It’s not a man’s right, it’s not a right. It’s an issue of competing rights, is about all I’m prepared to concede, something Natalie Sonnen so eloquently explained for us.

This small rant comes to you courtesy of this article in the Globe and Mail about Kelowna having a “protect human life” week.

Don’t get me wrong, I love animals (I’ve got two adorable and ridiculous westies of my own), but a recent article in Slate presents the issue of framing the abortion debate around consciousness. This presents the obvious problem of removing human exceptionalism.  An ape who is self-conscious comes to have more rights than 22-week unborn baby who isn’t yet self-aware. A dog’s rights trump a newborn baby’s. Unfortunately, this idea isn’t new. Bioethicists such as Peter Singer have taken this idea to the extreme and, for decades, have been making arguments that animals are, in fact, persons and some humans are not, such as newborn babies and disabled people. I think it’s important that we not let other people frame the debate for us, but that we take control of it. Humans, whether they are unborn or born, disabled or perfectly healthy deserve to live for the simple fact that they are human.

This will not do. There are NO repercussions to abortion, which is a safe and common surgical procedure (Reference Feminist Bible talking point no. 1).

Well, more precisely, I loved this one. The problem is everyone has a mother/was a child and so therefore, has an opinion on family-related matters and mothering. So while I agreed with her top five, I am also praying that new moms somehow dig deep for grace because they are going to get comments like these, and more annoying ones too. Except that last one. Anyone who asks a new (or older) mom “what do you do all day” deserves a summary, on-the-spot execution.

Twitter allows every bloviating joker to have a mini soapbox. It is therefore incumbent on all of us to strategically ignore the particularly idiotic comments. Like this one.

You may or may not have noticed that blogging has been light over here. That is for a couple of reasons. 1) Life/work has been busy. 2) I no longer feel a sense of anxiety when I don’t post something every single day. I am able to go away for an extended weekend and know that the sun will keep on rising and setting whether I post a post or not.

So. Generally, people, I view the light blogging as progress.

One thing I might add about the light blogging is that these days when I am sent many myriad of oh-so-funny-Akin-anti-Republican-“Get Government Out Of Our Lives Unless You Have A Uterus” tracts/posters/short YouTube clips, I can only sigh. I have no comment. I don’t want to further the publicity for these really achingly bad spoofs of what some think it means to be pro-life.

Perhaps you want me to post them, if only to say, “I can’t believe someone spent time on this,” or some such variant on a theme. However, for now, in my pre-Labour Day relaxing mode, I’ve just let them pass me by as I make ever stronger mojitos, “the weekend drink of champions.”

This is my long-winded way of wishing you a Happy Long Labour Day Weekend. I’m going to kick back and relax with some friends. Hope you get to do the same.

When I’m thoroughly disturbed by something I read in mainstream online magazines, it is of some small comfort to learn that others out there in this big ole’ world are equally disturbed. So for the cathartic benefit of knowing we are not alone, I link to this take on the abortion love story. Here’s the part I like best:

I am sick at heart because I keep thinking about Josh, and about all the men who are utterly messed up by women who treat them like semi-attractive, gift-bearing sub-humans–like genies, perhaps–using them and judging them and blaming them for being who they are instead of who the women want them to be.

Men are just as human as we are. Honestly. They have different problems, they have different weaknesses, they even have some different sins. But male friends deserve the same respect as female friends. We need to be gentle with them. We need to be careful of their feelings. The chattering classes have granted women the permission to use men for sex, to judge them constantly, to blame them constantly for non-sins. We should tell the chattering classes to go to hell.

What I like best is that she doesn’t let this woman off the hook for one second. She points a laser beam at all the problems, with some level of accuracy, I’d guess. Where your standard Canadian reader might be thinking, oh, poor dear, got herself into a difficult one, there, didn’t she! Or something along those lines. I’m not in favour of unduly blaming one gender over the other. But one of the many myriad problems with political correctness combined with strident feminism is that women have learned to expect a free pass. And I’m not in favour of that, either.

Ok, I got sucked in to watching the vice-presidential candidate tonight, I will admit. One comment: for all the talk of a party that hates women, there are certainly plenty in the audience. I suspect they are all plants.

I stumbled across this, in searching for something else entirely. I’m sad that I did. It’s a story with a moral and a motivation that I can’t understand. It’s a story that’s interesting and somewhat lyrical. It’s a story of selfishness. It’s a story of how oxytocin changes abilities to reason. It’s a story of what we are told we can do. And then some women go out and do it. And some blog about it, and compare their choice to kill their lentil-sized baby with deeply significant religious events like Passover that do not celebrate what she thinks they celebrate. Then trendy magazines like Slate give a forum for such articles and the author feels satisfied that she is a real artist.

Pro-lifers in this world always understand what it means to be pro-choice better than pro-choicers understand what it means to be pro-life. That’s what it means to be a minority: you have to understand those you live with, at least a little, while the majority assume everyone thinks like they do. But sometimes I’m truly at a loss.

Remember how Véronique was in the Globe a while back? She’s taken time to flesh out her thoughts further (imagine that, desiring more than two sentences to make your views on a topic known) here.