Here at ProWomanProLife sometimes we remember days like St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day and such, and sometimes we don’t. In 2008, I posted about the more serious side of St. Patrick. In 2009, Tanya posted the Muppets singing Danny Boy. Both are important and either will do to wish a Happy St. Patrick’s Day for 2011. (2010 got left out. Two out of three ain’t bad.)

Family Research Council held some breakout sessions at the United Nations. This short clip highlights why exporting abortion, particularly chemical abortion, is a dangerous thing for resource-poor countries. It also gets into the psychological side effects of abortion. Worth watching.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0lRL5QtJI”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0lRL5QtJI]

(h/t)

Like most of you, I anxiously check the news several times a day to hear more about Japan, what’s being done, and how we can help. The situation is increasingly tragic in Japan and almost every resident, including the unborn, is at risk.

Douglas Almond, a Columbia University economist who has studied the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, is concerned that the Japanese government may not be doing enough to warn pregnant women to leave any areas at risk of radiation exposure. Those areas can be much farther from the nuclear plants than many people realize.

Mr. Almond, in an e-mail, explains. The fetus may be particularly sensitive to low doses of ionizing radiation, a susceptibility that current public health responses in Japan seem to have overlooked. Evidence comes from a recent study of Chernobyl fallout in Sweden, which experienced comparatively low radiation doses from the accident; indeed radiation levels in Sweden were believed safe at the time. While this has been largely confirmed in subsequent studies, there is one important exception: children in utero at the time of the accident. Swedish students who were in utero during the accident experienced significantly lower cognitive function, as reflected in performance on standardized tests in middle school, especially those tests that correspond best to IQ. The damage was greatest for cohorts in utero in regions of Sweden that received more fallout by virtue of rainfall during the time the radioactive plume was over Sweden, and were of gestational age 8-25 weeks at the time of the accident. This last finding mirrors earlier epidemiological analysis of the survivors of Atomic bombings in Japan, which found reduced IQ and head circumference among the cohort exposed to radiation at those gestation ages.

[…] I’m grateful to Michael Greenstone, an M.I.T. economist who is also director of the Hamilton Project in Washington, for calling this research to my attention. “The point,” Mr. Greenstone says, “is that the Japanese government should be issuing stronger warnings to pregnant women.”

This is rich:

A Chinese official said Monday that New Zealand should consider special compensation to parents of Chinese students killed in an earthquake last month because their loss was magnified under the country’s one-child policy,” Associated Press reports. “Seven students from China have been identified among the 166 confirmed deaths in the quake that devastated Christchurch city on Feb. 22, and as many as 20 others are still missing. Chinese Embassy official Cheng Lei said Monday that Chinese quake victims had lost not just their only child, but also a future breadwinner. He said New Zealand should consider providing additional financial assistance to those families.”

I’m not quite sure why New Zealand is responsible for China’s one-child policy. Perhaps the Chinese government should take steps to outlaw the untoward death of the children they allow to live.

A study assesses the situation with regards to sex selection abortion amongst immigrants to America from India:

We found that 40% of the women interviewed had terminated prior pregnancies with female fetuses and that 89% of women carrying female fetuses in their current pregnancy pursued an abortion. These narratives highlight the interaction between medical technology and the perpetuation of this specific form of violence against women in an immigrant context where women are both the assumed beneficiaries of reproductive choice while remaining highly vulnerable to family violence and reproductive coercion.

I don’t really know what to say about this article. It had to have taken a lot of bad decisions for doctors and scientists to have painted themselves into this corner, all starting with treating human beings as objects.

Tens of thousands of human embryos hang in cold storage in Canada’s fertility clinics, an unknown number of which are “orphans.”

Increasingly, however, clinics are preparing to match these embryos — which could survive for decades in suspended animation — with infertile couples who long for a child of their own. It’s a form of third-party procreation that experts predict will only become more common as the number of surplus embryos grows.

Embryo donation has been called the most humane answer to an sticky ethical situation: How to dispose of leftover embryos that are created by infertility treatments and then literally frozen in time?

Personally, I don’t have a problem with people adopting embryos. It’s better than them living in frozen stasis for 15 years until they can no longer survive, and I don’t see it as very much different from anonymous adoption of children who have already been born. If nothing else, it’s certainly better than the other two options: destruction or using them for science experiments. However, I think it’s incredibly sad that we’ve gotten ourselves into this position in the first place.

A friend of mine has helped pull this event together, which features former residential school students. March 28, 7 pm, St. Paul’s Auditorium, Pavillon Guigues Hall, Ottawa. Sounds interesting and it’s open to the public. Some online info can be found, here. “No sector of society is immune to sexual abuse or the darkness of heart into which it pulls children, families, communities and subsequent generations. Three well-known Canadians reflect on their journeys from the heart of darkness to the heart of forgiveness.”

Admittedly, I had never heard of Ms. Littlejohn prior to today, but the work she is doing and has done to support Chinese woman’s reproductive rights (and when I say this I mean, as she seems to, the right to bear children) is phenomenal. Who better to give the keynote address on this International Women’s Day than a woman who supports the right to bear children?

BOSTON – Reggie Littlejohn highlighted the suffering of women under China’s One Child Policy as the Keynote Speaker and Award of Excellence recipient at the 100^th Anniversary of International Women’s Day celebration in Boston on March 8, 2011. Below are her remarks:

I am deeply humbled to receive the Award of Excellence on this historic day […]

I accept this award on behalf of the women and families who continue to suffer because of forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide. […]

While women in some areas of the world celebrate the great advances in women’s rights in our nations, women in other areas have seen a decline. As the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, I am dedicated to the plight of more than half a billion women in China who are victims of the One Child Policy. They have had perhaps their most fundamental right stripped away: the right to bear children. And let us not forget the 100 million missing women who are victims of “gendercide,” the sex-selective abortion of baby girls.

Most people know that China has a One Child Policy. Very few people stop to think about how it’s enforced – through forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide.

The coercive enforcement of China’s One Child Policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other official policy on earth. It is the biggest women’s rights issue in the world today. It does not matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice on this issue. No one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice.

I’ll know who she is from now on.

 ___________________

Jennifer adds: Reggie Littlejohn’s organization, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, currently has a petition to free activist Chen Guangcheng. Learn more here.

Inspirational speech from a past American president, Ronald Reagan. Neither can Canada survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live. I look forward to such a speech from a Canadian prime minister. Some day, my friends, some day.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WTiK9Dd9z0]

(h/t)

From The Week,

The morning-after pill might soon need a new moniker. A new report in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology suggests the emergency contraceptive might also work well as a woman’s go-to form of birth control, a use doctors have typically discouraged in the past.