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The right to sex for pleasure

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A right that’s not exactly enshrined in UN constitutions–yet. Joyce Arthur, well-known pro-choice activist, comments on the National Post web site:

Yes Matt W, let’s err on the side of life – WOMEN’S lives. Because the right to abortion is not about a woman’s right to choose, it’s about her right to LIFE – which means far more than just mere physical survival.  

Behind your view is the assumption that women are obligated to have babies just because they are capable of it. Not so. Women can never enjoy full human rights or equality unless they can control their fertility. That includes the right to have sex for pleasure, which carries a risk of pregnancy regardless of use of birth control. So abortion must be available as a backup.

The moral status of the fetus, when life begins etc., does not matter, because women need and will have abortions regardless – even women who think abortion is murder. Abortion is legal because it’s widely practiced regardless of any laws, in every society, in every time. Half of all women in the world will have an abortion at some point in their lives. But 68,000 women die every year and 5 million are injured from illegal, unsafe abortion. So please, let’s err on the side of WOMEN’S lives and keep abortion legal.

Her idea of “rights” reminds me of another quote from a different context:

We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us.

–Rev. Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda’s National AIDS-Prevention Committee

Who is honestly going to stand up for our “right” to casual sex (and hey, while we’re at it, can we enshrine that it be really good sex too?) over someone else’s life? Guess Joyce Arthur just did. (It’s also a twisted sense of pleasure that sees women heading to a clinic to put their feet in stirrups for invasive surgery, all as a matter of routine “choice”.)

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Tanya adds: You know, I think a group of Canadian men should rise up (in this same ridiculous fashion as Joyce Arthur and her ilk) and complain feverishly about male equality because they are unable to get pregnant. And they should also revolt against the injustice of how badly it hurts when they get kicked in the groin. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to belittle the issue, but these exaggerations of Canadian women being “obligated to have babies just because they are capable of it” are so tiresome.

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Véronique adds: Well, if a quote ever summed up how illogical the pro-choice position is, this one would take the prize: “Abortion is legal because it’s widely practiced regardless of any laws, in every society, in every time. ”

So is rape, Ms. Arthur, so is rape…

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Véronique, commenting on the comments: The comments about rape — why it is wrong and how it compares (or not) with abortion are interesting. Is rape wrong because it upholds the right to sex for pleasure over other rights or because it denies women the right to control their own bodies? To me, both arguments merge into one as they both involve a sense of individual entitlement over someone else’s body, be it for power, sexual gratification or whatnot. I wish I had more time to explore some of the implications of this but for the time being, I will just ask what makes something wrong: motive or substance? In other words, does it really matter whether a woman is raped because the rapist didn’t respect her right to physical integrity or because he felt that his right to sex for pleasure was paramount? This line of thinking is characteristic of our times where nothing is just plain wrong.

All this being said, my point about rape was more specific to Joyce Arthur’s argument that abortion must be legal because people have been doing it throughout cultures and generations. If the fact that people do it therefore it must be legal/moral/ethical, then it makes a host of deviant behaviours legal/ethical/moral. Rape and murder come to mind.

And I am not even going to touch the issue of whether legality means morality and vice-versa.

History of abortion in America

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 This article is completely fascinating:

Abortion was so extensive in the mid-1800s that The New York Times called it “The Evil of the Age . . . The enormous amount of medical malpractice [a euphemism for abortion] that exists and flourishes, almost unchecked, in the city of New York, is a theme for most serious consideration. Thousands of human beings are thus murdered before they have seen the light of this world.” But the abortion rate began to fall after the Civil War as a nationwide pro-life movement gathered strength.

That movement included the largest women’s organization of the era, the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), as well as the YMCA and YWCA (Young Men’s or Women’s Christian Association), various Societies for the Suppression of Vice, and, by the end of the century, the Salvation Army. Many doctors were involved; unlike today, the American Medical Association was a staunch opponent of abortion, which it dubbed “unwarrantable destruction of human life.” (emphasis mine)

Women’s groups, doctors, and charitable organizations working together. A vision for the future, truly.

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Tanya adds: Here is what I gather may have become the shortfall of the modern pro-life movement:

Laws against abortion assisted the pro-life movement but were not its primary focus of attention. ”

The writer concludes by saying abortion legislation is not a pointless venture “but time and money spent on providing and promoting compassionate alternatives saves more lives.”

Today, I’m not sure the general public views the pro-life movement as primarily compassionate. We can blame that on whoever we like (the media, the pro-abortion advocates or Morgentaler himself) but we are the only ones who can change our public image for the better.

Friends of Liberty

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Both Andrea (#88) and Rebecca (#80) made the Western Standard’s Liberty 100. Yay you!

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Tanya adds: Yay you, indeed! Now would you say you are “scrappy and unconventional” or just plain “controversial?”

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Andrea is just trying to understand how Rebecca beat her by eight spots. Seriously though–I always found Matthew Johnston (who put the whole thing together) had a good sense about him–he understands, I think, that strong families mean smaller government.

That delicate balance

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Environmentalist are always going on about how, when we as humans fiddle with one thing, there’s always an unforeseen and often negative chain reaction.

Like antibacterial soap.  Because we’re so obsessed with being clean, we’ve managed to aid in the evolution of antibacterial resistant strains.  Next step:  we invent stronger antibacterial soap, and bacteria in turn becomes resistant to that (and so on until it becomes the stuff of Dr Who episodes).

So what happens when we try to control the sex of our offspring (through, say, sex-selection abortion)?  Wouldn’t you know that we’re all wired up to keep that male to female ratio pretty much even.

When females are in short supply, they have a better chance of snagging a mate, and are thus more likely to pass the gene for fathering daughters on to their offspring. And when men are scarce, they have a better chance of mating and passing along the gene for having sons.

“It’s kind of a counterbalancing mechanism,” Gellatly explained in an interview. “You can’t get a population that becomes too skewed toward males or too skewed toward females.”

Makes for an interesting scenario in a country like China where there are 120 males for every 100 females.  If the science is accurate, more women will become pregnant with girls than boys.  And if the Chinese stay true to their traditions, the increase in number of abortions performed will be exponential.

My nomination for Canadian of the Year

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At least as far as defending life is concerned: Rod Bruinooge. He’s a young, talented, ambitious Metis MP from Winnipeg, which means in the Conservative Party, which is eager to grow in rural areas and attract more aboriginal votes and bring in fresh blood, the sky is the limit for him. And he is a proud supporter of life and defender of the unborn, who speaks not only for the most vulnerable among us, but also the two thirds of Canadians who want at least some restrictions on abortion in Canada (as compared to the current complete lack of them.) After picking off the heavily favoured Reg Alcock in the last election by 111 votes, he expanded his margin of victory to 4000 in October.

There are many different kinds of courage. By toeing the line and keeping quiet, Bruinooge could curry favour with higher-ups in the part and set himself up for a smooth climb through the party. He’s also got a young family (with his second child born yesterday – congratulations!) and therefore no end of claims on his time. But instead of playing it safe and keeping his mouth shut, as the CPC would prefer, he’s speaking his conscience, leading the most-unsecret-ever secret pro-life caucus, and setting an example more of us should follow. I know I have often chosen to keep my beliefs to myself, whether out of a desire not to cause social unpleasantness, alienate colleagues, or mark myself as an outcast in the extremely pro-abortion circles in which I spend much time. One of my New Years’ Resolutions is to be brave enough not to acquiesce, through my silence, when others speak of abortion as a women’s right. I have a feeling Rod himself doesn’t see himself as a hero for doing what he does and saying what he says, but I admire him, and look forward to what he’ll do in the years to come. We need more MPs like him.

That Bill C-484 was a close one!

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Did we ever dodge a bullet there. I’m so grateful to all those who fought to keep that amendment to the criminal code outta the books. Just look what could have happened in Canada:

Charges against Frederick Beach, accused of beating his pregnant girlfriend to death, include one under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act… He is accused of beating to death Verlinda Kinsel, 29, in September and killing the fetus she had said was his. Authorities say the victim’s 9-year-old son witnessed the assault.

If convicted, Beach faces life in prison.

If you ask me, the crying shame in this story is not the fact that the guy’s gonna get charged under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

Dear Colby: Huh?

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It could be me. Those vacation days have a way of softening the noodle (I blame Chimay; nobody ought to make beer this good). But I must say I have very little idea what Colby Cosh is saying in this piece.

I am amazed a hundred times a year that pro-life Christians get away with claiming that they stand on eternal principles when it comes to abortion, even though, if you prod them, they will start talking rot about DNA (whose existence and nature somehow went undisclosed through centuries of religious revelation) and will admit that it was the progress of scientific understanding which obligated them to suddenly promote abortion in the panoply of sins, circa 1968. They faced a choice concerning which principles they chose to modify under the pressure of technological change, and opted for the direction that allowed them to signal resistance to modernity. Their stance is about as deserving of deference as the Western Church’s 12th-century ban on crossbows, and no more tenable.

I guess it shows how much I don’t go out, but I have never been confronted with rot about DNA while discussing abortion-related issues (“a hundred times of year”? Gosh, Colby, where do you hang out?). Most of the pro-life folks I know are pretty keen on modernity – at least, the parts of it that gives us flush toilets, laptop computers under $1,000 and awfully cool gadgets like the “smarter smartphone” I just got. I’m also cool with crossbows.

I admit I don’t go to great lengths to justify how I became pro-life (or, as I prefer to call it, anti-casual-abortion). It’s quite simple, really: As a rule, it is wrong to end the life of innocent human beings. And I side with Rod Bruinooge whe he says it’s at best bizarre that a country would outlaw the sale of my own individual body parts but allow me to terminate the life of an unborn child at any point in a pregnancy for any reason whatever.

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Andrea adds: I wish I had written this before now, because now you won’t believe me, but I absolutely knew when Bruinooge said the bit about kidneys that some clever individual would come forward to say “Indeed! And this is why we must deregulate organ sales.” If I had thought about it harder, I might have guessed Colby Cosh—as I know his stuff and read it with interest, because he’s a good writer and I like him. Today’s offering isn’t really his best, in my opinion. It’s really… emotional. I recognize the visceral hostility to Christians–and by extension, Christian pro-lifers–because, er, I used to share it. So he’ll have to get over that, somehow, because being pro-life is not a religious stand, or rather, need not be. This column reads like a host of unresolved personal issues in national columnist clothing. 

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Tanya adds: Good, so I wasn’t the only one to pick up on the bitterness vibe in this editorial.
Mind you, he lost me way before that. He lost me at:

I don’t claim to know what most Canadians think about kidney donation; my guess is they don’t think about it at all.

Cosh followed that up with his own opinion of what he believes most Canadians would think of organ-selling on e-bay if they ever gave much thought to the issue at all, which they don’t.
(Not my fault. That sentence was only as confusing as his thought process.)

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Andrea adds: And Tanya, we are not alone in picking up the bitter vibe. So did Charles Lewis in this quick rebuttal. (You’d have to be a rock not to notice. Compare and contrast God and Morgentaler? Really?)

When you’re living in a house of cards

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If they said sex selection abortion was wrong–well, all hell would break loose. Quite literally, by their own description:

Media campaigns to discourage sex-selective abortions sometimes take on imagery that condemns or vilifies all abortion services: television and print advertisements feature well-formed fetuses left in wells, lakes and drains; billboard ads use “feticide” and other loaded words that personify the fetus. In parts of India, fundamentalist religious leaders are also becoming actively involved with the sex-selection campaigns and are using for the efforts as a tool to restrict abortion for any reason.

The effect of these campaigns is that obtaining legitimate abortion services can be more difficult for the women who already have difficulty accessing safe services: poor, rural, and less educated women.

Correction: The effect of these campaigns would mean they’d be out of a job and more women would… live. So please, keep killing off your girls–just lay back and think of “women’s rights.”

(Thanks to C-FAM for publicizing this story.)

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Rebecca adds: I will never understand why aborting a baby because it is unplanned, because it will be expensive, because it will interfere with your education, because it might not be healthy, because you don’t want stretch marks, because you’ve decided you don’t love its father anymore, because you’re, well, tokophobic – all that is ok, but aborting a baby because it is a she – that’s outrageous, barbaric, and must be forbidden.

Don’t get me wrong, I think aborting a baby because it’s the “wrong” sex is appalling – but no more so than any other elective abortion.

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Andrea adds: Totally agreed, Rebecca. But I find the lengths to which feminists will go to protect abortion over and above absolutely anything else quite astounding. A missing female demographic–pshaw. Nothing compared to losing “abortion rights,” right?

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