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This is 2009, right?

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There’s a feature in today’s Ottawa Citizen about a doctor who is celebrating his 25,000th vasectomy. (Called “The vasectomy king,” for some reason I can’t find it online).

Here’s the quote I found interesting. The doctor says:

If men had to bear kids, we wouldn’t have a population explosion.”

To this I would say, um, we don’t have a population explosion, my friend. We have very low birth rates. Nothing exploding here.

Interesting how old “truths” die hard.

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Tanya adds: Old truths die hard because Al Gore is walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue wearing a sandwich board.  On the front, it says “the end is near!”  On the back is a graph which has no basis in reality showing that the population of the world will grow to over than 10 billion by the year 2050.

world-population-chartlol

Oh, make that 9 billion. (I guess even he couldn’t sell his original figure of 10 billion).

Empty suitcase found shady…

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…er, I mean, “shady suitcase found empty.”

A suitcase that prompted a bomb scare Monday afternoon outside a downtown Ottawa abortion clinic turned out to be empty…

the large black suitcase leaning against a post…was empty and had been left out for disposal.

You know how it is. The Canadian press is riddled with stories of abortion-clinics exploding. No wonder someone thought is was a bomb.

But, wait a sec, the one and only bombing ever to occur in Canada in relation to an abortion clinic was in 1992. Hmm, that’s (…1…2 …carry the 4…) over 16 years ago!

I wonder if the reaction from emergency services would have been the same had the suitcase been found outside a Denny’s.

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Brigitte adds: As a certified paranoid (perhaps in part due to having spent time in France during a Vigipirate episode), I admit I always look twice at such objects. You never know, and failure to notice a dangerous package might easily be catastrophic. But  there’s a difference between looking twice and freaking out unduly, given that abandoned empty suitcases are mostly an affront to our aesthetic sensibilities. Oh, and I love the last line in the story Tanya links to:

Anti-abortion protesters often march and wave placards outside the clinic.

But of course. Placard wavers! Not far from an abandoned suitcase! Who wouldn’t call the police?

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Andrea adds: What is more interesting than the short news story are the comments, including this one from one “Bunty W”:

So yeah, I’m glad I killed that fetus! Morgenthaler deserves sainthood as far as I’m concerned.

and this on the “clump of cells” argument:

You (who have clearly never read a science textbook) will be amazed to know that YOU are just a cluster of cells. Trees are clusters of cells, fish are clusters of cells… everything in the living world, AMAZING!

The comments go on for a long while. This is interesting, because the issue is resolved and has been closed for a very long time…this I know, for pro-choice advocates tell me so… (Sing with me.)

Free range parenting continued

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I’ve been thinking some more about free range parenting particularly as it pertains to safety, or our society’s risk aversion. I think that the extent to which children can be left unsupervised is directly proportional to parents’ ability to count on their neighbors – writ large – to keep her children safe.

My suburban neighbourhood is surrounded by open fields and a small wooded area. Liesl and Kurt, who are responsible for walking Cocker Spaniel twice a day, would love to prowl the open fields but are not allowed… yet. Is this necessary? Probably not. The risk of meeting an ill-intentioned stranger is low but the stakes are high. And more importantly, if my children yelled, would anybody help them? I don’t think so and this is the most frightening thing.

In recent years, two women were murdered by random strangers in the Ottawa area. Ardeth Wood disappeared in August 2003 and Jennifer Teague in September 2005. Some reported the similarities of both cases but omitted an important one: in both cases a witness noticed something amiss, felt uncomfortable about it, figured it was a couple’s dispute and decided to mind their own business. A cyclist saw Ardeth Wood visibly upset being taken toward the forest by Chris Myers. A resident heard Jennifer Teague’s scream as she was abducted at knife’s point by Kevin Davis. Both decided not to get involved. Upsetting as it is, I always wondered if my nausea wasn’t caused by the knowledge that I might have done the same thing in similar circumstances: mind my own business.

My fear is not so much that my children will make unfortunate encounters on the bike paths circling my neighbourhood. But if they did, residents of fancy ravine lots wouldn’t hear them in their sealed, air-conditioned, oasis of splendor. I have lived here for two years and I know one neighbour. I joke that if burglars pulled in my driveway with a delivery truck, they could empty the entire content of my house and nobody would bat an eye. I can drag my kids kicking and screaming through an entire shopping mall without anyone asking if they are okay. “Good!” you tell me? What If I wasn’t their mom?

Pro-life demonstrators? What Pro-life demonstrators?

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Ottawa March for Life 2008

In local Ottawa news yesterday, 2 broken water pipes caused traffic nightmares. But if you were driving through Ottawa’s downtown core, as I was, in the afternoon, you could not miss the 8,000 marchers who paralyzed circulation around Parliament Hill. CBC radio was probably caught in some “ethical” dilemma, having to choose between reporting what goes on in Ottawa – 4 main downtown arteries filled by 8,000 people – and having to acknowledge pro-life demonstrators. Because driving down Metcalfe around 2 pm, I was shocked by the size of the March for Life. Up came the 2 o’clock local newscast and I was thinking “For sure, they’ll have to mention the march, if only to accuse it of clogging up downtown!” But no! Not a word! Not a word at 3 pm either. Not a word. The broken water pipes got the royal treatment.

See no evil Hear no evil
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Tanya adds: The Ottawa Citizen didn’t have a problem accepting money to advertise for the March for Life, though. Ahh, scruples…

http://shopping.ottawacitizen.canada.com/ROP/ads.aspx?advid=836404

When choice doesn’t involve choosing

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I have issues with “a woman’s right to choose.” Particularly when the said “right to choose” becomes the only yardstick of morality, that is, the standard against which we measure whether things are right or wrong. As we wave “the right to choose” furiously nobody seems too concerned about what the choice is about. As a result, we – that would be the royal “we” – become righteously indignant when our “right to choose” is threatened rather than when the options that substantiate that right are threatened.  

Don’t understand what I am referring to? Go and read the Ottawa Citizen’s ongoing coverage of Catholic Archbishop Terrence Prendergast’s statement that pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied communion in the Catholic Church. Today’s front page article present reactions from Catholic politicians although to what extent these politicians are “in communion with church’s teaching” is highly questionable. Regardless, reactions fall into two categories: those who recognize that the Archbishop is giving Catholic politicians a choice and those who think he is attacking choice, be it in their political careers or in women’s lives.

Members of Parliament who accuse the Archbishop of blackmail and bullying don’t realize that they do have choices. Plenty of them. They can support abortion laws – or lack thereof – on the Hill. They can also walk from their offices to the nearest abortion clinic if they want to. They can get four selective abortions if they need to. In fact, they have more choices than pro-life activists in just about any setting . To that long list of choices, Archbishop Pendergast has added one more: they can receive Catholic communion or not. What these self-proclaimed pro-choice Catholics want is not so much choice as choice without strings attached. But that can hardly be called choice, can it?

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