Lots to enjoy just in the headline alone!

(Emphasis mine and added for your reading pleasure.)

Thankfully, the PEI government is resisting pressure to have abortions performed on the Island.  Make no mistake, the pressure is intense.

A press conference will held tomorrow by the US-based National Abortion Federation.  Their media advisory goes as follows:

On Wednesday, May 28 representatives from the National Abortion Federation, the University of Prince Edward Island and Dr. Robyn MacQuarrie, a gynecologist who is willing to provide abortion care in PEI, will discuss a proposal to bring abortion care to the province. This proposal has been presented to the PEI Medical Advisory Committee; however, it has not been moved forward even though it would promote women’s health and be cost‐positive for the province.

We therefore ask, on what basis is the project proposal for a Termination of Pregnancy Service not being approved?

On what basis is the province of PEI continuing to refuse to provide the women of PEI with access to a medically necessary service that it is their constitutionally protected right to access?

Really?  “Medically necessary” and “constitutionally protected right”.  Wow.  That rhetoric is really getting old. Certainly no one is buying that anymore.

Fortunately, the CBC actually gave airtime to the PEI Right Association.

P.E.I.  Right to Life president Holly Pierlot said she’s pleased government is not moving forward with a plan to have abortions performed in the province, but added the status quo isn’t where she wants the province to stay when it comes to abortion.

She wants government to take a stronger stand against the procedure.”We would like the government to base their decision on the science about the long-term impacts of abortion on women, and begin to create policy that reflect real health care, not health care put forward as a euphemism for abortion on demand,” said Pierlot.

We need to hear more about the long term health impacts on women and their families.

Read it here:

A day later, objecting to Sun News’ coverage — apparently reporting what Trudeau says is upsetting to Liberals — a party spokesperson explained by email what Trudeau apparently meant to say.

“Mr. Trudeau and the Liberal Party do not condone sex-selective abortion … the Canadian Medical Association (has) stated clearly they do not condone sex-selective abortion and we of course support that.”

Okay. So why didn’t Trudeau say that the first time?

Are we left to conclude that the party adopted this position solely because the CMA did? Can’t we reach the conclusion, on our very own, that ‘gendercide = bad’?

Maybe I’m reading too much into the email excerpt. Maybe I’m too upset. Maybe gendercide makes me upset.

Sigh.

Andre Schutten describes the challenge in a piece that ran in The Calgary Herald this weekend. Have a read. I hope the group fights this restriction. I think they have the law on their side.

In December, the Barrhead/Neerlandia ARPA group contacted Pattison billboards to see if they could place an ad on the Edmonton Transit System (ETS) buses. The poster is a simple design, non-graphic in nature, honest in its inquiry. There is clear contact information in the form of a website for where the conversation on the questions posed can be continued. Having personally checked the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards, this poster was good to go. (Judge for yourself — the billboard is kindly reproduced here.)

The billboard poses a simple, yet provocative, pair of questions designed to get Edmonton citizens thinking and talking. The poster wants the viewer to consider the reality that Canada has absolutely no laws protecting pre-born human beings (a reality, I might add, unique to any democratic country in the world). The wording of the poster is carefully crafted to elicit discussion about the meaning of the word “choice,” about the acceptability of late-term abortions, and about the reality of gendercide, a phenomenon happening in Canada (as documented by the CBC) where female babies are aborted simply because they are female.

All of this is legal. All of this should be discussed. All of this made a nameless bureaucrat at the ETS too squeamish to allow the posters.

Despite public funding of abortion services that take place off Prince Edward Island, the National Abortion Federation is pushing to have the procedure take place on the Island.

Dawn Fowler, Canadian director of the National Abortion Federation, says her organization has presented a business case to the Robert Ghiz government with the aim to make abortion services available to women in P.E.I.

According to this article in the Guardian, Fowler has three abortionists willing to cross over to the Island to perform abortions in the hospital’s ambulatory care rooms.

Not surprisingly, the government is resisting this move.  But Fowler seems determined.

The federation is planning a news conference in Charlottetown next Wednesday that will include one of the physicians willing to offer abortion services in P.E.I.

What do you think about this?

Parents were outraged after an Arizona high school featured a two-page spread in their yearbook showing images of teen students who were either pregnant or had babies. The concerned parents and grandparents complained that the high school was wrongfully glamourizing teen pregnancy. […]

Students were also shocked and unhappy to find these photos in their yearbook. Fellow student Gregory Gomez explained, “There are other kids who have worked harder for better accomplishments. And (the young parents) have a whole page for their kids.”

Teen pregnancy is obviously no easy thing. Teens choosing to carry their children to term and raise them or place them with loving families face tough decisions and sacrifice. I hope their families, schools, churches and communities provide them with the support they need.

They are growing up in a culture that glamourizes teen sex through every medium. Teens are viewing and becoming addicted to porn at alarming rates. It is becoming more graphic and more accessible than ever before.

So we can’t act surprised that teens are having sex and getting pregnant.

And these teen parents are part of the school body. They are also students. They participate in the school community and culture. It doesn’t sound like the two page spread glamourized teen sex and parenting. In fact, the teens are quoted on the challenges they face.

So does this spread ‘glamourize’ teen sex and pregnancy? Or is it just reflecting a reality?

Should we be outraged at the pictures? Or the mess of a culture that they’re having to navigate?

As Andrea says, bring on the prude revolution.

I found this to be a particularly touching reality check. Sadly we’ve heard of the women who suffer in silence after an abortion, but as always, there is the unexpected fall out with cultural changes. What a sensitive disclosure.

I think this issue deserves a little attention, especially as it appears to be hiding just around the corner.

Living with Dignity is a group in Quebec that is trying to expose the pushing through of Bill 52 which, if adopted, will legalize euthanasia in the province in contravention of the Criminal Code.

The bill on end-of-life was reintroduced in the National Assembly on May 22 around 11:15 am. There was no debate. It happened in less than a minute. Dr. Barrette and Mrs. Hivon are to be named co-sponsors. Around 1:15 pm, representatives of all four parties stated during a press conference that there would be a free vote for all MNAs. Everything tells us that they will be going to vote before the end of next week.

Living with Dignity and the Physicians’ Alliance against Euthanasia, who represent over 625 physicians and 17,000 citizens in the Province of Quebec announced that should Bill 52 be passed,

we would institute a legal challenge attacking the constitutionality of those provisions in the statute that, under the pretense of “medical aid in dying”, are aimed at decriminalizing euthanasia.  Indeed, these provisions violate our Charters of rights and encroach on federal jurisdiction over criminal law, as euthanasia constitutes a culpable homicide under our Criminal Code.

Living with Dignity maintains that the rushing through of this Bill is a parody of democracy that invites legal challenges.

For some really great background information on this whole issue, you can go to the LifeCanada web-site here.

Quebec citizens are urged to contact their MNAs.

Justin Trudeau cannot condemn sex-selection abortions. Of course he can’t. When you give a blanket endorsement of “a woman’s right to choose,” then you can’t condemn gendercide. Because that would be, you know, logically inconsistent. And therefore gendercide somehow becomes an expression of a Charter right. (And no, again, there is no Charter right to abortion.) And so, it somehow seems it’s a woman’s right to have female babies killed in Canada because they are female.

Is your head spinning?

Full Transcript:

MARISSA SEMKIW: A woman comes to you. She says she’s pregnant with a girl and she wants to terminate the life of the child because it’s a girl. What would you say to her?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: My position has been very clear. The Liberal Party is the party standing up for people’s rights. And the Liberal Party will always be the party of the Charter. So we will continue to stand up for people’s rights and not legislate them away.

MARISSA SEMKIW: So to be clear, you wouldn’t discourage her from having an abortion because it’s a girl?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: My role as the leader of the Liberal Party is to make sure that Canadian legislation respects peoples rights and that’s what I will continue to do.

MARISSA SEMKIW: Yesterday you said you were happy with the status quo on abortion. But right now the status quo is that it’s perfectly fine to abort a child because it’s a girl. Do you have no qualms with that?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I will leave discussions like that between a woman and the health professionals that she encounters. I don’t think the government should be in the business of legislating away people’s rights. And that’s why the Liberal Party is steadfast in this position.

Women do not care what the personhood status of the fetus is in deciding whether or not to have abortions.

Joyce Arthur makes this point with Jerry Agar, and I fully agree.

Pro-life education campaigns need to draw attention to the humanity of the fetus at all stages of pregnancy so that it would filter into our subconscious that the fetus has humanity and matters in an extraordinary, supernatural way.

But pro-life counselling in the midst of crisis cannot focus on personhood, because that is not the predominant issue for women in crisis.

It is truly any number of the following issues: My life will change too much, I can’t envision this going well, I need to keep training for my Olympic bid, I don’t have the money, my husband is against me, my boyfriend will leave me, etc. etc. etc.