When I first heard of William F. Buckley some 20 years ago, I didn’t like him.
It was Christmas. I wanted rollerblades. I got a William F. Buckley Word a Day calendar.
Since then, my esteem for this man with a great vocabulary and a great vision has grown. He accomplished so much, and for the purposes of this site, we should honour him for holding the life line in our culture. Not merely for holding it, but for ardently and eloquently defending it.
Read more about his life, here.
A Lifesite editorial here comments on the recent Hastings Center Report on infant euthanasia in the Netherlands. This point struck me as interesting:
What [pro-lifers] seem to have failed to recognize, therefore, at least with the necessary clarity, is that the humanity or inhumanity of the fetus is often no longer the issue – at least, not within the elite spheres of the pro-death movement…
Agreed. I once interviewed a woman working in an abortion clinic. Our conversation became more heated (not good) and I spluttered something along these lines of “Don’t you know what the fetus is?” She in turn rolled her eyes at me and said “Of course. You think I don’t know? You think women don’t know?”
So it was then that I realized there are two types of pro-choice people: Those who naively believe the fetus is not a person until a certain magical moment in gestation and those who know the fetus is human from day one but don’t care. (They also get touchy on the terms “person” versus “human” but that’s the substance of a different post. The fetus is human because it’s not animal or mineral, but a person? That’s a whole different ballgame. )
So Robert Latimer is to be released from jail. That makes me angry. I understand that he’s no danger to society, and that he’s unlikely to re-offend. But that’s not the point, and never was. It is illegal – and wrong – to take the life of disabled people no matter what the reason. It bothers me that we live in a society that fully sanctions it when the disabled person is still in the womb, and tolerates it once the person is out.
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Andrea adds: More disturbing than what Latimer did–kill his daughter–has been some of the sanctimonious pontificating from the media, which has ranged from full on sympathy, to understanding tolerance. This article is no different:
Born with a severe form of cerebral palsy, Latimer’s daughter Tracy was 12 years old, weighed barely 40 pounds, had no mobility, suffered unrelenting pain and endured five to six epileptic seizures a day, when Latimer ended her life… She had little more than a newborn’s consciousness and could communicate only through expressions, laughing and crying.
This is false, but even if it were true, so what? They claim suffering, suffering, suffering on Tracy’s part, but always neglect to discuss her and who she was: Her personality, her preferences, her schedule, her day. Tracy Latimer was a sister and a daughter, who had favourite colours and foods, and was a part of a family just the same as me. And I mean that. Tracy Latimer was no less a person than I.
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Véronique adds: About the likelihood of re-offending. When I was listening to excerpts of the parole board proceedings, the Board asked Latimer a question along the lines of: “What if one of your family members was disabled following a car accident? Would you take it upon yourself to end their life?” If my memory serves me well, Latimer never answered the question directly. It was a valid question that deserved an answer. While we are led to believe that disability is congenital and can be avoided by advocates of prenatal genetic testing, disability is often accidental. Latimer may never have to end the life of another daughter with cerebral palsy, granted. But it doesn’t mean that he will never be faced again with the disability of a loved one.
Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has a letter in the Citizen today. She states there is a conflict between Bill C-484 (unborn victims of violence) and existing laws. There isn’t-because the only law governing the fetus today, and after this bill too, is a woman’s choice.
A woman can do what she chooses with her unborn child.
Now what Arthur is getting at is a longstanding hypocrisy: When an unborn child is wanted, he or she gets medical treatment, even in the womb. And when unwanted, he or she can be killed.
With this bill, when a wanted unborn child dies, the criminal can be charged accordingly.
The decision still hinges on a woman’s choice.
This hypocrisy has existed for some time, and this bill rests on that hypocrisy.
In these cases of violence against pregnant women, they wanted their babies. They chose to keep them. Therefore, honouring their memory, as per their family’s requests, many of whom are backing the bill, means charging the criminal for two murders.
Joyce Arthur, with her complaint, is suggesting that in these cases of violence against a woman and her child, that woman’s choice doesn’t count.
Why? Because Joyce Arthur fears, more than usual, that the eternal hypocrisy of our system will be exposed. (This system, which cares for infants on one floor of a hospital and aborts them on another.)
But either this is a game of choice, or it’s not.
Joyce has two choices then: To support women’s choices, or not.
Arbitrary? Yes. But groups like hers made the rules. Now they ought to play by them.
…Canada! For “scariest country on the planet,” in the Gender Politics category.
I do wonder, however, why Canada would be worse than the UK, or the States. Seems to me women’s studies departments and gender politics thrive elsewhere too.
But no matter, the honour, for today, is all ours.
PWPL is proud to report that our very own Brigitte Pellerin is swish. Or at very least, she’s attending a swishy event. She’s on the jury that nominates the winner of the prestigious Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing and has both a ticket and a dress for this hot, sold out event. No karate kimono tonight.
This revelation spells the end of her self-deprecating “I’m an old goat” series of jokes. Clearly, you are cool and I think the rest of the old goats here would appreciate it if you just came clean.
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Brigitte is: Thinking about a comeback… I’m sure there’s one somewhere… How about I like being an old goat? Does that work?
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Andrea adds: As in, you are an old goat in swishy clothing? Works for me.
Vicki Saporta and the National Abortion Federation will not support Bill C-484. That’s the unborn victims of violence bill before Parliament right now. How could they? They point out in the release that the bill’s sponsor, Ken Epp is a known public enemy, er sorry, “a known opponent of legal abortion.” For the National Abortion Federation, it’s all sweetness and decency, hands across the water and teaching the world to sing: Until a pro-lifer enters the room.
Their reasoning? The bill will apparently conflict with “well-established Canadian laws.”
NAF fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term. Because this bill does nothing to protect women and because its possible consequences include casting doubt over well-established Canadian law, NAF opposes C-484.
That’s funny, because Parliament deemed the bill votable. And then there’s the fact that Canada has no abortion law. So where might the conflict be?
On the plus side, NAF will not be mandating death–they felt it necessary to state their support for a woman’s right to keep her baby in the same press release.
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Brigitte adds: I always like to ask people why they say the things they say. Here I would like to know why the NAF insists that they “fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term.” I’m glad they do, and I don’t mean to question their motives (well, you know, not unduly), but I wonder why they felt the need to add this sentence. It’s like this other bit I noticed a while back, from Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, who suggested that:
… a more appropriate way of dealing with such a serious crime is for the courts to impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant.
Why do people who insist the fetus has no rights because it is not a person also insist that a crime against a woman who is carrying one of those non-person things in her body should be punished more severely than a crime against a woman who’s not carrying a non-person fetus thing in her body?
Read about your right to accurate sex selection–for purposes of abortion– here.
…Eventually, we’ll establish rules to ensure the safety and efficacy of fetal sex tests. At that point, we’ll declare them adequately regulated. That’s how a taboo begins to die…
Sex selection abortion–if only we could make it safer, more reliable. Avoid the pain and distress of a false gender test result. Just imagine what those couples must suffer.
David Cameron, Conservative opposition leader in the UK will support a lower limit on abortion. That limit currently stands at 24 weeks.
Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, won’t, “on the basis of medical advice.”
Though it’s admirable that Cameron will support a lower limit, this is the kind of debate I’d rather not have. Abortion is not typically at any number of weeks about women’s health, but rather about our cultural mentality. If it were truly about women’s health, we’d encourage a woman’s ability to support what her body does naturally. 24 weeks, 20 weeks, 14 weeks, eight weeks, four weeks or two… always a person, and largely a choice made for distinctly non-medical reasons.
I have been rather busy lately with the launch of a new television show and haven’t had a chance to write much. Or do anything else, for that matter. (And you do know, don’t you, how fast a pile of laundry can grow when left unattended?) I didn’t catch the Oscars last night, but I now see Juno won for best writing, which is awesome. I saw the film a few weeks ago and was both charmed and delighted a) by the movie’s plot; and b) by its non-preachiness. I was worried it’d be a movie about abortion, which I didn’t really want to see. But it’s not. It’s a wonderfully clever little love story in which a pregnant teenager decides to carry her baby to term. Well done.
