From the set of CSI. No, from the pages of the Ottawa Citizen:

Two local families have asked the Superior Court of Justice to order DNA testing of a celebrated Ottawa fertility specialist to determine whether his sperm was used to create their children.

Dr. Norman Barwin and the clinic he founded, the Broadview Fertility Clinic, have been named in two unusual lawsuits.

The suits contend that Barwin inseminated two women with the wrong sperm samples. …Barwin, the former president of Planned Parenthood Canada, was named to the Order of Canada in 1997 for his contributions to women’s reproductive health. Last year, he received an honourary degree from Carleton University alongside former governor general Adrienne Clarkson. …

Barwin once admitted in a Citizen interview that his “worst nightmare” involved inseminating a patient with the wrong sperm.

That 2001 profile of the doctor revealed that he had failed to pass the exams required to become a certified gynecologist in Canada, despite holding a PhD in women’s medicine from Queen’s University in Northern Ireland. Barwin said he never took the time to study for the exams. 

He’s innocent until proven guilty, of course. But I’m starting to think it really doesn’t take much to get into the Order of Canada.

I received this news item in my inbox, with the very subject heading I’ve used here.

A pregnant woman was gravely injured and her unborn child killed after a traffic accident in Surrey Sunday afternoon. It happened at 4 p.m. at 132nd and 96th Avenue when a van and a smaller car with five people inside crashed in the intersection.

Made me suddenly sad, actually. Because we lose so many unborn babies but we only care about 0.01 per cent of the time. Also, my heart goes out to this mother, who has lost her child. Sad, just sad, all round.

In a comment yesterday, Véronique commented that she knows a lot of pop culture songs because of her kids. Another way to keep up might be to read this scathing critique of Lady Gaga by Camille Paglia:

…[D]espite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…

There comes a point when, if anything and everything is sexy, then nothing is sexy. (We probably passed that a while back now, come to think of it.)

It’s the anniversary of 9/11, and this piece takes us back to September 10, 1683. Apparently, September 11 wasn’t a random choice for the terrorist attacks nine years ago.

I never got my invitation to this conference on the future of feminism:

The second wave of feminism, which began nearly 50 years ago and which followed the first wave of the suffragettes, “was about enshrining in law [women’s] rights,” Maureen McTeer, a long-time advocate for women’s advancement, told The Globe and Mail during a break between speakers. The third wave, she said, has to be about “changing attitudes.”

I want to change attitudes. Yes I Do.

This is an ad for a campaign called Born HIV Free with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy at the helm. Upon watching this, my first thought was something along the lines of, “this is weird.” Then I watched it again, and I pretty much thought exactly the same thing.

However, there is a point to be made: strong language is used precisely because it’s truthful, and because we’re not talking about abortion here. “Life is beautiful. Don’t let AIDS kill it before it starts.” I’m surprised someone hasn’t complained about this. (Silly me, I forgot. We only complain when pro-lifers point out something this obvious.)

(And thanks to Kristina for sending this link in.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfQ9aMpoXvQ]

Today I was about to set out on a jog when my iPod up and died. It did not respond to CPR (reset, plug in, pull plug, plug in) so I rummaged through my drawers to find an MP3 player from an age when dinosaurs walked the land. It worked, but only radio (no volume control) and frequently no control over the station. So I was subject to the whims of said dino-MP3 player.

This led to some hits, if I do say so myself, like Africa and Living on a Prayer.

But then there was this more modern song (what are the kids listening to these days??) And I could swear the lyrics were “All I ever wanted was a one night stand.”

And I thought two things. 1) Young man–with standards like that there’s nothing but a bright, shiny future ahead! And 2) Now there’s words a woman would never speak.

(File this one under Love and Romance.)

With back to school came back to work for a friend of a friend. Her mat leave is over and she has really struggled with her return to work. But struggle or not, she’s doing it, because she “doesn’t want to be a housewife.”

Which caused me to ponder: What does that mean? It’s a kind of Betty Friedan type of thing to say. She (the mom returning to work) loved her time with her baby, I’m told. Which is not, incidentally, “time off.” This would have made her a temporary “housewife,” I guess. 

I’ve always thought women should do what they think is best. But when it comes to so many, I see them stamping out their instincts and with it, their desires, in order to pretend they feel AOK when they go back to work fulltime. I wonder why they do it. But it’s not my place to ask or question their personal choice. So I’ll muse about it here, instead, with a kind tone, I hope. I don’t think one decision is more right than the other. This post is about women’s desires, and why they don’t listen to them.

Seems to me that being a strong woman might involve staying home, where the world will tell you that a woman’s strength lies in going back to work. Just one of life’s little contradictions.  

FYI: A fun column about a strong woman who never worked outside the home.

A great editorial in the Montreal Gazette today, since Quebec is holding hearings about euthanasia these days:

Support for mercy killing is usually couched in terms of dignity, which seems bitterly ironic since it’s hard to think of a more extreme denial of dignity than killing, however benevolent the motive.

I’m very pleased this is their editorial position. So rational, logical and life affirming. From this position, however, it’s only logical to say the same of the unborn. We don’t kill to solve our problems, no matter how big those problems might be.

What a great story:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy