The topic of disabilities is raised not infrequently in the abortion debate. As in: Should preborn child X with disability X be aborted? Would it be the kinder/more compassionate thing to do? The conversation circles around whether it’s kinder to immediately take the life of the child than to let the child live with its disabilities.

Anyway, when I saw this article posted on Facebook regarding community celebration of people with disabilities, simply because they have disabilities, written by someone with a disability, I thought it was well worth sharing. The effect of “inspiration porn” is not something I’ve had to think about, but it’s important to know the impact these pictures, posters, memes are having on the people depicted.

What’s “inspiration porn”?

Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary – like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball – carrying a caption like “your excuse is invalid” or “before you quit, try”.

What are these images and posters really communicating?

Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn; it’s there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. So they can go, “Oh well if that kid who doesn’t have any legs can smile while he’s having an awesome time, I should never, EVER feel bad about my life”. It’s there so that non-disabled people can look at us and think “well, it could be worse… I could be that person”.

In this way, these modified images exceptionalise and objectify those of us they claim to represent. It’s no coincidence that these genuinely adorable disabled kids in these images are never named: it doesn’t matter what their names are, they’re just there as objects of inspiration.

But using these images as feel-good tools, as “inspiration”, is based on an assumption that the people in them have terrible lives, and that it takes some extra kind of pluck or courage to live them.

For many of us, that is just not true.

Read the rest here.

Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute, one of my favourite people on the marriage file, is asking you to sign a petition, if you feel you are a victim of the sexual revolution.

People, I have strong feelings on this subject. From realizing there was a sexual revolution, to realizing it was largely negative, to thinking, wait a second… am I victim of this… my views have really shifted and I have come to see how troubling most aspects of the sexual revolution really are.

The problem is that conservative types like myself don’t like to play the victim card. So I’m not going to go too far down that road.

BUT I will say I agree with Jennifer Roback Morse’s general take on this issue and I believe so so many are negatively affected by this.

Sign the petition. (If you are in Canada, I had some trouble, but I know we have US readers too, so consider lending your support.)

Speaking of creative extremists, my friend Stephanie Gray is in Ottawa giving a talk on Wednesday. It’s at St. Patrick’s Basilica, 7 pm. This could be your big moment to join the ranks of creative extremism. Many thanks to Knights of Columbus, Holy Spirit Ukrainian Catholic Seminary and Ottawa Against Abortion for sponsoring this talk.

Please join us for an inspiring evening with Stephanie Gray, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

In the battle against abortion, everyone has a role they must play. At times, it can be difficult to know what one can do to help save lives. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something- what are you called to do?

We are called to action in our every day lives- to speak the truth at work, in our families, to strangers, to our peers.

Come and be empowered to speak the truth.

Oh yes we do. This interview with Lila Rose is not new, but it is very interesting. This phrase “creative extremists,” which she uses, is from Martin Luther King Jr., in his letter from a Birmingham jail.

Honestly, there is no doubt in my mind that within my lifetime we will see people change their views 180 degrees on this issue–and turn away from abortion as a valid option or choice. I think people like Lila Rose are helping us get there.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjx7bNwbwEw&feature=c4-overview&list=UUzYY14szIFejUXYbk4BjZmw]

Well, my goodness. To what do we owe this great treat of two pro-life columns in short succession? Another good one:

I don’t know why the heroic daughter of a yellow perch in Georgian Bay took such a risk. I don’t think she was a Catholic. I doubt if she was even religious. I’m certain she didn’t weigh an ounce over two pounds. Yet for the sake of her unborn children, her putative spawn — spawn, hell, her still unfertilized clutch of eggs — she was ready to take on a 200-pound competitor in the shallow early-morning waters of 12-Mile-Bay.

This doesn’t tell me that the defense of the unborn is a religious imperative, tied to some Catholic dogma. On the contrary, it tells me that defending one’s spawn, one’s breeding grounds, is a natural position, available to a fish that, whatever she may be, has never been part of a Popish conspiracy. You don’t need to be more religious than a perch to be pro-life.

You don’t need to be religious to be pro-life. Of course not. That said, there is a Judeo-Christian worldview that undergirds the pro-life position. This is because more and more we are seeing folks say yes, the fetus in utero is a baby, a child, but women ought to be able to have an abortion regardless. This is the idea that killing innocents under circumstances x, y or z is OK. Where the Judeo-Christian position is that it is not OK. Is that a deeply religious view? I’m not sure. It certainly is a different worldview, however, than the secular tendency toward convenience and independence.

I don’t know what spurred on this column about life in the “civilized west.” It is more direct than his usual:

Oblivious to experience that amply demonstrates it’s easier for two parents to support 12 children than for 12 children to support two parents, we try putting the burden of our support til we’re 120 unto the one lucky child we didn’t abort.

And this:

Had I been born a little earlier, say, 30 million years ago, in the same place, I wouldn’t have become a columnist. What geologists call the Pannonia basin was the bottom of a shallow sea then, covering much of Europe. Born in such a place, chances are I would have been an ancestral fish. I couldn’t have participated in building a society in which the least safe place is the womb and babies have no one to fear but their mothers. Yes,  I would have missed something for sure.

I don’t know what brought this on, but I like it.

Reality TV and me are not friends. That said, for some reason I’ve seen an episode of Millionaire Matchmaker. Today I get this news item about how the star of Millionaire Matchmaker regrets her abortion and not having kids:

My biggest regret is I didn’t have children and I had an abortion in my 20s,” Stanger, the star of Bravo’s “Millionaire Matchmaker,” said in response to a question. “I was pregnant and I didn’t have enough money and I didn’t think it was OK to have a child and be a single parent. Now, look, everyone’s doing that.”

She said she didn’t find the right person at the time, reiterating that her biggest personal blunder was “not having kids.”

I continue to be somewhat fascinated by concepts of choice and control. How much we have or don’t have. The way I see it being childless is one thing. But being childless with an abortion in your past is another. I think many women would mourn or regret that, and we ought to be able to talk about that. If it takes a reality TV star to bring up the conversation, I’ll take it.

The mother is murdered, the baby survives. Tragic at all times but especially so around Christmas. Her grandmother had this to say:

Fannie Casara said she raised Eva Casara since infancy and hopes to care for the newborn as well. “She looks just like her mother,” Fannie Casara said. “She’s beautiful, and she’s so tiny, all those tiny fingers and toes.”

I would have posted this earlier but with the ice storm in Toronto, power became a complicated thing. As a side note, we think we are very advanced in our culture with instant communication of all kinds, however, when hydro goes down, all of us are returned to the late 1800s. The great equalizer. I digress.

I wrote this up the day the Supreme Court of Canada decided our prostitution laws are unconstitutional. It’s a bit of a different kind of article to write for me, less academic than usual. Feel free to add reasonable comments, as I note it already has the usual well-informed ones lining up.

So often those of us who are against the legalization of prostitution are portrayed as prudish. Scared of sex. Moralistic.

We think more highly of ourselves than the rest of those other folks who are dirty and disgusting, be it johns or the women who prostitute themselves. So the storyline goes.

But the legalization of prostitution is not wrong because it is an “us versus them” battle. It is wrong because the legalization of prostitution will affect every household, every family and every person in similar ways. This is because human nature is the same. We face the same temptations in our hearts.

The only difference between me and a woman who prostitutes herself is that the seeds that would have launched me onto a path of prostitution were not watered. In short, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,” as the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote.

I loved this article.  Suresh is a “Hindu who trends more toward the orthodox side of Hinduism.”  He was born between Hindu temples, a mosque and a cathedral, and if anyone would know about multiculturalism or interfaith issues, it would be him.  It was refreshing to see him remind us that we ought not take Christ out of Christmas for the sake of political correctness, so as to make Christmas inoffensive to other peoples.

He writes:

If the political fashion designers of religions believe they are doing minorities any favour by “Christcleansing,” they are dead wrong. They are actually disrespecting us and making us feel guilty of something we have never asked them to do.

And he makes a good point because he knows if Christianity is on the “chopping block,” his religion might be next.

This is firing me up to speak up again and exert my rights to hear about Christ in Christmas. Who knows? Today it is Christmas, tomorrow I might see Diwali or Id or Vaisakhi dissected for political correctness.

Echoing these very sentiments is MP Nina Grewal, a Sikh, also pleading her case for us to respect Christmas as a Christian feast.  See her Statement in the House of Commons which she bravely made just a few days ago.

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

So Merry Christmas everyone!  And remember, whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Sikh, Jane or a Hindu, or a non-believer, Jesus is the reason for the Season.