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Couldn’t care less

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqroT1FZ5Y]

It’s nice sometimes to be able to read a blog with some accompanying music… I just want everyone to know that I’m posting this “coolly and dispassionately.” Save for the fact that I recently launched a pro-life web site, and am now staking my very being and reputation on being a smart and savvy pro-life woman who knows better than to advocate for abortion on the basis that it is a “woman’s right,” save for all that, I really couldn’t care less. In short:

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

–REM

Medieval justice–if even that advanced

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In practice, this failure to limit abortion to 20 or 22 weeks doesn’t mean that much–most abortions are done earlier than that. But in theory, it means we are perfectly happy to kill babies that could live on their own (in spite of the fact that doctors find it traumatising). I mentioned before it’s a debate I wouldn’t want to have–because a life is a life from conception. But it is depressing to say the least, that given 3-D imaging, and all we know about life today that we maintain medieval conceptions of justice and decency into the 21st century.  

 

Planned Parenthood Ottawa: Their choice or no choice at all

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It was November 2007 when the Ottawa Senators Foundation, the wives and girlfriends of the Ottawa Senators (also known as the Sens Better Halves) chose First Place Pregnancy Centre as one of their designated charities in a tree raffle. First Place Pregnancy Centre is a small counseling centre located on Bank Street in the Glebe, in Ottawa. They rely exclusively on charitable donations to help women in crisis pregnancies, in offering post-abortion counseling and generally in offering pregnancy help and information.

 

Today First Place Pregnancy Centre sued Planned Parenthood Ottawa. Why?

 

When the First Wives made First Place Pregnancy Centre one of the charities, Planned Parenthood attacked. Calling First Place “anti-choice”—they raised a stink and cast aspersions on what First Place does. As a result, First Place withdrew from the fundraising opportunity. So today First Place sued Planned Parenthood for “interfering with critical funding” and for defamation.

 

First Place doesn’t offer or refer for abortions, but that is something they openly tell each client. They’ll give you all the information you need, but they won’t help you obtain an abortion. Last I checked, that’s not a sin.

 

Many women appreciate the heightened sense of awareness and empathy First Place provides: It is, after all, very difficult to be truly sympathetic to a woman grieving an abortion when you don’t believe there’s anything wrong with it. That’s something First Place does. Does Planned Parenthood Ottawa?

 

Which leads me to another point. Pro-life women and girls get pregnant unexpectedly too. Consider that pro-lifers believe that the unborn are people, not to be killed. In short, abortion is not an appropriate option. Should that pro-life girl only have the option of counseling from Planned Parenthood—a place where in the same room with a different client that counselor will sanction and refer for an abortion? Pro-lifers have sex, fear pregnancy, get pregnant, are further terrified and need counseling too. Must they all go to Planned Parenthood Ottawa? Or should there be other options?

 

Let me add at this point that all pro-lifers support Planned Parenthood Ottawa. It’s not because we want to, mind you, but because we are forced to. Planned Parenthood Ottawa is rolling in government dough. I don’t agree with what they do. But I am not able to withdraw my tax dollars.

 

The only choice I have available is to support other groups, like First Place Pregnancy Centre. And so can the Sens Better Halves.

 

First Place pregnancy centre offers another option. They do it day in and day out whether you’ve had an abortion in the past or will have one in the future. They just won’t help you get one.

 

I think that’s understandable. Only the most obtuse question the very idea of being pro-life. And no one’s forcing anyone to go to First Place either. Seems to me women are smart enough to choose. Seems to me that First Place offers one more choice. Seems to me that Planned Parenthood Ottawa in throwing their weight around last November, has been served a lot more than legal papers. They should serve up the explanation on why they think their choice is the only choice for all of Ottawa’s women.

 

Hope it’s a good one—because relying on choice mantras when you take others’ choices away sounds like a dirty trick to me.

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Tanya adds: There’s a Facebook group petitioning against the Sens Better Halves and their donation to First Place Pregnancy.

 

One Facebook group member is on staff at PPO and had this to say as she tried to articulate what makes this organization ‘anti-choice’:

I have deep feminist intervention perspectives, and i’m a believer in the philosophy that a womyn knows best what is best for her own good. By allowing for these myths [referring to a link with breast cancer, risk of infertility, increased risk of depression, and so on] to continue, i feel that we bully womyn.

Let’s be out and open with it. What they call ‘scare tactics’ can actually be backed up credibly.

Regarding abortion’s link to breast cancer: It is a highly politicized issue, and studies have shown a variety of results. It’s irresponsible for a medical professional not to mention the possibility. Now’s a good time for me to bring this up again.

As far as infertility, even the Mayo Clinic says: “It’s possible — but very uncommon —for a surgical abortion to cause scarring on the inside of the uterus or to weaken the cervix.” Are we not to even mention this possibility?

Let’s not forget depression. We’ve covered that before, too.

I could go on with this, and this, but that might be overkill.

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Andrea adds: Thanks Tanya. That Planned Parenthood Ottawa employee lost me at “womyn.” I will attempt to ensure she gets spelling lessons soon.  

Dependent at 20 weeks, 40 weeks, 80 weeks and counting

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When it comes to lowering the number of weeks for legal abortion in the UK, it seems much of the debate is revolving around “the medical evidence” for survival rates outside the womb. Then there’s the view to women’s rights–the pending disaster should women not be allowed to kill their babies at 20 weeks. Finally, some crazy person claiming science can’t decide it all.

Far be it from me to comment on all things scientific, but babies delivered at full term do not survive on their own outside the womb. Not the ones I know, anyway. That’s the human predicament. We offer ourselves to compassionately care for these babies, where the mother can’t or won’t. Unless we don’t get the opportunity because all those babies are aborted, which is more the reality right now.

Saving money on special effects

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The UK votes to support animal human hybrids and saviour siblings. The negatives are many: a devaluing of human life, embryos as commodities, using people for parts. A loss of the uniqueness of the human soul, a utilitarian approach to medicine.

But let it not be said that I am always negative, a wet blanket, a downer. On the plus side, in due time, budgets for movies like the Narnia series should go way down (save on graphic designers, hire a real centaur instead.)  

A lesson in prevention

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Evan Harris from the UK, Monday, had this to say to the press.

What, really, the number of abortions tells us is the number of unwanted pregnancies. That’s the fundamental issue. And the best way to tackle that, as other countries have shown, is to have much better sexual relationships education than we have and much better access to … contraception. (emphasis mine)

He seems, like so many other pro-abortionists, to bring up the issue of unwanted pregnancy like it’s a sort of illness to avoid. Usually, government will offer the obvious methods of disease prevention. Don’t want lung cancer? Quit smoking. Don’t want to be obese? Eat sensibly and exercise. Don’t want to be pregnant? Here’s the kicker. The answer should be ‘refrain from sex outside of a committed relationship.’ But this simple solution evades us. Instead, a more complicated answer is offered, and this cleverly disguised as ‘comprehensive sex education.’

It’s a bit like if government were to say, “Well, the people are going to eat poorly anyways, so let’s start endorsing the latest diet craze or weight-loss pill.”

I don’t know where to begin

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Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at [Boston’s Children’s Hospital], has launched a clinic for transgendered kids — boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys — and he’s opening his doors to patients as young as 7.
Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty. The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the change.

 

 

Just so we’re clear – we’re talking about pre-pubertal children. You know, kids at an age where they want to be an astronaut in the summer and a snow plough driver in the winter. The age when they plan to live at home at 47 because they can’t imagine ever sleeping more than 3 meters away from Mummy. Kids who are too young, by several years, to vote, drive, get a job without their parents’ permission, get married, or even decide they’re done with school. And this guy is proposing to let them take drugs, the long-term health consequences of which are totally unknown, while they try to decide what gender they want to be?

I really hope my esteemed colleagues, and our valued readers, speak up, because I truly don’t know what else to say, just that there is a whole lot more that must be said.

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Brigitte adds: A new slogan for the age might be “You’re Never Too Young To Pump Your Body Full of Hormones”, or perhaps “It’s Never Too Early to Get Confused”. I would have been a candidate for such a clinic back when I was 7 years old. I used to think being a girl stank, because you weren’t supposed to do fun things like drive go-karts or climb trees (at least, I wasn’t) and I always thought the boys were having more fun. Somehow I managed to stay off puberty-delaying hormones and eventually I outgrew my gender unhappiness. Am I meant to feel aggrieved because my “condition” went “untreated”?

Animal-human hybrids, saviour siblings and gestational limits

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The BBC reporter here asks Dawn Primarolo, a Labour MP and health minister why animal-human hybrids are wrong. (Watch the video link.) She does not answer that, but rather moves fluidly into a discussion of embryonic research, saying

This is a decision about where life begins

Well, yes, it is. And now it’s 14 days. Why? Because she said so.

She goes on to talk about how the embryo is a collection of cells under 14 days. And how we can only get certain possible treatments from this collection of cells. And how those “cells” would only be used in very extreme cases where there were no other avenues of research.

This, plus lowering the abortion limit in the UK from 24 to 20 weeks will be up for a free vote in the UK tomorrow.

I guess I find the juxtaposition of discussing abortion and embryonic stem cell research fascinating. In order to fight for late limits on abortion she uses the “woman’s right to choose” argument; in order to justify the creation of people for the sole purpose of experimentation, she uses the treatment argument–“it could save your life.”

Whose life? Certainly not the saviour sibling’s, that’s for sure. Should be an interesting vote.

But I don’t want to be an engineer

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The poster back when I was in high school said “I want to be an engineer, just like my mom.”

Well I didn’t, and my mom isn’t one either. Shockingly, new research shows the lack of women in science-related fields may be because we don’t want to.

Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women – highly qualified for the work – stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.

I am sure, however, that the government can find some way to force us: You will like math. You will do math. You are good at math. Repeat.
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Brigitte adds: Ha-ha! Adds. Get it? 

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Andrea adds, subtracts and multiplies: but isn’t so good at division or percentage increases. Hardy har har. (Keep your day job, Brigitte, keep your day job.)

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