Rabbi Sacks is the author of more than 25 books, including Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence. You can learn more about him, here. I first became aware of him when he gave this speech, printed here in full.
Anyway, Rabbi Sacks is going to be in Toronto on March 15. You can get tickets, here. He’ll be talking about why religion is not a threat. I’ll be there!
In December 2014, a pregnant woman named Cassie Kaake (pronounced “cake”) was murdered. Her baby was 30 weeks gestation, named and known as Molly to her mother and her loved ones.
The family in their grief after her murder were surprised to learn that the fact that she was pregnant doesn’t register in Canadian law. They knew they had lost not just Cassie but a very much chosen and wanted Molly.
Father of the child, Jeff Durham, who happens to be pro-choice, is helping spearhead Molly Matters. Cassie chose to be a mom and as the slide show on their web site would indicate, was excited about the prospect.
And so yesterday, Cassie and Molly’s Law was born: “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (injuring or causing the death of a preborn child while committing an offence).”
This enactment amends the Criminal Code to make it an offence to cause injury or death to a preborn child while committing or attempting to commit an offence against a pregnant woman and to add pregnancy as an aggravating circumstance for the purpose of sentencing.
This Act may be cited as the Protection of Pregnant Women and Their Preborn Children Act (Cassie and Molly’s Law).
It means something when a woman is 30 weeks pregnant–the loss of that child not yet born is profound. Importantly, this forces the judge to account for the gravity of killing two people, not just one, in sentencing. Finally, we all know pregnant women are more vulnerable to attack and abuse, and I believe this will raise the profile of pregnancy, making it matter more. Molly matters, Cassie matters, pregnancy matters, women’s lives matter–all of this matters. These are points to ponder for the inevitable backlash. (Some people can’t handle a Doritos ad, so I expect this will not be smooth sailing.)
Just enjoy this one. Sad and beautiful, all in one.
Brittani and Ian McIntire were stunned to learn that they were expecting twins, Mason and Madilyn. After several doctor’s appointments, the couple learned that one baby wasn’t developing as well as the other.
Mason, who currently weighs in at 9 ounces, has a hole in his heart and an abnormal brain. Madilyn is just over 2 pounds. Mason’s best chance at survival would be to operate on his heart, but doctors don’t want to take that risk because of his brain, Fox 8 reported.
During a recent ultrasound, however, the doctors captured tiny unborn baby Mason’s hand gripping his sister’s much larger hand.
His mom says she is of course holding both these babies, but in a more concrete way, that if Mason passes away, at least he won’t be alone. Life is hard and beautiful, all in one.
Scores of people who make porn films for a living pleaded their case to California workplace safety officials: Don’t force condoms or safety goggles or other devices designed to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases on them because those devices will simply stop people from watching porn films and soon they’ll have no jobs at all.
When your job violates your own human dignity, it’s better not to have one.
If you have thoughts on what this memorial in Ottawa should look like, today is the deadline to contribute them through this very short survey.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The picture below has been making the rounds on social media with this caption:
An Iraqi girl in an orphanage – missing her mother, so she drew her and fell asleep inside her.”
As it turns out the photo is staged.
Why is this such an effective photograph?
I think it conveys something powerful about the family, particularly about the relationship between mothers and children.
I think it also conveys that mothers are safe spaces–they provide love through physical and spiritual strength and protection.
And in this one photo, we can better understand why the abortion issue is so controversial.
With abortion, this quasi-sacred mother-child relationship is in play. Women who abort likely are at least subconsciously aware that they are mothers at the time of the abortion and afterwards. Because pro-life or pro-choice, this relationship with our mothers is an important and valuable one, on which we rely over the course of our lives. Because little children should be, in a perfect world, protected by their mothers. When we as pro-lifers chastise abortion, we may in fact be reminding women who have had abortions, in the deepest and most profound recesses of their heart, that they failed.
So this photo–as art–captures a lot of emotion.
It reminds me to tread carefully in just how I choose to oppose abortion.
…she should be.
“Outrage over innocents,” her column in the February 6, 2016 Post, perfectly describes how most people who are pro-life feel not only about animal abuse, but about abortion, too.
Urback describes how terrible it is to see an animal mistreated:
I think the explanation has to do with the way we perceive the victims: as wholly innocent, uncomplicated, blindly trusting. That’s not to suggest adult victims “deserve” their fate, but simply that an abuse against a child, for example, isn’t diluted by details. A child is simple, pure and untarnished, which makes it unconscionable that someone would hurt them.
The problem with abortion is, of course, that we don’t see the unborn child as suffering. We don’t want to. Discussions of when the fetus feels pain remain hotly contested, as all things to do with abortion are.
However, it is good to note with this column that the genesis of the concern, the outrage that a pro-life person feels as regards the taking of life in the womb is ultimately the very same concern the animal lover feels. It is the same picture of an innocent being hurt, for no reason at all.
Animal lovers, picturing the face of a devoted dog, who wants to be with people, who just wants to be in the thick of things… playing games, getting treats, putting a paw on our knees, need to see pro-lifers similarly, as compassionate people, concerned for the fate of innocent life, wherever it may be found.
For more on these thoughts, look up Mary Eberstadt.
A much loved pooch who has since gone on to serve with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
Two outstanding presentations were made to the Joint Committee on Assisted Suicide.
Leading ethicist and director of McGill’s Centre for Medicine, Law and Ethics, Margaret Sommerville told the Federal Joint Committee that “…future generations will look back on the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as the most important social-ethical-legal values decision of the 21st century, and the decisions that Parliament will make about the legislation and regulations to govern those interventions are an integral part of that decision.”
According to this Ottawa Citizen article, she said the harms and risks can be limited if government adopts certain recommendations. These would be to avoid the future “normalization” of physician-assisted dying, by making it clear that it is an exception, should only be used as a last resort, and used rarely. “If Canada had the same percentage of total deaths of deaths by (physician-assisted dying) as the Netherlands and Belgium currently have (about 4 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively) we would have between 11,000 and 12,000 deaths each year.”
Also appearing before the Joint Committee, made up of 6 Senators and 11 Members of Parliament was Ottawa’s Cardinal Collins.
“The strong message from the Supreme Court is unmistakable: some lives are just not worth living. We passionately disagree,” said Collins, who presented on behalf of the Coalition for HealthCare and Conscience.
LifeSite News quoted that Cardinal as saying that
“The right to be put to death will, in practice, become in some cases the duty to be put to death, as subtle pressure is brought to bear on the vulnerable.”(…) “Often, a plea for suicide is a cry for help. Society should respond with care and compassionate support for these vulnerable people, not with death.” Collins emphasized that, “those called to the noble vocation of healing will instead be engaged in killing.” This will have a “grievous effect both on the integrity of a medical profession committed to do no harm, and upon the trust of patients from whom they seek healing.
Catholic hospitals, for example, are “not ‘things.’ They’re communities of people,” Collins said. “They have values and that’s why people come to them,” and they are “funded by the government because they do immense good work.” “If you undermine the institution for what it is, our society would be very, very much harmed,” he cautioned. “Our whole community would be a lot harsher, colder, crueler, without the witness given by community who are on the ground, on the street, day by day, caring for the most needy.”
LifeCanada presented a brief to two members of the Joint Committee at a special hearing in Langley, BC. The brief can be found here.
The Joint Committee is wrapping up it’s hearing February 4th. To learn more, you can go to the Joint Committee webpage here.
The Center for Disease Control in the States is telling any sexually active woman who is not on the Pill to not drink. Ever. Our tax dollars at work, as one American friend put it.
I’m surprised that feminists are not publicly annoyed about this. After all, it’s a little degrading to presume that women need to either be on a daily regime of hormones OR never touch alcohol, rather than assuming the best, that people can drink in moderation and that this is fine.
Instead, the press piles on, writing a sidebar about a 43-year-old woman whose mother “drank” while pregnant and now she has the mental age of a first grader. One might presume this means the mother had the odd glass of wine or a beer. But no:
Kathy again drank throughout her pregnancy, but usually just with friends. She’d put away a bottle of wine, or four to five beers, during a weekend.
Drinking wasn’t her only risky behaviour: “The fact is, I had poor nutrition, smoked cigarettes, worked in bars and drank alcohol. None of this was conducive to a healthy pregnancy.”
In 1973, just a few months after turning 18, she gave birth to Karli.
More reasonably, one might offer up this story not as an admonition not to ever drink while sexually active and not on the Pill, but rather, to get help if you are struggling with alcoholism, particularly as a teenager.
Women are made to be fearful about so many things during pregnancy. The list grows and grows and if the shadow of a birth defect shows up in some early ultrasound, abortion is immediately offered as a “solution”.
I’m against abortion. I’m also against treating women like children. I’m against drinking to excess such that you cloud good judgment on a regular basis. And finally, I’m against making pregnancy so ridiculously difficult and angst-ridden simply because the culture of the age assumes no one can be reasonable. Here ends the rant.
Me and a glass of wine. Apparently in an empty restaurant. But don’t worry, I wasn’t pregnant.
CBC’s Carol Off interviewed a Brazilian abortion activist who is using the onset of the Zika virus to promote abortion in Brazil. You can listen to the interview here.
Some thoughts:
These are wanted children, presumably. In the contested science of psychological effects for women after abortion, there is an area of agreement and it’s this: aborting a wanted baby leaves women at greater risk for later problems.
Secondly, many women might be right to wonder why there isn’t an all out attack on fixing the virus, finding a cure, finding a vaccine and controlling the spread by controlling mosquitoes. Even the abortion activist alludes to this as a problem in the interview.
Finally, it’s only where you are not thinking of babies that abortion can be a solution. You’ll notice the interview starts with reference to the “fetus” and ends with reference to the “baby.”
Carol Off’s last question is about whether abortion is even an effective solution since microcephaly is only diagnosed later in pregnancy.
According to the CDC “Microcephaly is most easily diagnosed by ultrasound late in the 2nd trimester or early in the third trimester of pregnancy.”
I’m against abortion, so it’s pretty clear where I stand on abortion as a solution to anything. But even if you are not against abortion in principle, second or early third trimester means women have been pregnant for many weeks, are bonded with their babies–furthermore, their babies look like babies, very clearly.
So I believe that advocating for legal abortion in response to the Zika virus gets an epic fail on the feminist front regardless of whether you are against abortion or not.
