It’s the annual March for Life today and I just checked it out. Beautiful day here in Ottawa, sunny and warmer than it’s been. The Hill is full, many people are just enjoying the sunshine. A photo, courtesy of Faytene Kryskow, because I did not take my camera.
So this Mother’s Day, The Chronicle Herald celebrated a little early by wishing a happy ann’y to the pill. I thought I had missed the boat on posting, but the articles celebrating the pill and its ‘achievements’ just keep coming. They’re all in the same vein, promoting the pill, painting the naysayers as backwards, unsuccessful hillbillies. The Herald was particularly strong on that, finding references so obscure they couldn’t even name the individual.
One Montreal psychiatrist concluded in 1965 that the pill made women unfeminine and that some patients complained “they were no longer interested in their homes, in their children, even in their husbands.”
Or this gentleman, and his defunct magazine.
“What we need is not birth-control, but self-control,” Ralph Cowan told the now-defunct Weekend Magazine. “If things go on this way, in 20 years we’ll have so many old people there won’t be enough young people to pay for their welfare programs.”
They finally conclude…
“Some doctors felt it was an abortifactant, that it provoked abortion,” she [Christabelle Sethna] explains. “They were confused how it worked because it was so new.”
Confused, or well informed?
This morning, Forbes released this little number, praising the pill. This quote from the CEO of Dermalogica is my favorite.
The birth control pill gave me the opportunity to delay having children and start my own company.
Amazing folks! Step right up, take this pill and you too can be an entrepreneur!
Pharmaceutical companies have gone a long way to promote the pill, it’s big business. What I would like to see, is a little less blind faith in it.
Thanks to Julie for drawing my attention to this piece by Jill Stanek. I must say I don’t understand why the American Association of Pediatrics would worry more about cultural sensitivity than, say, the health of girls. And not just physical health, either. For there is something deeply more troubling about female genital mutilation than “just” removing body parts; it’s the idea that girls and women are not supposed to experience sexual pleasure – that they are somehow dirty, or impure, if they do. It’s not just a “cultural practice”. It’s butchery, pure and simple – and if you don’t believe me, I challenge you to watch one (ditto with an abortion). So why would we put up with it, and try to minimize it instead of just saying “No way, we’re not going to tolerate that sort of butchery on American soil”? As Jill Stanek points out:
Traditionally, feminists have strongly opposed FGM, along with all of Western civilization.
But in this new age of cultural sensitivity, attempts are being made to bridge the divide, not necessarily end the barbaric practice of FGM.
For instance, there is a call to stop using the offensive term “mutilation” in favor of “female genital cutting” or “female circumcision,” both utterly inaccurate.
There is also the recent suggestion by the American Academy of Pediatrics to barter a compromise, recommending that pediatricians offer the gentler, kinder form of FGM, Type 4: pricking, piercing, or incising. In a new policy statement on April 26, AAP recommended:
“Some physicians … advocate only pricking or incising the clitoral skin as sufficient to satisfy cultural requirements. This is no more of an alteration than ear piercing. …[T]he ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is not physically harmful and is much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting. There is reason to believe that offering such a compromise may build trust between hospitals and immigrant communities, save some girls from undergoing disfiguring and life-threatening procedures in their native countries and play a role in the eventual eradication of FGC.”
I should note this recommendation is currently illegal in the U.S.
It’s also a pretty stupid idea.
Hey girls, try to talk your guy into that one, just for fun:
Ultrasound could be used as a reversible contraceptive for men, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina, who say a blast to the testes safely stops sperm production for up to six months. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided $100,000 to push head clinical trials, the BBC reports, in hopes of offering a new method of birth control. “We think this could provide men with up to six months of reliable, low-cost, non-hormonal contraception from a single round of treatment,” lead researcher Dr. James Tsuruta said. “Our long-term goal is to use ultrasound from therapeutic instruments that are commonly found in sports medicine or physical therapy clinics as an inexpensive, long-term, reversible male contraceptive suitable for use in developing to first world countries.”
It could be me (I’ve been known to be on the crusty old goat side of things), but I find these kinds of stories drab and depressing. I mean, isn’t sex supposed to be fun?
Today’s Globe and Mail offered this piece on abortion in the continent.
Legalizing abortion would be a simple way to reduce the maternal death rate. In South Africa, the number of abortion-related deaths fell by 91 per cent after the procedure was legalized in 1997, according to a Lancet study.
Though, if you highlight the South African maternal mortality rates provided by the map in the article itself, you can see that in 2008 the rate was at its highest since 1980. Since the author York focuses so much on South Africa in the article, it might be important to note that in 2002 South Africa reported over 52,000 rapes.
The fact checks continue to turn up surprising results…
…virtually all of the estimated 5.6 million abortions performed annually in Africa are unsafe. Only about 100,000 are done by properly trained professionals in a safe environment, according to a report last year by the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy organization for sexual and reproductive health.
Oh, an ‘advocacy organization for sexual and reproductive health’, well that makes me feel better. Here’s a line from their Wikipedia entry…
The Guttmacher Institute in 1968 was founded as the “Center for Family Planning Program Development”, a semi-autonomous division of The Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Perfect.
Promoting abortion to a victimized populace seems to ignore the socioeconomic reasons for their crisis pregnancies in the first place. It may even be a little grotesque, but that could just be me.
You’ve read her thoughtful comments to our posts. Now you can read her posts of her very own! Today we welcome a new PWPL woman, Jennifer Derwey, our first “east coast” (Nova Scotia) correspondent.
Read all about her, here.
Welcome, Jennifer!
The University of Calgary has notified eight members of the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) student group that they have been found guilty of a major violation under the Non-Academic Misconduct Policy regarding a pro-life display held last month. The verdict comes one week after the students each attended individual, closed-door hearings with an Associate Vice-Provost during which legal representatives were disallowed.
The verdict is “a formal written warning” that if the students “fail to comply with directives of Campus Security staff in the future” it will “result in more severe sanctions,” said Acting Associate Vice-Provost Meghan Houghton, who was the sole decision-maker in the guilty verdict.
“We are going to challenge this verdict,” stated Alanna Campbell, CPL President. “We did not break a single University bylaw or regulation and so we will defend ourselves accordingly. We will also not cease exercising our rights to free speech just because they’re threatening us. I’d rather be expelled as a principled person than graduate a coward.”
That’s my kind of girl! Wish I had that kind of courage back in school.
I happen to think there’s lots wrong with this. Though I’m terribly glad for anyone who can become a mother, I don’t think it should be done at any cost, or quite frankly, through interventions like in vitro at any age. It seems unjust for the children, in a way. Imagine being 20 with a mother who is 80? And therefore no chance to know grandparents, and no chance for grandparents to know you?
…Mothering remains a profoundly worthwhile undertaking, one that Chesterton calls nothing less extraordinary than “the mystery of the making of men.”
…And women. Happy Mother’s Day.