An article from a pro-choicer about how we ought to consider the reality of negative effects after abortion more seriously, based on the sad case of Australian celebrity Charlotte Dawson:

While the cyberbullying doubtless exacerbated her woes, Charlotte’s memoir could not have been more clear on their root cause: “When I got home [from the abortion], I felt that something had changed. I felt a shift … I felt the early tinges of what I can now identify as my first experience with depression.”

Why the careful media detour around the precipitating incident identified by the victim herself? If Charlotte had traced her depression to a campus rape or domestic violence, the media would have been all over it like white on rice.

Dear Dr. Colleen MacQuarrie, conference speakers and participants:

I don’t know you, but I am going to assume that we have more in common than you might think. In fact, I am convinced of it. Forgive my arrogance, but I’m going assume a couple of things. I’m going to assume that we all want women to realize their full potential. I’m going to assume that we all want women to be safe and healthy. I’m going to assume that we all want to uphold the dignity of the female for what it is, unencumbered by stereotypes and presuppositions. I’m going to assume these things because I’m here, in this space, for one reason and one reason alone: I care about my fellow woman. And you too, are where you are, for the same reason. We’re out in the world caring for the marginalized, we’re gently folding into the greater society those that have been neglected. Our work is good and noble.

Many of us do what we do for free. We do what we do by sacrificing time that could’ve been spent doing other, more personally beneficial, things. We do it because it matters so much to us, because other women, complete strangers, matter so much to us.

Your conference is a call to bring abortion access to Prince Edward Island, and you know that I would argue that abortion access is not the solution to the issues that bring women into crisis pregnancy situations. You know I won’t advocate for that, because I believe in every fiber of my being (and we can see it exemplified in the way our society responds to the unmarried mother) that there are implications for a society that provides abortion on demand to its citizens, and these implications affect each and every woman, regardless of her stance on abortion. You know that many women have multiple abortions, and this illustrates that abortion doesn’t lift a woman from the socioeconomic position that brought her to the abortion clinic in the first place.

I would argue that by funding abortion on demand we’re saying it’s okay to have an abortion because gender inequality still prevails in our classrooms and our workplaces, that you won’t get that promotion or that degree unless you have an abortion, and we’ll pay for it.

And perhaps we are not only saying that it’s okay, and that we’ll pay for it, but perhaps we’re sending the message that unless you are pregnant in the most Utopian of circumstances, you SHOULD have an abortion.

You know I don’t agree with you, but we still have so much in common. We still share a view of womanhood marked by strength and infinite possibility. With so much in common, why have we yet to create a space for ourselves to enter into dialog with one another? Why have we not come together to erect a more sustainable and universal vision of the future? Why do we still seek refuge in our podiums, me at mine and you at yours?

We should be fearless, and in our fearlessness collectively exchange ideas, let our moral imaginations reign, let the most truthful ideas win, let the most honest aspects of our passions come to the surface and be written into our moral code.

Sincerely,

Jennifer

An eloquent piece, with an important kicker about the lack of wisdom of our age:

Even to call “Making a Green Choice” an “article” is overly generous, since, despite the demise of print media, the word still carries some implications of quality. However, just as someone can be called an actor simply for appearing in a film, this is an article only in the sense that it has been published. It reads much more like an angry, lonely rant beneath a Facebook post on the joys of being a stay-at-home mother—the same sort of thing blogger-troll Amy Glass managed to exploit with her recent tirade “I Look Down On Young Women With Husbands and Kids.”

For this reason, the appearance of “Making a Green Choice” in a print magazine – especially in Mother Earth News, which has always been about tradition – seems an accident of our shifting public forums. Hailing from the blogosphere, such articles as this might also be seen as a reminder of how reckless and impulsive online commentary can become. Its ideas have, so to speak, no gestation period, and often reinforce the idea that social media is making us into sociopaths.

There are no graphic visuals at this link, but there is disturbing, graphic content about human trafficking. A movie called Eden is coming out this summer, “a sex slave’s story.” Bolded some interesting details, to me.

She was recruited into sex slavery in 1994 by the person she believed to be her boyfriend. While studying Law at a technical college in Dallas, Chong met a man claiming to be a soldier in a bar who she knew as Keith, only later discovering that was not his real name. She described him as chivalrous, adding: “He would say to me ‘you should smile more often you know’, he was very, very sleek. That’s what makes him poisonous.”

Estranged from her family, Chong was vulnerable and looking for her ‘Prince Charming’ and he manipulated this to recruit her, she says.

“It’s like a hunting game, they know how to hunt, they look for them, they watch, they observe. They’ll do a round of tests,: says Chong. “A man will go to the bar and he will say ‘who wants to get me a drink?’ and the first woman who says ‘I will’ without knowing him gives him the signal that she will do anything for him.”

After just two months of dating, he drove her to an abandoned house in Oklahoma telling her that he needed to help a homeless friend.

I’ve read before about girls who are distant from family, lonely, even those who are not, but are going through a rebellious time, being lured into prostitution/human trafficking.

I believe all of this is facilitated by a culture that places no limitations on sex other than it be consensual. I’ll leave that thought dangling, as I flesh out my reasons why. A post will be forthcoming. It has to do with the decline of the family, the higher proportion of girls raised without active dads, a cultural milieu that says sex in any dating relationship is not only normal but required, a culture that demeans sex through even government-funded exhibitions in our very own Museum of Science and Technology and then is horrified when there is a “rape culture” on campus and elsewhere.

My thoughts are not yet complete, I know, so more to come. But let me just add that in this environment, the fact that I am maligned for being prudish and traditional in face of such unspeakable horrors when sex is twisted into something it was never intended for, speaks volumes.

I just watched Brian Lilley interview Mike Schouten on WeNeedaLaw’s new Saskatchewan campaign. The goal of the campaign is obtain legislation requiring parental consent for abortions.

And it turns out, a lot of Canadians are a-okay with parental consent laws. An Angus Reid poll showed 55% of Canadians supported a requirement for parental consent for a minor’s abortion.

Apparently there is a museum of abortion and birth control in Sudtirol, Austria. This article walks you through that. Toward the end, the abortion provider, Christian Fiala, who founded the museum has this to say about people who disagree:

Sadly, you cannot talk to these people in an objective manner. They are, if you will, psychologically confined in a certain way. Normal discussion isn’t even possible. That is the true drama. Not the abortions but the fact that to this day, people like them are allowed to stand outside our clinic scaring away women who need help. I have received anonymous death threats too. But let’s not talk about people like that any more. It doesn’t further the cause. You wouldn’t blame illiterates for reading the wrong newspaper.

It’s interesting, because although it is likely patronizing, I feel the same way about him. Worldview, people, it is a very long process to change it.

Then there’s this gem:

Until about 1900, killing babies after birth was the predominant method of birth control. From then on, and for about 70 years, the illegal termination of the pregnancy between the fourth and fifth month became commonplace.”

In short, we used to kill babies after birth, but now, ladies and gentlemen, we do it before, and this is what makes us so civilized. A sarcastic well done to you Herr Fiala.

From Wesley J. Smith,

There was some sturm and drang at The Corner yesterday. Andrew Johnson’s posted an entry noting Planned Parenthood’s abortion honcho sniffing that the humanity of the aborted fetus is irrelevant. Many angry comments ensued and Drudge put it on his front page. From the quote:

The president of the country’s largest abortion provider said she didn’t think the matter of when life begins is pertinent to the issue. “It is not something that I feel is really part of this conversation,” Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood told Fusion’s Jorge Ramos on Thursday. “I don’t know if it’s really relevant to the conversation.”

Why is anyone surprised?  Planned Parenthood is really in the “right to a dead baby” business. Recall, for example, a lobbyist for Florida’s PP refusing to rule out infanticide after a botched abortion if that is what the mother wants.

This is the American branch of Planned Parenthood, but I do think this a blog post worth reading.

If the humanity of the unborn child isn’t at issue, what is?

A newly born child already so tightly bonded to his mother. A powerful video.

I can’t help it: All these women at the Oscars start to look exactly the same–interchangeable like the cut-out dolls my nieces have, whereby you can put different dresses on the same paper face. I’m not sure how to avoid this. A little less glamour? Or how about allowing these women to be…wait for it…themselves, not carbon copy looks with carbon copy views. We all know what gets you awarded an Oscar. Or perhaps, better put, we know what doesn’t.