Is it just me, or does there seem to be a more developed line of reasoning within pro-abortion rhetoric?  I have come up against it a few times now and even seen it slightly baffle a TV talk show host.

It goes something like this:  women’s rights cannot be arbitrarily removed or even “balanced” with fetal rights. It is impossible for two beings in the same body to exercise competing rights and imposing a duty of care on a pregnant woman towards her fetus would result in extensive and unacceptable intrusions into her bodily integrity, privacy, and autonomy.  (paraphrasing Joyce Arthur from her Huffington Post debate.)

Obviously, this has been articulated many times before, in various ways and by various people including Supreme Court Justices. There is always a conflict of rights in these important social issues (slavery, for example).

But the crux of the abortion issue is this:  the woman stands to lose some of her rights to bodily integrity, privacy and autonomy to a lesser or greater extent during her pregnancy.  This loss is temporary.  However, the child stands to lose his or her ENTIRE LIFE.   It’s an absolute, complete, unmitigated loss of existence, including all of the rights that are predicated upon life, including bodily integrity, privacy, autonomy etc.

The argument needs to be made, often, that women do not have an absolute right over the lives of their children (as recognized in law by almost all of the countries in the Western World except Canada). A woman’s temporary claim of her right to autonomy cannot trump the absolute claim of life itself of the unborn child.

In fact, society can and should make demands upon the woman to bear her temporary loss for the sake of the very life of the child. Life is worth so much that we have no qualms about asking people to risk their lives daily for its protection from such things as the ravages of war, injustice, and crime.

Life is a precious. Period.

A book review of Girls Uncovered, by my friend Glenn Stanton, here.

While only 20 percent of young women answered that oral sex is sex (such a question reminds me of the Saturday Night Live “Celebrity Jeopardy” skit where Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery is stumped by the category “Colors That End in Urple”), more than 40 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds have had oral sex, while 70 percent of 18-year-olds have done so. And it doesn’t get better the older they get. For 20- and 21-year-old women, more than 80 percent report having had both vaginal and oral sex. More than 25 percent report having had anal sex. More disturbing, more than 40 percent of early post-teen women report having engaged in oral sex in the last thirty days. Now anyone who believes these girls are empowered, doing exactly what they want to do, when they want to do it, don’t know the hearts and minds of most girls. They want meaningful relationships where their boyfriends commit, taking them seriously and treating them respectfully. It was not young girls who invented the hook-up culture. But they do acquiesce to it.

A while back now I reviewed Donna Freitas’s Sex and the Soul. It said something similar. And then Dr. Miriam Grossman (Anonymous, MD) and Jennifer Roback Morse also wrote books saying something similar. “Sex is sexist” is a line from this most recent book review. But  it’s true, in so far as men and women experience sex differently and want different things from it.

I’d be interested in the book that examines what the hook-up culture does to boys. A friend of mine was recently asked out on a date where she had to pick the guy up, from his parent’s house, he was late, he emerged wearing a robot t-shirt, he made her pay half for a pitcher that she wasn’t really drinking since she was driving and then, wait for it, wanted her to stay over.Wow.

Where did he get the idea that this was a workable proposition? Come on, science, study the negative effects of the hook up culture on boys, too.

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Correction: Said fellow did not ask my friend out, but rather texted her for long enough that she suggested perhaps they could meet. A natural thing to suggest, I’d say. However, it’s worth noting that he didn’t even have the gumption to ask her out.

I don’t actually like Dan Gardner’s columns. It’s not what he says so much as how he says it–with that air of official superiority that tells us all he has achieved the nirvana of perfect wisdom. I have a soft spot for humility. But damn! He makes some great points in this column. Read it.

Thus, what looks like a highly principled statement about the relationship between morality and liberty in a pluralistic society is actually something less grand: It is a lazy and weak defence of the status quo.

It’s time for me to read the Margaret Atwood novel, if only because it has been referenced so many times this past little while. But I have seen Gattaca. In this article, Mara Hvistendahl, author of Unnatural Selection, a book I have read and highly recommend (see? I do know how to read) questions whether Gattaca will come true. It’s about genetic pre-screening and tests on embryos.

And here’s a little clip from the movie, while I’m at it:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c25ZzUFePY]

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…when they read pro-abortion talking points. (Otherwise, please shut up.) Thanks to Heather Mallick for clarifying this, once again:

I now find Tory MP Gordon O’Connor strangely attractive. And you can quote me.

Way too reasonable. That’s all I have to say about Andrew Coyne’s column today. Too fair minded. Too thoughtful. Seriously, it’s helpful when someone who isn’t pro-life (which I assume he’s not) weighs in on these things without lighting any hair on fire.

Watch here. Brian does an admirable job. So does Joyce, though I disagree with her vehemently and she has her facts wrong in places.

My apologies, people! I’m terribly self-centered! Natalie did a FANTASTIC job last night under difficult conditions (I personally think as someone who has done a lot of media that speaking to a reporter in the lobby of the House of Commons is about as nerve-wracking as it gets) so please return to this link and watch her. There are a bunch of links to the right of the video box but they are labelled clearly.

While I hope the Woodworth motion passes, every time the question comes up we win. That’s my take on it. Win or lose, we win. And the other side knows that. Yesterday was a bad day for them.

I’d actually, in spite of the ever present bias in favour of the pro-choice side, like to thank CTV for taking the issue on in a thorough manner. Bias against us is one step up from ignoring the issue. The wisdom, yes, wisdom!, of Saturday Night Live is always with me (“we have hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up!”–Two wild and crazy Czechoslovakian brothers) so be of good cheer.

Filing under “women’s rights” because as everyone who reads this site knows, abortion does not confer rights or strength on women, but rather is degrading, hopeless and hurtful.

She’s using the F word. F for feminism. Clever.

Now she’s moved on to how the Conservatives are destroying gender equality.

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Update: Women ought to have the right to choose, she says. To define their destiny. So many euphemisms, so little time.

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Update 2: Niki Ashton: The issue. Was. Settled. In. 1988. (Well then, that settles it!)

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Update 3: Now Niki is speaking for all women. Oh dear. A thought just occurred to me: All those who passionately advocate for abortion are alive. We’ve heard that before, but it really does strike me as true in this moment.