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Beauty and intelligence

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simone.jpg 

Today, feminists everywhere celebrate what would have been Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th birthday. She was Jean-Paul Sartre’s “life partner.” But let’s be perfectly clear: It’s not that she would have needed Sartre, no no, she was indeed independent. No woman ever needs a man. It’s just that articles about her tend to mention her relationship to him straight away, and then segue into her completely unique contributions to feminism and philosophy. One of her beliefs, as per Der Spiegel:

…Beauvoir refused to buy into the notion, considered a matter of course in the bourgeois society of the day, that beauty and intelligence are incompatible.

Though it’s certainly not clear that they always go together, either. Probably need to go on a case by case basis on that one.

Don’t count on governments

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What’s that quote-no policy win is permanent, no defeat everlasting? In Australia, the Howard government had banned aid to fund abortions in developing nations. Now an opposition coalition is moving to overturn that ban.

A federal Liberal MP who chairs an all-party parliamentary group wants the Rudd Labor government to end the ban on funding family planning advice for women in developing countries, calling the ban stupid and anti-women.

and  

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said Australia must do everything it could to give people in the developing world a reasonable expectation of a healthy life.

Anti-woman? Abortions offer a healthy life? Hello, unsubstantiated opinion-goodbye reasonable effort to stop the advent of abortion in developing countries where access to basic health care is a problem, forget about abortion.

The bottom line: Don’t count on governments to stem the tide of abortion extremism. And I might add, that’s a good thing. We should be able to discern all on our own what constitutes good policy, without the reigning elite telling us.

“Changing abortion’s pronoun”

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5f9-b-Zfnw]

Part of the mantra-say it with me-abortion is a woman’s right-denies the fact that men are ever involved, or that they might want a say.

This article from the Los Angeles Times highlights how abortion affects men, after a conference in San Francisco for post-abortive men.  Raises the valid question: If men and women have children together–as in these are “our kids”–do they not also have the abortion together?

Reminds me of this young rapper mourning the loss of his child. Watch the video above and tell me that men don’t care.

Making war out of nothing at all

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Who is more in favour of “abortion rights? ” Says Hillary: “I am!” Says Barack: “No, I am!”

It’s really hard to win an imaginary war–“abortion rights” don’t exist. “The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of abortions” ain’t enshrined nowhere.

Good luck, then, to both of them in this politicking over nothing at all. We all know they are on the same page on abortion, anyway.

The question nobody’s asking

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If I weren’t afraid of stale metaphors, I’d say this is where the rubber meets the road.

Some MPs are rallying support for a proposed law that would make it a crime to kill or injure an unborn child after a Winnipeg woman, who was eight months pregnant, was shot to death.

Conservative MP Ken Epp, who recently tabled private member’s bill C-484 called the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act,” said the legislation would create a new offence in the Criminal Code. The bill addresses a “huge gap” in law when a violent act is perpetrated against a woman who has chosen to carry the fetus to term, he said.

“This is a case when the woman has decided to have that child, and that choice has to be protected in law,” Epp said. “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m pro-life. But this bill goes very narrowly at one issue — where the woman has made the choice to have the child, and that choice is taken away unilaterally, without her consent and usually with violence.”

Seems like a no-brainer. Most people, I think, would agree attacking a pregnant woman is worse than attacking a man or a non-pregnant woman. It’s just one of these things everybody knows. Including, it would appear, the pro-abortion person the newspaper story had to quote.

Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, said the usual things about slippery slopes and women’s rights (as if the rights of women who actually want to keep their babies didn’t count), but then, in the words of the newspaper story, she “suggested 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.”

And nobody thought to ask her why. Why impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant? Why should the justice system care about a clump of cells that, we insist, is NOT a person?

Newsflash: Hollywood is not a good teacher

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For the love of the saints-do I need to write this? Hollywood movies are not a good tool of instruction for your kids.  Today Ellen Goodman of the Washington Post Writers Group notices this, and bemoans a spate of movies she says are unrealistic, and uncomplicated. What? Hollywood, unrealistic?  Shocking.

We are in the midst of an entire wave of movies about unexpectedly pregnant women-from Knocked Up to Waitress to Bella-all deciding to have their babies and all wrapped up in nice neat bows,” she writes.

Now, ignore the fact that these movies are truly the exception to the norm-the usual Hollywood storyline is more American Beauty than Bella-and ignore the fact that she clearly has not seen Waitress-the lead actress there allows her baby to lead her away from “Husband Wrong” to singleness, not Mr. Right, as she claims-ignore all that, and I’d still say I can’t believe Goodman is actually complaining that parents are being called to, well, parent.

Once again, adults are being called to teach against the cultural tide,” she writes, angrily bemoaning the fact that “when Spears told the world she was pregnant, it was described as a ‘teachable moment…’  

If I ever have daughters, I’m just going to sit them down in front of Enchanted and The Sound of Music on repeat. That way, when a wicked witch kicks them out of Fairy Tale Land, they’ll have the real life survival skills to cope with New York City in their poofy prom dresses at night. Alternatively, when Mother Superior kicks them out of the Abbey, they’ll fall right into the arms of a dashing sea captain, who will leave his fiancée (she goes back to Vienna, where she belongs) and change from a taciturn, angry man into a warm and loving husband.

That’s my plan, anyway. 

And on a different, more serious note, these movies reflect the reality that most of us are uncomfortable with abortion–and plans to socially engineer that discomfort away make us more uncomfortable, not less. Hence Hollywood-movieland may from time to time address the topic in a way that is profoundly unrealistic.

But turn that frown upside down, Ellen! The vast majority of girls and women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy really are living sad and complicated lives. And they go to the abortion clinic so that we as a society don’t need to grapple with their problems and can go on living our enchanted lives.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGdi_4v020]

Is “Choose Life” religious speech?

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 A New York court has decided that the phrase “Choose Life” is not religious speech.

…a New York federal district court refused to permit the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles to amend her answer to raise an Establishment Clause defense, finding that religious speech was not involved…

Are they sure? “Choosing” and “life” could be part of a religion somewhere. But I’ll leave that decision to the judges in New York.

For my part, I’ve long been worried about Ontario’s license plates, “Yours to discover.” Discover what? Ontario? Or perhaps you should discover yourself, implying some sort of spiritual journey. My point is, it’s all very nebulous, and this government slogan could be deemed religious, or irreligious and therefore offensive, to someone, somewhere, at any point soon.

I’m concerned.  

A revolution in Britain?

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A story in the Daily Telegraph explains how an overwhelming majority of British GPs do not wish to perform abortions.

Family doctors are threatening a revolt against Government plans to allow them to perform abortions in their surgeries, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Four out of five GPs do not want to carry out terminations even though the idea is being tested in NHS pilot schemes, a survey has revealed.

The findings will throw doubt on Government trials to provide medical abortions – using drugs in the early stage of pregnancy – outside hospitals.

In a survey for The Daily Telegraph that was carried out by Doctors.Net, an online organisation representing GPs in England and Wales, only 14 per cent of the 2,175 GPs who responded were willing to undertake the procedure.

More than three quarters said they were not willing to carry out abortions and 54 per cent of these strongly objected to the idea.

The comments at the bottom of the news story are quite interesting. Most seem strongly against the idea of forcing doctors to abort babies.

Radical fallacies

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What do I think about supposed pro-lifers who kill abortionists? I think they’re not pro-life. They may call themselves pro-life, but they are not.

  

I bring this up because on December 27, the front page story in the National Post intends to examine the beliefs of fringe pro-lifers and discusses their murderous actions as acts of faith.

 

These lunatics make for easy targets, and deserve the scorn, derision and life sentences in prison they receive. 

 

I call them lunatics: But this is not to say I believe that those who commit lunatic acts—like killing abortionists—are crazy. Quite the contrary—they often follow a set of beliefs they believe to be rational and logical. I’ll turn to another National Post columnist today to explain what I mean: “There is bad philosophy, and bad ethics and bad theology—just as there is bad science. They produce ideas which are false—and all false ideas of consequence are eventually dangerous.” That’s Father Raymond de Souza for you—far more eloquent than I’ll ever be.

 

In this vein, killing abortionists is the dangerous consequence of bad philosophy and bad ethics.   And while we’re on the topic of bad beliefs, there’s plenty of ‘em out there, firmly embedded in our current zeitgeist. It’s the purpose of this group to combat just one of them: The radical idea grounded in extreme utilitarianism that abortion helps women. I raise my glass (but far away from my laptop so as not to spill on the keyboard): A toast to fighting bad ideas, no matter how they manifest themselves, no matter how popular they become. 

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