Feminism – Page 7

On plan A

April 10, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

Plan B.

It’s the emergency contraception that works in part by not allowing an already fertilized embryo to implant, so an exceptionally early abortion.

It also works by wreaking havoc on a woman’s body, lots of nausea, throwing up, waiting at home by yourself.

I was waiting in the drugstore yesterday and I noticed it sitting there on the shelf. Plan B.

It’s not called Plan A.

Getting pregnant at the wrong time is never your first choice.

When you are asked about your plans for the future they are never “I’m going to complete my degree, but only with difficulty and perhaps by taking longer because I’m going to get pregnant—round about second year?—with someone I don’t love or know that I want to be with for a weekend, let alone a lifetime.”

Immediately you are launched into “Plan B” territory.

I would say Plan B—the drug, and Plan B the idea is a bad plan, and what you want is a new Plan A.

Your Plan A might not be executed in exactly the fashion you thought, but women should not need to have surgery or take pills to be equal and successful in this world.

Doing so means acquiescing to the fact that this is an anti-family world, and that life is only ever played out on sterile terms.

We don’t make accommodations for people who need special circumstances very easily. Why is that?

Perhaps because we rarely ask?

If we are to build a world where women truly thrive, it can’t include abortion, because this cuts life off, and demands that women function as men.

On this idea of creating new plan As—it happens All. The. Time and is fairly non-controversial in practice.

My Plan A: I thought I would be an international diplomat or journalist. I thought I would live and work in Europe, and I spent near two years there trying to build this future. I was actually fairly fluent in German for a time.

My life today? I am not an international diplomat or journalist. My writing portfolio is focused almost exclusively on domestic, social affairs. I live in Ottawa.

The other Plan A from a slightly earlier stage in my life was to be a kinesiologist. I thought I might do water therapy/rehabilitation for people who have suffered accidents, because I lived and breathed the pool in high school. I love swimming still.

I do swim, three times a week. And that’s as close as I am to that Plan A.

Plan As almost never look exactly as we thought, and a good friend, a good feminist, any strong woman in your life will help a younger woman understand that. As we live through the ups and downs of life there is a long term trajectory toward achieving not just your own practical goals, but your vocation—without claiming a false right to kill your unborn child along the way.

I am not where I thought I would be or perhaps even should be today, but I am happy.

We should never acquiesce to a contrived Plan B when we can live a Plan A adventure.

(I’m so far gone on planning these days that there are no letters left in the alphabet.)

I tried to say a version of this as my concluding remarks at the “Stump the Pro-lifer” event yesterday, but I don’t think I really captured what I meant, so trying to post those thoughts here today.

Looking out over the coffee fields of El Salvador. Part of me wishes I could be a coffee farmer. But I realize this plan is more than slightly unrealistic.

How to maximize profit with your spa abortion service

April 1, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Carafem, the spa abortion experience is about profits. Not service, not women, not activism. Normalizing abortion for them isn’t about normalizing abortion. It’s about making money. Which they will make more of, if abortion is normalized.

As Barbara Kay explains in her column:

There may be a great deal of money to be made in massaging the roiled consciences of those with much to feel roiled about. But that will make Carafem an entrepreneurial success, and nothing more.

One more thing: they don’t do surgical abortions (well why would they, those are more expensive, therefore less profit margin).

Because Carafem will offer only the abortion pill, not vacuum aspiration or other surgical procedures, prospective clients must be no more than 10 weeks pregnant. …

After receiving counseling and some basic tests, Carafem clients will take an initial pill at the clinic. Purdy’s team expects to get them in and out quickly, within about 60 minutes.

That’s a super fast spa experience. Relax, ladies. But not too much. Because we need to charge another client.

When my friend took the abortion pill, from her description, there’s no spa or cup of tea that helps when you are throwing up so much that you are concerned the pill didn’t actually work and you have to go back to get it again.

So the question is: Do they hire extra folks to clean up the vomit or do they simply hope that part happens at home?

So what about bodily autonomy?

March 30, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 4 Comments

Thanks, New Wave Feminists, for posting this photo. Well put.

How do you spell hypocrisy?

March 26, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 21 Comments

Turns out it’s spelled “Fern Hill.” Fern Hill is a blogger. A bossy, brash blogger, who doesn’t like people like me and often singles me out, met with much gleeful sarcasm from her minions. I asked her for a coffee a while back, simply to see that we are both people (it was not an effort to make her pro-life, goodness me, no). She said no.

She is busy tweeting the names of all the members of the Christian Medical Dental Society:

@CMDSCanada are shy about divulging members but want to impose their values on us. Know any members? Post names with #PatientRights tag.

Meanwhile, Fern Hill is a pseudonym. I just wanted to name this hypocrisy. Especially since “Fern Hill” has made a blogging living on spotting the purported hypocrisy in others.

My name–my real name–is Andrea Mrozek, and when you have questions or concerns–you know where to find me.

Fern Hill. But not the Fern Hill who does the blogging, you’ll note. This grassy knoll isn’t so mean.

Strip clubs shutting down across Canada

March 23, 2015 by Faye Sonier 2 Comments

Here’s some good news:

Strip clubs, with flashy signs advertising nude dancers, once had a strong footing in downtown centres across Canada.

But as Cheetah’s Show Lounge in Kelowna, B.C. closes its doors, an adult industry insider says strip clubs are an endangered species being killed off by lack of demand.

But also some news that causes me some mixed feelings :

“The market demand for adult entertainment clubs is a male around a certain age,” Tim Lambrinos, director of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada, told Daybreak South‘s Chris Walker.

“It seems that young Canadian males are more distracted with other types of interests — Game Boys, plugging in things and so on…

And some unfortunate news:

… and it’s almost as if the young women are the ones bringing them out to the clubs now.”

Well, it’s a start I guess.

photo credit: Gorgeous, temping Lensbaby via photopin (license)

The problem of parenting today

March 15, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 4 Comments

Our friend and former PWPL blogger has a post about sleep and children here. Read it and weep. I think all of this would be more livable and do-able with better community. With the aunties, the uncles, the grandmothers, the grandfathers, adult children, etc. around and about. She alludes to this:

The isolation of the modern homemaker is forcing us to be everything to everyone in our family, without the help of a village of older mothers, aunts and grandparents whose sleepless nights are far and gone. Our children can no longer busy themselves with little neighbours, they need us to entertain, stimulate and socialize them while the neighbours are in daycare and preschool from dawn until dusk.

We don’t have community because we are obsessed with the office working world. The 9-5, 8-6, 7-7 days we do. Seriously, many of us happily work 12-14 hour days away from our families, our children and think absolutely nothing of it. I’m talking mothers and fathers here, lest anyone think I’m blaming women. I’m not. That said, responsibility is on mothers too, because if we all decide en masse that we won’t prioritize parenting, I’m not quite sure we can expect anyone else, the people who didn’t bond with a baby over nine months of pregnancy, to do exactly that.

I am trying to think more about this. The way we do life. The business expectations. I admit what Veronique describes here sounds like a personal hell to me. My personality changes when I don’t sleep. I become depressed. My outlook shifts. What was previously difficult but possible becomes too difficult and impossible, and by the way, I’m a useless loser whom God has forsaken.

It happens rather quickly, actually, and soon, without sleep, I begin to eat too much, exercise too little, and everything spirals. I think I could cope with sleepless nights (due to children, or otherwise) IF I HAD FAMILY AND FRIENDS AROUND. But that doesn’t exist anymore, so we face a problem in our society. A couple years back, I had a rare instance of a protracted fever, sore throat, ear ache, etc. I lived alone, was single, and for about a week, saw no one. People who are home during the days for whatever reason are alone.

So great is my own commitment to work, work, work, that recently, when I found I had the opportunity to be at my sister’s home with my nieces for one week, I couldn’t give up on it. I prioritize those kids to the extent that I spent the week there, yes. But I could have taken a vacation, I could have taken unpaid leave. It would have been fine in the grand scheme of life–what am I trying to prove, and to who? But I was so worried about work, that mentally, I couldn’t. I took an hour here or there, that’s all.

Once upon a time, I reorganized my schedule to help a mom care for new born twins. This was only possible because I work at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada where you can do that kind of thing and no one thinks it is terribly weird–they appreciate it. But I still needed to make up the hours. If we skip three hours a week, we need to make up three hours a week and back to our scheduled lives we go.

I don’t like this picture. It starts with the devaluing of parenting–people think kids parent themselves and they then further think it’s strange when accommodations need to be made in the business world. It extends to the devaluing of mothering, how hard it is. Why aren’t you working? What do you actually DO all day? those kind of questions. And it finishes when we expect fancy business cards and job titles to be a success in this world.

That little thing called pride

March 4, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

An article about how to parent seven children practically screams for a Sound of Music photo

Pride–I know thee well.

This article made me smile in a couple of places. It’s a mom recounting how she makes it all happen with seven children.

I liked this part the best:

It turns out that I don’t need the public presence my pride thinks my talents deserve (and all the smartphones, haircuts, petrol, and trousers necessary for such publicity) for my life to be worth exactly what every human life is worth: nothing to most people, and everything to a few.

(Petrol? Trousers? Hello, UK! Fun.)

My add to what she said: My life is worth nothing to most people, everything to a few, and supremely everything to my Creator. That I live one more day is something I can give thanks for every morning. My life is a gift, even if today it is a congested, sore throat, snivelling, coughing, will-I-live-to-see-another-day kind of gift. (The answer being yes you will! It’s called the common cold and people generally do survive these things.)

Why must I bring a Creator, aka God, into this? Because this mother is valuable to seven more people than I am valuable to, yet that does not, I repeat, DOES NOT make her more valuable than others with fewer/no children. We are each unique created souls, of inestimable worth, and that doesn’t alter based on how many accomplishments we have, how many children we have, how much money we have, how many friends/acquaintances/possessions/athletic pursuits/books writtten/Gold Medal Wins–do I need to go on–that we have.

Ultimately, the pro-life struggle is about convincing each woman who carries a child of her own worth. Men can and should help do this, but since the woman carries the baby, it’s she who must ultimately truly believe she is valuable regardless of circumstance. This is very difficult to do because we live in a world where we are valued for what we do, where we live, how much we make, what our title is. And title, earnings, what we do–these things can and indeed do diminish in the short term when you have a baby. Your title goes UP (with the baby, who will always only ever have one mom) and DOWN with the world. (Yes, I do resent this, somehow, and am working through my thoughts on it. To repeat: Pride, I know thee well.)

Being in Washington D.C. for the past four months taught me a lesson in humility. Yes, I’m a crazy social conservative, and many hold me in disdain. The problem is, being held in disdain is itself a form of recognition, and if I’m honest, I enjoy it. In Canada I am known for what I do. I have a title. I am a bigger fish in a smaller pond. But in the US of A I am one among many, no title, and not known for what I do. People were generally still nice, and some were very, very, very kind. I’d call them out for this but they would be embarrassed and not want the attention. I think they know who they are.

At the same time, I also got to experience Ye Olde “You Don’t Have Anything To Offer Me So Now I Shall Search For Someone New To Talk To” syndrome at events. We all know it. The searching eyes. The “I’ve seen your name tag and now I need to move on.” Oh yes.

It is my hope to get over my pride, to focus on my contribution to making the world a better place, to helping women thrive, their unborn babies live. At risk of sounding religiously self-satisfied, I’d also add this: How much better to get credit where it counts, for the things that really count with the One who ultimately counts.

Over and out. Going to take more cold medication now.

Gender Cafe, Ottawa, February 9

February 8, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

I first met Daniel Gilman on a very, very cold day outside Canada’s Supreme Court years ago for a pro-life protest. Daniel and I both cling to this strange, fanatical, anachronistic, dinosaur notion that life matters, that people matter and we ought not kill them, even when it seems like that would be a good idea. I suspect I’ll be seeing lots more of Daniel outside the Supreme Court in the coming years.

Anyhoo, Daniel does a lot of good things, and one of them is happening on Monday. You should go. Information about this gender cafe looking at solutions for the rape culture on campus can be found here.

Parents: Talk to your children

February 3, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

Miriam Grossman, (100 percent MD, 0 percent PC) is doing an admirable job these days to equip us all to cope with 50 Shades of Grey. I’m encouraged that she is rising to this challenge, considering I just saw a 50 Shades of Grey display at my local grocery store, felt a rising sense of despair and then did…precisely nothing. (Well, I paid for my groceries and left. That much I did. So I’m not still standing there, incapacitated. Hurray!)

Miriam Grossman, MD

Parents, however, can do more. It’s something small and important and it will build your family up. You can talk to your sons and daughters about this stuff. And tell them why it’s not normal. Then you can expand and continue the discussion into one of what you want them to know about sex. It takes a lot less (a lot less) than 50 Shades of Grey behaviour to damage a young person. The scars they accrue in their teens and twenties will be with them for a lifetime and will be shared by their future spouse, in spite of them not having a sweet clue about who or even whether they will get married one day. Them’s the breaks and yes, it is sad. The short-lived days of the “freedom” of the sexual revolution of the 60s have already turned over into a legacy of divorce, STDs, lack of intimacy, and rising porn rates.

So, parents: you have the power to prevent pain in your kids through loving and compassionate conversation. Miriam Grossman is great, and she provides links to other helpful sites like this one.

“What we don’t know just might kill you”

January 30, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

Great article. You’ll remember Brittany Maynard as the young woman who killed herself recently, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. The author of this piece asks important questions about how it is she may have gotten this brain tumour. We can’t say for sure, is the bottom line, but the questions are worth asking.

I happened to meet the author at a conference last weekend. I don’t think Canada has the same issue with widespread egg donation. If we do, I haven’t heard of it. I’m also not in the demographic where people would donate eggs. I’m in the demographic where people hold on to their eggs and hope they can still have children. My demographic may think they should use an egg donor if they can’t have kids, but I think that is the wrong course of action, because it encourages a young woman to wait to have kids, as if she had forever. It is sad to encourage young women to do something apparently altruistic, so that they can find out later they can’t have their own children. My demographic should not be responsible for perpetuating the problem for younger folks.

Anyways, I think Canada outlaws payment for egg donation. Am I right? Which is good, since even this free marketeer believes stridently that bodies and their parts ought never be for sale.

Meta