This cute little video is making the rounds. Enjoy.
A good reminder that if we are tempted to condemn eugenic thinking of past eras, we should probably condemn the eugenic thinking of the current one. (Most Down Syndrome babies are aborted.)
Will medical advances persuade us more readily than human rights?
There was an interesting article in the National Post this week by Michelle Hauser. Hauser explored medical advances that will make it difficult to blindly accept our abortion status quo. Here’s a taste:
And perhaps the most fundamental question of all: when common medical practice establishes that a 13-week-old fetus is worth saving through surgery, will it not also be worth protecting through the law?
It’s a fantastic piece and I tip my hat to Hauser for all the research she did to pull together such an informative piece. I plan to circulate it to the Physicians for Life’s membership this week.
While I try to remain hopeful, I’m not sure that these advances will change Canadians’ behaviour when it comes to abortion, and I don’t think they’ll influence our legislative stance on the issue. Rather, I think these advances will lead to the “designer babies”(eugenics) that the WHO is concerned about and greater rates of abortion.
We already have a consumer mindset about most things, including life, why would this be any different?
What we need is a change in our conception of human life – and a belief that it is unique and valuable.
We’ve dehumanized the unborn or flat out stated that our lifestyles/circumstances are more important than the actual life of our unborn children – I don’t think medical advances will change this.
We have graphic images, incredible ultrasound technology, life-size medical models of the fetus, and prenatal information from every imaginable source (from National Geographic to Pampers). And yet we continue to abort. And American research shows that the vast majority of abortions are for “lifestyle” (such a “bad timing”) reasons. We’re not talking about cases where the mother’s life is at risk, for example. And we’re not talking about the humanity and the human rights of the unborn child. Science has long established that (of course) a human fetus is, in fact, human.
Perhaps if this information is folded into existing and successful apologetics programs and educational resources – perhaps then it’ll play a role in changing hearts and minds.
But right now I think many hearts are hard or afraid, and many minds choose to be willfully closed.
National victory begins in our local communities
When the mainstream media decides to champion a cause, it can mean millions, if not billions of free advertising for that particular issue. The acceptance of same-sex marriage in our society would be a good example.
Conversely, what the media chooses to ignore is often tragic and catastrophic. Canada’s National Marches for Life attracting tens of thousands from across the county would be a good example. The Ottawa March consistently draws more people to the steps of Parliament Hill consecutively, year after year, than any other single issue.
But the fact that the media has chosen to ignore this issue is such a great disservice to women that it is difficult to fathom.
Her name was Kate. She was a 28-year-old business woman whose story is told in “What Every Woman Needs to Know about Blood Clots” posted on the National Blood Clot Alliance “Stop the Clot” website. Kate’s symptoms started while she was in Hawaii on her honeymoon. She suffered pain in her calf that was so intense it woke her up at night. She went to an orthopedic surgeon, who ordered scans, found no problems, and dismissed her. She forgot about it. Seven months later she passed out in an airport following a flight. Medical personnel said she was dehydrated. Completely unknown to her, Kate had developed deep vein thrombosis in her calf.
Women who take their daily hormonal contraceptive are not told that it raises their risk of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) 300 to 500 fold. DVT causes stroke, heart attack, blindness, brain damage, and death. The pill also puts women at increased risks for various cancers, other sexually transmitted diseases, and it acts as an abortifacient.
According to a lone, but significant CBC report, there are at least 23 deaths from the birth control pill in Canada alone, and numerous other serious health affects. Bayer has paid out over $1 billion to settle lawsuits against their birth control pills, Yaz and Yemen.
So when the media ignores an issue, it is up to us to take up the rallying cry. American Life League is campaigning to stop the horrors that Planned Parenthood perpetuate, and they are also focusing on the birth control pill.”Organize a local event”, their web-page encourages. Don’t wait for big media outlets to take up this cause, get active in your local community.
National victory begins at the local level. Planned Parenthood, local pharmacies, and other contraception distribution points and manufacturers are excellent venues for your event. Stand on sidewalks or other public right-of-ways. Make yours a peaceful, prayerful presence. You can hold signs about contraception and our Pill Kills signs, if you wish. Be sure you comply with all local laws.
Ignore the ridiculous stock photo, read the piece
Natural Family Planning, not the “rhythm method,” has devices and apps to track your fertility, which is part of your general health and wellness. (Things they don’t teach in school, not even necessarily med school, as I’m learning.) This article explains:
The company behind the Kindara app, which charts a woman’s fertility signs right on her phone and connects her with specialist support, has come out with an innovative thermometer.
Cheekily called Wink, the thermometer is linked wirelessly with the app in her cellphone and acts as an alarm clock – since taking basal temperature at the same time each morning is integral to most fertility-monitoring methods.
Temperature taking can be inaccurate, and there are effective methods without it, but in any case, it’s good to see any form of NFP providing this kind of convenience. Advocates for things like NFP, and I suppose I am one, need to remember that the charting thing can be a pain in the you-know-where for some people, so pretending it is always Fun! and Easy! (see stock photo) is unwise, to put it mildly.
What taking your temperature every morning looks like…never.
Natural Family Planning is about women’s health
It’s not just about a woman’s fertility, but it also offers clues to how your body works, and possible problems. A fun little movie that teaches women what natural family planning really is so they won’t dismiss it as “the rhythm method.” And good news for all the sceptics: The creator of this film is not religious and the word “abortion” never comes up. (h/t)
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IEf73_l7Yo#t=289]
Promoting LARCs will target the poor
A discussion of possible pitfalls in promoting long acting reversible contraceptives in the USA:
A recent experiment in St. Louis designed to “promote” LARCs targeted disproportionately African-American (50 percent) and poor (37 percent public assistance) women with the result that, while less than 10 percent of American women regularly choose LARCs for themselves, 75 percent of the St. Louis group used them.
The bigger philosophical question is what happens when infertility is the default, as contrasted with fertility.
Though from what I can see, the growing number of men who have had vasectomies have already achieved this culture of infertility. Friends my age on the online dating scene appear to but rarely encounter men who haven’t had one.
Three parent embryos
Three parent embryos was approved in the UK yesterday. This article explains what this is about:
But what has been proposed, and now approved by the House of Commons, is not a treatment at all. The proposed technique ignores people who already have mitochondrial disease, spurning them in favor of creating new individuals who will (advocates hope) not carry the genetic mutations. The proposal is to manufacture genetically-engineered babies. Mitochondria are inherited from the mother, so the proposal calls for recombining parts from two different eggs to engineer a genetically new egg (or destroying and recombining parts from two different embryos, to assemble a genetically new embryo), theoretically with healthy mitochondrial DNA.
My cab driver this morning understood this sounds like a terrible idea. The question is, why didn’t the majority in the UK Parliament?
“What we don’t know just might kill you”
Great article. You’ll remember Brittany Maynard as the young woman who killed herself recently, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. The author of this piece asks important questions about how it is she may have gotten this brain tumour. We can’t say for sure, is the bottom line, but the questions are worth asking.
I happened to meet the author at a conference last weekend. I don’t think Canada has the same issue with widespread egg donation. If we do, I haven’t heard of it. I’m also not in the demographic where people would donate eggs. I’m in the demographic where people hold on to their eggs and hope they can still have children. My demographic may think they should use an egg donor if they can’t have kids, but I think that is the wrong course of action, because it encourages a young woman to wait to have kids, as if she had forever. It is sad to encourage young women to do something apparently altruistic, so that they can find out later they can’t have their own children. My demographic should not be responsible for perpetuating the problem for younger folks.
Anyways, I think Canada outlaws payment for egg donation. Am I right? Which is good, since even this free marketeer believes stridently that bodies and their parts ought never be for sale.
Does the Pill cause an abortion?
Read here, and decide for yourself:
In order to reach high effectiveness rates, hormonal contraceptives rely on two main mechanisms: prevention of the fertilization of a woman’s egg (prefertilization effect), and prevention of the implantation of an embryo by the modification of the lining of the uterus (postfertilization effect). The second mechanism is what we’re concerned with here. If ovulation occurs and if the egg is fertilized by a sperm, which sometimes happens, especially with today’s low-dose pills[iv], the resulting embryo will travel to the uterus and attempt implantation. However, scientific literature shows that oral contraceptives, implants, the shot, the patch[v] and IUDs make the lining of the uterus inhospitable to it. It is also clearly stated in the labels of these contraceptive methods[vi].
RU486 defies the “no debate” rule on abortion
Mike Schouten’s article in the National Post yesterday draws attention to the fact that we will likely be expanding abortion services across Canada, but without any democratic process.
Of course there is the argument that the RU486 is a nightmarish experience for women – an hours long drama of contractions ending with the expulsion of her developing “little one”, a translation of the Latin word “fetus”.
Canada’s anti-abortion activists are urging Health Canada to consider the detrimental effects RU-486 has had on women’s health in countries where it is already in use. According to Johanne Brownrigg of Campaign Life Coalition, “In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported 2,200 adverse effects, including 14 U.S. deaths, 58 ectopic pregnancies, 256 infections, and 339 incidents requiring transfusions.
But then there is the abysmal double standard of a government who won’t open the debate on abortion, but it will widen the services dramatically, without public consultation.
The Conservative government, along with all the political parties in Ottawa, have denounced any attempt to debate abortion in the House of Commons. This was most recently manifested by the harsh opposition to even discussing something as benign as Motion 408, which merely sought to condemn gender-selective abortions. The news that the approval of RU-486 is imminent, with no debate, smacks of hypocrisy.
For now, the application and any decisions surrounding the infamous abortion drug have been put on hold till the Fall.
photo credit: BlacktouchYellow via photopin cc