenage girl who uses the pill (or other hormonal contraception) is five times more likely to contract an STD than one who does not.

My humble suggestion is that they sensibilize everyone to the fact that the pill kills women, too, lest we overlook all the spoken (but mostly unspoken) side effects.

Oh, I get it!

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Ever since I saw this, I’ve been thinking more about why abstinence is a bad word. Reading this, it became pretty clear. (If you enjoyed that read, you’re in luck. Hundreds of similar articles are published every day.)

If we adults choose to live like an episode of Sex and the City, preaching abstinence to our teens seems outlandishly hypocritical. Gracious, no one wants to be a hypocrite!

That, and “do as I say – not as I do” has never been a very effective parenting technique.

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Brigitte is laughing her little head off: My favourite part in the age-difference discussion?

Family members seem to be a popular gauge on both ends of the scale: ‘They have to be older than my younger brother,’ another woman tells me.
Of course, it also depends on whether you’re planning on doing more than sleeping with the person.  ‘I mean, is it just sex or am I going to have to have breakfast with the guy and attempt conversation?’ a young woman in her 30s asks.

But, our middle-agish woman also had a problem with this distinction. ‘Sleeping with people is a type of relationship, isn’t it?’

Yes, honey, it is.

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Andrea is also laughing:

Having said that, however, as a friend in Vancouver so aptly put it, ‘It is still a great ego boost when a guy ten years younger than you makes it quite apparent that he’s got it bad for you!’

Ain’t no “ego-boost” large enough to compensate for the lack of self-esteem that would allow a woman to think someone younger than her wanting to sleep with her constitutes a compliment. I mean, imagine that… a young testosterone-filled guy wanting to have sex. With me. Sweep me right off my feet.

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