Chuck Colson was obviously an influential man. But he has been influential in my own life as I have thoroughly enjoyed his books and podcasts. I remember seeing his book Born Again in a church library somewhere and rolling my eyes because I thought the title was such a cliché. Who knows why, but I ended up bringing that book home and reading it. I subsequently bought copies of it to give to anyone who was interested, which is something I’ve never done before or since.

Obviously he is best known for his Prison Fellowship Ministries, but he was also a stalwart of the pro-life movement.

Here’s an article about him at the time of his passing away:

I shudder to think of what I’d been if I had not gone to prison,” Colson said in 1993. “Lying on the rotten floor of a cell, you know it’s not prosperity or pleasure that’s important, but the maturing of the soul.”

Well put.

Nigeria is making significant progress in reducing their maternal death rate, and not surprisingly, it’s a back-to-basics approach that is making the difference.

Nigeria had the second highest burden of maternal mortality and was in the top five countries reporting a high number of child deaths.

“Ondo State reduced under-five mortality by 25 per cent and maternal mortality by 15 per cent in 2010, it stands to reason that if by 2010, it was 15 per cent, by 2015 it will reach 75 per cent.” […]

“We realised that only 16 per cent of the women who come for ante-natal return for delivery, meaning that 84 per cent of these women are giving birth elsewhere.”

Adeyanju said there was no way to ascertain the level of skills of the people that attended to such women or the safety of the equipment used.

He said that the first initiative of the programme was to keep track of the women by creating a register for pregnant women and assigning them to individual community health workers.

The commissioner said that the women were given prepaid mobile phones, with access to tricycle motorbikes, to help them to access their health care providers.

“The women were also directed to the nearest health care provider so that they would know the shortest distance to go when they need help.” […]

“…we are now looking at every pregnant Nigerian woman as flesh and blood and not statistics.”

Adeyanju called for aggressive sensitisation campaign on maternal issues and a clamp-down on hospital facilities that fall short of standards.

“The Ondo State’s mantra is that pregnancy will no longer be a death sentence and we won’t stop there.

“Looking beyond pregnancy, we realised that poverty also leads to the death of those who make it out of the hospital and that too should be addressed.”

Tomorrow I fly home from my Holocaust course at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. I’m feeling just a little bit melancholy as this was a meaningful time filled with learning of all kinds. Tomorrow I return to “real life”. (Before I left I posted a photo of tulips; now I hear snow is in store. Sigh.)

Anyway, humour me just before I return to the ins and outs of Canadian life/social policy/work etc. etc. etc. A quote from my course when we examined the resistance to the Nazis:

I would call it a ‘positivistic approach to life’…a kind of belief that under any circumstances you are a human being and it is up to you to react as a human being. They can break your body; they can’t break your spirit without your cooperation. This is what we used to tell them. After all, the logical way to fight death is to live, isn’t it?”

–Joza Karas

There’s something meaningful there for me. Perhaps for you too.

Don’t let the latest stats fool you.  When CIHI reports that there were 64, 641 abortions in 2010, (a 40% drop in numbers since 2004) you know that something is up. Sure enough, we see that Quebec no longer reports abortions at all (hospital or clinic), BC has “incomplete” data, meaning that the majority of clinic abortions have not been reported, and Manitoba and New Brunswick have “unreported” clinic abortions.  How’s that for shoddy statistics?  I don’t suspect that any other surgical procedure in Canada would be so poorly reported.

When Quebec last reported in 2008, they had 27, 319 abortions.

If the numbers aren’t being reported, what does that mean for medical billing?  At the very least, taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent.

This is an issue that needs to be seriously addressed – we need a public outcry that will get politicians moving.  Really, if abortion is such a great, liberating thing, what are they trying to hide?

I’ve decided to pick up the slack (feeling a little guilty) and this certainly caught my eye.  The great investigative journalism of blogger Pat Maloney brings us the numbers of signatures on the latest petitions asking for protection for unborn Canadians, but more interestingly, who is presenting them in the House of Commons. It’s nice to see democracy at work, and like Pat, I think we need to keep it up!  The more, the merrier.

There are on-line petitions garnering support, but the more effective petition is the officially approved, old-style paper one that everyone signs and then you send it in to your MP.  That can be found here.

Friends, I’m sorry I have not been able to update the blog. Those of you who have tracked with us for a while, however, will know this is the first break since 2008. I’m in Israel, doing a week-long course at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. Fascinating, heavy, busy: A fantastic learning experience from the academic perspective but also because the participants are literally from across the globe from Africa, to Europe, to North America. Lots to ponder. I’m sure I’ll be able to include some of the information I’m learning for a long while to come.

But for now, enough of you have emailed me this link about six hospitals in Toronto hiding the knowledge of fetal sex.

It’s amazing how slow people are to wake up to the fact that yes, this is happening in Canada. And it’s further amazing to me that some women defend it and claim they are “defenders of women’s rights.”

Danielle Smith on social issues:

In our Wildrose, when our members elected me, they knew they were electing a candidate that was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage,” Smith told an all-candidates gathering in Okotoks, a town of 24,000 located south of Calgary. “The only way we’re going to be able to become a mainstream, big-tent conservative party which is capable of forming government is to focus on the issues that matter to Albertans.”

Wildrose is a populist party. If abortion matters to Albertans, it will have to matter to Danielle Smith. I seem to recall a referendum where abortion did matter to Albertans, and they were pro-life. I’ll try to look that up.

I may be on holiday and hardly blogging at all, but let it not be said I don’t pay attention to the important stuff.

Angelina and Brad are going to tie the knot!

Now seems like a good time to mention I am going to be away a lot in the coming weeks. Blogging will be lighter than usual. (And by the time I am back, it will be tulip time in Ottawa! Hence the photo.)

Happy Easter!