[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJkBQn1-r8]

These are taken from the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform’s Facebook page. I think these students are doing a very honourable thing, drawing attention to the plight of the unborn. I know their hearts and souls are in this cause, and they are the justice reformers of our age. Still, must be hard, for them and possibly their parents, too. I have great respect for them.

I don’t have many details yet but apparently four students were arrested by campus police as they set up their pro-life display at Carleton University this morning.

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Rebecca adds: Wow, we’re lucky to live in a country facing absolutely no threats from terrorism, organized crime, or random violence. Because if any of those were serious problems, there’s no way police would be spending precious time arresting people for saying unpopular things, right?

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Correction and Update: There’s a short article in the Ottawa Sun, here. Five students were arrested by Ottawa City Police, not campus security.

There’s a cover story in Newsweek called Man Up! (my link is to a critique of the article I appreciated), there was a story in Friday’s Globe and Mail called the Emasculated Male and I’ll be giving a talk on Tuesday night called The Status of Men:

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

I’ll be more or less presenting Gilder’s thesis, which I thought was pretty interesting, but which also gives me cover from the ensuing criticism. (As in “Gilder said it! Not me.” I’m still trying to weigh who Gilder offends more, men or women, and thus far, it’s a toss up.)

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Rebecca adds: Correcting injustices to women is important not because they’re women but because they’re people, and healthy marriages, families, organizations and societies can’t exist if half of their members are treated badly. But the solution isn’t to treat the other half badly. And we need to hear more about the tension between the sexes from happily married people, and not from bitter divorce(e)s – the tone of any given book about men, women, marriage, divorce, parenting, heartbreak, etc tends to telegraph the author’s sex and marital status pretty reliably from the opening pages.

There will be a Genocide Awareness Project display at Carleton University this Monday. I understand most Canadians prefer to put their head in the sand on this issue, pretending it’s empowering or that the injustice simply doesn’t exist. I’m glad these students won’t let that be an option this Monday.

Here’s their press release:

CONTROVERSIAL ABORTION EXHIBIT SPREADS TO OTTAWA
Students at Carleton University Get Eye-Full

OTTAWA. This October, 4, Carleton Lifeline will re-open the abortion debate—and it will be hard to ignore them.  The students will display six 4×8 foot bloody images from the controversial Genocide Awareness Project (GAP: www.unmaskingchoice.ca/gap.html).  The GAP graphically compares abortion to historical atrocities, such as the Holocaust, and has been met with resistance most particularly at the University of Calgary. This Monday from 10am to 4pm, their exhibit will be displayed in the Quad at Carleton University.  With students passing through that area on their way to and from class, heads are expected to turn. “A university is the marketplace of ideas and we want to use that platform to show that abortion is an act of violence that kills a baby,” said club president Ruth Lobo, a Human Rights major.  “We know this exhibit is effective at changing peoples’ minds because they’ve said so.”

The students said they hope to achieve debate about abortion, and they hope their message won’t be censored. Their exhibit comes on the heels of the University of Calgary Campus Pro-Life (CPL) club’s GAP display.  Out west, the students have faced censorship attempts from U of C — from the university having them charged with trespassing (the charges were eventually stayed) to charging them with non-academic student misconduct.

“We hope Carleton upholds our rights to free speech and academic freedom and encourages healthy discussion,” said history major James Shaw. “And if people are bothered by the pictures, I ask them to consider, if there’s nothing wrong with abortion, why would a picture of it bother someone so much?” A press conference will be held on campus in the Quad at 9 am on Monday October 4th 2010.

“Feminist launches 4000 years for choice.”

I can’t do commentary on this any better than Suzanne Fortin over at Big Blue Wave:

Wait a minute: hasn’t the patriarchy always controlled women’s reproduction, and feminism was a response for that? Is this an Orwellian manipulation of history or what? And have you noted how this campaign equates abortion with choice? From the About page:

The 4000 Years for Choice project seeks to create new icons, symbols, and images about reproductive choice.

Look folks, no matter how many icons, symbols and images you create, they will ALWAYS be superimposed on the image of a dead fetus. Because that’s always the result. So no matter what kind of symbols of “empowerment” are created, they are always created against the backdrop of death and destruction. There’s no evading it. Abortion means death.

 Since they are in the business of rewriting history, I wonder why would they not celebrate 10,000 years for choice. Maybe more. Maybe before fire was created, and before the first wheel… People! Why so short-sighted? Cuz when you’re makin’ stuff up, you should use that time to get really creative.

This is hilarious!

Female sexual dysfunction – which is claimed to affect up to two thirds of women – is a disorder invented by the pharmaceutical industry to build global markets for drugs to treat it, it is claimed today.

I’m going to sound awfully old-fashioned, but you know, if we could only stop treating sex like some kind of machine that needs technique and oil and tinkering and stuff, we might start enjoying ourselves a bit more.

Hey, look! Somebody I know published a fine piece on that famous “hooker ruling”. And it neatly addresses something that’s been bugging me for a while about the debate over whether prostitution should be legal – the way people confuse “legal” with “good”. As in: prostitution should be legal because let’s be honest, what’s the big deal? So what if some women (and men) want to sell their bodies? It’s theirs, right? Well, no. Not right.

Countries with legalized prostitution should consider the number of young girls transported in dirty containers from places like Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria and elsewhere, to service western buyers. Will Canada join their ranks?

Some in the Netherlands are now hoping to undo the damage of legalized prostitution. Amsterdam’s Mayor Job Cohen told the press in 2007 human trafficking was on the rise and crime was running rampant: “Since the legalization in 2000, things have changed. The law was created for voluntary prostitution but these days we see trafficking of women, exploitation and all kinds of criminal activity.”

Prostitution is dangerous whether legal or illegal. Furthermore, it’s not a choice. The vast majority of women come to it through drug and sexual abuse, mental health problems and extreme poverty.

Maintaining strict laws is about protecting women who are abused by the very way in which they survive. This is also about the kind of country we want to live in.

Because I have too much spare time, I’m taking a couple of MBA courses this year.  One of them is marketing.  I went into this with no expectations whatsoever – didn’t really know what the content would be, how it would be taught, or anything other than it’s a core course for the program.  And it’s fascinating. One of the ideas that I found particularly resonant was the argument that really good marketing makes selling obsolete.  If you have identified a need, developed the right product, priced it and promoted it properly, it will sell itself.  (Example: Apple’s new gadgets which are sold out within about twenty minutes of release. If you think Steve Jobs is the devil, choose a different example.)

This goes to the heart of why I don’t think criminalizing abortion is the way for pro-lifers to spend their time, money and influence.  Yes, it might well reduce the number of abortions that happen in Canada (or it might increase the number of Canadians who drive to the nearest US state that allows abortion on demand, or the number of doctors doing stealth abortions.  Probably a combination of all three.)  But why not eliminate the need for legislation, the way good marketing of products obviates heavy-handed sales?

I’m convinced that if we could have an honest discussion about what abortion is, how a fetus develops, the short and long term effects on women who abort their pregnancies, even if they think it’s a positive choice or an exercise of freedom, or how sexual politics have changed to the detriment of almost everyone in an abortion-on-demand culture, we wouldn’t need laws – the vast majority of decent people would no more consider abortion to be a solution to an unplanned pregnancy than they would consider murdering their spouse to be the solution to a marriage hitting a bad patch.  Let’s work on the message – the substance but also the packaging and the distribution method.  If it helps the pro-life cause to sell itself, it will have been worth it.

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Andrea adds: Don’t forget cutting government funding for abortion and abortion-promoting groups.

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Andrea adds again: Was at an interesting talk last night and conversation turned to how to market the pro-life message. The difference between marketing in the world (Coke versus Pepsi, for example) is that this type of marketing capitalizes on self-interest. So too does the pro-abortion mindset. Where pro-lifers are marketing an “other-focussed” view–also a long term one. And so I wonder whether Rebecca’s course addresses those factors at all. Marketing the pro-life message comes down to a civilizational shift.

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Back to Rebecca: To Andrea’s point: actually this sort of did come up in the discussion, as when the prof was (introductory seminar) outlining what marketing was (and what it’s not – which is simply advertising.) Briefly, there are short term marketing tactics, which involve attempts to boost sales, usually of a specific product, through flash and gimmickry.  And then there’s a long term approach where you want to change how people think and live for years down the road.

Governments and lobby groups do this a lot – think recycling ad campaigns, public health campaigns involving cancer prevention and detection – but so did Apple, which foresaw and helped bring about a world in which computer were everywhere and in everything, and Microsoft, which saw a chance to give people far more control over the inner workings of these machines.

The point of much political, cultural and religious discussion is ultimately people’s choices and behaviours.  So looking at pro-life (and, as commenters have pointed out, the culture of promiscuity) messages as part of that discussion is interesting.  But what I really found intriguing was this idea that if your strategy consists of loudly and obviously exhorting people to do something at the final stage of the decision-making process, whether it’s waving placards in front of a clinic or having giant balloons outside a car dealership trying to get people in the doors, you’re missing the bigger and better window of opportunity – to shape people’s perceptions and beliefs so that they don’t consider going into the clinic, or the Ford dealership, because they believe deep down that abortions are wrong and harmful, or imports are more efficient and safer.

I’m not saying there is no place for other strategies in trying to change how Canadians perceive abortion.  But one thing business does extremely well is figure out how to get the most bang for their buck.

If the marketing industry has concluded that the best way to sell something is to understand your market and tailor your message so the product sells itself, maybe we should give it a shot in the abortion discussion.

…that refugees in Canada do not have easy access to surgery with one exception? Yup, you guessed it: Abortion.

When it comes to surgery, the federal plan appears to be much stricter than what Canadians are offered through provincial health care. Other than abortions, which appear to be offered and paid for on demand, all surgeries must be either an emergency or deemed essential by a doctor.

I can’t imagine many legitimate refugees wanting this “benefit” though. You escape an oppressive regime and travel a great distance, all to arrive in a new, safe place so that you can… kill your unborn child? Doesn’t really resonate with me.