…and also a commentary on the good that crisis pregnancy centres do. PWPL is non-religious, but faith is clearly a part of this woman’s story and you can’t take that away. In any event, I found her story very moving.

Ten or so minutes long, you can find it told here.

Last night, I went to see The Iron Lady. I have very low expectations when I go to see any Hollywood movie, but I must say, I give this one two thumbs up.

It has some shortcomings, of course. Some lines are given to Thatcher that simply don’t ring true, for example. One of them comes very early on when she tells Dennis, her soon-to-be husband, who has just proposed to her, that she won’t be a regular woman, “life must be about more than just washing teacups,” or something to that effect. It doesn’t ring true as something Thatcher would say. It sounds too feminist, and she wasn’t one, and is unnecessarily offensive to most every mother in the audience. Heck, I was offended, and I am not a mother.

There are also one or two other moments where I thought this isn’t Thatcher, this is Meryl Streep vying for an Oscar.

That said, I do hope Meryl Streep does get an Oscar for her performance here. Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as a tough, sensible, hard working and concerned Prime Minister. That there are shortcomings around some of her lines, some of the history, even the controversy over whether one should depict a woman yet living as having dementia doesn’t change that.

Have you ever gone to listen to great piano concert and thought, I must become a pianist, immediately? Or have you been to the ballet and subsequently wished you could dance? This movie had me leaving thinking I should run and become Prime Minister. To leave our great nation in a better position than how I found it (that was said in a British accent). It’s that kind of movie, and that can only be a good thing.

In reading the other letter to the editor, I missed this one:

Re: It’s Primarily A Medical Matter, letter to the editor, Jan. 11.
Dr. Philip Ney states that there is “no scientific basis for abortion” — he couldn’t be further from the truth. Many years ago here in Ontario we introduced maternal serum screening, a blood test that allows us to screen for birth defects such as Down’s syndrome and Spina Bifida. If a test comes back positive, we offer the patient amniocentesis. If that also confirms the presence of either of these conditions, the patient is counselled on options — one of which is to terminate the pregnancy.
It is a difficult and anguishing decision for many patients to make — but it is a decision based on science, not whimsy.
Dr. Susan Piccinin, Ancaster, Ont.

Let those words sink in. To this doctor, taking the life of a Down’s child is a matter of science. As they say, science tells us what we can do, but it never tells us what we ought to do. And for this doctor to be so cold-hearted in the presence of disability makes me shudder.  At least she’s honest.

A letter to the editor today:

I am a mother to two children. I have always wanted to be a mother, so abortion was never something I had to consider — but I have always been pro-choice because I support women’s rights. Any mother could tell you of the significant physical and emotional burden of carrying a baby to term, not to mention the act of giving birth. It’s an experience that carries more intimacy and vulnerability than the act that precedes it. I cannot imagine being forced to go through the birth process without having a choice in the matter, any more than I can imagine being forced into sex without consent.
The discussion surrounding abortion often focuses on the concept of morality from a religious perspective, or whether or not the fetus has legal rights. How about focusing on the issue from the position of what is acceptable and compassionate to the individual? It is the woman in question that lives with the painful decision to have a baby or not. Being forced to give birth to assuage other people’s consciences while doing damage to one’s self is tantamount to abuse. We as women deserve better.
Lisa Sumlak, Calgary.

It’s in part because of this view that ProWomanProLife was started. I strongly believe in women’s rights, and I am strongly against abortion. This is not a zero-sum game, that one side (the fetus) has rights and the other side (the woman) doesn’t, or vice versa. The two do not need to compete.

In fact, our culture is quite strange in putting this idea forward–I can only assume we’ve been told it so long that that we believe it to be true. But how are the mother’s rights trampled if she gives birth? Could that birth not be viewed as an extension of her rights? Is there something empowering about abortion? What might that action do to the woman and her state of mind, her ability to choose in the future?

I do disagree with this letter, but that’s not my point with this post. My point is that we simply aren’t very creative in considering abortion and women’s rights today, and we’ve accepted a worldview that may or may not hold water. We need to be asking a lot of questions, and if I could meet the author of this letter, I’d hope we could have a considerate discussion of all these things.

Couldn’t have put this one better myself:

The default position of pro-choicers, whether or not they frame it this way themselves, amounts to a belief that abortion is always the right choice for women who have given it even a moment’s consideration. Once a woman has so much as considered the possibility of abortion, any effort to change her mind – or even just to give her more information to consider – is an attempt to limit her freedom of choice. A woman who doesn’t go through with her impulse to abort is a woman who has fallen victim to some sort of pro-life plot against her rights.

So in Texas it will be required that a woman seeking an abortion listen to the heartbeat of her unborn baby and hear information about fetal development, a description of the ultrasound. The usual suspects were against this:

The challengers, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, also argued disclosure of the sonogram and fetal heartbeat was not “medically necessary” and therefore beyond the state’s power to regulate the practice of medicine.

I can think of other things that are medically unnecessary…

Also, good to see that the judge was a woman:

The required disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information,” Chief Judge Edith Jones wrote for the threejudge panel.

Nice.

It’s the oldest story out there. Been there, done that. And yet, when some “enterprising” reporter gets it in his head that he wants to “expose” a crisis pregnancy centre, because he himself is pro-choice and has a foregone conclusion on what abortion counseling should look like, we’re supposed to believe it’s an exciting story.

I’m talking about this, which I just received via Twitter. CTV sent a fake client to a crisis pregnancy centre in British Columbia.

I don’t know what the pregnancy centre said, or precisely what advice they gave. I’m assuming they spoke of legitimate links to harm the result of abortion.

I do know that there are many adverse outcomes to abortion that our pro-choice media chooses to ignore.

To not give full information is to leave women open to the very real possibility that they will have more than regrets–maybe pick up an alcohol or drug habit, perhaps lose their relationship, experience suicide ideation, or suicide. Remember Emma Beck, a young woman who committed suicide after having an abortion. Oh wait, don’t remember her, because her experience is not what counts. She should have just bucked up! Turned that frown upside down! My oh my. To actually experience pain after an abortion. What a loser.

That is, in effect, what those who despise crisis pregnancy centres are saying. They want to claim that the women who lose their own lives after abortion don’t matter. They want to make out like it’s all a big deception–saying negative things about abortion. We have a pro-choice legal system, university profs, healthcare system, public funding model–if crisis pregnancy centres don’t exist to counter this, who will?

The irony here of course is that pro-choice agencies do little pre-abortion counselling at all. When they do, they too will say things like “sometimes some women have a poor reaction.” They have to, of course, because even if the American Psychological Association bungles their statement on abortion, there are, still, negative psychological outcomes after abortion hidden in their positively framed statement. Plus, the reality is out there, by women’s lived experience. When pro-choice agencies choose to ignore this or downplay it, it should be as egregious a failing as crisis pregnancy centres exaggerating the harm.

Another point I’d make is that pro-choice agencies rarely see the outcomes of their advice. Those women who do suffer don’t go back there for counselling after the fact. A woman who tries to commit suicide ends up in a hospital emergency, not Planned Parenthood.

This is about the ideological divide, at the end of the day, and not the actual words the crisis pregnancy centre spoke. In truly unbiased terms, one side ignores adverse outcomes to abortion and the other talks about them. Crisis pregnancy centres should not be targeted for doing the latter, given the euphemisms that pro-choicers use daily.

The media is responsible for disseminating information, something they have utterly failed to do on the topic of abortion. This does all women a disservice.

CTV’s report isn’t out yet, which is why the title of this post has a question mark. The reporter’s name is Jon Woodward. I haven’t seen the show (no one has) so I can’t know for sure what they will do.

When it does come out, I’ll watch with great interest. And if the result is actually a sting attack, using information obtained through fraudulent means and bolstered by the reporter’s own ideological bias, then I will call 416-384-5000 (Bell Media) and ask to be put through to the viewer complaints/relations line, and you should too.

Brigitte Pellerin, no stranger to ProWomanProLife and now at Sun News, writes well about the death of Rick Santorum’s baby:

Dennis Miller once explained that he considered “everyone and everything to be comedic fair game, except for the helpless.” You’d think Down Syndrome kids and dead babies would count as helpless. But no – some people simply have no shame.

Picked this one up from Big Blue Wave, who comments that more people need to hear this. I agree. I also think that repeating “You’ll have to trust me” isn’t the most compelling way to make the point. Although trust and faith are what is required when faced with huge, scary, life-altering decisions. I guess reading it on the page like that just sounds a tiny bit flippant to me:

Yes, these are all the realities that await a single parent; however, that doesn’t make these realities devastating or life ending. These are all very small things to endure and over come in comparison to the life long guilt and pain you will experience from having an abortion. People have overcome greater adversity – loss of limb, paralyses, death of loved ones, battles with cancer, religious oppression, torture, the Holocaust. You name it. Being a single parent is trivial in comparison and you are stronger than you think you are. Please, just trust me.

Still, the point of the article, that we can rise to every occasion that comes our way, that we are more courageous than we believe ourselves to be, and that abortion is regrettable where rising to the occasion and giving birth is commendable, are ones worth repeating. Again and again. Somehow, even in our self-esteem culture, many people imprison themselves with their own “can’t do it” or “I have no choice” attitude. I believe we always, I repeat, always, have choices. (And by that I am not making an about face on abortion. Some things are not a choice.)

Here ends the channeling of Tony Robbins.

It’s hard to think that women and children would be military targets, but for militias and rebel groups operating in the DRC, that’s exactly what they are.

The killings of the civilians took place on Monday and Tuesday in remote villages in the territory of Shabunda, in South Kivu Province, an area still troubled by armed groups more than eight years after the end of a war there. An army spokesman said the 45 victims were mainly women and children, including one pregnant woman, and a leader of a village was decapitated.

There’s a petition to President Obama you can sign here to send an envoy to the region. If you know of something similar in Canada, please let us know.

In 2009 the NY Times reported,

Christine Schuler-DeSchryver, a well-known anti-rape activist, vented about all the empty promises from the stream of high-ranking visitors who have recently come to eastern Congo, “one more important than the next.”

“In the end, all we got was a pile of business cards,” she said.

The Congolese women have been waiting too long for action.