Why oh why oh why OH WHY does anyone ever go with the “it’s always existed” or “it’s entirely natural” argument in defending his or her cause?

Goodness me. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times. Abortion has always existed, and therefore, it’s necessary and right, say abortion supporters. Prostitution, ditto.

This letter defending how natural prostitution is, is the impetus for today’s rant:

Prostitution is a natural phenomenon. Slamming and condemning governments and politicians for not doing anything about it is no solution, and shows a misunderstanding of the attitudes of many Canadians.

I find these arguments embarrassing because they are so easily refuted. Just because something is longstanding does not make it right. I read in today’s Post that in Albania, the family members of murderers have to go into permanent hiding because of a cultural tradition whereby the wounded family is allowed to knock off one of the murderer’s family. Ah, blood feud, vigilante justice. Been around for centuries–and therefore it must be good! On what planet does this pass for logic?

The other thing is that what is natural is often not right. Social liberals don’t understand this because they view human nature as being essentially good. Social conservatives do (or, ahem, should) because they think that evil is found in every human heart and therefore, just because it may feel natural to be drawn to porn, to use a woman for sex or even to kill someone–doesn’t make it right.  (We (ok, I) almost enjoy my personal struggle against some of my evil, yet natural, tendencies, and we (ok, I) generally go to the person concerned to apologize and to God for forgiveness when we (I) fail. But I’m digressing now.)

“It’s natural” isn’t a great argument, except where there are other substantive arguments to be made. Otherwise it should be reserved for moments such as my defence of moving to deodorant instead of anti-perspirant.

Here ends the rant.

_______________________

Brigitte adds: I believe I read somewhere that murder was a pretty old thing, too. Cain, I believe, invented it. Or maybe it was Brutus. Not sure. So, can I go out and murder those who stand in my way?

______________________

Andrea adds: Go to town, Brigitte. People have been doing it for a long while so it’s AOK.

______________________

Véronique adds: Ah the “natural” argument… I’ve heard it from every side: abortion is natural, working mothers are against nature, the list goes on.

It’s like “progress”, which is usually a good thing –pro-choice people think themselves as “progressive” – until it isn’t: abortion has happened throughout the ages, why fight it?

Or like “animals”: pro-lifers – anti-choice – view women as breeding stock … until you get to sterilization and euthanasia. Then treating people like animals is the dignified thing to do.

Antibiotics, vaccines and c-sections are not natural. Unlike abortion.

There’s an online movement to send this guy to the Oprah Winfrey show, and I support it (costs nothing – you can also buy one of his albums like I just did).

Possessed of an unflagging spirit that’s remarkable under any circumstances, Justin copes with a rare genetic joint condition called Larsen Syndrome, that keeps him wheelchair bound. “Sometimes people find it hard to understand why I would be so positive,” he explains. “I was born into my situation, I don’t know any different, and I feel very fortunate for my family and all the support that I have. I know my physical situation is a bit of an attention grabber, but as an artist and performer, it is my job to hold the audience’s attention, and let the music speak for itself.”

You can also use this application to make your own music video honouring your own hero(es).

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwoUM8ETFfk]

There’s a court case in B.C. about the right of offspring created with the use of anonymous egg or sperm donors to know who their biological parents are. It’s quite obvious, from the offspring’s point of view, that one has the right to know who one’s parents are. But unfortunately, those “parents” weren’t having children, they were creating commodities – without thinking that perhaps, one day, the “commodities” in question might ask for something completely normal and human. Embarrassing, what.

For what it’s worth, I am entirely on the side of the kids.

Here we go again: Henry Morgentaler has been nominated in the Globe and Mail as a transformational Canadian. Nominations are open until November 26, so I’d suggest pro-lifers get in there and nominate many, many more, lest Morgentaler actually be chosen.

Morgentaler did transform us, I suppose. He popularized the idea “of expendable human lives” and “turned this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live.” (Paraphrased from Dr. Jefferson) He made it possible for women to use abortion as birth control, whilst denying them fundamental information about the baby and what abortion does to women. And he transformed us with his obstinate pride (when he was received into the Order of Canada, he said “he deserved it”–quite an acceptance speech) and his strange poetry. Transformational, indeed.

_______________________

Jennifer adds:  Ugh! The quote in bold on the left just ruined my day…
“Were every child a wanted and loved child, the world would be a substantially better place.” So then it’s our job to love them all then isn’t it? I’m loving some right now… get to it people!

That’s the sort of thing they should be up in arms about, right?

LONDON — A leading Muslim cleric has sparked controversy in Britain by claiming that it is impossible for men to rape their wives.

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, who is president of the Islamic Sharia Council, told a website that “sex is part of marriage” and suggested that husbands who commit such acts should not be prosecuted.

“Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage,” he told The Samosa website. “Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity… Because when they got married, the understanding was that sexual intercourse was part of the marriage, so there cannot be anything against sex in marriage. Of course, if it happened without her desire, that is no good, that is not desirable.”

Our very own Rebecca Walberg is moderating a live chat about managing Canada’s water resources with the Financial Post. You can learn more about it, here.

The Victorian period is full of canonical literature from women writers. Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen paved the way for later writers like Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. And much has been written about the prevalent theme of madness that serves as a common thread to underpin all of these works. The suspicion of the woman as “unstable” and prone to madness is embedded in the bedrock of western culture, through such classics as Medea and continued through early and medieval Christian assumptions that women were more prone to heresy and demonic possession. The later development of the asylum allowed for a more general accusation of mental illness to permeate the fears of women. Michelle Iwen writes:

While women’s proportion of admission did rise modestly above that of men, I believe that it was the nature of confinement that so effected women’s writing enough to perpetuate the concept of the unruly woman unjustly confined which, in turn, helped advance this idea in popular culture and eventually into medical discourse, in a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle. It was this cycle which led to the trope becoming reality in the 19^th century as women internalized this threat because of its unique dangers to what was believed to be their inherent female qualities.

The idea that certain female characteristics need to be bridled has not escaped our contemporary writers, nor has it’s hum faded from the background of women’s lives. I experienced these inherited fears myself when I, like most new mothers, was given my first questionnaire on depression from my family physician. Sleep deprived, with images of Vivienne Eliot in my mind, I filled in the blanks.

As you have recently had a baby, we would like to know how you are feeling. Please UNDERLINE the answer which comes closest to how you have felt IN THE PAST 7 DAYS, not just how you feel today.
I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things.As much as I always could
Not quite so much now
Definitely not so much now
Not at all  

I have looked forward with enjoyment to things.As much as I ever did
Rather less than I used to
Definitely less than I used to
Hardly at all […]  

This article brought back the memories of these questionnaires.

An influential medical group says pediatricians should routinely screen new mothers for depression. Depression isn’t just bad for moms: It can also harm their babies.

That’s according to a new American Academy of Pediatrics report published Monday in the journal, Pediatrics. It cites research showing developmental and social delays in babies with depressed mothers.

The academy says that every year more than 400,000 babies are born to depressed women. Estimates say that between 5 per cent and 25 per cent of women develop postpartum depression.

The pediatrics academy says severely depressed women should be referred to experts for treatment.

There’s no simple way to screen women, women having feared being institutionalized for centuries. While we need screening, I would advise extreme caution to physicians who choose to use generalized tools like these questionnaires. Relying on the answers from these tools will not only give inaccurate results, but may put women and their children in danger. Instead, emphasize the commonality of postpartum depression, look for the more obvious signs, and provide accessible counselling to not only the obviously depressed but perhaps to all new mothers. And of course, avoid words like “treatment”.

Poor Big Pharma, not making quite the profits they hoped to on the HPV vaccine? So they’ve done what any business would do. Put it on sale! Now you can force school age kids through school programs. But what about women in college?

Young women are clearly not aware of how important it is to be vaccinated against this cancer,” said Joan Murphy, head of the division of gynecologic oncology at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. She said vaccination, along with regular Pap testing, provide the best protection against cervical cancer.

I don’t really think the price point is the problem.

Do we really want to encourage boyfriends to administer through-the-mail pharmaceuticals?

The court heard uncontested evidence that Brennan had arranged for the medical abortion pill, a prostaglandin called misoprostol and anti-progesterone called mifepristone, to be posted from Russia by his sister, and that these pills were taken by Leach after she thought she might be pregnant.

The author (perhaps just a teensy bit melodramatically) argues for the defence…

The law the couple were alleged to have broken was an old one, based on the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act of the English Parliament. Crafted in another century in another country and for another time […]

The law, the police, the judge, the lawyers, the doctors were all men, acting in a drama that had its origins when women were chattels and there was no notion that ”women’s rights are human rights”. Our sensibilities are different now.

I think I’m a type 3, too.

For the last seven years, Tuttle has been teaching women how to “capture” their beauty with her course, “Dressing Your Truth.” “Most women do not know how truly beautiful they are,” she writes in her book of the same name. The problem for most women, she believes, is that they don’t know what “type” they are and are therefore “misunderstood.”

Women who take her course start by examining their personalities, then their facial features. Tuttle believes there are four types of women. Sarah Palin, for instance, she sees as a Type 1. Type 1 women typically “talk readily and easily to people” and “like to keep things light and fun.” Yet, “in an effort to be taken more seriously, and not to look so cute and youthful,” Type 1s tend to dress in black, their biggest fashion mistake, writes Tuttle.

[…]

A Type 2 woman is “diplomatic, empathetic, meticulous, preferring to observe rather than participate in larger social settings.” Julia Roberts is a classic Type 2. The most common fashion mistake of a Type 2 is the tendency to wear bright clothes to counter a subdued nature, says Tuttle, “making her complexion look pasty,” so she seems “weak and shy.”

A Type 3 woman is “swift, fiery, intense, practical and abrupt.” This kind of woman “may have been told as a child, ‘Relax! You’re too demanding.’ ” Jean Price believes Laureen Harper is a Type 3. “She’s got that rich dynamic energy, and whoever is advising her, they’ve got her in tailored, structured Type 4 clothing, including the black, and that really dramatically ages her. She should be wearing browns and rich autumn colours. And her hairstyle! They’ve even got it too soft! She needs it to be cut edgy and uneven with more height to it.”

Type 4 women are “private, disciplined, influential, and uncompromising. You move forward with crystal clear focused determination while maintaining quiet confidence.” Elizabeth Taylor is a classic Type 4—the only type of woman who can wear black. A Type 4’s biggest fashion mistake is wearing soft, flowing clothes. It makes them look frumpy.

__________________

Update: I consulted with the authorities (aka hubby) and apparently I am a 3/4 hybrid. Or, as he puts it, “You have the best qualities of each”. So. In order to feel pretty with what you’ve got, you have to marry the right guy. Simple!

_______________________

Andrea adds: Put me down as types 1, 2, 3 and 4. I talk easily to people, I’m empathetic, I’m intense, I’m disciplined and just a teensy bit uncompromising (only on the things that count). On the positive side, this makes it very easy for me to dress in anything at all. On the negative side, I may have a personality disorder. Stay tuned.