Few people argue that sex-selective abortion is a “good thing”, but when we talk about what’s wrong with it, are we leaving out the women who are affected by the practice? This article in the Washington Post really raised some interesting points for me and illustrated that, just like with all abortions, nothing gets solved by law alone if the society doesn’t change. The answer to solving the sex-selective abortion problem, as always, seems to lie with addressing the needs/problems of the women who have them.

Few voiced the point that sex-selective abortions are a symptom of a larger problem: that girls are devalued because of societal norms and pressures. Many women and men earnestly fail to see the possibility of raising a daughter who can proudly carry the family name, support her parents in old age without ridicule, and live without fear of violence against her body and the associated pain and shame for her family.

Sex selection is portrayed as an “exotic” issue, even though we see the differentiated  (or “specialized,” as our multi-billion dollar maternity and baby products industry would prefer) attention to baby boys and girls across U.S. society — the “tougher” mechanical toys for boys, the frills for girls; the early career suggestions subtly impressed on the young. These differences are exacerbated in some cultural contexts, where a family is “not complete” without a son and, worse, socially and economically insecure.

For women whose friends and relatives push sex-selective abortions, the debate around PRENDA was both deficient and disempowering. They heard either that their problem is not real, since it is faced only by a small fraction of a minority, or that they were unimaginably cruel, requiring punishment. The real solution lies in restructuring gender roles generally, but these women heard a demonization of their cultures specifically.

Reported here:

“We are in the home of Canada’s new human-rights museum that is being built,” Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Calgary-based group, told CBC News. “Our point is … let the pre-born children in, because abortion is Canada’s greatest human-rights violation.”

Tomorrow is World Blood Donor Day, and you can participate by contacting your local centre. Your 350ml donation could save three lives and help save women who might otherwise die from severe bleeding and haemorrhage during childbirth (the leading cause of maternal death). Here’s a two-minute video about the process.

CBC investigation discovers what those of us following the story have known to be true for about 6 years now.

Yesterday we received some flak here at PWPL for The New Abortion Caravan, a program we are not running. I am not running The New Abortion Caravan, neither do I have anything to do with it. However, I will certainly post about this cross-country anti-apathy tour. Here’s a news item from Regina’s Leader Post.

I know the graphics are inflammatory. I know some pro-lifers don’t like them. Here’s why I do, in spite of the fact that I don’t use them myself. Because what we are fighting here in Canada is apathy to a very real social problem. I can bring out photos of happy babies til the cows come home and no one will notice. Pro-lifers already do provide charitable aid and support to young families in need. No one notices.

When apathy is so high, we need different approaches to come at the issue from different angles. Yes, I have some concerns over the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform’s strategy. I still support them, even with those concerns.

As Stephanie Gray says in this news item: “The images are graphic because abortion is graphic … and if people are bothered by the posters, we hope their complaints will be to the abortion clinics.”
I note the responses in the article linked above and indeed in the flak from yesterday speak to “don’t tell me what to do with my body,” not the reality of a dead baby, which is what abortion is and what it does, by intent.

It is my fervent belief that women can have these children–need not be their mothers, but can have the children–without foregoing any more rights than they currently do when they abort. Historically it is a relatively new idea that women would achieve rights through the killing of their unborn children. It is an idea I do not accept.

Because equality for women and girls is everybody’s business

Indeed! Status of Women wants us to nominate women leaders for a Governor General’s award in commemoration of the Persons Case. Here’s the info you need to find strong women to nominate in this regard. What about Linda Gibbons, for one? Or Mary Wagner? Both strong women, advancing women’s rights in our society.

I will freely admit these women are ahead of their time, and we’ll probably only honour them after the fact, when we are likewise busy repenting of the horrors we pushed in the name of “women’s rights.” However, every small action matters, and if Status of Women receives nominations for strong pro-life women, it sends an important message: Strong, confident women are pro-woman when they are pro-life, and being pro-life is a compassionate and pro-woman stand.

Not all quotes are great, but this one from Einstein just really stands out to me.

Do you want your union to be spent protesting against pro-life organizations? See this press release from Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform below:

The Canadian Auto Workers’ Union Takes on the “New Abortion Caravan,” Organizes Sweeping Counter-Protests across Manitoba and Ontario

Regina, SK. The largest private worker’s union in Canada has come out against the “New Abortion Caravan,” an appropriation of the famous pro-abortion 1970 Abortion Caravan, by the controversial anti-abortion group the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/caravan).

The anti-abortion caravan has been attracting widespread media coverage on television and radio from Vancouver into the prairies, and angry denunciations from abortion rights activists. Now the Canadian Auto Worker’s Union (CAW) is wading in, promising counter-protests at each of CCBR’s presentations across the country. (http://www.caw.ca/en/11272.htm)

Julie White, CAW’s director of Women’s Programs, responded to CCBR’s caravan in the following statement: “In April 1970, the Vancouver Women’s Caucus set out for Ottawa…Their actions would lay the groundwork that would see the legalization of a woman’s right to choose. Today 42 years later, an organization known as the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform wants to take away our rights using fear, guilt, and shock tactics. Join us at the counter protests and let’s once again tell them that our reproductive fights are not up for debate” (http://www.caw.ca/en/11279.htm).

Stephanie Gray, CCBR’s executive director, responded by saying, “The old Abortion Caravan brought us abortion, which decapitates, dismembers, and disembowels pre-born Canadian children. We seek to redeem history.”

Gray also added: “I also find it shocking that the largest private worker’s union in the country is using its union dues to advocate for abortion. Participation in this union is mandatory, and yet people like CAW president Ken Lewenza are using the union dues of pro-life auto workers to advocate for Canada’s status quo as the only Western democracy to have no abortion restrictions. Canadians are forced to fund abortion with their tax dollars, and now CAW members are being forced to advocate for it with their union dues.  What does abortion have to do with workplace issues for autoworkers?   It is unfortunate that Ken Lewenza has no respect for his employees’ freedom of conscience.”

The New Abortion Caravan will be in Regina today, then heads into Manitoba and Ontario as the week progresses.  The schedule of the New Abortion Caravan’s presentations can be found here: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/caravan/events

Brigitte Pellerin does a nice job in this video clip of explaining what happened at the Supreme Court of Canada regarding Linda Gibbons last week.

I always get an uneasy feeling when I see a pharmaceutical company doing philanthropic work that will never, ever, EVER, have anything to do with prescribing medication. It seems…seedy. I am especially freaked out by one specific company, Merck (also known as MSD). I wrote two years ago about Merck sponsoring so-called educational campaigns for Marie Stopes, and this year they have cropped up on my radar once again with their new campaign, Merck for Mothers. The U.S. announced it is giving $75 million to a global maternal health initiative partnered with none other than Merck pharmacuticals.

Among other roles, Merck for Mothers, a 10-year $500m initiative, will guide the strategic direction, support on-the-ground programme implementation and evaluation efforts.

Personally, if I were a world power I wouldn’t let the Merck corporation decide anything at all and would certainly not let them “guide” the direction of a global maternal health initiative when there’s money to be made on their end. I find the Merck for Mothers promotional images of underprivileged women and slogans about motherhood rather vulgar considering their track record.

Merck has proven in the past that they can’t exactly be trusted to do what’s in the best interest of people. In 2004, a recall of their drug Vioxx exposed the companies willingness to forego public safety in favour of profits.

For most of the five-and-a-half years it sold Vioxx, Merck knew the drug doubled the risk of cardiovascular problems among users, but it did not tell doctors or patients. Instead, it pursued an active disinformation campaign—telling doctors that Vioxx was safer for the heart than older painkillers (it was not), squashing university scientists who dared to dissent, and withholding clinical trial results that would have definitively proven Vioxx’s risks to federal regulators. In late 2004, after the weight of the evidence became impossible to deny, Merck abruptly pulled Vioxx from the market. […]

According to research published in the Lancet, a British medical journal, Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 140,000 cases of serious heart disease in the United States before Merck withdrew the drug in 2004. Roughly one-half those cases ended in death.

But I shouldn’t really be picking on the poor little $48 billion a year revenuing Merck, this clip about the Vioxx scandal explains that just about no pharmaceutical company operates because of a “commitment to saving lives.” So why should we trust them? And more importantly, why should our doctors and our government officials trust them with anything as important as women’s reproductive health? This may not always apply to individuals (I’m a big fan of forgiveness), but Rene Descartes said, “The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.”