As you all know, I am proudly anti-choice with regards to the choice of killing your child in utero or otherwise. However, in things childbirth and child-rearing related, I am decidedly more pro-parental choice.
This is why the very public attention on the royal birth makes me uncomfortable. I understand Kate and William are royalty and this is what they live with, but honestly, I can think of nothing worse than the paparazzi taking pictures approximately four minutes after you give birth.
As Robyn Urback says over at the National Post:
The issue is not one of pro-life versus pro-choice. Indeed, both sides should be concerned about an amendment made to Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection Privacy Act (FIPPA) made on January 1, 2012, which prohibited the official release of any abortion-related information. Slipped in as part of Bill 122, an act purportedly about public sector financial accountability, the change to Section 65 effectively rendered provincial abortion data after 2010 untouchable to the general public. Freedom of Information (FOI) requests on the topic would not be satisfied. […]
Now, Maloney has taken the issue to the Divisional Court at the Superior Court of Justice, seeking a judicial review of the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s order to deny her request. The decision will have very real implications on the legitimacy of the Section 65 amendment as it relates to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the principle of open government and transparency in Ontario (which, granted, is hard to refer to without a smirk given the ongoing saga of deleted gas plant emails in Ontario). Though Maloney is pro-life when it comes to her personal abortion beliefs, Ontarians on both sides of the debate should stand behind her judicial actions.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
And Margaret Somerville weighs in at the Ottawa Citizen:
But placing restrictions on public access to information about abortions is anti-democratic, said Margaret Somerville, director of McGill University’s Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.
“Democracy says that we’ve all got a voice in the public square,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re going to prevail, but it means that we’ve got a right to speak and to be heard. The problem is, you can’t speak and you certainly can’t be heard if you haven’t got the information on which to base what you say.”
Somerville said politicians are uncomfortable with the discussion and, by restricting information, could believe they are lessening the chance the issue will be brought up in parliament.
“No matter what you think about whether abortions should be legal or not, everybody agrees that the less abortions there are, the better it is; nobody is in favour of abortion. You can’t point out what a major issue this is unless you have the information.”
I’ve been aware of this case since Pat broke the news at her blog in May 2012, but it still blows my mind. The Ontario government unilaterally decided to block access to data about procedures we fund. The tax-payers and electorate apparently just don’t need to know. They’ve got it handled. Unreal.
Several factors contributed to the falling birth rates, the department said in a press release. One factor was the state’s school sex education program, which law requires to be comprehensive and medically accurate. The report also credits community-based education programs that provide sexual health information to teens and their parents.
“We do believe that our programs are behind these numbers,” Karen Ramstrom, the chief of the program standards branch at the California Department of Public Health’s maternal child and adolescent health division, told the Los Angeles Times.
“California’s innovative strategies and community partnerships aimed at lowering teen pregnancy are helping young women and men make responsible choices,” Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the CDPH, said in a press release. “We must not be complacent; we must continue to promote teen pregnancy prevention programs and strategies in all communities.”
Innovative! Responsible choices! and a pregnancy rate that hasn’t gone down at all. Witness the correction at the bottom:
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said that the state’s teen pregnancy rates had dropped. It is the teen birth rates that have dropped.
So what that may mean is that teens are simply having more abortions. If the birth rate drops, but the pregnancy rate doesn’t, I can’t think of what else that would mean. This is why good stats are important.
A tragedy: An 11-year-old is raped in Chile. She says she wants to keep the baby. Pro-choice folks are upset by this:
At that age the girl doesn’t have a capacity of discernment, not even at age 14 would she have the mental and emotional capacity to discern this,” said Giorgio Agostini, a forensic psychologist who has worked on dozens of child sex abuse cases.
Another blogger rightly points out that is she choice abortion, they would say that is her right:
If abortion was legal in Chile and the girl had chosen to abort, the pro-aborts would have argued that it’s her right regardless of her age. In other words, abortion should be legal at any age but choosing life is beyond the maturity of an 11-year-old. Somebody please explain this asymmetry to me.
It does seem like some are saying she’s mature enough to choose abortion, but not mature enough to choose life.
I say it’s a tragedy all around, and abortion isn’t a solution. An 11-year-old who is raped is going to need a lot of support, care, help, love regardless of what happens with this baby–who I hope would be born and adopted by some loving family. I resent the fact that pro-choice folks think of abortion as the magic undo button for trauma.
I also pause to reflect on the evil in the world and in each one of us, that someone would rape a small child. Causes all kinds of anger and philosophical discussions in my heart and mind. I understand God to be all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing but cases like this are tests, to be sure. I still believe it though. Because in the face of great evil, there must be an ever greater good.
The National Campus Life Network is holding its annual symposium in Toronto this year, and you’re invited! For more information, watch the video below and click on this link.
Look! Someone else in West Virginia is Pro-woman, Pro-life.
Good to see. I do not know this person. However, it is really reasonable to have blogs like this come up, since being pro-life in defence of women is a reasonable position to take.
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Faye adds: Miss Faye’s Google Alerts are about to become much more numerous…
Strong words from an Irish senator. He describes what abortion is in some detail. Warning: It’s gory. This is what abortion at 20 weeks is. (You decide whether you support it.)
Your patient will have been feeling her baby kick for the last two months of more. But now she’s asleep on an operating room table, and you are there to help her with her problem pregnancy. The first task is to remove the laminaria that had earlier been placed in the cervix to dilate sufficiently to allow the procedure you are about to perform.
The first instrument you reach for is a French suction catheter. Picture yourself introducing this catheter through the cervix and instructing the circulating nurse to turn on the suction machine. What you will see is a pale yellow fluid that looks like urine coming through the catheter into a glass bottle on the suction machine. This is amniotic fluid that surrounded the baby to protect her.
With suction complete, look for your sopher clamp. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go. A second-trimester D&E abortion is a blind procedure. The baby cannot be seen in any orientation inside the uterus. Picture yourself reaching in with the sopher clamp and grasping anything you can.
Once you’ve grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard. Really hard. You feel something let go, and out pops a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again, set the jaw and pull really hard once again, and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again, and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart, and lungs.
The toughest part of a D&E operation is extracting the baby’s head. You can be pretty sure that you’ve got hold of it if the sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull’s pieces. Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.
Congratulations, you’ve just affirmed her right to choose.
The law to raise standards at abortion clinics was signed into law and as result, abortion clinics in Texas are closing:
The most significant abortion center closure — in the 40 years of legalized abortion since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision– was made public today when Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Inc. announced that it was shutting down its abortion facility in Bryan/College Station, Texas after fifteen tumultuous years in business.
Shawn Carney, 40 Days for Life campaign director, said: “As the birthplace of 40 Days for Life and the place where Abby Johnson resigned after eight years working for America’s largest abortion chain, this is a huge victory for the entire pro life movement! Peaceful and prayerful local opposition to abortion is ending abortion from the grassroots up.
This news comes courtesy of 40 Days for Life.
Make no mistake: These were not places that “help” women or their health. We can celebrate these closures as the victory that they are.
Pat Maloney, a fabulous blogger and dear friend of PWPL, is taking the Ontario government to court over their undemocratic and unjustified suppression of abortion statistics.
In January 2012, the Ontario government, quietly passed an amendment that restricts Ontarians from making freedom of information (FOI) requests for abortion data and statistics. This came to light after Pat, more investigation journalist than simple blogger like moi, made a FOI request and was refused. The reason the Ministry of Health refused to release the data was because of the new amendment made to Ontario’s freedom of information law. Pat broke the story, and it made national headlines.
PWPL wrote about the story here, when Andrea and I were featured in a 100 Huntley Street segment, and we linked to Margaret Somerville’s Calgary Herald piece.
In the press release she issued this morning, this is what Pat’s lawyer, Albertos Polizogopoulos, had to say about the case:
“As a blogger, Ms. Maloney benefits from the freedom of expression and freedom of the press guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” explains Polizogopoulos. “The Charter protects her right to comment on matters of public interest. The allocation of taxpayer funds for a medical procedure which remains the source of much controversy is certainly a matter of public interest and the suppression of that information cannot be justified in law.”
I wrote about the case this morning at ActivateCFPL:
Without this data, as Maloney states in her press release, how are Ontarians, particularly organizations such as youth and women’s health groups, going to monitor trends and determine if government or non-profit programming is effective? If a group launches a provincial safe-sex program, without abortion data, how will it assess if the program was effective? Premier Kathleen Wynne has promised to re-introduce what some consider a radical sex-education program. How will Ontarians determine if that is tax-dollars well spent? There is no way to know if such a program would cut the rate of teen abortions or spike them if the government hides the data. […]
So now Maloney has to invest significant time, money and resources to fight this fight. It’s a fight to ensure that Ontarians can keep their provincial representatives accountable on health care costs and programming. And this isn’t just Maloney’s fight. This is a fight for all Ontarians.
Are we comfortable with the government deciding what information we and can’t access about their activities and funding? If we’re comfortable with one $30 million a year restriction, what’s next?
What Ontario’s government did to restrict otherwise generally available data from its citizens is unthinkable and arrogant. It tells me that they don’t think the people who elected them are entitled to know how their tax dollars are being spent or if government programing is effective. Frankly, passing this amendment was a condescending move. Hats off to Maloney for taking the government on.
Read the rest here. And drop by Pat’s blog, Run with Life, to offer a few words of support. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it. Going through the legal system to take on a provincial government is no easy task.
When I read about “brochoice” I did a blog post too. But I was really angry and Faye cordially suggested that we not publish that one. Friends don’t let friends publish angry rants.
So thankfully, Miss Rebecca Richmond at National Campus Life Network was able to collect herself and write something useful. Bravo, Rebecca. You have succeeded where others have failed.
For the uninitiated, “Brochoice” is part of the Texas Debacle–fighting over new pro-woman, pro-life legislation down south has gotten ugly in that state. “Brochoice” is what happens when a man decides he needs to motivate men to stand up against the new legislation, which raises standards in abortion clinics and outlaws abortions when the baby could actually be born alive. Why does he stand up to make his voice heard? Because restrictions on abortion put a damper on your casual sex life.
It is so good to see men standing up for the ladies.
If you’d like to read more about Brochoice, take it away, Rebecca. I can feel my blood pressure rising and it’s early in the day.
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Faye adds: Well, I think friends can let friends post ‘angry’ rants. It’s when it comes to explosive, incendiary or nuclear rants that a friend should offer another perspective.