ProWomanProLife

You are here: Home / Archives for All Posts

Quote of the day

by 1 Comment

The National Art Gallery in Ottawa talking to the Ottawa Citizen about its rule prohibiting the carrying of small children on one’s shoulders:

“Unfortunately, we just can’t allow that kind of liberty”…

Uh, yeah… My point exactly. I have argued many times that talking about “abortion rights” wasn’t the end of the discussion, we also had to understand the basis for that right. We seem to accept the limitation of rights just about everywhere so long as they serve some notion of “greater good.” Like the protection of delicate artifacts. But suggest that abortion might weaken society and erode women’s rights and you’re told to get your nose out of women’s uteri.

Head shake. Eye roll.

New government bill to replace Bill C-484?

by 4 Comments

This was announced about ten minutes ago.

The federal government will introduce new legislation that will punish criminals who commit violence against pregnant women, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said at a news conference in Ottawa on Monday. Nicholson said the bill will “leave no room for the introduction of fetal rights.” The bill is aimed at protecting women from violence, he said.

…

Opponents to the bill, called the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, raised concerns that the bill would reopen the debate on abortion in Canada.

“Let me be clear, our government will not reopen the debate on abortion,” Nicholson said Monday.

__________________________

Update: The Globe has an article on the same topic here. A small note on style–if “unborn victims” gets quotation marks, then I’d ask also that “abortion rights” be consistently referred to with quotation marks. The “right to abortion” is much more imaginary (and never confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada) than those “unborn victims”–who we can view via a thing called “the ultrasound.”

And why not?

by 1 Comment

This could be the complete opposite to the ad campaign Andrea mentioned earlier today. A somewhat unorthodox Italian priest is running a beauty contest… for nuns:

Father Rungi, a moral theologian with his own blog, said that the nuns would not wear swimsuits or revealing outfits. What he valued most in a woman was “inner beauty”. Asked for his feminine ideal, he replied: “Well, I would say Sophia Loren.”

The contestants must be aged between 18 and 40, and can be either full members of an order or novices. Father Rungi said that he expected many who applied to be young, attractive — and non-Italian. He said: “Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies? Today it’s not like that any more, thanks to an injection of youth and vitality brought to our country by foreign girls.” He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty. The Brazilian girls above all.”

_________________________

Update, Wednesday afternoon: The contest has been cancelled.

_________________________

Andrea adds, belatedly: I think our idea of beauty has been so hopelessly corrupted that there was little chance of anyone seeing the whole business of a “nun beauty pageant” as sexual… Beauty apparently must be measured by naked anorexics in America’s Next Top Model… I wish this priest had gone ahead with his pageant. It might have reintroduced the world to what beauty can really be.

Defend Tom Wappel

by 3 Comments

Aha. Just before the story broke that Morgentaler would be received into the Order of Canada, Rob Anders was forced to take a sign down from his office window. The sign read “Defend Life”–we blogged about it here and here. Amélie Crosson, Communications Advisor, Office of the Honourable Jim Munson, Senator, sent an email to everyone on the Hill (and their dogs, too) about how she felt offended by just how political the sign was, and don’t we deserve more, and our Parliament is not a frat house…bla, bla, bla.

Turns out there’s no policy against signs in windows. Writes Tom Wappel, MP, in the Hill Times:

I contacted the Speaker’s office, the Sergeant-at-Arms Office, Canadian Heritage, the House Accommodation Services Office, and the Conservative Whip’s Office. Guess what? There is no policy!

Since there are signs in numerous other windows which were there before Mr. Anders removed his, and which are still there (e.g. “Veterans for Obama ’08 in the Confederation Building), I wanted to know why Mr. Anders’ sign (“Defend Life”) had been singled out for attention and removal. It turns out it was because someone had complained about it.

Why? Since other signs remain in windows, it is clear that there have been no complaints about other signs. Thus the complaint has to be not about a sign in a window, but about a sign in a window which was assumed to be a pro-life sign in a window.

Well, I am proud to be pro-life. Being so is not a criminal offence (yet). Expressing my pro-life views is not illegal (yet). What can be more fundamental in the very seat of our democracy than our Charter-cherished rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression?

So, I have borrowed Mr. Anders’ innocuous sign and put it in my window in East Block, and there it will stay.

I am also a lawyer and I respect the rule of law. When and if there is a written policy agreed upon, banning all signs from all windows, I shall remove my sign, but only after all other signs have been removed.

Kudos to Tom Wappel for putting the sign in his window.

Changing the comments

by 1 Comment

Comments are posted for this week, here. As of today, we are switching to posting comments under the post themselves, ie. no more Comments page. At the launch of ProWomanProLife, too many comments flowed in, and I couldn’t balance with the dayjob–so we pushed it to a weekend format, which allowed me to review once a week. Two things have happened since then: I have gotten used to the daily maintenance of the site, and comments are more manageable, save for the spikes that occur when issues arise–which has been often enough, but anyway.

Thanks for writing in, and please continue to do so. We’ll still moderate the comments, so posting will not be instantaneous or automatic, but on a shorter delay, and under each post.

I’ll tell you what I think is really, really scary

by Leave a Comment

I have a low level of appreciation for pornography in the public square. (You can click here to see the offending ad campaign–I’m not going to post the photo.) Especially when it masquerades as “female creativity.” I’m glad I’m not the only one. Many thanks to Ms. Batsheva Capek–and I don’t know her, or who she is–for spearheading an effort to get this ad down. We need people on the street who recognize porn for what it is. We also need people to boycott American Apparel, whose “CEO” has been very public about using a 1970s-style porn-look to sell your 16-year-old t-shirts. The Globe reports about the story, here.

In New York City, the same ad ended up with the words “Gee, I wonder why women get raped?” written over it. It was then replaced. But the company says this:

“It is a little bit disconcerting to see what feminism has evolved into,” said Marsha Brady, one of American Apparel’s two creative directors… “When … there’s a group of people attempting to shame female creativity, female beauty, female pride under the auspices of protecting women, it’s really, really scary.”

You know what is more scary? Those who think these ads represent female creativity, female beauty or female pride.

Ponnuru on Biden on abortion

by 1 Comment

For those of you eager to hear something encouraging about the U.S. presidential campaign: A post at the Corner about Joe Biden’s stance on abortion, which appears slightly less extreme than that of Barack Obama.

For pro-lifers, there is one tiny hopeful sign in the Biden pick. For a long time now, the top ranks of the Democratic party have embraced an orthodoxy on abortion policy that includes support for taxpayer funding of it and for keeping partial-birth abortion legal. The Democratic platform supports taxpayer funding. The three top contenders in this year’s Democratic presidential primaries—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards—support both taxpayer funding and partial-birth abortion.

Since partial-birth abortion became a political issue during Bill Clinton’s first term in office, every Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominee has supported keeping it legal (or making it illegal in name with loopholes to keep it legal in practice). When Gore considered running with Evan Bayh in 2000, feminist leaders told reporters that he was unacceptable because he had voted against partial-birth abortion.

This time the feminists said very little as Obama considered Bayh and Biden. For the first time in many years, the Democrats have a candidate for national office who opposes taxpayer funding of abortion. For the first time since partial-birth abortion became an issue, they have a candidate who opposes it, too. It is a less important development, I think, than the fact that their presidential nominee believes that some forms of infanticide should be legal. But it strikes me nonetheless as progress, however painfully limited.

Calling all journalists

by 1 Comment

To me, there’s a story behind the story here: The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons didn’t just change their policy and decide to force doctors’ hands at a whim. Recall the Canadian Medical Association Journal guest editorial of July 2006. It was co-written by Jocelyn Downie and Sanda Rodgers. Jocelyn Downie had been appointed to advise the interim board of the CMAJ–a lawyer, she was, not a doctor, and a lawyer who advocates for decriminalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, alongside her pro-abortion views (death all round, but let me not digress). Questions: How did she get appointed to the CMAJ interim advisory board? Why was she allowed to guest write an editorial? What are these two doing today? Do they have influence over the Ontario College?

It’s likely the same people who voted against Bill C-484 at the CMA.

There are only limited numbers of radical pro-abortion types, but they have loud voices, and lots of power, as I learned sitting in the law faculty for the Morgentaler conference in January 2008. That’s not a conspiracy theory, or some mild assertion: When you are the dean of the faculty of the country’s preeminent law school, you have a little bit of influence. (Dean Moran welcomed all of us to the Morgentaler conference, lest you have any doubt as to where her conscience lies–and she’s still allowed to use it these days).

Bottom line: Who is responsible for this Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons draft policy? Who is guiding the CMA? Hey–a little bit of investigative journalism never hurt anyone.

Meta