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Mr. Mom

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pregnantman.jpg

A woman who underwent a transgender transformation to become a man is pregnant. The child is due to be born this July. Read more here.

Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child … I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”

After all, family is whatever you want it to be in this day and age.

[Ethicist Margaret Somerville] added: “It’s a very touchy thing, this deconstruction of our biological reality and the institutions that have existed across all kinds of societies over thousands and thousands of years to establish stability, respect and certainty. I think we’re just playing with fire.”

When progressives want to restrict choice

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Interesting piece about private daycare operators in various parts of the country… who are being targeted by the Left for being bad ugly people who use children to make a profit. Or something; it’s hard to understand exactly what it is that the NDP’s Olivia Chow objects to, since even state-sanctioned not-for-profit daycare centres employ people who make money caring for children. But anyway. Ms. Chow, whose private member bill “would commit Ottawa to a national daycare plan and deny funding to any new for-profit centre”, seems reasonably certain that “private” money is somehow worse than the “public” kind. (Though I agree with her when she says that “Tax dollars should not be going to a company’s bottom line” – it’s just that I would apply that principle across the board, not just against companies I don’t like.)   

But that’s not what got my attention. What really grabbed me is right in the first paragraph:

Private sector daycare is under attack in many parts of the country, with vocal opponents claiming that earning a profit is fundamentally at odds with proper child care. [emphasis added]

Isn’t that what people used to say about health care?  That it was wrong to make a profit caring for sick people? That it would be better if the state took over?

We all know how well that turned out, do we.

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Tanya remarks: “Tax dollars should not be going to a company’s bottom line.”  Oh, like the bottom line for an organization like Planned Parenthood, say? 

Have a good one

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Today, March 25, is “National Back Up Your Birth Control Day,” south of the border. Celebrate by getting Plan B emergency contraception at a great discount. Read more here.

No mention as to whether they’ll be giving out balloons and cotton candy.

Plan B emergency contraception provides a larger dose of the same hormones found in birth control pills…

Those hormones are estrogen and progesterone. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure it isn’t the same estrogen and progesterone which have been shown in extended doses to contribute to coronary heart disease and invasive breast cancer, just to name a few.

As part of this momentous celebration, Planned Parenthood will also be “lobbying members of Congress to permit over-the-counter access to EC regardless of age.”

What a proud day for women everywhere! Ladies, mark your calendars. This is something to be sure to celebrate every year.

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Andrea adds: It is very difficult to view unfettered access to Plan B for any age as being pro-woman and on this it really doesn’t matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice. Many of the women using Plan B repeatedly are young girls–not women. Marketing the morning-after pill like this makes it sound as though it’s a piece of cake. You take a pill, et voila! your problem disappears. But many girls can’t tolerate those high doses of hormones and end up throwing up. At which point, one can’t be sure the pill stayed down. So back for a second over-the-counter dose. Repeat the agony, which is heightened because you are alone (no doctor’s supervision is the whole point). That’s not health care. That’s a joke.

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Andrea adds again: It’s also International Day of the Unborn Child. I’ll admit though, that whether on my side or the other side, “International Days” of most kinds don’t thrill me. I gather this day aims to change our culture, to recognize and accept the unborn, and I’m glad.

The day was expressly started on the Feast of the Annunciation, making this particular day for the unborn more or less a Roman Catholic celebration. That’s not to say it couldn’t broaden out, but I firmly believe we need all peoples and faiths to join the fight against abortion, and I’m not sure that linking pro-life events to Roman Catholic holy days will achieve this goal.  (I’m well aware that other faiths are not exactly out there leading the charge on this one, so I appreciate the RCs doing it.) Some convoluted thoughts then, on this day for the unborn. Would that we lived in a culture where such a day was completely unnecessary.

A legal entity within a legal entity

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Does this make any sense? Are the rights of women eroded through government cutbacks? Do regular non-political Canadian women know what Status of Women Canada actually does? And on the “schizophrenia” of Bill C-484… well, have a read. It’s a very, um, interesting take on it.

Mrs. Carole Lavallée (Saint-Bruno-Saint-Hubert, BQ):
…In the days following International Women’s Day, I must say that it worries me deeply to sit in this Parliament under a Conservative government. I was elected almost four years ago and I have never had to make so many speeches to promote the status of women. This is unusual. I feel like the rug is being pulled out from under us.

It seems to me that this Conservative government is attacking the promotion of the status of women. Some attacks are obvious. The most obvious, of course, are the cuts made to Status of Women Canada, so that the organization would stop promoting the status of women. There have been many other attacks. The most recent is Bill C-484, introduced by a Conservative member, a legislative measure that greatly concerns me. The bill has to do with unborn victims of crime. Under the pretense of protecting fetuses and protecting women, it would give a legal status to the fetus. This could mean sending women to prison for having an abortion. It would turn back the clock on women’s rights by decades.

I am surprised that, as I speak here today in 2008, I am forced to defend women’s equality, to defend women’s bodies and to tell men they must stop trying to legislate on women’s bodies. They cannot simultaneously be a legal entity and have another legal entity inside them. That is schizophrenia. I say this jokingly, but I am really very worried.

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Brigitte adds: Yeah, and women cannot simultaneously be a human being and have another human being inside them. That is schizophrenia… (If that‘s what the opposition manages to come up with, I say we’re winning.)

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Tanya points out the obvious: Bill C-484 states: “For greater certainty, this section does not apply in respect of conduct relating to the lawful termination of the pregnancy of the mother of the child to which the mother has consented.”

Carole Lavallée says: “This could mean sending women to prison for having an abortion.”

She may be on to something with this “schizophrenia” concept… there’s definitely some paranoia going on. Elevating the rights of fetuses to a little lower than those of a house-cat has the pro-abortion side “really very worried”? In her place, I’d be more worried about how out of touch with Canadian women I am, since 74% of them are in favour of the bill.

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Véronique adds: You can go to prison for hurting a house cat. I’m just saying this to preempt comments about Tanya’s comment.  http://cfhs.ca/news/humane_societies_applaud_criminal_code_changes/Anyway… I have a dear friend who suffers from schizophrenia. We go back many years — before she was diagnosed — and she is one of the most courageous person I know. All this to say that for vocabulary’s sake, there is nothing “legal” about whatever lives in my friend’s head. I’m not even sure it’s an entity.And at the risk of sounding like a lawyer, I am a legal entity who lives in a legal entity. That would be my house. Seriously. I’ll spare your intelligence and stop here rather than explain how many legal entities we technically live in. As I’m writing this, I am humming “the head bone’s connected to the, neck bone. The neck bone’s connected to the backbone …”

 

Sex is a sacrament and not a commodity?

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Woah. Must be some deeply religious news source—perhaps a newspaper from the Vatican—making this recommendation:

Re-instituting the traditional Christian message on sex – it is a sacrament and not a commodity – would be a good place to start.

Not quite. The same paper reports high teen abortion rates: One in 23 teens in some areas have had an abortion. I must be jaded, because that doesn’t sound that high to me. It’s worth looking into the stats and figuring out very precisely how many women have had abortions. In Canada, 70 per cent of abortions happen before age 29. But how many are repeat abortions, which would change the number of women who have had one, and the rate. This is very important. Why? For accuracy alone, which is a good reason all by itself. The other reason why it’s important is that pro-abortion activists would like to “mainstream” abortion. It’s just so normal, why look! One in three women will have one before the age of 45. I highly doubt this statistic as cited by Planned Parenthood in the U.S. And as with so many of these finer points, it is critical to know the exact and correct number.As for sex education and abortion: I’m not convinced calling sex a sacrament will help (far too many don’t know what a sacrament is). But that it is not a commodity, not to be taken lightly, and to be avoided entirely as a teen: Why, oh why, is this so controversial in the public square? 

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Just stumbled across this: This item suggests some women have repeat abortions. Up to five, in spite of sex education. Interesting.

Obama, poverty and families

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Obama’s recent speech discussed race and poverty: Here’s what he did not discuss. Marriage is an anti-poverty campaign in itself. The article is from a non-so-con source (very important-because so-cons are born with a pro-marriage, pro-life gene, as we all  know).  

Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. … Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent-usually a father.

And lest you think the Republicans are doing any better on this issue…

Even Republican presidential nominee John McCain-whose economic agenda focuses on pro-growth policies, like corporate tax cuts-has little to say about the family, though the children of many fractured poor families will be in no position to take advantage of such tax cuts. … Comparing the rhetoric of the presidential candidates with the latest stark data on families is a reminder that, until we can at least begin to discuss in the political sphere one of the major causes of economic woes in America today, we can’t begin to take the necessary steps to reduce long-term poverty.

I laugh in the face of danger

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Joyce Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, called the Angus Reid poll “dangerous,” here.

 Feminists who are politically aware hear about this bill and immediately know what the problem is,” Arthur [said].

Clearly, Joyce Arthur and I do not share the same definition of dangerous. I feel that stiffer charges for violent criminals (as itemized in Bill C-484) are conducive to a less dangerous society. What can I say? I’m a little out there with my views sometimes.

Angus Reid Strategies’ director of global studies, Mario Canseco, [said] that the poll was not financed by any outside party and undertaken “out of our own interest”. Canseco called Arthur’s criticism of the way the poll was conducted “normal” and added, “this is one of the ways people react to surveys that show that not everyone agrees with them”.

British Embryo Research Bill

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I cannot pretend to begin to understand the science of this, but I’m not sure how much technical background one needs to feel that there is probably something very creepy going on here. 

Among other things, the proposed bill would allow researchers to “create inter-species hybrids by injecting human DNA into a hollowed-out animal egg cell. The resulting embryo is 99.9 percent human and 0.1 percent animal.” The point of creating such an embryo is to give scientists the large number of embryos they need to make stem cells to help find cures for a range of diseases. 

Again, I’m no scientist, but the government’s defence of the bill doesn’t seem to jive with the description of what actually goes on in this kind of research, at least as it is described by Reuters. The British Health Minister, Ben Bradshaw, has defended the bill by saying that it concerns the use of “pre-embryonic cells to do research that has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in this country”.  

In another Reuters article, a researcher defends the practice as follows: “The aim of our experiments is to discover ways to make stem cells for anyone that will be invaluable in treating human diseases, not to give birth to some abnormal chimera.” In other words, don’t worry, none of these embryonic “chimeras” (his word, not mine) will actually survive such experiments. How reassuring. 

On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Cardinal in Scotland has denounced the bill as a “monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life”.

Gee, I wonder who’s right?

By the way, according to Reuters, Canada is one of three other countries (besides the UK) where scientists carry out “similar work”. 

One thing you can’t do to your children…

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Found this in my morning’s Wall Street Journal:

A California court ruled this month that parents cannot “home school” their children without government certification. No teaching credential, no teaching. Parents “do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote California appellate Justice Walter Croskey.

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The case was initiated by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services after a home-schooled child reportedly complained of physical abuse by his father. A lawyer assigned to two of the family’s eight children invoked the truancy law to get the children enrolled in a public school and away from their parents. So a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the registration of all parents who crack a book for their kids. If this strikes some readers as a tad East German, we know how you feel.

Ain’t that scary?

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Tanya adds: Honestly, what does one have to do with the other?  Are government certified stay-at-home teacher less likely to physically abuse their children than those other parents who are not certified?

This is a pathetic excuse for the government to prevent parents from raising their families on their own terms; parents who seem to be turning out children more well-educated than those in public institutions.

 

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