Read this week’s comments, here.
Life and academics
An upcoming event on the ethics of prenatal screening. It sounds interesting. I read the abstract–the speaker will, I think, argue against prenatal screening on the basis that it doesn’t serve women well:
I argue that in the vast majority of cases the option of prenatal screening does not promote or protect women’s autonomy. Both a narrow conception of choice as informed consent and a broad conception of choice as relational reveal difficulties in achieving adequate standards of free informed choice.
I will, however, further argue that she might benefit from the firm hand of a non-academic editor.
Putting our money where our mouths are
And let’s face it: At ProWomanProLife our mouths are pretty big.
So what would it cost to support a woman and her baby? Til they were self-sufficient and out of the woods?
An approximation of monthly expenses:
1200 rent
500 food
110 phone/internet
300 miscellaneous
500 baby supplies
for a total of 2600 per month.
On a “World Vision” model of 30 dollars per month I need 87 people (ok, 86.6 people).
Or I need 50 people at 30 dollars a month and 11 people at 100 dollars per month.
Or 26 people at 100 dollars a month.
You get my point.
I consider this because I recently offered full financial support for a woman facing a crisis pregnancy. She was a friend of a friend and wanted to get an abortion. I have no doubt in my mind that I would have been able to do this–for her–even if through a re-arrangement of my own finances. But to be able to do it on repeat for the many more women who need it, on a regular basis… that would require something else.
I don’t know where ProWomanProLife will end up, but this is one model: And apparently whereas I can support a child on 30 dollars a month in Africa, the Canadian context calls for a lot more.
Things to think about.
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Tanya adds: I agree, and who wouldn’t. $35 a month essentially provides for a family of 5 in the Philippines. It is more expensive to live in Canada; that’s a fact. But what standard of living are we aiming for? What local charities are there to become affiliated with? And what federal and provincial social services are already in place? (How I would have loved to get to live on $2600 per month when my daughter was a wee thing.)
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Andrea adds: Those estimates were deliberately high–it’s easier to ask for less than more, in the end. I actually have little idea how much a baby costs–the rest of you will know that better than I. But what I’m aiming to buy for a young pregnant woman in distress is peace of mind–however much that costs.
China: Are we there yet?
In recent news, not so much abortion but morality, particularly the kind or morality — or lack thereof — found in today’s movies. The artistic community has its nose out of joint in light of a new bill that would give the federal Heritage Department the power to deny funding for films or tv shows it considers offensive. At least, that’s what the CBC tells us. Driving with the radio on, I was treated to much weeping and gnashing of teeth from concerned artists promising a descent into China-styled censorship and the end of audacious, creative movies — by which they must mean movies that cannot get a message across without repeated appeals to sexually graphic images, gratuitous violence and other delicious morsels of entertainment.
When they say “deny funding” what they mean is deny a tax credit. A tax credit worth 11% of salaries paid to Canadian employees in the making of the movie. What this means, really, is that offensive movies will still be created, produced and distributed in Canada, only that offensive movie-makers will have to do it on their own dime. Which they already did, strictly speaking, since a credit reimburses money already spent on salaries.
China is not around the corner. Not because of this bill, in any case.
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Rebecca adds: … but why expect Canada’s chattering classes to grasp this rather unsubtle difference? After all, the suggestion that we not use taxpayer dollars to fund elective abortions inevitably results in protests that evil conservatives want to create a world of back alley abortions, in which doctors and women in desperate straits are thrown in jail. Just as the body politic increasingly wants everything undesirable to be criminalized, so it wants everything legally permitted to be federally funded.
Death, taxes and The Toronto Star
Sigh. Why do I always have to be different? I did not love the movie Bella, so of course it figures The Toronto Star really, really did.
But everyone loves Bella. I have not heard one bad review. So why did I feel like I could not connect with the characters and the story? Some possible answers: I am a robot. OR I expect saccharine Hollywood romance when I sit in a theatre and when I don’t get it, I’m not sure what to do. Perhaps given this crazy world, when a story conveys compassion and real love, it is altogether too confusing. Or perhaps, I have an anti-Toronto Star reflex, which forces me to disagree with their articles even prior to reading them. Je ne sais pas.
In any case, do not trust me and go see the film and decide for yourself. There are some beautiful scenes, and that Eduardo is a beautiful man, in every sense of the word.
Too greedy for babies
Here’s a Canadian story about a young couple “struggling to get by.”
The young couple is planning to marry in six months and, within a couple of years, start their own family. Before long, they’ll want to move out of their cramped, eighth-floor apartment and buy their first home. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to do it on their own. With a combined annual income of $80,000 and zero savings, they simply don’t have the means to qualify for the $200,000 mortgage they’ll need to get into a starter home.
These are our North American standards; house first, then kids. Until all our financial ducks are in a row, we are “struggling to get by.” I blame these set standards for many of the abortions conducted in Canada for financial reasons. In the US, 21.3 percent of women having an abortion state they “cannot afford a baby” as their main reason. We often closely mirror their stats. (No one knows the exact figures in Canada because “StatsCan doesn’t collect data on the reasons for termination.”)
I am not turning a blind eye to poverty in this nation. I do, however, refuse to believe that one fifth of women seeking abortions in Canada are truly poor. In Nigeria, where nearly three quarters of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, 11.4 percent of women having an abortion claim it’s mainly because they cannot afford the child. In Mexico, 15.9 percent. Honduras: 5.3 percent.
Gandhi said, “We have enough for everybody’s need. But not enough for everybody’s greed.” If StatsCan ever does start collecting data on reasons for abortion, I think they should include “too greedy for baby” as a possible answer.
UPDATE, Saturday: Governor General Michaelle Jean is not turning a blind eye to poverty in this country either, as she prepares for her visit to Canada’s North.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080411/national/gov_gen_arctic
Half-way there?
We’ve mentioned a few times already (see here and here) that it was somewhat odd for someone like Ujjal Dosanjh to be in favour of the abortion status quo yet against sex-selection abortion. Here he is again explaining his position, in today’s Ottawa Citizen.
While we firmly support a woman’s right to choose as paramount, there is a clear distinction to be drawn between supporting access to safe abortions, which we vigorously defend, and the abortion of fetuses solely to prevent the births of female babies due to biased socio-cultural norms, which we abhor.
I don’t see the “clear distinction”, and I sure don’t think it’s OK to see choice as “paramount”. I believe it’s wrong to discard “inconvenient” babies, regardless of the reasons why such babies are considered inconvenient. But hey. Better oppose some abortions than none at all.
Good looking girls
It’s not all doom and gloom. Good looking girls bucking terrible fashion trends. And smart too:
Elena Bitelli, 14, says, “I usually like to dress casual, with a pinch of elegance. Jeans and maybe an elegant blouse. I sometimes look at magazines [but] I don’t pay attention to ones with lots of celebrities. I think celebrities are often children who haven’t grown up…
Read about it here.
Stuff I wish I’d made up
Tired of dancing every night, and never getting ahead? “Become a SuperStripper!”
[h/t SJD]
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Andrea adds: It’s almost hard not to see this as a joke. Like all those offers of advanced degrees I get in my junk mailbox. But no, I see it’s real. Legalizing prostitution and legitimizing stripping: guess we can look forward to advanced degrees in pole dancing, lap dancing, and a whole lot more. Whose betting the “profs” are all men?
A nugget from “A Demographic Winter”
Possibly 2008’s most important documentary, A Demographic Winter, has just become available. I barely know where to start, so I’ll just share one of the many things that jumped right out at me (please don’t be surprised if I do a “part 2”).
100 years ago, 75 – 80% of households had children in them. This family was a dominant force of influence on our society. Within this context, only those messages appropriate for little ears and eyes were allowed, certainly in the home, but also within the majority of communities. Today, one-third of households have children, which definitely explains our media’s shift to less child-friendly messages.
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that children keep us all a little more innocent, a little more pure, and a little less corrupt? By rendering the child an endangered species of sorts, we have done our world the disservice of catering to more adult desires. We are therefore inadvertently exposing the few children left to these adult messages and tainting that which used to help keep us from all our perversion.
Be it far from me to place the responsibility of upholding society’s standards of morality on a child. They certainly don’t need that sort of pressure. But, by their very existence, they do make us watch our mouth, be good examples of courtesy and kindness, and love immeasurably. In short, they make us better.
It’s easy to forget what gems these little ones are. We more often hear about their carbon footprint, and how very expensive they are. They are, after all, the “unwanted” in “unwanted pregnancy.” Well, that is child un-friendly, to say the least. The media really has outdone itself.
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