You’ll recall Ruth Lobo for standing up to the Ottawa police before she was handcuffed and taken away in a police van for wanting to do a pro-life display on her own university campus. If you found that inspiring, as I did, then here’s a good opportunity to support her as she continues to combat the injustice of abortion:

A fundraising dinner and Silent Auction, to
support Pro-Life missionaries Ruth Lobo and James Shaw

April 30th, 2011
Dinner Served at 7:15 PM

Notre Dame Cathedral 375 Sussex Dr. Ottawa, Ontario
•Keynote Speaker: Jason Jones (producer of award-winning film Bella)
•Dinner includes Green Salad, Pasta (Vegetarian and Meat), Cinnamon
sponge cake, Wine, Cheese
•Only 100 Tickets at $20
•email PMLauzon at gmail.com or ruthie.lobo at gmail.com to reserve
•Silent Auction (Looking for Donated Items of $20-$50 value, or more)

Last summer, I read Margaret Somerville’s article on children’s rights to their biological origins in the Globe & Mail.

Adoption is our longest-standing experience of dealing with a situation where children have been intentionally disconnected from their biological parents.

In the past, adoption records were permanently sealed. We now recognize that as being harmful to the adopted person and potentially so to the birth family, and unethical. Yet donor-conceived Canadians do not know who at least one of their biological parents is, because donors here are allowed to remain anonymous, which is no longer the case in a growing list of countries (including Britain, Australia and New Zealand among many others). That also is unethical and, if we continue with gamete donation, it must be changed.

Adoptive parents were once advised by “professionals” – as the parents of donor-conceived children have been and still often are – not to tell their children of their origins; they were told that secrecy was best.

At the time, I disagreed. I thought forcing parents to reveal their identities would deter already apprehensive parents from going through with adoption on both ends of the process. However, a recent experience may change my mind.

A few weeks ago, I was watching NBC’s ancestry reality show called “Who Do You Think You Are?”, which is essentially a very long advert for the website Ancestry.com. I had used this website years ago, but never found much. The show prompted me to give the site another chance. For me, the search entry has always been the same, looking for my biological father. I knew his name but not how to spell it, had his photograph but no year of birth, had his birth country but not his current location. The search on the site? Well, it turned up a matching name with the correct spelling, his year of birth and a matching country of origin.

I think I was a little shocked at first. It was funny, how something I had put so much time and energy into years ago was suddenly so easy. I found more about him through a Google search, his location, more recent photos, details about his life. This wasn’t particularly impacting, I had put to rest my expectations of finding this person years ago. What was shocking was the difference it seemed to suddenly make in me. And it was sudden. One minute I couldn’t have told you where my biological father was or if he was still alive and the next, I could. The effect was instant. There was a confidence perhaps that wasn’t there before. I won’t say something was “missing”, because that implies desiring it to return, but something that was not present before was now present.

We are the stories we tell ourselves, so do I think all children have a right to know their story? I don’t know if it’s a “right”, but I will say…it is, in an inexplicably intimate way, better to know than not know.

…then what’s the worry?

The Department of Health (DH) is set to launch a legal challenge against a ruling that the full statistics on late abortions must be made public.

Following a request from the anti-abortion ProLife Alliance (PLA), the Information Tribunal ruled in October 2009 that the data must be disclosed under freedom of information laws.

The decision was hailed by the PLA as a victory for ‘transparency’, but ministers fear that releasing the figures could lead to the identification of patients and doctors involved in late abortions.

While abortion on ‘social’ grounds is only legal in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, under Ground E of the 1967 Abortion Act it is legal to abort a foetus right up to birth if there is a substantial risk of ‘serious’ physical or mental abnormality.

Campaign groups like the PLA are concerned about cases where mothers opt for late termination because their unborn babies have been diagnosed with conditions such as a cleft palate and club foot.

They claim that the rules are being flouted to weed out ‘less than perfect’ babies, where doctors say such conditions can usually be corrected by surgery.

The concern seems to be the identification of women and doctors who have participated in such abortions, because they do in fact violate the UK’s 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act:

Women who consider abortion are referred to two doctors who then advise her whether abortion is suitable based on the decision of which of four conditions apply; only when the doctors reach a unanimous decision is the woman allowed to terminate pregnancy.

Pregnancy can be terminated under one of the following circumstances, if the pregnancy:

1. puts the life of the mother at risk
2. poses a risk to the mental and physical health of the pregnant woman
3. poses a risk to the mental and physical health of the existing children
4. shows there is evidence of extreme foetal abnormality i.e. the child would be seriously physically or mentally handicapped after birth and during life.

But is that a good reason for a government body to continue to release inaccurate statistics?

Apparently, Heritage Minister James Moore wrote an article when he was a student decrying late term abortions and also the media’s biased reporting of abortion. There’s a couple of deplorable things going on here.

One is that the media saw fit to print this story. If ever there was a desperate, fear-mongering political strategy going on in unearthing this article from ten plus years ago, this is it. Also, if there ever was one Conservative who is without a doubt, completely and totally NOT socially conservative, aka pro-life, it is James Moore.

Secondly, it’s deplorable and sad that decrying partial birth abortions would somehow tarnish one’s political reputation in this country.

Finally, it’s deplorable that James Moore isn’t standing by his original piece, which sounds to have been entirely reasonable.

On May 5, my workplace is hosting a conference. Brad Wilcox and Mark Regnerus are the big name speakers, and I know they will be interesting. But I’m actually most looking forward to hearing Jonas Himmelstrand discuss family matters in Sweden.

For so long we’ve heard much rhetoric about how successful the socialist Swedish model is (particularly with regards to providing daycare for all and long parental leaves) but Jonas actually lives there and he has a different take. And has written a book about it, soon to be coming out in English.

In any event, this conference is open to the public. That’s all of you. So if you are in Ottawa on May 5, stop on by. What better way to fill your post-election hours? Early bird registration rate ends on Sunday, April 17.

This article is about still borns and how difficult it is. That is, of course, true. I just couldn’t help but think about all the aborted babies when I read this:

…[M]ost babies born still are quickly “disposed of” without being held, named or given a funeral. …These lives that will never be lived, this source of incalculable heartbreak, cries out for attention.

Babies disposed of. Incalculable heartbreak. Crying out for attention. Really? This from André Picard, the Globe and Mail health reporter who acted as a shill so that Morgentaler could get his Order of Canada.

I believe abortion is not solely a women’s issue because I think men ought to be involved with and responsible for their unborn children, too.

Others believe it because they think men have babies. No really.

I like the fact that Carleton Lifeline is looking to make positive and permanent changes to the environment students face on campus. They are asking for a judicial review of the student association’s policies. The press release below explains it all. By the way, clarifying the student union’s contradictory actions will help all students, not just pro-life students. Other student groups, for example, those who support Israel, are often the target of student union discrimination, as well.

For Immediate Release: Pro life clubs asks Court to Judicially Review student union’s decisions and policies

Ottawa—After their club status was denied November 15, 2010, Carleton Lifeline has filed a Notice of Application for Judicial Review of the Carleton University Students Association’s (CUSA) decisions and policies.

The clubs status was revoked after CUSA acted on sections 5 and 6 of their Discrimination on Campus Policy. Section 6 reads, “CUSA further affirms that actions such as any campaign, distribution, solicitation, lobbying effort, display, event etc. that seeks to limit or remove a woman’s right to choose her options in the case of pregnancy will not be supported. As such, no CUSA resources, space, recognition or funding will be allocated for the purpose of promoting these actions”.

This section is in direct contravention of CUSA’s Constitution, which declares that CUSA will “promote and assist in maintaining an academic environment free from prejudice, exploitation, abuse or violence on the basis of… political affiliation or belief” (Article 2.1.d).

Carleton Lifeline exhausted the internal appeal mechanisms, culminating in a challenge of the decision and policy in a hearing before the CUSA Constitutional Board. In a meeting that did not follow CUSA’s own protocol, and violated policies, the Constitutional Board unanimously ruled against Carleton Lifeline’s challenge.  On December 16, 2010, the Constitutional Board ruled in favour of the policies and upheld the ban on pro-life groups on campus.

Ruth Lobo, Carleton Lifeline president, stated, “Lifeline deserves to be treated the same way as other clubs. For this reason, we are asking a panel of judges to review CUSA’s decisions and policies. We hoped that we could not have had to proceed this way, but we feel very strongly that we have been treated unjustly”.

Carleton Lifeline sought to have the appeal reheard due to the Constitutional Board’s violation of board rules. However, CUSA refused. John Mcleod said, “This is overt discrimination. After our club was banned on the basis of our political beliefs were then banned from a fair hearing. The fact that CUSA cannot respect their own policies shows its inability to function as a voice for the student body”.  As a result, the club has filed a Notice of Application for Judicial Review.

I’ve been reading this article today that addresses the teen pregnancy issue and offers a solution: Give disadvantaged young girls options and purpose.

For all the noise and clatter about encouraging abstinence or handing out condoms in schools, many close to the issue are convinced that teenage pregnancy is less a matter of morals or sex education or access to birth control than it is a matter of a girl — or boy — feeling that they have a future. Or not.

“Simply put, girls with prospects do not have babies. It is not just the disadvantaged, but the ‘discouraged among the disadvantaged’ who become teen mothers,” Janet Rich-Edwards, a Harvard epidemiologist, wrote in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Some even theorize that many teenage girls don’t have babies despite being poor. They have babies because they are poor. Teen pregnancy is well established as a cause of poverty. It may also be a result of poverty.

Lisa Piscopo, a Colorado Children’s Campaign researcher, said she suspects many teen pregnancies among disadvantaged kids aren’t accidents.

“I believe girls choose to have babies when they don’t have a vision of any other options,” she said.

That’s something we should all agree on. While I don’t adhere completely to some of the articles’ finer points, it seems, at least in Colorado, people are finally addressing the why behind teenage pregnancy instead of focusing solely on the how. It continues,

In 2009, a University of Chicago study reported that by age 17, one-third of young women in foster care reported having been pregnant. By age 19, that proportion had risen to nearly half. The study’s author, Amy Dworsky, found that as many as one third of girls interviewed for the study said they wanted to become pregnant. It’s likely, Dworsky told a congressional panel in 2009, that those girls want “to create the family they don’t have or fill an emotional void.”[…]

“And they’ll ask, ‘Why wait? Wait for what? I’m not going to college.’ “

This letter, by one Thomas Ross of Calgary, longs for the day when people will begin “thinking rationally.” Here’s his view now:

A seed is not a plant. An egg is not a chicken. A fetus is not a human. A fetus does not become a living human until after birth when it takes its first breath of air. Before that, it is a parasite living in its mother’s environment and feeding off of her nutrients. You cannot murder something that is not living; that would be like if I stabbed a pop can and was arrested for assault. I long for the day when people realize it is not their business to tell others what they can and can’t do in their lives, and start thinking rationally. Sadly, I think we will all be long gone before anything like that happens.

Thomas Ross, Calgary

 I cannot tell a lie: I laughed out loud when I hit the “thinking rationally” part.