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Two abortions and no kids when you are “ready”

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I actually worry about this kind of woman.

I called my male therapist a chauvinist pig when he labeled my childlessness “a biological tragedy.” What seemed tragic was that it took me until my 40s to feel together enough to bear a child. By then it was too late. I feared God was saying: “I offered you the miracle of birth. You don’t get to choose when.”

She bought the line our culture serves. Wait until you are ready! I don’t think egg freezing is the answer, of course, but rather a more laid back approach to life. After all, her mother by her own admission truly had it all. And when you look, I see these role model women all around me. Five children, three children, seven children, and sitting up on a political panel at the top of their game, political commentators, think tankers, doctors, lawyers, speechwriters, etc.

PS. If you are not actually waiting for anything and can’t find a good man to settle down with, this article is not for you. I know plenty of people who don’t think waiting to try for children at 40 is the best plan they could possibly come up with. People–pro-life people, even–can be so insensitive. So. If you want to be married and try for kids and it hasn’t happened, go enjoy what is before you today, regardless of what that might be, planned or unplanned.

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These are the shoes you don’t wear with kids in tow, but can wear without. See? Advantages on both sides.

 

Lejeune Exhibit January 29-31, University of Ottawa

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From a friend. An exhibit well worth attending!

You are invited to attend an exhibit about a remarkable French scientist, Jérome Lejeune, “a father of modern genetics” who in the 1960’s discovered the trisomy 21chromosome, the cause of Down syndrome. The exhibit will tell the story of the technical challenges of making the discovery in the very early days of human genetics, how the discovery led Lejeune to value and love his patients even more, and the impact his discovery and subsequent choices had on his scientific career.

The exhibit will be held at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ottawa, in the Atrium of the Roger Guindon building (451 Smyth Road, Ottawa K1N 6N5) behind the Ottawa General Hospital), from January 29 to January 31. 

A discussion panel will be held on Thursday January 29 at 7pm featuring Dr. Mark Basik fro McGill University, Dr. Lise Poirier-Groulx from the University of Ottawa, and Dr. Emanuela Ferretti also from the University of Ottawa.

More background information on Lejeune can be found here. 

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Tell the College of Physicians and Surgeons not to deny conscience

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Ontario doctors will be forced to participate in abortions even if it goes against their beliefs, thanks to a new draft policy by the College of Physicians. Doctors must be able to practice medicine freely. The CPSO is accepting feedback until February 20th here. Please write in, telling the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario what you believe. Diversity 

Don’t worry, folks! Killing patients is part of his job

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So really, Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 11.11.16 AMyou shouldn’t worry about the fact that this doctor has killed 100 people in 12 years in Belgium. It’s part of his job! And when he does it right, it’s very quick. Two minutes! That’s it. Very expedient and he always makes sure he has the patient’s consent. So turn that frown upside down! Put any lingering discomfort aside about the woman you witness being killed because she has asked for it, and is simply getting the rest she needs.

This short ten minute documentary shows a woman who requests death and receives it. It’s not graphic.

Her doctor kills her, and then fills out the paperwork. All in a day’s work. [youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo8Hn0DEcpw]

“Welcome to the world” coin

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A friend sent me this link to a “welcome to the world” coin, new from the Canadian Mint, and pointed out it looks a lot like the little feet lapel pin many people who are against abortion wear.  This is not, of course, what the Canadian Mint intends. I take it as a sign of how those who are pro-choice are fighting a losing battle, because at the end of the day, the feet you celebrate and the feet whose life ends look very, very similar.

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The story’s end changes the meaning of every page

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origin_379903189“God has the final say in my life, not cancer.”

These are the words of a woman, a mother for four young children, who has a terminal diagnosis.

This is probably the most profound, most brilliant video I have ever seen on the topic of dying, and dying with dignity – true dignity. She gets it. She gets the meaning of human suffering, the purpose of death, and why God, not her cancer, should have the final say in how she lives and when she dies.

Dignity doesn’t come in a syringe.  It comes from a life well lived in the truth of Love.

Miracles happen every single day. There are countless people walking around who are supposed to have died years ago. And that is a possibility worth sticking around for.

You know what else is worth sticking around for? Every day, I get to spend my time with the people I love.

My life isn’t a story written by cancer. It’s written by love. And whenever it ends, it will end in eternal love. And the story’s end changes the meaning of every page.

My life isn’t mine to take. It’s mine to give.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nf_rb2qkbE]

Beautiful, brilliant and inspiring.

 

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RU486 defies the “no debate” rule on abortion

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Mike Schouten’s article in the National Post yesterday draws attention to the fact that we will likely be expanding abortion services across Canada, but without any democratic process.

Of course there is the argument that the RU486 is a nightmarish experience for women – an hours long drama of contractions ending with the expulsion of her developing “little one”, a translation of the Latin word “fetus”.

Canada’s anti-abortion activists are urging Health Canada to consider the detrimental effects RU-486 has had on women’s health in countries where it is already in use. According to Johanne Brownrigg of Campaign Life Coalition, “In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported 2,200 adverse effects, including 14 U.S. deaths, 58 ectopic pregnancies, 256 infections, and 339 incidents requiring transfusions.

But then there is the abysmal double standard of a government who won’t open the debate on abortion, but it will widen the services dramatically, without public consultation.

The Conservative government, along with all the political parties in Ottawa, have denounced any attempt to debate abortion in the House of Commons. This was most recently manifested by the harsh opposition to even discussing something as benign as Motion 408, which merely sought to condemn gender-selective abortions. The news that the approval of RU-486 is imminent, with no debate, smacks of hypocrisy.

For now, the application and any decisions surrounding the infamous abortion drug have been put on hold till the Fall.


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Prenatal genetic testing tells us nothing

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large_5546837013Amy Julia Becker makes a great point about finding out that her child had Down syndrome.

There is some false, yet underlying assumption that pregnant women have to go through genetic testing to know if their child has the disability.

But more importantly, that tiny bit of medical information, in essence tells us nothing.  Not only are the doctors  “ill-equipped to interpret test results and to offer a fair and balanced description of Down syndrome” but the fact itself does nothing to describe who these little people are.  The medical information does not describe these little girls and boys, who despite their disability, will have all kinds of interests, quaint personality traits, and precious moments.

Being a parent of a child with Downs is as joy-filled and full of surprises as any parenting experience would be.

Genetic testing merely puts parents on a search and destroy mission without ever allowing them to know who their child is.

In the hospital, we received a diagnostic portrait of our child. Some of it was spot on: she has tubes in her ears and wears glasses. She needed a heart procedure. She still sees therapists every week. And yet the diagnostic portrait, even though it included some accurate facts, never showed me anything true about our daughter. It never told me that she wouldn’t love dress up clothes or baby dolls but that she would love spelling words and playing Monopoly. It never told me that she would sneak the iPad under the covers—not to play games or watch videos—but to read Matilda. It never told me she would form a friendship with my 88-year old grandmother, and that together they would read and sing and look at pictures. It never told me how much of her life would be worth celebrating.

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Tales of USAID and the sterilization horrors of India

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origin_3874356034I had written previously about the deaths of several women in Indian sterilization camps. This article explains to a greater extent the horrors that take place in these filthy centers, the lies that women are told and the tragic deaths and bodily harm that befalls them. Totally outrageous in all of this human misery is the fact that USAID underwrites most of these clinics!

Human rights activists have repeatedly documented that camps like those in Chhattisgarh are pervasive and routine throughout India. They’ve detailed how women are persuaded with cash incentives – or the chance to win a refrigerator or a car – and how they are coerced – into sterilizations. And they have described cases in harrowing detail: young childless women consenting to procedures by thumbprint unaware that it would leave them infertile; dozens of women being sterilized on school desks by doctors operating by flashlight; women maimed in the quest to meet government sterilization quotas.[5] Just last year, there was outrage after the national television station aired footage of women lined up and bleeding on the ground at a camp where 103 lower caste women had been sterilized in under five hours in another state.[6]

Yet none of the Supreme Court of India rulings, international policies and declarations, ever seem to make a difference in India which has been a playground for population controllers for decades.

Investigative journalist, Celeste McGovern, does a superb job in ousting the culprits of this human rights tragedy.  Despite distancing itself, USAID is found to have its tentacles all over the population control and government quotas for sterilizations in India.

Documents reveal that USAID has for more than two decades been at the helm of India’s family planning programs, not just funding the massive directive that includes tens of thousands of camps, but overseeing and orchestrating the entire program, even encouraging cash incentives for sterilization and IUD insertion.

McGovern goes on to describe how USAID designed a program called the Innovations in Family Planning Services (IFPS) launched in 1992 with $325 million from USAID to be matched by $400 million from India’s government. Buoyed up by the success of the IFPS, USAID and the IFPS created a special “autonomous parastatal” agency called the State Innovations in Family Planning Services Agency (SIFPSA) to “provide flexibility and avoid bureaucratic delays.” According to McGovern, they made an unaccountable agency to operate away from public view and outside the democratic process

Kerry McBroom, an American human rights lawyer with HRLN in Delhi told McGovern that “85% of all family planning money goes to female sterilization”.  She continues:

Donor organizations need to be accountable for rights violations perpetrated with their funding. Activists have made reports of unsafe and unethical sterilization for decades – it’s impossible that donors are totally oblivious to the violations.

This brilliantly researched article is a must read if you intend to know what is happening abroad with foreign aid money.

And stay tuned for Part 2.

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