It’s Christmas day and I hope you are all enjoying some good family time. Blogging between now and New Year’s will be light. I will leave you with my favourite Muppet Christmas song for now.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt_9ZzMmrtE]

This short letter uses up the word count to make very few logical or effective points in response to Mike Schoutten’s piece about abortion and infanticide. What a shame that those who defend abortion really only have euphemisms like “abortion care” to rely on. But she’s probably a provider, so we can understand why she must bury herself in euphemisms in order to keep on doing abortions instead of actually helping women. (I’m sorry if that sounds bitter or angry, but I don’t have a lot of time for these “women’s advocates.”)

I must admit, these beautiful stories just about do the trick for me. And I’m confident there are many more such stories, just not captured on film or written up online.

I am not a fan of using the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut to advocate for the unborn. I have seen this happen on Twitter. I am not in favour of connecting the Newtown event with abortion because I believe these are fundamentally different issues and I believe that in this period directly following the horrible massacre, those families who lost loved ones should be allowed to mourn free from the interference of activists of all kinds–be it those who want gun control or those who want pro-life laws.

However, this video makes a powerful point about what it means to be pro-life in a broader sense. Pro-lifers believe in protecting all children, and we believe that when we fail to do so as a society, we have all failed. There are no prescriptions made in the video and there is no condemnation of those who are not pro-life. It is a simple statement of why I am pro-life: because when we fail to protect children, we have generally failed in our culture and our society.

We are failing in many ways, these days.

I therefore appreciate this video.

A group of 25 women will be walking from Montreal to Ottawa next year in the spring. 25 women for every year since 1988 and the disastrous Morgentaler decision.

Here’s a little video about it. Looks like a great initiative and makes me look forward to 2013 and all it will bring!

People who know me will know I make jokes about being a surfer at heart. But I do truly love water and waves and all that they represent (freedom, renewal, strength, power and sometimes, danger). So this story of a young surfing woman in Bangladesh bucking misogynistic cultural trends definitely struck a chord with me. Enjoy.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0gc1XqZew]

Barbara Kay has a wonderful article in the post, in support of M-408.

Legislation targeting sex-selective abortion is ineffective in the West, because it’s difficult to enforce (as in the Netherlands, where the practice is illegal but still widespread). That is why I favour Conservative MP Mark Warawa’s petition for the Commons to approve his motion — M408 — to “condemn discrimination against female pregnancy termination.”

This is an intelligent compromise. Women still would have freedom of choice, but the view of enlightened people that sex-selective abortion is a retrograde practice, alien to Canadian values and based in contempt for women, would be given official expression in our legislature.

An abortion law in Canada would halt the slide toward acceptance of infanticide. A good article by WeNeedALaw’s Mike Schoutten:

While the promotion of infanticide by “ethicists” such as Peter Singer and two philosophers in a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is generally dismissed by the public as extreme, Canada’s top legal experts are increasingly using our lack of legal protection for pre-born children as an excuse to enter the world wherein infanticide is an acceptable practice for women who have given birth and don’t receive the support they require to take care of their newborn child.

A passage from A Severe Mercy, A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph by Sheldon Vanauken. The whole book, sentence sentence, is beautifully written. It’s the true story of the correspondence between CS Lewis and Sheldon Vanauken, men who exchanged letters as they lost their wives to terminal illness. Here’s one passage that I thought our readers might be interested in.

He had been wont to despise emotions: girls were emotional, girls were weak, emotions—tears—were weakness. But this morning he was thinking that being a great brain in a tower, nothing but a brain, wouldn’t be much fun. No excitement, no dog to love, no joy in the blue sky—no feelings at all. But feelings—feelings are emotions! He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions. But, then—this was awful!—maybe girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life. Shattering! He checked himself: showing one’s emotions was not the thing: having them was. Still, he was dizzy with the revelation. What is beauty but something that is responded to with emotion? Courage, at least partly, is emotional. All the splendour of life. But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it seemed to be found in love—a great love—though maybe for the saints there was joy in the love of God. He didn’t aspire to that, though; he didn’t even believe in God. Certainly not! So, if he wanted the heights of joy, he must have, if he could find it, a great love. But in the books again, great joy through love seemed always to go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain—if, indeed, they went together. If there were a choice—and he suspected there was—a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.

A sometimes funny piece about why being a mother today is hard, particularly as contrasted with yesteryear:

There were no flashcards, there was no sign language (unless you were deaf), there were no organic, free-range bento boxes — your job was to just see a kid through to adulthood and hope they didn’t become an idiot.