A thoughtful article on the nature of graphic displays and what they achieve.

I personally believe the graphic abortion photos are necessary, but they only have a lasting impact when there is simultaneously a dialogue with those holding the signs. I’m pretty sure that’s the point of the Genocide Awareness Project presentation–it’s to get people talking and asking questions and thinking about it.

And I don’t actually think these are “shock” tactics. I hate movies with blood and gore just for the sake of it, and haven’t seen a horror movie since a grade five Hallowe’en party (The Watcher in the Woods). (In case you are wondering, my friend’s mother saw how scared I was and removed me–rescued me–to play by myself in my friend’s bedroom, where I was much happier. Oh, and years later, I tried the Blair Witch Project, which was a very bad mistake involving a lot of closing my eyes, plugging my ears and humming The sun will come out, Tomorrow! in the theatre, and that’s the end of horror movies for me, forever.)

But when the history is bloody, then show me the history. When I did Holocaust courses for my degree, there were sections so horrible I couldn’t keep reading. But when it is truth, then bring it on.

Abortion is horrible, therefore the photos and evidence is horrible. Showing what abortion is to an apathetic public is not a shock tactic, for shock’s sake alone. I support it.

Interesting.

The British Columbia government has filed a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson Inc., claiming the maker of the “Ortho Evra” contraception patch “aggressively marketed the contraceptive without disclosing the safety hazards associated with Evra.” The lawsuit claims that women using the patch “did not receive any warnings about the increased risk of developing blood clots, pulmonary emboli, strokes, heart attacks or deep vein thrombosis associated with Evra.”

At least 23 women have died from the use of this form of contraception, including an 18-year-old New York fashion student who collapsed in a city subway station. An autopsy on Zakiya Kennedy’s body found a blood clot had moved into her lungs, and the medical examiner ruled that the clot was a side effect of the Evra birth control patch she was using.

Blaise Alleyne over at University of Toronto Students for Life put a caption on one of the Carleton arrest photos. Well done.

On the one hand, medical science is working hard to cure infertility. On the other, sexual and reproductive health providers are working hard to sterilize as many people as possible.

What does this mean? It means that the infertile, and the fertile alike, are feeling increasing pressure to ride the conflicting roller coaster of reproductive treatment.

While women tend to be more vociferous about fertility treatments, men are not excluded from this ride. Vesectomy campaigns have been running in various countries around the globe for decades. The largest of these is possibly the campaign run in India in 1972, where 221,933 vasectomies were preformed during an eight week period in over 1,000 camps. However, the most recent campaigns are more subtle…

Leading UK family planning specialist Marie Stopes International is running an innovative vasectomy advertising campaign throughout the World Cup tournament. Football-themed posters encouraging men to seek information about vasectomies will be placed above urinals in men’s toilets, on tip seats in taxis and in pubs and bars around the country.

Each poster features a special vasectomy call number and an SMS address giving interested parties the option to ring or text for an information pack.

The campaign is aimed primarily at men who are in stable relationships and have completed their families.

“By placing these advertisements in men’s loos we’re hoping guys will consider the matter when they, quite literally, have the matter in hand,” said Julie Douglas, Marie Stopes International’s Marketing Manager

My concern is that marketing vasectomies in this way may lead to men considering the surgery at increasingly younger ages (there are currently no concrete restrictions on the procedure for those over 18 in North America). In packaging a vasectomy as a flippant and “easy” procedure, men who simply fear unwanted pregnancy may resort to surgery (which may also create a false sense of sexual security) and their partners may also feel more justified in pressuring them to have such a “simple” operation.

The initial vasectomy is relatively low cost and straight forward, but reversal is far more complicated.

The chief advantage of vasectomy — its permanence — is also its chief disadvantage. The procedure itself is simple, but reversing it is difficult, expensive, and often unsuccessful.

The cost for reversal surgery in Canada?

As you may be aware, the Ontario government (OHIP) and most provincial health-care providers do not cover the costs of a vasectomy reversal. We try to keep costs as low as possible.

The cost of a vasectomy reversal is approximately $4,880 including the surgeon’s fee, hospital and anaesthetic fees. There are no charges for pre-operative and post-operative clinic visits and testing as these are covered under OHIP and provincial healthcare plans.

So while the medical field works away in labs curing infertility, young men are being met in the loo by adverts that promise sexual freedom but could ultimately lead to their never having children at all.

A British columnist, Virginia Ironside, on killing as compassion. Have a look:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RAAhTL4Arg”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RAAhTL4Arg]

From the AFP:

KINSHASA — The UN confirmed Wednesday the arrest of a man suspected of leading a group of Democratic Republic of Congo rebels who raped hundreds of civilians, after earlier concerns he had been misidentified.

[…]

The arrest “is a very clear signal to other perpetrators that sexual violence is unacceptable and that justice will win,” said Margot Wallstrom, the UN’s special envoy on sexual violence, during a press conference in capital Kinshasa at the end of a week-long visit to the country.

The arrest is good news, but like all stories of war, there are complexities worth devoting our time to. Here is a journalistic report from American Amy Ernst:

I wanted so badly to hate this man. He’s extremely handsome, with soft eyes, thick, curling lashes, and a nervous glance. It doesn’t fit with the dirty green uniform and rickety gun hanging from his shoulder.

The soldier, whom I’ll call Adonis (he did not want his name used), is part of the Forces Armées de la Republique Democratique du Congo (FARDC), the governmental forces, that are just as out of control as the rebel forces. When I ask if he has killed or tortured anyone, he says emphatically, “so many.” Civilians? “Sometimes.” I ask him if he has ever raped a woman, but before he can respond, his superior, who is also speaking with us (and like Adonis, prefers to keep his name to himself), jumps in.

[…]

When Adonis was 10, living in a village called Masisi with his six brothers and sisters, he was captured by the CNDP, Rwandan rebel forces previously led by the infamous Laurent Nkunda (Nkunda’s forces and the FARDC have always been on opposite sides of the constantly changing conflict). Adonis pulls up his sleeves with dirty hands, and shows me several thick scars in the creases of both of his arms. “When they started cutting off my arms, I accepted,” he says.

[…]

Adonis continues to shake his head. Child-soldiers are used often by all military groups, particularly the Mai-Mai (community-based) rebel groups. They are forced to rape, kill and torture other human beings before they have even hit puberty. When they are demobilized (pulled from their stations of war), they rarely know where their families are, have no system of support and have done things a child should never even have to think about. Even after being demobilized, many of these children are lured back to the military camps by the promise of food and a relative sense of security. If they are not lured back willingly, they are often forced back with more violence.

The Congolese organization I work with, COPERMA, helps victims of sexual violence as well as demobilized child-soldiers. Child-soldiers receive the same type of help as all victims of the war, a foster family, vocational training and the opportunity to complete primary, if not secondary school. One of the biggest struggles with the victims of rape is that they will engage in prostitution to find food for their children. With child-soldiers, the problem is returning to the fighting. COPERMA can’t do everything, and even with their help the children are still stuck in extreme poverty and instability.

Hearing that some of the boys helped by COPERMA had committed crimes as horrible as those the young girls were simultaneously telling me about, I was conflicted and confused. I was angry at COPERMA for assisting rapists. But the more I speak to people, the more I see that victims of war come in all forms.

I wanted so badly to hate Adonis; it would be easier to hate him. But now I see he needs help too.

In my youth, when the new reproductive technologies were still new, I remember hearing the argument that surrogacy and certain other forms of reproductive technology would lead to the “commodification of children.”  The people discussing the issue seemed interested in that viewpoint in a academic sort of way, but most people did not seem to find that abstract risk a compelling enough reason not to allow people to realize their cherished dream of children.  We certainly wouldn’t want to tell people what they should or should not do.

Which lead us to where we are now – parents pressuring a surrogate to abort a baby following a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome.  “The child is seen by the commissioning parents as a product, and in this case a substandard product because of a genetic condition,” said Prof. Francoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University.  No kidding.

So, that is what the commodification of children means in practice  – a child in utero is branded a “substandard product” of which the consumer refuses to delivery.

Contrast this impoverished view of humanity and human relationship with that of this parent of a “defective” child.  This article was written in response to the televised comments of a British advice columnist stating that “it was better to terminate a pregnancy than to condemn a disabled or unwanted child to a lifetime of emotional or physical suffering”.  But that’s another eugenics story.

Sigh.

Niqab and hot pants… oh my! (Gentle warning: the song’s lyrics, in French, are somewhat explicit, in a semi-poetic kind of way.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st38g1N5uuo&feature=player_embedded]

For the record: I don’t like it. My problem with the niqab isn’t that it’s not sexy or explicit enough.

Should abortion protestors have been allowed to put up graphic displays at Carleton?

(scroll down, poll is on the right)

Tonight is a big night in Ottawa. People, we have choices.

Stephanie Gray is debating at Ottawa University. I’d go if I could but my attendance is pretty much required at the talk I’m giving at the Laurentian Leadership Centre:

Canada has a Status of Women department. Guest lecturer, Andrea Mrozek, asks if we need to create a Status of Men department instead. Our general lack of concern for men (and marriage) will spell the end of fatherhood and families as well as the social and economic prosperity we enjoy. Ms. Mrozek reviews the decidedly politically incorrect Men and Marriage by George Gilder (1986) placing it in the context of the new millennium. Tuesday, October 5^th, 2010, Laurentian Leadership Centre, 252 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, 7:30 to 9:00 pm

Yes, it’s bad planning from the Centralized Agency of Forces Working For Good in Ottawa And The World. But it can’t be helped now. The only bad choice is staying home.