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Librarian overreacts, blames Bush

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When I saw this in The Toronto Star today, I knew I needed to do some additional reading. Could it really be that the Bush administration has time to clamp down on librarians, of all people? That he was up late the last couple of nights, wondering how to make it more difficult for medical researchers? 

A casual perusal of alternate news sources reveals that my headline for this post is likely more accurate than the Zerbisias column. Read the real news, here and here. Sounds like one overzealous librarian made a mistake and decided to blame–who else–George W. Bush.

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Tanya says: Agreed. After all, if Bush is opposed to abortion, why would he want to hide numerous findings from from POPLINE about the correlation between abortion and depression.

Missing the point at University of Toronto

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The Varsity reports on a pro-life demonstration at University of Toronto, here.

Reading the article makes for interesting commentary on the reporter’s perceptions of abortion. Now the Genocide Awareness Project does not equate abortion and the Holocaust but rather says where personhood is denied, great atrocities occur. As in if we declare people of other skin colours are not people, then we are able to tolerate slavery. If we declare Jewish people are not people, we can tolerate the Holocaust. This nuance is apparently all lost on the reporter, however, so I am forced to wonder whether it will not be lost on most pro-choice students on campus.

I for one, believe the Holocaust is a stand alone event, and that word should not be used for any event other than the actual Holocaust in World War II. But I do not believe that the Genocide Awareness Project is saying that “abortion is a Holocaust,” rather to repeat, that the similarity lies in denying personhood to a particular group of people. In the Holocaust it was Jews, today, it is the unborn.

I’d appreciate nuanced feedback, in particular if you believe I am playing a game of semantics.

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Trish adds: There are several interesting little insights about the abortion debate to be gleaned from the Varsity article. First of all, note who the coalition of pro-choice campus groups were: they included “UTSU, ASSU, the Centre for Women and Trans People, the GSU, CUPE 3902, CFS-Ontario and the Steelworkers.” As usual, there’s the round-up of campus groups who collect their fees from those students who are just trying to go to school and then go spend that money on those causes selected by their professional student activist executives? Anyone who has gone to university knows just how representative those groups are. But CUPE and the Steelworkers? These are now campus groups?

In addition, prolife comments were collected from Rosemary Connell who is identified as an “anti-abortion activist (and non-student)” Comments regarding the students positive response to the pro-choice shouts of “20 years of reproductive freedom” were provided by Chantal Sundaram, “a CUPE 3902 staff rep”. Is she also a “non-student”? Gee, I wonder why the pro-lifer is identified as a “non-student” and a CUPE staff rep isn’t? Maybe she’s a part-time student?

Finally, check out the comments sections. Is that where we finally get to hear from actual students? (Presumably that is who is reading the Varsity.) If they are representative of the campus population (who knows?), the pro-choice side is not doing very well.

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Tanya adds: The Holocaust (capitalized, in reference to WWII) is a stand-alone event. However, a holocaust is “any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.” [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holocaust] Genocide is “the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.” [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide]

I rather think that abortion is more of a holocaust than a genocide, with some reservations. Nothing says it better than a dictionary. 
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Andrea disagrees with the dictionary: There are no “small h holocausts.” It’s a term used specifically for the event in WWII and ought to be reserved for that. Prior to the Holocaust we did not use the word. But the question is whether or not we can compare something to the Holocaust, for me anyway. And there, I believe we can draw comparisons, where useful, as in for example, showing that both today and in various times in history, like in the Holocaust, we choose to deny some people personhood status.   

What to say…

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Go read and weep.

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Rebecca adds: I hate to seem unsympathetic, as this woman seems genuinely to be in pain, albeit (as she acknowledges) because of her own choices. But isn’t this a symptom of some mental health issue or other – compulsive lying to avoid dealing with the reality of one’s life? At best, it’s Walter Mitty syndrome, and depending on how much she deludes herself, maybe something worse.

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Andrea adds: Does this culture demand women deny themselves something they actually really want? I have wondered that, especially given that in one poll, now slightly out of date (1997, I believe) one in three Canadians said they desired three kids–a far cry from the 1.5 we currently have. But there’s something awfully strange about lying that you have children, when in fact, you don’t.  I believe there is a greater pressure to deny wanting to be a mother. That’s personal experience of course, and unscientific. But our birth rates go a little ways to proving it.

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Tanya adds: This is quite a bit of presumption on my part, but as we make plans for our lives, we envision things going a certain way. Perhaps this women had a vision for her childless life that never came to fruition: travel, successful career, building a dream home…  In the end, many women sacrifice children for the sake of another ideal. But hopes for the future are like vapour, and we can do little to grasp them.

Sometimes I’m so grateful I had my daughter by “accident.” Otherwise, perhaps my own purposeful intentions would have kept me from the joy she now brings to my life.

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Patricia adds: I agree with Andrea that there is pressure on women to deny wanting to be a mother. At least, on young women. In pursuing a society in which “girls can be anything”, we seem to have arrived at a society where a girl “had better be something” and motherhood isn’t enough of a “something” to count. That’s how you end up with the horrible scenario of mothers pressuring their own daughters to abort an unexpected and unwanted child. It’s better to be “something” first and then you can be a mother. Or not. And all of this is complicated by the fact that the erosion of marriage makes it risky for a woman to aspire to motherhood. The result is that motherhood is no longer a legitimate aspiration of a young woman, except if it’s fitted in after the fulfilment of meaningful personal goals. And I think that is hard on a lot of women.

I love secret agendas

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I missed this over the weekend. I’m still going to give a positive assessment of abortion in the media for my talk at The Interim’s 25th anniversary dinner. I’m not going to change that because of CTV’s Bob Fife.

But I might wear a costume.

And by the way, if you don’t already have one, anytime is a good time to order your “I’m a scary conservative with a hidden agenda” mug from Mark Steyn. I’d suggest getting one even if you aren’t conservative. After all, it’s fun to have a hidden agenda and only conservatives ever have those, as they make nefarious plans in back rooms, rubbing their hands together like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Excellent.

(First saw this knuckledragging item on Small Dead Animals)

The world without…

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Barbara Kay has an interesting piece about having children, or rather not having children, in today’s National Post. 

As she describes the anti-kiddists views, it seems that not only does having children make you less able to self-actualize and increase your standings on the happiness index through career achievement, peak experiences (climbing Kilamanjaro) and material acquisition (see Véronique’s post below), it also destroys the planet. 

Sigh. I would like to think that such views are marginal but there is an element to the environmental movement that depicts humanity as a parasite or a cancer on the earth. And I worry that its influence is more mainstream than we think. Check out “The World Without Us” website. Or the calls of Tim Flannery, Australia’s 2007 Man of the Year and one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” for decreased population. Or the charming Paul Watson, Toni Vernelli and David “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence” Benatar, all described in Kay’s column.  

It seems to me it’s all part of the world view that kids just weigh us down, prevent us from becoming what we really should be. And they just weigh down the earth, too.   

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s wrong to misuse the resources of the earth. Don’t waste and don’t litter. I think that about covers it for environmental policy. 

As for the impacts of more kids, the irony is that many of the practices that the environmentalists seem to want us to adopt come naturally in a household filled with children. Sharing space and resources, remembering to think about the needs of others, consuming less so there’s enough for everybody, all these habits are almost second nature for the person who grows up in a full household.

Alas, many don’t see this. Instead, they argue for more regulation, more legislation, more public officials to enforce the laws and regs to meet our environmental objectives. One has to ask though, if no one is having kids, where are they going to get the bodies to fill those jobs and the taxpayers to pay their salaries? And for whom are we saving the planet?

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Tanya adds: On the up-side, if they do go so far as to implement a global one-child policy, pro-aborts will need to find a new platform. “Pro-choice” just wont have much of a ring to it when you have the choice to have one child or less; not two; never three!

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2008/04/05/ted-turner-pushes-one-child-policy-pbs-interview

 

Autism linked to premature birth

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Read the news release here. Then revisit our post on previous abortions and the risk of preterm birth.

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Rebecca adds: Tsk tsk, Véronique. Don’t you know that sharing scientifically established facts is just another way of imposing patriarchal values on women, to scare them out of exercising their right to choose?

Seriously – it bears repeating that if any other necessary surgery, let alone an elective procedure like an abortion, were done exclusively on women, and more often on minority women, without studying its long term consequences, or without sharing the facts about those consequences that are known, feminists and all sane people would be up in arms. Consider the work that’s been done on unnecessary hysterectomies, for instance, or on the virtues of radical mastectomy compared to lumpectomy for cancer. A great deal of thought has gone into considering these procedures not only in terms of their short term medical consequences but also their longer term effect on women’s physical and mental health, and sexual health. None of this discussion has yet taken place about abortion.

 

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