Assisted human reproduction is an area of law that I really need to beef up on when my calendar clears. I think the pro-life movement and others interested in ethical quandaries should be doing some additional thinking and writing on the issue. As noted in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen:

“There is no ethical framework for assisted reproduction. There is no guidance for practitioners or for the public as to what should or shouldn’t be allowed, and how it should be conducted,” says Dr. Arthur Leader, a physician and co-founder of the Ottawa Fertility Clinic, the only place in Ottawa to offer third-party reproductive assistance services.

If you’re someone who has an expertise in this area and want to chat about it, please drop me a line. It can be done in confidence, if you’d like.

photo credit: Etolane via photopin cc

Now that I have your attention, I’m not talking about a concerted effort to censor me/us by nefarious powers that be.

I’m talking about the censorship I do to myself.

This morning I ran into a reader of PWPL in the drugstore checkout. We had a nice chat. She shared that she is going to be retiring and is going to do more work on “these issues.” She then said “I don’t feel comfortable saying that word out loud!” I agreed that sometimes I struggle with the same thing.

Self-censorship: We are our own worst enemies. Why wouldn’t you mention the A word? Why not ask questions? Why not be up front about the work we do “on these issues”?

A tangent: I was recently out on a gelato date. One of the flavours is called “Sexy Chocolate.” “Sexy Chocolate” is just plain ole’ chocolate, in case you are wondering. After eating “Sexy Chocolate” absolutely nothing about me had changed. Except possibly my weight. It’s disappointing, to be frank. People, if I order “Sexy Chocolate” I want some sort of outcome guarantee.

Anyhoo, when I’m in that store (not too terribly often; please reference point A about the weight change) I always feel it is slightly pathetic that we feel we must add this descriptor (“Sexy!”) to just about everything. It’s an ice cream shop, for crying out loud.

And the lady serving the “Sexy Chocolate” described right there how a child had kind of stumbled over the word “sexy” in making the same order recently.This piqued my interest.

The immediate question to pop into my mind was “Why are you making a child order sexy chocolate?” Do they not expect children in their ice cream shop? Or is “sexy” just a standard, run-of-the-mill word, to be learned early? As in “See Sexy Spot Run.”

However, I self-censored and didn’t say anything.

I continue to challenge myself to stop doing that and I challenge you to do the same. My goal here isn’t to be annoying, but rather to be honest with myself on how I am feeling. Or, often enough, about my life’s work. Honest and cordial. That’s all.

Here ends the rant. (By the way, it is cool to run into friendly readers in the drugstore!)

“Sexy” or “Regular” chocolate? I’ll never know…

What follows is the press release of the Susan B. Anthony List:

House Moves to Protect Women, Unborn with Late-Term Abortion Ban Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act Will Stop Future “Houses of Horror”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) praised the U.S. House of Representatives, led by courageous pro-life women, for passing the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 1797), which safeguards babies nationwide by banning abortion past 20 weeks gestation, the point at which they can feel pain. According to a January 2013 Gallup poll, 80 percent of Americans would make abortion illegal in the third trimester and 64 percent would make abortion illegal in the second trimester.

“Congress has taken an important first step toward making sure we stop abortionists like Kermit Gosnell and his horrific abortion clinic and procedures. The House listened to the overwhelming majority of Americans, men and women, who instinctively recoil at the dehumanizing and degrading practice of late-term abortion,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the SBA List. “This pro-woman, pro-science, Constitutional bill deserves an immediate vote in the U.S. Senate. It’s simple: children capable of experiencing unimaginable pain from abortion must be protected across the country.
“The big abortion industry cannot defend late-term abortions. Americans are disturbed by the callous nature of this practice, the disgusting clinic conditions in Pennsylvania, Delaware and other states, the 330,000 abortions Planned Parenthood of America performs every year as it receives half a billion in taxpayer dollars, and the repeated harm women experience as a result of their exploitation. Women and the unborn deserve better than abortion, and making late-term abortions illegal is a simple step in that direction. Votes have consequences. Congress should take note we’re pulling together our 2014 target list tonight.”

The SBA List has compiled an ever-expanding fact sheet on abortion industry negligence and brutality occurring nationwide.

Last month national and statewide pro-life groups launched the Stop the Gosnells coalition dedicated to exposing the horrors of the late-term abortion industry and encouraging legislative response.

The Susan B. Anthony List, and its affiliated Political Action Committees, the SBA List Candidate Fund and Women Speak Out PAC, are dedicated to pursuing policies and electing candidates who will reduce and ultimately end abortion. To that end, the SBA List emphasizes the education, promotion, mobilization, and election of pro-life women.  The SBA List is a network of more than 365,000 pro-life Americans nationwide.

This is a well done video. Give if you can.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3JesJ0gSqBo]

Jonathon Van Maren, tell us how you really feel. LOTS of zingers in there. Happy Father’s Day, indeed.

Abortion, of course, is the generally proposed solution to the inconvenient presence of a developing human being that showed up to spoil all the fun. Since Frat Boy Tom really didn’t want to have a baby with Sally From The Bar, Tom can gently—or, more often, loudly—suggest that Sally go to a clinic and have their brand new, blissfully unaware offspring shredded by a suction aspirator and tossed in the trash. Problem solved—Tommy’s conquest now has an actual body count, but at least he dodged having to explain to his now-deceased child how he met Mommy or mitigating his travel plans with child support payments. But—horrors—what if Sally doesn’t want to allow the local fetus exterminator to force his way into her uterus and forcibly evict the baby that could well have her laugh and Tom’s eyes? What is poor Tom (who hasn’t even found himself yet!) to do?

My fabulous EFC colleague Julia Beazley had a great op-ed piece run in today’s National Post:

Why is this? Because the violence experienced by women in prostitution is not rooted in the laws on paper, or in how they stand up to a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The violence directed at women in prostitution is rooted in the demand for paid access to women’s bodies — and the fundamental inequality that underlies this sense of entitlement. […]

The violence is rooted in the underlying view among the people, mostly men, that purchase them that women in prostitution are somehow fundamentally different from their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives and daughters. This misperception justifies treatment of women as objects to be bought and sold. The very existence of prostitution requires a subclass of people who are available to be bought, sold and rented; people understood to be somehow just a little less equal than everyone else. The Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia have discovered that legalizing prostitution does not change this.

photo credit: Hani Amir via photopin cc

You can learn about this new palliative care facility called Emily’s House through Global News, here.

I link to this because I follow the blog of Lindsey Yeskoo, whose daughter is Emily, after whom the facility is named. Lindsey’s daily writing, which tells of her family, her life and the story of how she has cared for Emily for many years now (I joined in maybe two years ago) has been something of an inspiration to me. So much grace to absorb from her words and her example. Grace and peace: two qualities I long to possess, but oftentimes show little. I’m working on it!

I’d like to hear Tania Fiolleau speak about her life as a former madam. I think her story would be really interesting. How she got into prostitution, how she got out, what she thinks of the madams currently clamouring for legalization.

If you are in North Bay on June 22, the REAL Women chapter up there is hosting her for lunch. They’d like you to buy tickets in advance. More info can be found here.

Linda Gibbons protests inside the bubble zones outside Toronto abortion clinics. She paces quietly and hands out pamphlets. For this she has spent many years in jail, and on Tuesday this past week, she was arrested again. This is her life’s work and I’m grateful to her for it.

In moments, I wonder what would happen if more of us joined her in a concerted effort with media advisories going out ahead of time. Ie. many young women being thrown in prison might cause more of a stir than one elderly one, who to be frank, we’ve gotten used to. It’s more a question of when Linda Gibbons is going back to jail, not if. I muse about this kind of idea regularly, if you’d like to know about the inner workings of my mind.

Then I muse about building a house with space for young girls who are unexpectedly pregnant to live in, but now I’m digressing.

Yesterday, Quebec introduced its euthanasia bill. Euthanasia is currently a criminal act, though Quebec is trying to work around the Criminal Code by declaring it health care. From Wesley Smith:

As I understand the Canadian system, all hospitals, nursing homes, etc., are publicly funded, part by the province and part by the federal government. This would appear to mean that every taxpayer in Canada will be underwriting euthanasia, and moreover, that the provincial government of Quebec will require the killing of patients to be allowed in all publicly funded hospitals, residential care facilities and nursing homes.

Assisted suicide and intentional homicide are crimes in Canada, under the federal criminal code. But the provinces are in charge of regulating medicine. So, Quebec seeks to get out from under the federal criminal laws by redefining euthanasia as health care, e.g., the medical treatment of “aid in dying.”

If this becomes law, it will be a disaster for our country of epic proportions, but I’ll save that rant for another day. However, the “safeguards” put in place to ensure that people aren’t euthanized against their will, etc, will surely be watered down in years to come, as has happened in other countries that have permitted the practice. Our friend Alex Schadenberg explains,

Some call it a “slippery slope” and others call it an incremental extension, nonetheless, doctors appear to be breaking the law by killing, by euthanasia, children with disabilities, such as spina bifida.

Smith states that if assisted suicide is accepted, the same will occur in the United States.

In Canada we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that recognizes that we are all equal under the law. Therefore, legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide in Canada will logically be extended, through the court, to all Canadians. You can’t have a little euthanasia.

Disabled babies are already being euthanized in the Netherlands are part of the Groningen Protocol. Let me tell you – the Netherlands’ euthanasia laws had plenty of safeguards in place when the country legalized the practice years ago. Then they were watered down as Alex explains above. Now babies are being euthanized. Like Fido, the family pet.

And children will be euthanized in Belgium as well, another country that has legalized euthanasia. The country debated the matter this past week.

In the wake of several months of testimony from doctors and experts in medical ethics, a Belgian Senate committee will on June 12 examine the possible extension of the country’s euthanasia law to include children.

“On both sides of the linguistic border, liberals and socialists appear to agree on the fact that age should not be regarded as a decisive criteria in the event of a request for euthanasia,” notes De Morgen. They want doctors to decide on a minor’s capacity for discernment on a case by case basis.

Not only do we need to worry about abortion taking our young, as well as rocking our families and societies, now we’ll need to worry about euthanasia doing the same.