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It’s not every day…

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…that I agree with Stéphane Dion. But he’s right about this:

Stéphane Dion has challenged the prime minister to clarify his view on abortion, threatening to reignite the debate as Canada careens towards an election.

[…]

“I think all Canadians have the right to know what the party leader thinks,” he said. “I gave my opinion. I want to hear the opinion of Stephen Harper.”

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And Andrea is staying true to form: and disagreeing with Dion. He only wants to know Harper’s stance on abortion now because he’s bought into the misinformation on Bill C-484, which expressly excludes abortion. Voting in favour of Bill C-484 is not a vote against abortion, much as Joyce Arthur would have us believe. If I thought that–I’d blog about it more often. In any event, all we’d get from Harper at this stage would be Ye Olde “I support a woman’s right to choose” too, and given the circumstances, I wouldn’t expect any different. Now if Dion weren’t asking, and if Harper were to clarify under different circumstances…that’s a different story. Then, yes, I’d like to know his stance on abortion. As it stands, I’d prefer Dion clarify his position, on, oh say, the environment. Or finances. Or just about any existing policy debate… where to begin…

Missing: conscience and intelligence at leadership level

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A new take on the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons draft policy: perhaps whoever wrote that need not be too concerned about ensuring doctors don’t reference their religion or conscience–at the leadership level, those are already missing. Today the papers report that the Canadian Medical Association voted to condemn Bill C-484.

the Canadian Medical Association voted yesterday to oppose Bill C-484, “and any legislation that would result in compromising access for women to the medical services required to terminate a pregnancy.”

Now I’m joking, of course, most doctors are concerned only about patient welfare, and they have a conscience and they thankfully use it and all that jazz. But now might just be the time for doctors to be concerned about their leadership. I would hazard to say it is all the same people who are writing pro-abortion editorials for the Canadian Medical Association Journal, who are creating anti-conscience policies, and who are voting against Bill C-484. Doctors–if you don’t agree with this and want to continue practicing, in spite of the doctor shortage and your overflowing waiting rooms, I’d take some time to write some letters and understand the politics of this. I personally have been waiting for one appointment for seven months–a day or two more won’t kill me. (I’m pretty sure.)

One woman’s necessity is another woman’s luxury

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It’s tough to have kids: We can’t afford ’em, and apparently, don’t really even want ’em.

And doing without things most Canadians consider necessities — everything from giant TVs and laptops to restaurant outings and recreational toys — is tough to swallow in an increasingly consumerist society.

Confusing necessities and luxuries isn’t fatal, I guess, except in the cases when women choose abortion because they couldn’t afford to have a child. For some women, being destitute is a real problem. For others, I say, enjoy the flat screen TV–but will it still be as entertaining when you’re old?

What does freedom mean?

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Speak out against the conscience-free doctor.

Two good letters in the Post today on the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons policy fiasco: Dr. Leiva and Faye Sonier of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. She writes:

Lorne Gunter says, “freedom often isn’t easy.” Former Supreme Court of Canada chief justice Brian Dickson stated: “If a person is compelled by the state or the will of another to a course of action or inaction which he would not have otherwise chosen, he is not acting of his own volition and he cannot be said to be truly free.”

Sorry–no can do–above my pay grade

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You can say that? That’s awesome. Now everytime the media/my boss/friends/parents ask me a question that might require thought I have a pat reply in my back pocket.

But his support of abortion, a non-negotiable issue for many conservative Christians, remains a considerable obstacle, and he drew disapproving noises from the 2,800 audience at the Saddleback mega-church in Lake Forest, when he gave an evasive response to the question of when human rights begin following conception.

“Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” said Mr Obama.

Again (broken record alert): One of the ways to support abortion is to put your head in the sand and pretend you just don’t know what’s going on in there–what’s that body part called–a uterus? Goldangit, it’s just so complicated.

This actually works for many, I might add.
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What works for Brigitte: The story adds that:

Mr McCain, who has always been against abortion, in contrast gave a swift response: “At the moment of conception”. He won a loud round of applause.

And since then, my shares in a Republican winner-take-all scenario have increased slightly. I’m gambling on the University of Iowa’s electoral futures market for the first time this year; we’re using real money and while I’m no particular fan of John McCain I think he will win. One of my reasons for believing Mr. McCain will win is Mr. Obama’s extreme position on abortion. Not my main reason, but a significant one. Wouldn’t that be a hoot to make money by gambling on the pro-life side?

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Andrea adds again: Incidentally, on theological versus scientific perspectives: it’s the science that is particularly clear. New genetic material for every person begins with conception. We’re all former embryos, my friends. I just might even buy the t-shirt.

Not very impressive, no matter where you look

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I found this news story added very little to anything. But good grief, have a look at the kinds of comments readers have left, here. Sheesh.

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Andrea adds: From the Globe article:

In light of the role that she has assigned to herself, I’d be surprised if many people would have a problem with the way that she carries out that particular role,” Chief Justice Scott added.

“The role she has assigned herself”? Is this truly the way the system works? At that level? The Chief Justice sits on the committee to do whatever she assigns herself to do? There are also conflicting reports. Some say she never involves herself, and this story says she votes in cases of a tie. So which is it? I might also add, it is August 18. This controversy came up July 1. Is that the amount of time it takes for some communications specialist in the Governor General’s office to explain how things work? Since no one’s talking, they can hardly be surprised–Justice McLachlin can hardly be surprised–that people don’t know what to think and that there’s “misinformation” and “rumours” swirling.

Curtailing freedom of conscience for doctors in Ontario

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The National Post reported here about the new document regulating physician conduct in Ontario. It’s called “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code” and I just read it in its entirety. But even before I read it, I knew it couldn’t be good–take a look at the reason why this new document was created. It’s to respond to changes in the Human Rights Tribunals. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario says this:

In June 2008, changes were introduced to the Ontario Human Rights system, which will provide Ontarians with increased access to the Human Rights Tribunal. This new system is expected to result in a significant increase in the number of hearings into human rights complaints made to the Tribunal… In this climate of increased awareness of human rights, the College has developed a new draft policy for consultation, entitled Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.”

 

Human Rights Tribunals across the country, should the College not have noticed, have become a national embarrassment for the limitations they place on freedom of speech. Human Rights Tribunals are where people who don’t have a hope of getting their case through a real court go.

 

The document itself is a disaster; it apparently subjugates physicians to bureacrats at Human Rights Tribunals. The document gives those bureaucrats, those who hold physician’s livelihoods in their hands, substantial leeway to do their job. It says:

The balancing of rights must be done in context. In relation to freedom of religion specifically, courts will consider how directly the act in question interferes with a core religious belief. Courts will seek to determine whether the act interferes with the religious belief in a ‘manner that is more than trivial or insubstantial.’ The more indirect the impact on a religious belief, the more likely the courts are to find that the freedom of religion should be limited.”

 

But no latitude for doctors for whom “The college advises to proceed cautiously,” when it comes to their moral or religious beliefs.

 

There is no freedom where there is no freedom of religion. And furthermore, unless we want our doctors to become robots constantly looking up “A Code” of some sort or another, we want them to integrate their morals with their practice.

 

This policy is ominous, and will harm further our already flagging medical system. Ironically, it forces doctors to refer where they cannot provide care themselves—cold, cold comfort to those who can’t get a doctor in the first place, or who find themselves on waiting lists already. In practice, squeaky wheels, those professional plaintiffs, will a) get faster treatment, b) get “treatment” faster for something that is likely a social lifestyle choice, like abortion or sex changes, and c) put those nasty doctors they don’t like out of business.

 

These are dangerous times for people like Dr. René Leiva, quoted in the National Post story. He says:

This would put a burden on physicians like myself to conform to a view that basically puts my conscience under somebody’s else’s power,” said Dr. Leiva. “And the key aspect is moral integrity and the right of physicians to act in a way that does not harm the patient.”

And he’s right. What we have here is an open door to professional complainers to put excellent doctors through the wringer or even out of business.

I have three extraneous points to make. As a patient, should this new policy go through I’d suggest people like myself lodge a complaint for every doctor who suggests abortion when a child is diagnosed in utero with a disability or Down’s Syndrome. After all, they just put their secular faith ahead of practicing medicine by suggesting a child ought to die for disability. Not the kind of care I expect to receive and certainly, references their own religious belief.

Secondly, now is the time to push for abortion to be removed from that list of things considered “medically necessary.” We all know it’s not, and the case is made all the more compelling by the host of pro-abortion folks who have said this. Pregnancy is not a disease; abortion is not a cure. No time like the present to remove it from the roster of funded procedures.

And lastly, on funding procedures: This type of policy fiasco produced by third-rate bureaucrats who wouldn’t know medicine, morality or what it means “to be religious” if the Pope himself had a sit-down chat with them—is made worse by our socialist “health care system.” (I’ll put that in quotation marks because it appears to work best when you are perfectly healthy.) If we had a system that flourished, where patients could actually find doctors, we would not need to compel doctors to refer through “policy”—without a shortage, patients would know they could just find another one. This type of “policy” is the direct result of the fact that our system is living in a time warp shared only by North Korea and Cuba: Places, incidentally, where “Human Rights Tribunals” would thrive, too. With this type of policy we’ll see treatment for the most politically astute, the most finicky, the most ideological—those who do, I’d hazard to say, have an illness, but of a more nebulous, shall we say, mental nature.

More on the APA report

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While this could have been an “add” to Tanya’s post, I think the information is important enough to warrant a whole new one. Big Blue Wave posted this in full yesterday, too. I’ve bolded the parts I find the most interesting.

The commentary below is written by a psychologist, a member of the American Psychological Association, one Rachel M. MacNair, of Consistent Life. She says in reasonable, measured tones, you’ll note, that the APA came out with their conclusions based on One Study. One Study. Think about that. 

Tales from an Insider-Outsider on the Report of American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion, Rachel M. MacNair, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Integrated Social Analysis
research arm of Consistent Life: An International Network for Peace and Life
We have known for a long time that the word “choice” in the abortion debate doesn’t mean what it means in regular English, having become a euphemism for abortion rather than a matter of actually having options. Now we find that “science” means what the American Psychological Association (APA) says it means, rather than what those of us trained in a university might have been taught.
We start with the appointment of the Task Force. I’m an APA member, and on the Board of Division 48, peace psychology, though of course not on the APA Council which makes the decisions. Though I keep my ears attuned, the task force membership was appointed and explicitly not open to any more nominations by the time I first heard about it. Actually, there never had been any call for nominations. Membership had been decided by Division 35, psychology of women, and the Council apparently rubber-stamped the selection. I knew the fix was in at that point and subsequent events have confirmed this, but I gamely kept trying to talk about balance and science.
Having documented that three members of the task force were outspoken defenders of abortion and the remaining three had no public statements of positions, I immediately brought up the point of lack of the voice of skeptics wherever I could. Consistent Life sent out a letter to the entire Council last fall on this point, and received no response.
I volunteered to be a reviewer of the Report, which means someone that gives feedback from a scientific point of view. They decided I had the credentials to do so, along with Priscilla Coleman and David Fergusson of New Zealand. I don’t know the rest of the 20 reviewers; David is self-described as an “atheist pro-choicer,” but he shared his review with me and his opinion about the quality of the science therein was roughly the same as mine and Priscilla’s. (…)
But I was startled to dig in and realize that the new rationale for the conclusion was based on only one study – using British women where there was a screening requirement we don’t have in the U.S. The fact of many methodological flaws in that study isn’t really the point, since in the real world all studies have some flaws. Far more important is that the study doesn’t support the conclusion, since it did find more drug overdoses in women who had abortions compared to others. Also important is that it doesn’t even address the conclusion, since it was only looking at extreme outcomes – drug overdoses rather than over-all substance abuse, for example. (See http://wiki.afterabortion.org/index.php?title=Gilchrist#Weaknesses for discussion of the one study).
We don’t draw such a sweeping conclusion from only one study. As I said, they all have flaws. We put together a group of studies so that the flaws may balance out. One thing needs to be replicated before it’s taken seriously. Setting aside the quality of the study itself, citing only one study in support of a politically-desired conclusion cannot be explained in any other way than a politically-motivated exercise. This is not a debatable point. This is Quantitative Research 101.
(…)
More studies are coming out, of course. According to the logic of the report itself, if only one study can establish the conclusion, then in theory it should only take one study to knock it down, so long as the new study has the same strengths as the 13-year-old one. But that would be taking the assumption that APA was actually interested in keeping up with real science, an assumption for which at this point I have no evidence.
The Report dismisses many of the studies of post-abortion trauma on the grounds that women were already traumatized by the time they showed up to the abortion clinic. This is surely true, but doesn’t it then follow that it’s highly irresponsible to simply give them surgery and then send them home? If we have clear and undisputed information that a disproportionate amount of traumatized women (domestic abuse, substance abuse, etc.) are showing up at any medical location, how can it be reasonable medical care to not screen for this and provide opportunity for intervention? I pointed this out in my review, but they didn’t see this point as worthy of inclusion.
Meanwhile, the report does say that they do know that there are groups that have higher negative aftermath: teenagers, women who are pressured, women who have more than one, those abortions that late-term. This is information we can put forth as at least being a consensus among all reviewers.

A proverbial ‘nanny-nanny boo-boo’

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Said here:

…any researcher who wants to prove that the emotional stress of abortion directly causes mental illness in women is going to have a difficult time teasing apart and controlling for all these potential confounds.

That would be a paraphrase of the APA’s general assessment of “over 150 studies which examine a potential link between abortion and mental health problems.”

What does it all really mean? It means that no matter what results a study comes up with showing the correlation between abortion and mental illness, the pro-choice side of the debate will always have a convenient out. They just have to point out that the woman has a past.

Sort of amazing, don’t ya think, that the APA is able to concretely link mental illness to any contributing factors at all. I know I have a newfound respect for them.

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