Abortion numbers, they’re hard to come by, but POWER has been putting in the research to compile a comprehensive report. From Anastasia Bowles at the National Post:

No matter what your position on abortion, the study reveals unsettling facts about abortions in Ontario, and by extension, in Canada. For example, we learn that for every 100 babies born in Ontario, 37 are aborted.

The ratio for teens aged 15-19 is even more shocking. For every 100 babies born to Ontario teens, 152 are aborted.

The study noted that teens “were by far the most likely of any age group to have an abortion rather than a live birth.” And since it excluded abortions for girls under 15, the teen abortion rate is even higher.

It also revealed disturbing data about repeat abortions in Ontario hospitals. As many as 52% of women had one or more previous abortions. Even more disturbing, almost one fifth of teens aged 15-19 said they had already had at least one abortion. The study even cautioned that the percentage of repeat abortions was likely higher due to under-reporting.

And that’s just for hospitals. Abortion clinics were excluded from the repeat calculations even though they perform more than half the province’s abortions. And teens don’t need parental consent for clinic abortions (though they may at some hospitals), so more teens may go to clinics.

Even fairly liberal parents might squirm to think that their child, aged 14 or younger, could walk into a clinic to have an abortion — more than once — and they would never know.

Most Canadians are unaware that teens don’t need parental consent to have an abortion. They don’t even have to inform their parents. In fact, most Canadians — 80% according to a 2010 Angus Reid poll — don’t even know we have no legal restrictions on abortion.

For the record, abortion is fully legal in Canada at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason, and for any Canadian citizen, and taxpayers pay for almost all of them.

LifeCanada, a national organization educating on the value of human life, has commissioned Environics to poll Canadians annually from 2002-2009. Each year, a large majority, anywhere from 60% to 66%, supported some legal restrictions on abortion.

So even though most Canadians don’t know the facts or statistics on abortion, they don’t support the current legal vacuum in Canada. Imagine if they actually knew something about the subject.

This comes recommended by a friend who says the speaker is great. An Interview with an Ex-Porn Producer will be happening at Club Saw in Ottawa at 7 pm tonight. More info, here and on Facebook, here.

The miraculous story of Wall-E,

A dog that an Oklahoma shelter “euthanized” and confirmed to be dead was recently found alive and well in the facility’s dumpster, News 9 in Oklahoma City has reported.

(The resurrected pup; Image: Petfinder.com)

The three-month-old male black and white puppy had supposedly been put to (permanent) sleep with injections to one of his limbs and to his heart. A stethoscope test at the Sulphur, Okla., shelter led to the declaration that he’d died.

“You might say that he’s an angel dog,” animal control officer Scott Prall told News 9, after Prall found the resurrected dog, now named Wall-e, wandering around inside the trash bin.

Disney-Pixar’s fictional Wall-e was a robot that was the last of his kind.

Four of puppy Wall-E’s littermates did die as intended during the euthanasia process. Someone had previously left the dogs outside of the shelter, already over-crowded with homeless pets. Staff there believed the puppies were thin and “appeared to be sickly,” so the decision was made to put them down.

Wall-e proved them wrong, however, by not just surviving but thriving.

“He was just as healthy as he could be,” Prall said after his surprise trash bin discovery, made a full day after the “euthanization” took place.

I can see proponents of euthanasia saying, “We would never let this happen with human beings. We would make sure there were no miracles!”

The time of year for what, you might ask? Well, in Ottawa we are experiencing Winter Part Deux, snow, sleet, ice pellets, rain and puddles that are more like small lakes. I’m preparing for a birthday party tonight and knowing that we all need a little summer, I found a recipe for a drink called “Summer Breeze,” (pineapple juice, pink grapefruit juice, soda, mint leaves and two ounces of gin, if you must know.)

I’m sampling one right now–because gin is pretty much what is required for a gal like me to read an entire Judy Rebick column.*

Yes, it’s that time of year–International Women’s Day. The centennial, I gather.

I could go on about why I don’t see things Judy’s way. But quite frankly, I’m enjoying this Summer Breeze too much, plus I believe I’ll have a column in the Ottawa Citizen next week on this very topic. We don’t want to be like Sweden, ladies, is the only thing I’ll definitely write here. They have a very different concept of feminism, and it’s actually a whole lot more traditional than many of us (Judy included) realize. (All their social programs are geared to helping women stay home, such that most women do. Any given day in Sweden, there’s 20 per cent absenteeism on the job, and a much lower percentage of their corporate managers and CEOs are women in the private sector.)

I believe in freedom. I believe women ought to do what they want. I believe they should also fund what they want to do themselves, alone or within families. Relying on a husband’s wage to stay home with kids isn’t insulting, it’s common sense. I don’t think a government program makes women “more equal,” hence my constant railing against Status of Women Canada. And I believe if women work fewer hours in different industries, which they do, as per Statistics Canada, then they should actually be paid less, and that 100 per cent “pay equity” would be evidence that we gave up on the free market.

This may well be the gin talking. Here ends the rant. Enjoy the lead up to International Women’s Day. And make sure you have the beverage of your choice on hand for every time they mention “abortion as a hard fought right.”

*I really don’t drink very much. I had to use egg cups to measure out my ounces–perhaps too generous a proxy, come to think of it.

Ok, so maybe not everyone will find this so funny. However, even if you are a feminist, I’d still recommend watching at least the first 11 seconds, until her computer-generated cartoon arm makes a sweeping gesture about “the patriarchy.”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ro6fcj6Ek”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ro6fcj6Ek]

______________________

Brigitte adds: Hey! I’ve seen that gesture before! Right, Andrea? 🙂

Wow. Just wow.

When parents say their children are the true source of happiness and fulfillment in their lives, they may be enacting a psychological defence to justify all the time, money and energy they put into the job, finds a new Canadian study.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests parents are idealizing their role to cope with the downsides of being mom and dad — namely, how expensive it is to raise a family.

Not to mention the fact that parents idealize and overemphasize the joys of parenting sometimes to prevent themselves from strangling the apple of their eyes when they’ve stuffed something nasty down the toilet or scribbled all over the walls or peed on their car seat after swearing they didn’t have to go, or when they won’t stop asking one dumb question after another, or [supply your own list of examples here].

Parenting is WORK! It’s hard! And yes, it can get expensive. Nothing that’s worth doing is easy. People do what they can to get themselves through it. That’s because they’re human.

“I’m able to really be there for [my kids] in that five or six hours of time,” says this mom who left her kids behind for a new life. To really find herself. She’s a better mom now, says she.

Is it just me or does it feel like this woman is not talking about human beings at all? Let alone her own kids. I’m all over flexibility in mothering, to be able to do things as you see fit but really, I have to say, up and leaving entirely somehow (call me crazy) doesn’t qualify. She appears to be more of a disengaged observer of her own life.

Once you’ve decided that human life is expendable, where do you stop? It is perfectly legal in this country for a pregnant woman to end the life of her baby at any point in her pregnancy, for any reason whatever (or for no reason at all). The law does not care whether the child in question could live outside the womb.

Why people are then surprised by a ruling like this one is beyond me. Just think of it as a very late-term abortion.

I am not a religious person. But this story almost made me cry:

SANTA MARIA, California, March 2, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A “pillar of strength” – these were the words Etta Waterfield used to describe her mother-in-law, Jane Russell, who will be remembered by millions as a timeless beauty and talented actress of the silver screen.

But according to Waterfield, Jane’s true legacy lies in her deep devotion to the Bible as a born-again Christian, and her tenacity living out that faith as a pro-life advocate following a tragic botched abortion at the age of eighteen.

“Mom was to the world a movie star, but her passion was for the children. Her passion was for pro-life,” Waterfield told LifeSiteNews.com in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, two days after Russell passed away of respiratory failure in her Santa Maria home at the age of 89.

Russell’s story began in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California where she grew up as the eldest and only girl in a deeply Christian family of five children. The loss of a child – Jane’s older brother, who died at 18 months old – was what inspired her own mother’s zeal for reading the Bible, a hunger she passed on to her daughter.

The death of a child would also later exert a powerful effect on Jane’s life: when the eighteen-year-old star was already well on her way to a successful career in film, an illegal abortion took the life of her unborn child, and left her unable to bear children ever again.

According to Waterfield, the young Jane already “felt horrible” about the moral evil committed in the abortion, which was so badly botched she nearly died. “She knew it was wrong,” she said. “But she as a young teenager, she felt she was trapped and her career starting to take off, and it was an inconvenience, and she thought that was the best solution, knowing all along that it wasn’t.”

But it was because of the open arms of her own mother, Geraldine, that Jane was encouraged to “let the Lord figure out” how to turn the experience to good.

“Grandma Russell was by her side after she had the abortion and she said, ‘Daughter, the Lord will turn this around for good if you allow him to work in your life. There is no condemnation from Him, nor will there be any condemnation from our lips either,’” said Waterfield.

Jane carried on, she said, bearing courageously the responsibility of an abortion that wound up giving her “a heart for children,” particularly those who were difficult to place in adoptions, such as older and disabled children. Russell was to found the World Adoption International Fund (WAIF) in 1955. According to Waterfield, through Russell’s efforts at adoption advocacy, she helped find a place for over 40,000 children in permanent homes who may otherwise never have found them.

And despite losing her fertility, she became “mom” and “grandma” to many: having adopted three children, she left behind six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren at her passing. In particular, Waterfield said, Russell was passionate about using her fame as a well-loved actress to open the word of God to others.

“She made a mistake, but she is the perfect example of what the Bible says: what Satan has meant for bad, God will turn around for good if you allow him to work in your life,” said Waterfield. “That’s Mom right there: those thousands of children – that abortion turned into a blessing.”

[…]

As Russell lay on her deathbed, Waterfield said that she rejoiced to think of the meeting that lay in store for her.

“I whispered in her ear and said, ‘Mom, now you can hold your baby for the first time. You’ll be able to see your baby,” she said, tearing up. “And you know, I just wish I could see that reunion. Because of that baby, she was able to do so much for children.

“That’s her legacy: it’s not Hollywood, it’s the children. That’s how I want the world to know her.”

HIV is an epidemic everywhere, but perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Malawi. With a population of 14.8 million, close to 1 million are living with HIV. The Malawi government has stepped up its efforts to combat HIV over the years, but this newest attempt at prevention seems more than a little misguided.

Mwana Palibe, a cultural belief very popular in the lower shire districts of Nsanje and Chikhwawa has been named as one of the contributing factors to the wide spread of HIV and AIDS in the two districts.The belief, which prohibits couples from exercising their conjugal rights unless all the children who live in that particular house are in, is very popular among the Mang’anja people.

People of the two districts believe that once this tradition is breached, children fall ill from Kwashiorkor like diseases and they eventually die.

But speaking after Journalist Association Against Aids in Malawi, a grouping of media practitioners in the fight against Aids, visited the district, Traditional Authority Mlilima of Nsanje said there was no harm in couples having sex in the absence of their children.

“There is no any other connection in couples enjoying in bed and children falling ill. These are some of the beliefs we must eliminate if we are to win the fight against AIDS,” said the chief.

The association’s Chairperson Deogratias Mmana said the custom fires up men to be seeking relief outside their matrimonial circles.

“This is very dangerous because men can be tempted to go behind their wives and seek relief to other women, a thing which can accelerate the spread of HIV and AIDS in the country,” he said.

Wow, blaming wives for the spread of AIDS by cheating spouses, that’s rich! Ultimately, they’re saying “No no, your children won’t get ill and die if you have sex with your husband. They’ll get ill and die if you DON’T have sex with your husband.” I can’t imagine this message going over well, anywhere, or having any impact on the spread of HIV and AIDS.