These stories cannot get enough coverage:

The incident on the Calgary campus occurred the evening of February 19, 2013. Nicholas McLeod, president of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, ventured to campus and was distributing postcards containing graphic imagery when he was approached by security members and asked to stop.

McLeod said Monday in his first interview since the incident that when he refused to hand over his postcards he was knocked to the ground and swarmed by as many as five guards. […]

McLeod claims he’d been recording the guards on his phone and stuffed the device in his pants to prevent them from seizing it. He said he was taken to a holding room and remained handcuffed for three hours.

“They wouldn’t let me call a lawyer, they wouldn’t let me do anything,” he said. “They put the cuffs on extremely tight . . . I was in agony.”

He’s launched a $120,000 lawsuit. Good for him.

Robin Williams was a comedic genius. His death has left many reeling and mourning. There is something terrible and sad about suicide always, but particularly when a life was dedicated to making others laugh.

His suicide is a springboard to a broader point about combating suicide. For if current “death with dignity” folks have their way, we’ll soon have no logical reason to decry suicide at all.

How do we help people in a severe depression see through to a brighter time?

Certainly not by selling exit bags on the Internet. Pardon the extremely macabre nature of this, but exit bags are placed over one’s head, tied at the neck and used with a sedative-type drug so that our natural instincts for survival don’t take over when the carbon monoxide levels rise in the bag.

(Some help combat suicidal tendencies. Others provide the tools. It’s truly almost hard to believe.)

There has been no approval of suicide after his death, only shock and mourning. Suicide is always tragic, let it not be considered a viable option in any circumstance. Death with dignity does not mean providing an exit bag, it means providing hope. If Robin Williams had thought his death through more completely, and requested it, under current euthanasia legislation presented in Quebec right now, he would be granted it.

Things to ponder as we try to create a brighter world for people suffering in the dark realm of depression.

Robin Williams, Rest In Peace.

I’m not going to teach my kids about ‘safe sex’ because I don’t want to lie to them.

I have to say that while the article is great, I had to read it with the very same La Senza ad I just complained about running down the side. Irony. Makes that message just a little bit harder for all parents to teach, you know, with a dominatrix leering over your shoulder even as you try.

Anyhoo. Join the prude revolution, as I like to say. If understanding the natural consequences of sex and teaching those makes me a prude then I’m just going to grab hold of the label and enjoy it.

About that surrogacy case:

In Canada, negotiating how to deal with pregnancy crises like possible serious disability is a “very important” part of bringing together surrogate mothers and intended parents, said Sara Cohen, a fertility lawyer. Sometimes, “what we are looking for … in a gestational carrier is one who is going to understand that this is not her child, so it’s not her decision to make,” she said. “Is it her body? Yes, it’s her body, but it’s not her decision to make.”

ProWomanProLifer Véronique, who now blogs here, wrote in to mention the contradiction she sees:

There’s a contradiction between the abortion rhetoric (“my body, my choice”) and the surrogacy rhetoric (her body, not her choice). The funny thing is that people who support surrogacy are usually pro-choice (it all falls within the rubric of child as a choice or a right). People who are pro-life are generally against surrogacy because it requires the creation of disposable embryos (or more embryos than are needed), and it makes the baby into a commodity, not a gift. Then there is also the class issue: My body, my choice when it comes to occidental white women, her body not her choice when it comes to poor women selling their wombs to white occidental women.

All good points.

Well, actually, it’s not as strongly worded as I would like. Today I needed to get an errand done at lunch, and walked by La Senza in the mall. Their ads… Wow. So terrible. A notch worse than what I’ve seen from them in the past.

I thought about walking in and complaining. I ended up sending them a note via email through their web site:

Dear La Senza:
I am writing because your current store advertising is offensive to me. It is my choice whether I walk into your store. But when going through the mall, the images I see are not my choice. If I were in the mall with my young nieces, I wouldn’t want them to see your ads.  Thank you for considering a less aggressive, less crass look to your advertising. Young girls have a hard enough time finding self-esteem today. This advertising makes that a lot harder.

I feel only a bit better. It remains true that I wouldn’t want my nieces to see those ads!! So what to do? Just never go to a mall? Craft a route through the mall that avoids their store? Honestly.

I was reading about the Australian surrogacy case, of the twin who was dumped because he was a defective product. If this story moves you, and you want to help support Gammy, you can do so here.

As we grapple with the shock of a child being treated that way, it is my hope we turn the shock inward. Because many a Canadian mother has aborted her child for a bad prenatal diagnosis, even when the child was desperately wanted. As the world looks on, and honours this Thai mother for doing the right thing, think of the many of us who have done the wrong thing. The Australian couple who rejected Gammy is in every single last one of us.

All the more reason to honour Gammy’s mom for what must be seen as a heroic act.

In this article, I was reported as saying:

Andrea Mrozek, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, said she disagrees with making comparisons between abortion and historical tragedies.But she said Mr. Savoie’s concern, that today’s culture is indifferent to the consequences of abortion, is not surprising coming from a Catholic. “It’s not terribly shocking to have a strong Catholic appointed to the Holy See,” she said. “It boggles my mind people are still shocked by that.” Ms. Mrozek said the logical extension of what the NDP is suggesting is that people with pro-life views are unwelcome in public service.

This is about the appointment of Dennis Savoie as Canada’s envoy to the Holy See.

What I believe: I appreciate comparisons that drive home that abortion kills a person, but timing matters. The direct aftermath of a terrorist bombing is not the appropriate time to raise up abortion. If I consider the families mourning their loss in 9-11, some of them may be pro-life, but the two things—abortion and a terrorist bombing–have nothing to do with one another save for the fact that a person was killed. If I lost my family in a car crash tomorrow, I’d be thoroughly unimpressed if someone implied it wasn’t really significant, since so many more babies are killed by abortion in a day. Depending on how/where and when a comparison between abortion and historical tragedies are made, they might be callous, even if they drive a point about personhood home. Now Savoie may have been comparing reactions to certain types of deaths, not comparing the events themselves. I still think doing so too close to the tragedy engenders misunderstanding, not converts, to the pro-life cause.

That said, what one says to a pro-life gathering is different from what one says to the world at large, and his comments ought not have been pulled out of that context. Tone matters, too. And absolutely none of us would fare very well if we were called to account for every single thing we had ever said, publicly. I hate this “gotcha” style of politics that sees people employed to engage in practices most of us left behind in grade nine–poking fun and distorting or exaggerating.

Finally, yes, people, it’s true. Pro-lifers believe the baby in the womb is a person. We really do. It’s not surprising. It’s not new. Embryology textbooks used in medical schools back up the notion that new life begins when sperm meets egg. So it’s not a mystical notion, either. This conviction that people are people no matter how small is shared by  a sizable minority of Canadians. In this dialogue of the deaf, a good starting point might be to recognize this, since it sheds light on why pro-lifers believe abortion is a human rights crisis.

I am dismayed. They don’t mention if they made sure to implant a male embryo, either, a valid question given the problems China has with aborted girls.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmCZ6dJhh_U]

Timely:

Women taking newer formulations of birth control pills could face a 50 percent or higher increased risk of breast cancer than those not using oral contraceptives, according to a study by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists.

Some versions of the drugs used to prevent pregnancy – particularly those with high doses of estrogen, some types of progestin and certain dosing schedules – appeared to boost the risk, according to a review of 20 years of health system electronic pharmacy records.

Reporting research that few are aware of is not fear mongering, it is informing.