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A new slogan

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I say! This Rod Bruinooge character is really starting to gain traction, isn’t he. Most excellent. I especially like this from him:

The bottom line is that people like myself are not going to stop until, at the very least, unborn children have more value than a Canadian kidney,” he said.

How about we make a t-shirt that says:

People are kidneys too
In Canada, body parts have more rights than entire fetuses.
Are we really that dumb?

Any other ideas?

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Andrea: I’ll put forward “People for the Ethical Treatment of People” and keep thinking about it.
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Brigitte passes along Dear Husband’s suggestion: He says “People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans” (or PETH) would be easier to pronounce than “PETP”. He’s obviously not French.

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Andrea had already thought of the pronunciation difficulty: It’s PET-“P” –as in sounds like “pet peeve.” Come to think of it, that leads to all kinds of very witty advertising slogans. “Is killing people one of your pet peeves–in particular when they call it abortion? Join PETP today…”  (I’m still working on it, ironing out the details.)

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Brigitte is working so hard she belongs in a Dickens novel:

Make custom t-shirts at CustomInk.com

Those pesky ethical issues

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Brigitte wrote recently about surrogacy. What about frozen embryonic humans?

Couples are willing to do whatever it takes to create a family, and this leads to extra frozen embryos. In Canada, clinics cannot dispose of embryos without legal consent from patients. 

So we have, they estimate, about 50,000 embryos hanging around. Embryos the parents wanted, until they didn’t. I’m prepared to say as someone who would like to have kids and who is on the outside edge of her fertile years–that perhaps the “whatever it takes” mentality has to go.

Oh what a beautiful morning

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I do not know this Rod Bruinooge, the MP from Winnipeg and new chair of the Parliamentary Pro-life Caucus. I do, however, like him. It’s a good morning when you wake up to read an article called “Why I am pro-life.” It’s a nice little piece, and I find this part particularly interesting: 

My aboriginal elders have taught me that the cycle of life honours both birth and death, and respect for the unborn is a foundation of this philosophy.

I had heard that the aboriginal mindset is against abortion, and I’d like to know more about that, actually. I think it is interesting to look at a cultural view, one that doesn’t value choice and expediency over the cycle of life.

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Andrea adds to her own post that she is grateful to the National Post for not being scared of taking this topic on.

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Andrea continues to be thrilled: The Globe and Mail ran a cover story on Rod Bruinooge, calling him a modern crusader. Indeed, he is a crusader for human rights, and I’m really happy to see someone act so boldly and publicly on this issue.

Pssssst

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Rod Bruinooge, MP and chairman of the “secretive” Parliamentary pro-life caucus has taken his secrets to the media. Read all about it:

The new chairman of a secretive pro-life Parliamentary caucus is pledging to rekindle the abortion debate in Canada and bring “more value” to the lives of unborn children.

Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he’s not interested in reopening the divisive issue, Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge told The Canadian Press people need to be better educated about Canada’s abortion stance, which he says puts the country in a “class of its own.”

Interesting is that the pro-abortion side simultaneously claims that Canadians are pro-choice, and uninterested in debate. Is that one and the same thing? Because I don’t take apathy as support.

In any event, many Canadians are pro-choice, and many are simultaneously concerned about our status quo–they don’t like abortion on demand til the day a baby is born. This is something we must discuss instead of pretending the issue isn’t there, and discussion, free discussion, is nothing to be scared of. I’m up for it, in any case.

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Brigitte doesn’t understand: The guy who chairs a parliamentary committee talks to the media about what he wants his committee to do and that’s considered “secretive”?

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Andrea thinks the secrecy refers to the fact that the Parliamentary pro-life caucus doesn’t advertise who its members are. I recall wanting to know this as a journalist myself. And it was possibly the first question the media asked when I did a press conference with the PPLC on sex selection abortion year before last. But when the chair goes to the media with his plans, well, you can’t get much more open than that and more power to him, I say.

Name that author

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Food for thought: 

We
 are
 experiencing
 a
 tyranny
 that
 causes
 men
 to
 love
 their
 own slavery. It leaves the body free and directs its attack at the soul.” 

OK, I’ll tell you. It’s Alexis de Tocqueville, apparently. Made me think today we have some men and women who love the slavery of abortion: slavery to a false freedom, a choice that isn’t freeing at all.

Before Breakfast

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Charlotte's Web

My daughter got Charlotte’s Web (the book) for Christmas.  She may be only three and a half  but, at bedtime, she sat attentively through Chapter I: Before Breakfast.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, it starts out with a litter of pigs being born.  The runt among them is about to be put to death when Fern, an eight-year-old girl, steps in.

“Please don’t kill it!” she sobbed. “It’s unfair.”

Mr. Arable stopped walking.

“Fern,” he said gently, “you will have to learn to control yourself.”

“Control myself?” yelled Fern. “This is a matter of life and death, and you talk about controlling myself.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she took hold of the ax and tried to pull it out of her father’s hand…”it’s unfair,” cried Fern. “The pig couldn’t help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?…This is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of.” [emphasis added]

Now I know we all need to function within a civilized society, but perhaps we’ve all learned to control ourselves a little too well.  No, I’m not advocating we all behave like eight-year-old girls — heavens knows they can get away with worlds more than a 30-something woman like myself can — but I do suggest we remember that this cause, the pro-life cause as we typically call it, is indeed a matter of life and death.

I feel a New Year’s resolution coming on.

Now that would be really terrible

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acourageousmouse

I would like to see The Tale of Despereaux. (“A hero doesn’t appear until the world really needs one”) So a review here, for your Boxing Day amusement.

This part caught my attention–the reviewer comments on how being bold and courageous and different is a standard lesson for kids–but usually within a certain framework:

…it’s never too early to start training kids that they’re going to have to be rebels if they want to fit into society as adults. (That is, be rebels in the acceptable way; it would be disastrous, for example, to champion an “unpopular cause” that actually was unpopular.)

Now that, that would be really terrible–taking on a socially unacceptable cause. It’s embarrassing, more than anything, really. Why can’t everyone fight for a greener world? and other assorted causes “we can all agree on.”

Kids! Be bold and rebellious–just not too bold and rebellious.

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Brigitte adds: There’s a fun book on the subject by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, for those who are interested in why the herd of independent minds behaves the way it does.

An inspiring column

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In the Ottawa Citizen today:

My mother’s last lucid moment was also one of the most telling, even though at the time I had no idea what it meant. As she lay in hospital, drifting into what my brother and I knew were her final moments, she suddenly looked up and said: “I don’t care about all this. The two of you make everything worthwhile.”

How was that possible, I wondered. How could dying at the age of 51 make up for having raised a pair of honest boys? I knew little of real life then, preferring in a selfish unmarried way to focus on my career and the dream of owning a BMW.

I still have that fantasy, but the financial crisis means it will stay locked in my imagination rather than turning up in Santa’s sack. I must look for consolations elsewhere in these bad, sad days.

It’s a wonderful life

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It’s Christmas—I’m sure many of you have noticed. And with Christmas comes…worry and depression. There’s something about Christmas that leaves many struggling with the juxtaposition of real life with the supposedly perfect life commercials and movies present.

Below we have the story of one woman, who almost had an abortion.

I thought now might be a good moment to post her story for those women struggling because life does not feel wonderful—and Christmas only highlights that more for them.

I do love the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”—between the beginning and the end, however, each moment if captured on its own wouldn’t actually seem wonderful. George Bailey doesn’t get to travel, he doesn’t get to start his own business—he hates the Building and Loan. It’s only in the long term context—in a bigger, broader context—that it looks wonderful in the end.

Here’s Rachael DeBruin’s story:

It was my first year of university and things were not going so well between my boyfriend and I. We decided since I was moving away to school we should end the relationship.  However, not long after, we ended up back together and he started coming to stay overnight at my residence most weekends. The relationship had more up and downs than a roller coaster. It began to seem acceptable to treat each other poorly. We were both drinking and doing drugs. The emotional abuse and control was escalating between us. Still somehow I thought we might end up getting married someday so I justified being intimate with him and not being overly cautious.
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