Help Lesotho is a charity a friend of mine is working at. If you enjoy spinning, or even if you don’t, consider lending your support! (For filing in the category of “Basic and necessary things North American girls/women never think about.”)

 

Ottawa, ON – Help Lesotho will be hosting a “Menstrual Cycle” spin class on Saturday, January 28^th 2017 at Wheelhouse Cycle located at 1279 Wellington St W. Limited tickets are $50 and will go towards the creation and distribution of 100 washable sanitary kits which provide girls living in rural communities in southern Africa the supplies – and dignity – they need to stay in school. Over three years, each kit gives a girl 150 days that she can continue her education. “Menstrual Cycle” participants will be treated to an exhilarating spin class in the trendy Wheelhouse studio, followed by champagne, shopping for gorgeous Pearls4Girls jewelry, and door prizes sponsored by Allegro Clothing, Elements Luxury Tented Camp & Nature Spa, and Bicycle Craft Brewery.

“As a girl, I was taught to see my menstruation as a disease that was shameful and ugly,” says Pulane, one of the first recipients of a menstrual kit in Lesotho, “I loved the contents inside [my kit] because they make me feel like I can still be beautiful… My grades are much higher and I will soon be able to graduate.”

Every month, girls who cannot afford disposable products miss up to a full week of school because of their menstrual cycles. Education is proven to aid in fighting poverty, gender inequity and gender based violence. The Menstrual Cycle event will provide much needed supplies to achieve comfort, more schooling and a brighter future. Tickets to the event are available at Menstrualcycle.eventbrite.ca.

About Help Lesotho and Pearls4Girls: Help Lesotho is a registered charity based in Ottawa that supports 15-20,000 vulnerable children, girls, youth and grandmothers in Lesotho through a variety of programs. A landlocked country in southern Africa, Lesotho has the 2^nd highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. To learn more please visit helplesotho.org.

Pearls4Girls is a social enterprise of Help Lesotho. Through the sale of beautiful pearl jewelry, funds are raised to support programs that help build confidence, acquire leadership skills and get the support they need so they can become positive role models and agents of change. To learn more, please visit pearls4girls.org.

Yesterday’s paper informed us of an abortion denied in Montreal, of all places. Not really denied, just delayed*, but still, it has to hit the news as something devastating for this woman seeking a barbaric act. We are told this never happens. Just like sex selection abortion never happens.

35 weeks is so close to term. Baby territory. Full on human being, personhood territory, not by wacky pro-life standards but by the standards of the world, that is not fully pro-life.  

But there is yet a glimmer of hope in humanity when a hospital in Montreal balks at killing a baby at 35 weeks. There is furthermore even more glimmers of hope when the paper has to report the woman’s justifications for an abortion at 35 weeks today because Canadians rightly identify this sounds horrific. Which it is. Generally, it is safer to deliver a baby at 35 weeks than abort. (This is how we get stories of infants left to die, I’m sure.) 

(The pro-life question to ask is this: if you wouldn’t do it after the baby emerges from the womb why would you do it before?)

The point of interest to me, in case you are wondering, is that the woman says she did this out of compassion for the baby. she didn’t want the baby to suffer over a lifetime. (The baby apparently had health problems.) 

Now I’m betting if I said, I’ll take that baby with health problems and take care of it, either until he or she dies or for a lifetime, this mother would say no. 

I’m betting if I suggested we should hold that baby until it does naturally due to health problems, the mother would likewise say no. Don’t we all know someone who did that? Took a baby home so he could pass away naturally? It’s tragic, and sad, but this is part of life. 

None of us know when our last day will come. 

We have created the untenable reality where women can have abortions at any time for any reason and no logic ever enters into the picture. Killing a baby at 35 weeks, most likely without anesthetic, is totally lacking in compassion. It was likely very painful for this child. It is also dangerous for the mother. Which is supposedly why we have abortion available in the first place, so as to “save the health of the mother.” (This is not born out by stats, but that is the subject of another post.)  

And yet, this barbaric behaviour is justified on compassionate grounds. 

*Worth noting that this woman had no trouble getting an abortion elsewhere. Once again, the pro-choice lie that it’s “hard to access” abortion. I wish it were a little harder. She might have gone into early labour.

*Also worth noting is that the National Post says it was an abortion at 35 weeks, others are saying 30 weeks. The story is exactly the same, regardless. 

35 weeks in utero

When we teach women (and then subsequently men) that they cannot be successful in this world with children–it is not a woman’s world. 

In today’s world it is better for a baby to die, in many women’s conception, than to have that baby and make a go of it. 

This is a world created by ideological pro-choice feminists and opportunistic men. 

The point of this blog is to say that women can be successful with children. 

The point of this blog is to help a 22-year-old see that she can have it all (but maybe not on the same day). 

The point of this blog is to have older childless women telling younger women that there is more to success than how they define it in that moment. You simply do not think at 40 the same way you did at 20. 

I’ve long known women choose abortion because they perceive choosing life for their child to be death for themselves. 

It is not a woman-friendly world that allows us to think this way. 

At bottom, life is not to be thrown away. Not for women and not for babies. An embryo is a fetus is a baby is a child. You were that embryo. If you think your own life is meaningless, you will not see value in an embryo, fetus, baby or child. If you do–you should be able to extend the right to life to a new person. 

At bottom, articles like the one linked above completely overlook the child. It’s as if the child weren’t actually there. The abortion is simultaneously such a difficult decision because it is taking life, but then nothing at all–because if it were something important, how could you do it? This cognitive dissonance is perpetuated by pro-choice fanatics. 

If you are young and pregnant and believe your life is over or ending, please know this is not the case. There are people and agencies who can help you–not manipulate you, not coerce you, but really, really help you. 

Our lives are a roaring adventure or nothing at all, is a quote I’ve seen somewhere. Feminists demand we live lives of nothing at all, pushing adventure to the side in favour of a very constrained form of “success.” Sad.

(I wrote this because someone sent me this painful article. Read it or don’t–it’s the story of a girl getting an abortion published in Teen Vogue.)