…All Mike wanted was to pick up a bottle of wine. Instead, he is confronted with an image that is jarring, to him, but no one else. I’ve been there, Mike. I think the solution is to…buy more bottles of wine? Seriously, though, our public health campaigns do send conflicting messages. The messages hinge on the arbitrary notion of “wantedness.” If the child is wanted, there will be a long list of dos and donts. If unwanted… well, you know what happens in one of four pregnancies…
I went to see The Butler with friends over the weekend. Interesting movie, particularly for someone intrigued by politics and history. There are moments I liked more than others, but generally, I enjoyed it. I definitely need to read American history more, as I certainly refuse to let Hollywood “teach” me anything. But it was good entertainment.
It left me sitting there grappling with the different approaches to fighting for civil rights portrayed in the movie. The Butler himself adopts a slow and steady, hardworking approach and engages his superiors politely and earns their respect. His son goes on the offensive, sitting in cafeterias to break down racist laws telling him he can’t be served at a particular spot. He rides the “Freedom Bus,” which is bombed out at one point in the movie by members of the Ku Klux Klan. (By the way, they show real images of this, terrifying, and graphic, I might add.) He lands himself in jail on many, many occasions.
His father is dismayed and disappointed, with good reason. (The son’s attitude toward the dad is condescending.)
I see fighting against abortion as the civil rights struggle of our time–representing people who don’t and won’t ever have a voice. (There are other hugely important battles being waged, of course, but in my hierarchy of problems Canada faces, this is certainly a big one.) I struggle with the fact that I don’t do enough. Then I struggle with some of the tactics of those doing a lot more than I, for example, postcard drops or graphic images on the side of the road. I struggle with those tactics while admiring them at least a little (and, full disclosure, supporting them with a monthly donation).
At the end of the day, we all work to advance this cause. The Butler is a good movie for examining your conscience and ensuring that you do indeed pick one method of protesting this injustice, be it a more quiet diplomacy, or riding buses across the country and provoking people to re-think where they stand. Not everyone will be converted but everyone deserves the opportunity to turn away–if that is what they must do. I am reminded of the Wilberforce quote: ““You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”
I don’t believe they are and I plan on studying and learning more about genetic and reproductive technologies over the next year. For now, I’ll leave you with this link to a Christianity Today article. While its focus is on the evangelical church, I think it does contain some general food for thought. I think a robust discussion of these issues needs to take place within the broader pro-life community.
With the Center for Bioethics and Culture, I’m currently working on a documentary about surrogacy, and in our interviews I have sadly heard firsthand stories of the complications of this process—even when everyone starts off with the best of intentions. One surrogate was asked to have an abortion because the child she was carrying had a genetic defect. Another surrogate’s own children were heartbroken that their mother gave away the baby. A woman who served as a surrogate for her brother and his partner is still battling over custody of the now school-aged children. Even Elton John, who celebrated the birth of his children with the help of an egg donor and a surrogate, admits that it is heartbreaking that his children will grow up without a mother.
In response to assisted reproductive technologies and procedures, an uneven patchwork of policies and laws in the U.S. attempt to protect intended parents rather than surrogates or the children they carry. Legislative debates frequently take place with no larger sense of the gravity of this practice or how it might harm families and society.
For example, this year in Louisiana a state senator introduced a law that would allow surrogacy contracts for heterosexual couples. The legislator, who had gone to another state in order to contract with a surrogate to have children, described surrogacy as baking a loaf of bread in an oven, a comparison that—as I’ve mentioned before—belittles the very real issues involved. As human beings created in the image of God, women are not ovens, nor are their bodies simply vessels to be used, sold, rented, or loaned.
Read the rest here.
I like the story of this mama who visited her neighbours to inform them about Canada’s abortion status quo, and ended up receiving donations from a pro-choice woman. Being actively pro-life our in our communities doesn’t require much in terms of time or resources or training. Simply sharing what you know with people around you can make a difference.
I don’t have a lot of spare time, and yet I feel convicted to follow certain passions. One day I decided to just go out and pursue one. Maybe this was simply a bucket-list item, although more likely it was God putting it on my heart: I challenged myself to find time to go door to door in my neighbourhood with the pro-life message. A fundraiser for the Langley Pro-life Society was coming up and I dared myself to ask my neighbours for donations to help bring attention to the plight of pre-born humans.
Read the rest here.
That’s one inspirational beer commercial. Yes, beer commercial.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwndLOKQTDs&feature=player_embedded]
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Faye adds: Yeah, I cried too.
At the time one of the rare friends that knew of what was going on at the time told me to really think, because this would be something I may regret in the future. I remember actually thinking to myself, “No, I’ll be fine, I won’t regret it.”
I do regret it. That one act in fact became my biggest regret, and my darkest secret.
Read the rest here.
Doctors in the UK who did sex selection abortions will not be prosecuted, in spite of there being enough evidence to do so.
I don’t have kids yet, but when I do, I’ll probably heed this advice. I can’t even imagine how data will be searchable in 10 or 20 years from now, or how it will be mined and for which purposes. Creepy, creepy.
That poses some obvious challenges for Kate’s future self. It’s hard enough to get through puberty. Why make hundreds of embarrassing, searchable photos freely available to her prospective homecoming dates? If Kate’s mother writes about a negative parenting experience, could that affect her ability to get into a good college? We know that admissions counselors review Facebook profiles and a host of other websites and networks in order to make their decisions.
There’s a more insidious problem, though, which will haunt Kate well into the adulthood. Myriad applications, websites, and wearable technologies are relying on face recognition today, and ubiquitous bio-identification is only just getting started. In 2011, a group of hackers built an app that let you scan faces and immediately display their names and basic biographical details, right there on your mobile phone. Already developers have made a working facial recognition API for Google Glass. While Google has forbidden official facial recognition apps, it can’t prevent unofficial apps from launching. There’s huge value in gaining real-time access to view detailed information the people with whom we interact.
The easiest way to opt-out is to not create that digital content in the first place, especially for kids. Kate’s parents haven’t just uploaded one or two photos of her: They’ve created a trove of data that will enable algorithms to learn about her over time. Any hopes Kate may have had for true anonymity ended with that ballet class YouTube channel.
I know we all have enough to worry about, and that probably goes double and triple for parents, but this seems like a fairly easy action to opt of…we’ll see.
In a phone interview with the Straight, Joyce Arthur of the Pro-Choice Action Network said these organizations sometimes present themselves as secular agencies to lure pregnant women, but often have a secret religious agenda to discourage anyone from seeking an abortion or using birth control. Others, she said, will disclose their religious affiliation in fine print, but not in an “up-front” manner.
She also alleged that some crisis pregnancy centres falsely claim that there are links between abortion and breast cancer.
“They’re handing out medical misinformation to women, scaring them and so forth,” Arthur said. “Can they be regulated in some way?”
The Ministry of Health did not make a spokesperson available to respond by the Straight’s deadline. […]
B.C. NDP health critic Judy Darcy told the Straight by phone that she is “very disturbed” about the lack of counselling for pregnant women that offers real choices—”both to consider options, including abortion as a choice, but also counselling post-abortion in a way that is unbiased and that use medically sound information”.
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Faye adds: A comment from a friend: “Interesting tactic. Once you know you’re losing ground and politicians have an irrational fear of even discussing the issue, ask the government to regulate your opponents.”
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Andrea adds: To be fair, a winning strategy down south has been government regulation of clinics, which brings their standards up to those of other outpatient clinics. Clinics operating in subpar conditions are thus forced to close. (Hurray.) We are winning this, but we (broadly speaking, North American pro-lifers) are also asking government to regulate. Is that not fair to say?
There’s a new book out about the Pill. This review pans the book:
In her new book Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, Holly Grigg-Spall offers what she calls a “feminist critique” of hormonal contraception. She argues that the so-called liberating force of the pill has been illusory. She claims that the pill keeps women in the thrall of patriarchal capitalism and destroys their health in the process. The addiction allusion in the title is not a metaphor—Grigg-Spall is convinced that the pill is an addictive drug.
I don’t think it sounds like I would much like the book, either, based on some of what the review says. I have not read it. That said, I do not like the Pill and it’s true, I believe it is anti-feminist, for lack of a better term. Nothing reduces a woman to mere physical/biological function more than taking a Pill every day that suppresses her natural cycle. Furthermore, there is nothing quite so empowering as knowledge. Knowledge of how your cycle works, what it says about your overall health, and having control over that cycle without Big Pharma’s assistance.
The review asks some valid questions, however. One of which is why is the Pill so popular? I believe it is because it is very much promoted in med schools which look to pharmaceuticals for solutions. Doctors are schooled first, later wined and dined by pharmaceutical companies. They are not schooled or wined and dined by Creighton practitioners, for example.
But still, word is getting out there. Any when women discover the many myriad benefits of actually learning more about their own bodies, I believe they will leave the Pill behind. It won’t be because it is capitalist, or anti-capitalist. (Please.) It will be because it improves our overall health. And because it feels good to be able to take care of yourself and be treated like a human being by someone who actually cares about what your cycle is doing, rather than simply suppressing it.