What door would I choose? I refuse to be categorized. I’d scale the side of the building til I found an open window. Ya.
I do not like the drama of this ad. That said, I would like all women to be confident in their own real beauty.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DdM-4siaQw]
This is how I’d avoid the door choice.
The editors at Faith Today, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s magazine, interviewed a number of pro-life students and staffers in their most recent issue. It’s a quick but encouraging read. A few samples:
“I stay involved in the pro-life movement because abortion is a human rights violation that takes the lives of so many children. It has no parallel in history. We know this. With that knowledge comes responsibility. ” Alex vande Bruinhorst, Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, Calgary
“The thing I would like Canadians to know about abortion is that abortion is legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy, which puts us in the same category as North Korea and China. I’d like to ask each Canadian a simple question: Do you believe in human rights? Because if the answer is yes, then shouldn’t human rights begin where the human being begins?” Jonathon Van Maren, Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform
I love the honesty of this statement:
“I stay involved in the pro-life movement in Canada because the pay is below average, levels of stress is high, I work days, evenings, weekends, and I haven’t had a real vacation in 3 years. I question my involvement in the movement every day and after almost 4 years of working for Campaign Life Coalition, I still don’t know why I keep coming back, but I do.” Matthew Wojciechowski, Campaign Life Coalition Communication Director, Toronto
Thank you student and staff advocates for all you do and all your sacrifices.
Canada’s National March for Life is this Thursday, May 14th. Provinces around the country will be holding their own individual marches in solidarity with the larger march in Ottawa.
In preparation for this event, I’ve been reflecting on how we present ourselves as pro-life people and how we interact during these gatherings. Let’s use this time and this space as an opportunity to hear things we may have never heard before and to reshape the perspective. We can use this time and space to reintroduce ourselves, because being pro-life is largely a misunderstood position.
Firstly, we are about love, being pro-life is not firstly about legislation, it is about love. The kind of love of your fellow human being that made Canada great in the first place. The kind of love, overflowing into action, that makes Canadians willing to pay higher taxes to provide healthcare for the poorest of its citizens.
Being pro-life is about making Canada safe and welcoming for women and their children, it’s about reaching out to those in the margins and giving them the help they need, it’s about valuing the sick, the poor and the dying. It’s about overcoming isolation and poverty and fear in a violent system, a system that devalues human life, to attain a more perfect society.
There’s not going to be a person holding a sign on Thursday, across the country, that doesn’t feel love for their fellow human being. How do I know? Because you’d have to, because holding that sign doesn’t make you more popular, it doesn’t come with money, and it doesn’t come with accolades.
Holding that sign is a testament of your love overflowing. You love your fellow human beings, and that love has overflowed into action, into community. That sign is your “Hello.”
Holding a pro-life sign comes with suffering and it comes with discrimination and it comes with unjust vilification.
So why do it? Why hold that sign?
Because being pro-life is about love, and it’s also about speaking the truth. Truth that is not diminished or increases by the number of people who believe it, it is the truth, and it is unchanging.
And the truth is that we do not empower women by making them dependent on abortion. We offer hope and truth instead, hope and truth are our “Hello.”
When basic human needs are ignored, rejected, or invalidated by those in roles and positions to appropriately meet them; when the means by which these needs have been previously met are no longer available: and when prior abuse has already left one vulnerable for being exploited further, the stage is set for the possibility these needs will be prostituted, exploited. Abortion arrives as the perceivable “option” for vulnerable women, but in reality it is a violent exploitation of their situation. A situation that places a woman who has unmet needs in an incredible dilemma. She can either do without or seek out the option of abortion that leaves her increasingly divided from herself and ostracized from others.
Abortion is a form of prostitution, that convinces a woman to pay with her body and mind for affection and care which should be freely given. Because abortion is NOT love, abortion is NOT compassion, abortion is the cheap and careless handout we as a society offer to women in need and not a lasting change for the better. Our offerings, our compassion, these are also our “Hello.”
Who turns to abortion? Overwhelming it is the poor, the marginalized, and those already struggling with the demands of parenting. 2 out of every 3 women having an abortion already have children. These women need our help. Helping is our “Hello.”
Hierarchy, inequality, and violence have always been part of human social structures. There were always rulers and ruled, leaders and followers, the fortunate and the needy, the powerful and the weak. Various cultures have treated disparities in status, power, fortune, and ability in different ways. Buddhists emphasize the aspect of karma and destiny, while in the modern West the focus has been on freedom and choice, and the individual’s control of destiny. In this Western worldview, inequalities and differences are often associated with injustice and victimization.
But there is not enough money, not enough staff and volunteers in the world, to support a permanent population of rescuers and victims. We must raise up women and children and parents from this dark corner of victimhood, in all forms, both real and imagined. And we do that by valuing them. Until we restore the proper dignity and perceived social value of parenting, women and their children will continue to be victims of poverty. There will never be “gender equality” until we value mothers. Without mother’s rights, there cannot be women’s rights, only assimilation. Motherhood is the basic biological reality for the majority of women in the world, let’s accept that fact and move on up. Value, dignity and understanding are our “Hello.”
This Thursday, say “Hello” to everyone you meet.
As readers of this blog know, Kara Tippetts died a few months ago. Her husband, Jason, wrote a piece for the Washington Post explaining how his family was going to spend this first Mother’s Day without her. It’s a beautiful and poignant article.
This paragraph is with loaded with wisdom:
We will live in the reality of life instead of in our hidden expectations of how we want to be treated. I want my kids to enter into the celebration of this day, to remember the life their mom lived and the character traits she desired to foster in them: kindness, compassion and love. Our character develops when we are stretched, and this day will stretch us.
No one desires to experience hurt or face tragedy, but these experiences transform us. If we permit it, we can become better, stronger and more resilient as a result of them. We can become more compassionate and understanding. We may even experience joy, as Kara did, in the midst of heartbreak.
Now for something totally different and shamelessly self-promoting. I was actually given an invitation to blog about this, so I’m not being totally shameless.
Having lived in Rome, Italy for two years and marrying a man who spent nearly a decade traipsing around the European continent, I have some experience in these matters. There are pilgrimage companies, and then there are pilgrimage companies. Likewise, there are tour guides (especially in the Vatican) and there are tour guides.
Orbis Catholicus Travel is one of those tour companies offering small group pilgrimages to Italy, the Holy Land, Mexico, (even Cuba – in January 2016) and France that really knows a thing or two about authentic pilgrimages, and excellent tour guiding.
We keep groups small and intimate, we stay right in the heart of the action, and we make sure that groups get to know an area intimately, with regard to the art, history, culinary traditions and religion. And we don’t do the marathon tours of spending 14 nights in 14 different cities – watch out!
We know our guides. Tour guides can make or break a tour. Ours happen to be our good friends with whom we prayed, ate, lived and celebrated Rome.
There is so much more I could say on the subject, but suffice it to say, your time and resources would be well spent. So I encourage you to visit Orbis Catholicus Travel to learn more about our upcoming tours.
Will nurses be forced to participate in physician assisted death against their consciences?
The answer, according to this national nurses’ protection body is both yes and no.
The convoluted article in the Canadian Nurse Magazine by the Canadian Nurses Protection Society seems to both acknowledge conscience rights and deny them all in the same breath.
The use of the prescriptive is troubling in this paragraph (my emphasis):
Nurses are often the health-care professionals with whom patients choose to discuss end-of-life care. Once the Carter ruling comes into effect, nurses will remain involved in these discussions with the patient, family and health-care team, some of which will include a patient exploring the idea of physician-assisted death. Nurses will continue to provide patients with relevant information to the best of their ability. It can be anticipated that there will be times when a nurse will communicate to other members of the care team as quickly as possible — for example, when an eligible patient is seeking physician-assisted death or when an eligible patient had requested physician-assisted death but has changed his or her mind.
However, this paragraph seems to indicate that indeed nurses will be expected to participate in physician assisted death. Only a nod is given to conscience rights. (Again, my emphasis.)
Health profession regulatory bodies and health-care facilities will likely develop policies and protocols to address conscientious objections by health-care providers. If an eligible patient chooses to end his or her life by physician-assisted death, nurses must be prepared to provide for the patient’s care needs. The code of ethics contains information on ethical considerations in addressing patient expectations that are in conflict with one’s conscience. However, it states, “the nurse provides safe, compassionate, competent and ethical care until alternative care arrangements are in place to meet the person’s needs and desires.”
There may be no more patient to provide alternative care to if the attendant nurse meets the patient’s “needs and desires” in this regard.
If the Canadian Nurses Protection Society charged with providing legal protection for nurses is going to take the “must provide care until alternative can be found” stance, the pressure on nurses will be fierce. How many will leave the practice if medical death is enforced?
I went to the pharmacy yesterday to pick up a few things up and Fifty Shades of Grey was sitting on the shelves behind the cash.
At least it was behind the cash.
People are going to buy the DVD, forget it, and leave it lying around in a pile with their other DVDs. Some children and tweens are going to find the DVD and watch it, perhaps not really knowing to expect. Children can’t regain their innocence once it’s lost. And innocence is a beautiful and wonderful thing, something to be cherished. But who worries about stuff like that? Those of us in the Prude Revolution, like Ms. Mrozek. Join us.
Anyhoodle (yes, I got that from Ms. Mrozek), I tripped over this comic strip online a few days ago and loved it.
It’s May Day. So I asked my friend Paul Malvern, who stands up for working people AND is pro-life to offer his comments. Here they are:
While many people associate May Day with big military parades held decades back in the Soviet Union and other communist countries, the reality is quite different since this special day is as American as apple pie and as Canadian as hockey.
For, starting out in the 19th century, workers and their families in these two countries have used local May Day events to celebrate advances made in achieving fair pay and decent working conditions, and building a better life for their families. Sadly, since the 1960s, workers have had less to celebrate as parties on the Left – and not a few trade unions – have downplayed working class issues in favor of ever-so-trendy identity and sexual politics that has little to do with workers and everything to do with elites and the more affluent elements of society. A good example being support by the Left for abortion on demand – which views working class people as a liability to be reduced rather than a valuable human asset to be treasured and nurtured.
So on this particular May Day it is well to remember the original goals of this celebration. And rededicate ourselves to focusing our efforts on the real needs of our country and those unknown, unheralded, ordinary citizens who are doing their level best to build strong families in a culture where the sanctity of life and importance of children and families are no longer hallowed principles.
Great to see. I almost have a hard time believing that this is real! Read the whole thing, concluding with what anyone engaged in the pro-life side of things knows to be true:
The OCLA seeks to raise the concern that there is palpable institutional bias against pro-life advocates in Ontario and that this is harmful to society and substantively unjust towards members of the community.
“The abortion distortion” very often means we have free expression up until the point when abortion comes up. I hope that OCLA position paper works toward fixing that.
I also hope that they are prepared for a barrage of insults ranging from how they can’t think, to how they are in the pocket of the radical, religious right etc. etc. etc.
Sometimes the most insightful and remarkable statements come from children. We have all been witness to a child whose keen observation, humility and complete innocence causes them to spout great and eternal truths at the most uncanny and opportune (or inopportune) moments in life. Often these truths, which are so obvious to the child, have been have sullied by adults with our greed, our cynicism and our pride.
Here is one such example, and it is worth watching.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9–Rf1K9aA]
(The YouTube link is here.)
We would do well to heed these children.