An unlikely pro-life spokeswoman in Mindy Kaling. Read more on Convivium.
When I think pro-life talking points, I think freedom; the freedom to live a life that is not scripted or part of a checklist because even an unwanted pregnancy can become wanted. The world is filled with women, who moved from weeping at the sign of two lines on a stick to joy at the birth of their children.
Rachel’s Vineyard is having a retreat.
Rachel’s Vineyard is a safe place to renew, rebuild and redeem hearts broken by abortion. Weekend retreats offer you a supportive, confidential and non-judgmental environment where women and men can express, release and reconcile painful post-abortive emotions to begin the process of restoration, renewal and healing. Rachel’s Vineyard can help you experience God’s love and compassion on a profound level. It creates a place where men and women can share, often for the first time, their deepest feelings about their abortion. You are allowed to dismantle troubling secrets in an environment of emotional and spiritual safety.
Date – The next retreat in the Ottawa area is May 4-6
Cost – The 230$ cost covers all meals and lodging from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. Financial assistance is available.
To register or get more information, email us at rvr_ottawa [at] yahoo.ca or call 613-806-5522 (Lynda or Terry).
Life is a journey. Thankfully, we can move on and recover from past mistakes and keep on travelling down the road.
This is either a picture of a family supporting each other, or a family stepping into a sci-fi adventure on a different planet marked by dramatically more red sunsets. Your pick.
The Canadian budget document, #YourBudget2018, is easily one of the more patronizing government documents I’ve ever read.
So I wrote this column about it in the National Post.
Imagine with me for a second that the budget focused so much on men. Imagine that Budget 2018 referenced men 708 times instead of women. Men — we need to coax you into nursing! Men — not enough of you are kindergarten teachers! Men — don’t take time off with your children when they are young! Men — you can’t choose more paternity benefits — these are “use it or lose it” for women, only! If that sounds pushy, it’s because it is.
Welcome to the world of “feminism means what I say it means,” courtesy of our current Liberal government.
This article from late January by Michael Gerson gets at some important angles on the abortion debate that I had not thought about before.
It is the antiabortion movement that appeals to inclusion. It argues for a more expansive definition of the human community. It opposes ending or exploiting one human life for the benefit of another. There are heart-rending stories that prevent the simplistic application of this approach. But most of the antiabortion men and women I know have the genuine and selfless motivation of trying to save innocent lives.
Inclusion and expansion instead of exclusion and autonomy–are just some of the concepts he gets at. Worth reading.
Social inclusion, for all. (Including people in wheelchairs at running races.)
That appears to be the case on Ryerson Campus in Toronto, where posters offering support to pregnant students caused another… kerfuffle. The student union doesn’t know what to do now, because they are worried the pregnancy support might be “anti-choice.” Does the student union understand how extreme this sounds to outside ears? Do they not believe there could even be one woman who would benefit from attention and support if she is pregnant unexpectedly and doesn’t want to abort? Have they never met anyone who was pressured to abort? These things are quite common. Must be that they live in a little ideological bubble, where all they can process are the words pro or anti-choice.
This article from the from the Ryerson student newspaper on Jan 23, 2018 explains.
Talked with Brian Lilley about the new bubble zone on CFRA last night.
What our governments would like is for abortion to be wholeheartedly accepted and applauded. So when anyone stands up and says otherwise, they have to quash that sentiment. That’s what is happening with the new restrictions around abortion clinics and with the Canada Summer Jobs program–no one should be allowed to say abortion is a bad choice. Hence also the heavy dose of Charter talk–abortion rights are nowhere in it, but maybe if we talk about them in that way, we can make it so?
The fact that there are, in the case of the bubble zone regulations, such strong punishments associated with free speech in the bubble zone shows just how brittle the pro-choice side is. On the one hand, women going to get abortions are freestanding, independent and strong–they’ve made their decision, so pro-choicers would lead us to believe. On the other hand, a flyer, or simply seeing someone with a sandwich board condemning abortion apparently causes such distress that it can’t be had for 50 metres outside the clinic.
So which is it?
We pay for abortion. We fund pro-choice groups. We don’t give real medical information to women considering abortion (Watch the movie Hush, please). And in this climate, we say that pro-lifers need to be Even Further Stigmatized?
I think pro-lifers are more effective than we give ourselves credit for. I also think the inclination of Canadians is more pro-life than even pro-lifers realize. The stats show the mushy middle leans toward wanting restrictions on abortion in certain circumstances. Only 16% of Canadians think abortion is acceptable at any time. That leaves a whole lot more Canadians who are conflicted. And that is a scary thing for pro-choice people–got to ramp up the propaganda campaign.
The thing about bubbles is, they pop.
The spice of life is cinnamon, by the way. Here’s a story in which I recount a fun Costco encounter, leading to a discussion of defending life in the womb. Published in Convivium.
