A reporter called me yesterday asking what I thought about nominating Dr. Morgentaler for the Order of Canada.
I’d say Dr. Morgentaler should get the Order of Canada over my dead body… but why stop with me? There are so many more.
Here’s one concrete reason why he should not get the Order of Canada: What part of “I don’t want to do this to my baby” didn’t he understand?
(That quote comes at the 2.44 mark of this short film).
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ9AkTrbxgk]
I’m so very curious about this movie: Bella won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. I won’t pretend to understand whether that’s significant or not, but it sounds impressive.
Bella now has a Canadian distributor. According to the movie’s producer, the plan is to open in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver in March. I could not get any information as to specific dates but watch your newspaper listings.
I’m the kind of gal who thinks educated, confident young women ought to be in control of their lives. And I hate it when I read stories that prove me wrong. Like this one, in the Daily Telegraph, about a new British government plan that will tell doctors “to advise young women they should not automatically opt for oral contraceptives and instead think about using newer methods that last between three months and five years.” I don’t have strong opinions about which particular contraceptive method(s) should be used, other than to say I would personally choose the least invasive kind. But what to make of this:
At present, most women who ask their GPs for contraception are prescribed the Pill. Only about 14 per cent use a long-acting method such as the injection or implant, whereas 35 per cent – more than three million – use the Pill.
But more then three quarters forget to take their Pill on two or more consecutive days each month, meaning they risk falling pregnant.
Forgetting to take it is the most common reason for unwanted pregnancy cited by women seeking abortions.
I don’t mean to sound like a crusty old goat (no more than usual, I mean). But if you’re on the pill, and it’s your main method of contraception, and you’re, shall we say, “active”, the least you can do is remember to take the blasted thing every day. And if you forget? Wait until the next cycle to resume your, er, activities. It’s not that difficult, you know.
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Andrea adds: Many reasons to find newspapers depressing, but to the topic at hand: Waiting til the next cycle to “resume activities” requires speaking to your partner about why those “activities” have been unceremoniously halted. And The Pill is, I’m convinced, specially designed to ensure lower communication levels: More time “being active” and less time on pesky distractions, like talking. “A little less conversation, a little more action“–Some day a pharmaceutical company will use Elvis to advertise.
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Rebecca adds: A doctor once told me why she’s in favour of Depo, despite its significant health risks, for teenagers. Young women in her experience were too irresponsible, and their schedules were too erratic, to use the birth control pill properly. Their mothers, on the other hand, could be trusted to get them to the doctor every three months for a shot. The complete parental surrender implicit in this, not to mention the question-begging as to whether facilitating sexual activity for people too young and irresponsible to use the pill, is staggering. I guess today is my day to be a crusty old goat, too.
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Patricia adds: I’ll see your “crusty old goat” and raise you a “cynical witch”.
Let’s face it. The Pill is about consequence-free sex. So why should you even have to talk to your partner about pregnancy? I mean, you just want to have sex; what has one got to do with the other?
It seems to me that teenagers are especially susceptible to this way of thinking. You see it in other areas of their lives. For example, most teenagers can look forward to long lives, and as a result, they think that and behave as if they are immortal. With respect to sex, everywhere teens turn in our culture, they see it portrayed as some high-level recreational activity which may or may not have some emotional content, but certainly no real consequences. (Juno and Knocked up being the exception – sufficiently exceptional to be talked about as some kind of countercultural phenomena.)
I’m convinced that, as a result, teenagers (and not just teenagers) think at some level that sex really is consequence free. And all this despite the “blah, blah, blah” from counsellors and public health educators way off in the background (like Charlie Brown’s teacher) about STD’s, safe sex, using condoms, etc.
The result is that you end up with people thinking in some haphazard way that they can have sex and still somehow shouldn’t get pregnant, even if they haven’t taken their pills “properly”.
Suddenly, a pregnant women is victim of fate, not because of poverty or abuse or any number of the various terrible things that can happen to people, but just by virtue of being pregnant. Why else would a person feel that their lives have been “stolen” from them, just because they got pregnant after they had sex?
And I think this view of themselves as victims may be why women see themselves as entitled to do this otherwise awful thing to themselves and to their unborn child, to “get back their lives”, to paraphrase the abortionist in yesterday’s Post.
I don’t know that any right-wing pro-lifer thinks this is a “zinger“:
But [Michael Coren] is on shakier ground when he repeats one of the right-wing blogosphere’s most prized zingers: “More abortion doctors have been killed on episodes of Law & Order than have ever been killed in real life!”
Come now. Right-wing pro-lifers don’t worry about comparing real life with Law & Order. We’re too busy figuring out how to outlaw Law & Order itself – and though it’s shooting for the stars to be sure, that pernicious thing called television all told. Nice try.
Is it me, or is this creepy?
Scientists in Britain are claiming a medical first, creating human embryos with the genetic material of three people: one man and two women.
Yes, I know. These experiments are done by people who are trying to save mankind from terrible diseases. I’m not completely against science. But there are (or should be) limits to how much we try to remake humans.
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Andrea adds: Brigitte, it’s not you. It is creepy. But more than that, and perhaps more importantly, I’d argue it’s wrong, whether creepy or not.
…is proving to be a bust instead. A new documentary discusses the problem. (I have not seen anything but the trailer).
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Brigitte adds: Whoa, nellie. That’s scary. And notice the bit in the trailer where they discuss the merits of the traditional family… Can you honestly say you weren’t warned?
There’s a reason why I link to The Dawn Patrol on this site-she posts good stuff. Today’s meandering exegesis examines all the bad things that have happened to her lately and how…they actually worked for good. A reminder: There is no conspiracy. Bad things happen to good people. And the trucks that repeatedly splashed slush all over my new black pants on the way to work did not do so purposefully.
The U.K. will allow men with multiple wives to claim multiple benefits. Read all about it, here. The “Have your say” question asks this: “Should multiple wives get recognition from the state?” Er, how about “Should men have multiple wives?”
Then again, any criticism is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, in a way.
If I were Garson Romalis, I would want to make a really strong case for why dismembering 18-week-old babies isn’t wrong. He does it, here. I was going to transcribe this talk because I heard it live.
What struck me when I heard him was his tone of condescending superiority: His is the only speciality, he says, where women say “Thank you for what you do.” Excuse me? Really? Ever seen someone suffering from cancer and seen a doctor do all he could to save her? Ever seen a psychiatrist visiting patients on Christmas Eve, when he himself should be home with his family? Ever witnessed a family doc squeeze an extra patient in his day, because a patient called in desperate pain and needed to be checked out?
All Romalis knows is abortion. Instead of helping women, he puts them under the knife and sends them packing into the great silent beyond. For his two heart-wrenching anecdotes of women suffering, there are thousands more suffering today, the direct result of his actions. Only he doesn’t speak for them. Who does, is the question, really. Who does?
In the letters page of the National Post this morning is a summary of letters received after the Morgentaler retrospective last week. There is an excerpt containing the old chestnut that most anti-abortion activists are men, that it’s about controlling women, that if men got pregnant this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s to put this to rest that I think PWPL is so timely and necessary.
While noting that I don’t think the taxpayer should fund medically unnecessary surgery in general, and that Canada’s lack of abortion law puts us well to the left of all of Europe in terms of access to abortion at any stage in pregnancy, for any reason, I’m not in favour of trying to legislate abortion out of existence. For one thing, the problem isn’t just that abortions are readily available; if we somehow shut down all abortion providers in Canada, there would still be demand, which could be satisfied by clinics in the USA, among others. On the other hand, if we can reduce demand by changing how people think about abortion, the number of abortions will fall whether or not willing doctors are easy to find. For another, the strenuous efforts of abolitionists have yielded very little in terms of measurable progress in reducing abortion, so it’s time to try a more fruitful strategy.
I have my own beliefs about the sanctity and rights of an unborn baby, but I don’t think we’ll change many minds by arguing about that. The proliferation of 3D ultrasound machines, new research about fetal awareness and pain, and the increasing viability of extremely premature babies will continue to make an impression on some people, but for those who are heavily invested in the moral neutrality of abortion on demand, and who see the concession of any status to the fetus as in direct conflict with the rights of the mother, this won’t make a lot of difference.
We need more discussion, then, of abortion as a women’s issue. Abortion damages women. It does them physical and psychological harm, which is multiplied by the fact that very few women seeking abortions give their informed consent (meaning consent even after being advised of the risks.) Those of us who take such things seriously tend to agree that it does them spiritual harm. More broadly, a culture in which abortion is seen as essentially harmless wreaks profound changes to our collective understanding of motherhood, sexuality, the obligations of mothers and fathers to each other and their children, and adulthood. These changes aren’t good for anyone, but they’re especially pernicious to young women.
An obstetrician I met several years ago told me that in his experience, “women want an abortion like an animal in a trap wants to chew its leg off.” Making it easier and less painful to chew off a leg isn’t how I want to make a difference. We need to talk about why women choose abortion, how that choice affects them and those close to them in the short- and long-term, and what we can do to help women, after they’ve had an abortion and especially before they make that choice.