This just in, first hand, from someone working in a hospital:

One teenage girl came in last week for an abortion.  She was all alone, and clearly she was struggling with her decision.  After the abortion, I saw her in the waiting room, and the look on her face said it all…the suffering and pain she was feeling was quite apparent.  The poor girl had no one with her.  There was no pre-abortion counseling, nor was there any post-abortion counseling.  This, sadly, is still the state of affairs here in Canada.”

As you can imagine, abortion was not mentioned in the Budget 2012 documents.

So what connection could I possibly be making?

Read Andrew Coyne today. It’s about how fiscal conservatives have been had by this lacking-in-fiscal-conservatism Conservative government. I happen to agree, in large part, speaking as a small-c conservative myself.Which, by the way, you do not have to be to be pro-life, but now I’m digressing.

Anyway, many a pro-choicer has enjoyed making fun of pro-lifers when it comes to this Conservative government. They poke fun: “Stephen Harper has run you over–again!” Thereby implying that pro-lifers are naive and simplistic folk who thoroughly believed Stephen Harper was the man for them.

I have never believed this about Prime Minister Harper. Very, very early on, I took his robotic repeated phrase “I will not re-open the abortion debate” at face value.

He’s not going to re-open the abortion debate, folks.

But on fiscal accountability, now there’s a place where expectations may, rightly, have been high. Fiscal conservatism is, in actual fact, popular. Most parties, however they attempt to enact it, pay lip service to it. To have a Conservative government that does not follow through is a bit of a blow.

I just thought I’d highlight this, well, because I have a blog and can. I do so both for those pro-choicers who like to highlight what they perceive to be a pro-life weakness, AND, I might add, for those pro-lifers who believe Stephen Harper has thrown us under the bus, so to speak.

No one has been thrown under the bus like the average fiscal conservative under Stephen Harper.

Since it only dawned on me but very, very slowly and late in life that the the sexual revolution was a real revolution in the way we live as women, men and families, I remain interested in smart assessments of the topic. Here’s one, from Carolyn Moynihan over at MercatorNet. The article references another smart woman: Mary Eberstadt, writing about the same topic in the Wall Street Journal and that’s an article I’ll certainly be returning to read when I get a spare minute.

I know we live in Canada, BUT there are just a few interesting things that are going on south of the 49th parallel right now that are worth mentioning. Like President Obama’s video from the White House fully endorsing Planned Parenthood:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naP2FbO8_-c&feature=youtu.be”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naP2FbO8_-c&feature=youtu.be]

“So when some professional politicians casually say that they’ll get rid of Planned Parenthood, don’t forget what they’re really talking about: eliminating the funding for preventive care that millions of women rely on and leaving them to fend for themselves. That’s why last year when Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government unless we stopped funding Planned Parenthood, I had a simple answer: no.”

Aside from the glaring fact that one in five of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates is under investigation for fraudulent billing practices and for ignoring statutory rape and human trafficing laws in order to push teens through for abortions, he talks about Planned Parenthood as if it offers preventative health measures like mammograms, when we well know that they are really primarily doing abortions. As Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, points out, “Somehow the White House has missed the memo that Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms. How could they have missed that?”  That’s playing politics with women’s lives.

The other interesting thing that is worth mentioning is former Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s call for Democrats to tone down the abortion rehtoric.

“I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions… I’ve signed a public letter calling for the Democratic Party at the next convention to espouse my position on abortion which is to minimize the need, requirement for abortion and limit it only to women whose life are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest. I think if the Democratic Party would adopt that policy that would be acceptable to a lot of people who are now estranged from our party because of the abortion issue.”

Carter’s timing couldn’t have been better!

I have mixed feelings around movies like October Baby. One side of me totally agrees with the filmmaker in this article about the movie. He has an audience and he is catering to it. Religious folks, be they conservative evangelicals or conservatives Catholics, deserve more respect than they currently get. All too often they are pigeon-holed as being radical, crazy, out of touch or all three.

However, I wonder what the point is of creating a movie that only the converted will go see.

The problem here is that while I’d like Hollywood to make better movies, those movies, in order to support life, need not touch on it quite so directly. I suppose what I’m interested in are high quality films that testify to the human spirit, which will, in turn, testify to the idea that life is worth living, through good times and bad.

I’m not saying movies like October Baby should not be made. I’m glad Jianna Gesson’s story of surviving an abortion is being told. But I suppose what I’m saying is that I hope the filmmaker will go on to tackle a range of topics, doing so from his faith perspective, speaking to life and faith in a manner that might be more subtle, as well.

Given how brothels are newly legal in Ontario, this conference about human trafficking seems all the more prescient. You can get more information and register here.

Are you in law enforcement, social services, community services or a frontline service provider?

We are excited to inform you of an upcoming conference that will offer dynamic workshops and seminars on human trafficking. The Justice Summit will take place here in Ottawa on Saturday, May 5, 2012 at the Metropolitan Bible Church.

It is estimated that 27 million people are enslaved around the world at any given moment.

80% of the victims of sex trafficking are women, 50% or these are children.

Human trafficking has risen to become the second most profitable crime globally after the drug trade.

Young women have and continue to be trafficked in Ottawa and forced into sex slavery.

The Justice Summit will feature presentations by international human rights advocates, human trafficking survivors, and activists.

I don’t agree with this op-ed about the sexual revolution. But I was able to read to the end without feeling offended and aggravated.

This is how I aspire to write: in such a way that someone else might say “Nope, not my bag, and she’s inconsistent on X, Y and Z,” but still make it to the end of the piece and perhaps even think about it a little bit more after that.

So here it is: a somewhat illogical view on the sexual revolution, and one I can easily poke holes in. However, I won’t, and will instead applaud her light and airy writing style that seems to say to me that I could possibly have coffee with this woman and enjoy it.

If you are on Facebook, and if you feel so inclined, you can choose to like this idea of naming Stephen Woodworth’s motion after the Supreme Court Justice, Bertha Wilson, who said this:

The precise point in the development of the foetus at which the state’s interest in its protection becomes “compelling” I leave to the informed judgement of the legislature which is in a position to receive guidance on the subject from all the relevant disciplines. It seems to me, however, that it might fall somewhere in the second trimester.” (R v Morgentaler 1988)

I clicked over and it looked like all the usual suspects were complaining, so I felt inspired to click “like.”

I was driving this morning and CBC had an interview with one Johnny Reid. He said he likes to keep his music simple because the world is complicated. He said he likes to be optimistic, to draw people toward the light. He added life always has dark moments but those only help to understand the light, the happy moments. He described how he came to Canada as a 15-year-old from Scotland, with a funny accent and few friends, and his guitar became his friend; he could tell his guitar things he couldn’t tell others. He said his talent is music, but told the host she is able to keep people company when they are driving or alone; his father had the talent of being a mechanic and was able to keep things running; his mom had the gift of seeing the bright side of life…He hopes everyone finds the thing they are really good at, so they can do it, and make this world a better place.

I probably am not doing justice to the words of this lovely man, but I agreed with everything he said. If I can find the interview, I’ll link to it, for now, here’s one of his songs.  I may buy his music just because of that one interview. That’s the kind of impact it left on me. If I may add, I think the CBC host was inspired by him too–there was a bit of a pause after he stopped speaking and she simply said, “Thank you for coming in today.”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5uF-SeRc7s&ob=av2e]

I think all parents know that having kids has some economic impact on your life, but does this mean that we really need to think hard about the budget when we’re talking about our children? Of course we want our kids to one day go to college, eat healthy organic foods, and go to nice schools, but what does all this talk about how much a child “costs” ultimately do to how we perceive not only our offspring but every other human being in our lives?

I’m asking these questions because of this article today in the New York Times entitled “Mothers of Children With Autism Earn Less”. Well, duh, but how does this information effect our lives?

Mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder are less likely to be employed than mothers of children with no health limitations. They work seven hours less per week, on average, and they earn less: 35 percent less than mothers of children with another health limitation, and 56 percent less than the mothers of children with no health limitations.

Figuring out the exact amount a child may or may not financially cost a family seems to be a morally responsible act on the surface, but putting these figures into practice, letting them effect our decisions, doesn’t reek of the kind of unconditional love I’d like to aspire to as a parent. Either you believe that your bundle of joy, not to mention the elderly and the sick and the generally unemployable, have a value and a dignity irrespective of how much they tap your paycheck, or you value something else entirely.