Following up on my last post, I just read this one, written by Canada’s own Jonathan Van Maren, a stalwart pro-life activist. Five Things You Need to Know from the Leaked Planned Parenthood Footage is an important read. He concludes with this:
David Daleidan is today’s Harriet Beecher Stowe and these videos are our modern Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(Being today’s Harriet Beecher Stowe means being maligned publicly, until the tide shifts and then you are not.)
Jonathan Van Maren
This extraordinary documentary about key figures in the fight to eradicate slavery in the United States is available for free at your public library. Go and get it right now, it’s that good. (If you live or work near the downtown Ottawa public library, wait a couple of days for me to return it.)
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMrWeKILvps#t=19]
Here’s some commentary about the documentary:
This group of individuals took on the greatest obstacle to America achieving the ideals of its founding: slavery…They took it on, dead on when the vast majority of people simply wanted the issue to go away. They would not let this original sin on the American soul go forgotten and they pushed it and they pushed it and they pushed to the fore and eventually war came and slavery was ended and these people were at the heart of that. They are true American heroes and hardly anyone knows who they are.”
These individuals were societal outcasts, initially. Angelina Grimke couldn’t go to her home in the South–she would have been put in jail. A fellow named William Lloyd Garrison was attacked by the mob. Frederick Douglass had to flee to England and Canada at various points to avoid being re-captured. They held a unique vision of an America without slavery, and they held it as they endured defeat after defeat after defeat. Even at the start of Lincoln’s presidency it was absolutely unclear which way things would go.
So too did these activists endure divisions within their own movement–people who viewed the issue differently, or wanted to push in different ways. The documentary is a fascinating look at the hearts of activists and does not exclude their Christian faith, as many a Hollywood film has done with fascinating people; faith so often gets whitewashed out. That would be truly impossible here, as each person acted in accordance with their deeply held Christian faith. They all felt accountability to an everlasting and eternal God, and saw humanity in African Americans as a result. As such, there were theological differences that bubbled up too–pacifist versus non-pacifist Christian practice, for example. (Garrison was a pacifist, but one activist named John Brown believed military force to be inevitable and pursued the end of slavery using violence, for which he was hung.)
So. By now you know I took much of this documentary as a microcosm for the struggle lonely pro-life activists face. After watching this documentary, I thought of those who work tirelessly for life in Canada, to eradicate the stain of abortion today as slavery was the stain of yesteryear. I thought of all those who endure disparaging comments, or professional sanction because they call us to remember, remember, remember that we could be a more decent society to everyone in it. I thought of those like Linda Gibbons, in jail, even today. Always remember, never forget, that today in Canada, far from the fear mongering of pro-choice activists, the only women in jail because of abortion are pro-life activists.
The biggest problem we face is that the victims of abortion do not (generally) escape and do not get to go on speaking tours. The other problem is that the oppression is self-inflicted. Yes, many, many women face soft coercion toward abortion. But in the end, these women still walk themselves, or let themselves be walked to the abortion clinic. We have failed to convince that abortion is a far greater trauma than bearing a child with a disability, or being fearful about not having enough money to support a child, or being fearful about not being able to pursue a particular career. If women would not choose abortion, if men would not let them, acting instead as responsible, loving encouragement to the mothers of their children, then abortion clinics would not have any clients.
Canada without abortion. By choice. It’s our tagline, here, and we at ProWomanProLife have been successful in creating a solid internet presence, a place for pro-life women to go when they feel and indeed are treated as social outcasts. But it’s not quite enough, is it? Just having a space for pro-life women, to ensure we are represented, when the bigger and better funded voices pipe up with drivel like “my body, my choice,” is not enough. How to encourage women sitting on the fence? How to take the great number of women who would never personally have an abortion but still insist on saying they could never tell another woman what to do and transform them into pro-life supporters? How to move people of means and less means so that they give generously to support the fight for human rights for all human beings? How to do all this without it coming to violence, as it did eventually in the fight against slavery in America?
I don’t have all the answers, yet. But a three hour PBS documentary called The Abolitionists has put a renewed fire in my heart to try.
It’s the fact that they have any policy at all that is the problem. China now has a two child policy instead of the one child policy they had in place before.
From an expert, Reggie Littlejohn:
However, instituting a two-child policy will not end forced abortion, gendercide or family planning regulations in China. Couples will still have to have a birth permit for the first and the second child, or they may be subject to forced abortion,” Littlejohn said. “The core of the One Child Policy is not whether the number of children the government allows. It’s the fact that the government is setting a limit on children, and enforcing this limit coercively. That will not change under a two-child policy. The One Child Policy does not need to be modified. It needs to be abolished. Women will still be forcibly aborted under a universal 2-child policy. We need to keep up the pressure until China abandons all coercive population control,” Littlejohn added.
This journalist is in shock there’s a feminist prime-minister elect.
I’m in shock that she thinks of herself as a feminist.
A feminist is a strong woman, regardless of world view or ideological conviction. When you get your underoos into this big of a tangle for the lack of government dole outs, I think we can all agree you aren’t that. Her article should run on The Onion.
Feminists across the country are emerging from their bomb shelters, and blinking in the stark light of day to assess the damage of the past decade.
Did she actually say that? Yes! And more. Read and enjoy.
Catherine Porter, self-described “feminist” can’t do it–not without a lot of government money, hand holding and support. From a man, no less.
This caught my eye, from the campaign trail.
Trudeau and Mulcair will include abortion as part of the maternal health initiative overseas–this is no great surprise. What is surprising to me is the number of folks who are quite happy to frame abortion provision as included in reproductive services and maternal health.
One woman’s violence is another’s “compassionate care,” which is precisely why you can’t have a “woman’s issue” debate. Sigh.
Just as a small aside, this:
“According to a 2011 World Health Organization report, 21.6 million unsafe abortions were performed around the world in 2008 — almost all of them in developing countries.”
The source for [these numbers] lies in a series of reports published by WHO called Unsafe Abortion. There, researchers repeatedly clarify how hard it is to study the issue due to the lack of data. One citation (of many) reads: “As there are no feasible data collection methods that can reliably reflect the overall burden of unsafe abortion, one is left to work with incomplete information on incidence and mortality from community studies or hospitals … This is then adjusted to correct for misreporting and under-reporting.”
It’s no big surprise that some of the world’s poorest or war-torn nations don’t keep impeccable abortion statistics. So researchers rely on assumption after assumption.
Like this one: Abortions in the developing world, they say, are always under-reported. This assumption leads researchers to consistently inflate abortion numbers. Entirely lacking is any rigorous defence of this opinion. There’s every reason to believe that local attitudes toward abortion, most of which are significantly less approving of abortion than those in the West, might lead women to have fewer abortions, not more.
Then there’s the assumption that allows for local data to be applied nationally. “It was assumed that sub-national data could be extrapolated to country level with adjustments,” write researchers. That’s about as rigorous as assuming that since 2% of Saskatchewan is francophone, so too is 2% of Canada.
What about this one? Researchers assume that half of induced abortions would result in hospitalization for complications, using hospitalization rates to attempt to calculate unsafe abortion rates and then death from unsafe abortion. Yet that is entirely unreliable: Depending on the method used to abort, the prior health of the mother and access to basic antiseptic supplies, this ratio could be far too low or far too high.
I’m not a single issue voter myself, so I get it when people who are pro-life vote for a pro-choice candidate or a pro-choice party. Also it is fully possible that money is being put to abortions overseas even now (unreported).
All that said, not including abortion in maternal health makes sense. After all, making someone “no longer a mother” (of that particular child–she may have others) isn’t the same thing as making life healthy as a mother.
What I’m after is a society and a world where mothers are not penalized for being mothers, and a developing world where childbirth is as safe as it is in Canada today. And childbirth in Canada is not safe because of abortion, it’s safe in spite of it.
This is a fair pro-choice look at a pro-life event. What I want to draw attention to is the first comment on the article:
Thanks for a well written article. I’m wondering what were the questionable scientific facts presented at this particular talk? Were you able to either confirm or deny them?
Why I like it: She doesn’t rant about her views. She asks a simple question. The author might go and try to do that. And that could be interesting. That is the kind of thing, done privately, without debate, that changes minds. Also, to be fair, I’m pretty sure if the organizers knew or thought they were presenting false, unscientific information, they would want to change that. (I know the organizers, and I know they would indeed want to correct if they were misstating, or getting things wrong.)
To be sure, they are suing because their club was banned. But we should all consider suing when the education system is so bad that one simple sentence has three [sics] in it. I got a laugh out of that. They know their “women rights,” just not how to spell women. It gives me strength: Pro-lifers might win this battle after all.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ANTI-ABORTION GROUP AT RYERSON FILES LAWSUIT OVER ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION
October 14, 2015. TORONTO, ON— Pro-life students at Ryerson University have filed a lawsuit against the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) over denying their club, Students for Life at Ryerson (SFLR), status.
On February 23rd, 2015, the RSU Board of Directors unanimously voted that SFLR would not be allowed to form a pro-life club. This vote marked the last step in an appeal process that began in the fall semester after SFLR was rejected by the Student Groups Committee on the basis that the RSU, “opposes…groups, meetings, or events that promote misogynist views towards woman [sic] and ideologies that promote gender inequity, challenges women’s right [sic] to bodily autonomy, or justifies [sic] sexual assault”.
“Our club stands for human rights for all human beings, including those at the earliest stages of life. We also want to support pregnant students on campus who want alternatives to abortion,” states Carter Grant, a third year business major and Vice-President of SFLR.
Pro-life students at Ryerson were first denied club status back in 2003. Now students are taking the decision to court to assert their right to be treated fairly by their student union, and to not be discriminated against on the basis of their pro-life viewpoint.
What is happening at Ryerson is not an isolated event. Pro-life students across the country have faced similar censorship at other institutions, including at the University of Victoria, University of Calgary, York University, Carleton University, Trent University, Lakehead University, and Capilano College.
As a strong advocate for freedom of expression, the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR) strongly opposes these acts of discrimination and is assisting the students with this case. CCBR’s new legal department, CCBR Legal, has retained experienced constitutional lawyer Carol Crosson to defend the students. Ms. Crosson says that, “pro-life students have been denied rights on campuses long enough. This is the time to end this battle and enshrine students’ rights on campus.”
Through CCBR Legal, CCBR provides legal representation for those in the pro-life movement. As history as shown, legal representation is an integral part of successful social movements. The law protects the right for pro-life individuals to share their message on the same basis as others and CCBR Legal is determined to protect this right.
EWTN is a Catholic Network that I believe just came to Canada. They are doing a pro-life roundtable, featuring Deb Gyapong, Brian Lilley, and Jonathan Van Maren, among many others.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk33Uwvws2E&feature=youtu.be]
Here are the segment details for viewing the full thing:
Hear them speak at 4 p.m. ET, Saturday, Oct. 10, when EWTN broadcasts in Canada and the U.S. and streams online (under the television tab at www.ewtn.com) the first-ever “Canadian Pro-Life Roundtable” from St. Brigid’s Centre for the Performing Arts in Ottawa. (Additional airings in Canada are 1:30 a.m. ET, Oct. 21; 10 p.m. ET, Oct. 14; 1:30 p.m. ET, Oct. 16; and 1:30 p.m. ET, Oct. 18.)
Lots of smart folks talking about many aspects of the pro-life debate. Should be good.
It’s not uncommon for me to send Andrea a link to a news article with the accompanying text: “I don’t even know how to blog about this. I don’t know where to start.”
This story about Nicky Windsor is one of those stories. Nicky is a 29 year old woman from England who chose to abort her child.
She became upset with the abortion provider, the Conifer House clinic, because it did not provide her with sufficient options regarding the disposal of her dead baby’s body.
In response to her complaint, the clinic sent a card of apology and “comfort” and two ultrasound pictures of her baby. Nicky’s statement to the media:
She said: ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s absolutely disgraceful.
‘I’ve never known anything like it. What were they trying to do to me? Why on earth would I want scan pictures?
‘Going through a procedure like that is traumatic enough so to have it all brought back to me in the way that they did was absolutely shocking.
‘When I first got the card I thought it was a nice gesture but when I opened it up and saw two baby scans it absolutely shattered me. It was just an awful feeling.
‘It felt as if I had to go through the loss all over again.’
The front of the card, though not noted in the article reads “Your little one is sleeping soundly. Your little one is sleeping on a cloud, drifting high above. And gently dreams of peaceful things surrounded by your love.”
Nicky is not angry because her child is dead. She’s not angry that she perhaps made the wrong decision. She’s not angry that women are frequently told that abortion is a simple and straightforward procedure with few side effects, when she suffered severe trauma.
She’s angry that she couldn’t do what she wanted with the corpse and she’s angry that she had to look at the child that she “terminated.” She’s so angry that she goes public with her story and speaks to the media.
This story is as maddening as it is tragic. But the article does reveal some of the tragedy of abortion, how it not only ends a baby’s life, but how it hurts women. Nicky herself said that choosing to have an abortion proved to be a traumatic experience. The abortion provider also admits, via the message on the card, that a child was alive and is now dead and that the mother may be concerned about her child’s eternal soul.
I have to wonder if that concern and pain may be part of the reason for Nicky’s anger directed at the clinic. Nicky’s baby is gone and Nicky herself is in a lot of emotional pain.
And those of us who are pro-life are told we can’t call ourselves pro-woman.
Strong, powerful women are pro-life women.
I am pro-life,” Leitch said at a Collingwood Royal Canadian Legion. She credited her experience as a pediatric surgeon as a factor in upholding her anti-abortion position.
