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Can you say slow news cycle?

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LonelyHeartFarmer

You know it’s a slow news cycle when national newspapers run extensive singles ads. Unpaid ads, on the front page, above the fold. Mario is the lonely heart pictured in yesterday’s Globe and Mail:

Loneliness of agricultural singles is a growing issue in a province where farms are disappearing, but now experts – and dating sites – are paying attention

There must be a government fund for this sort of thing. A committee for rural dating. Clearly, that there is not is a sign of prejudice against Canadian corn stalks–whose very existence is at stake should young Mario not find himself a mate. I expect this prominent coverage should help spur on a national discussion. And perhaps get young Mario’s phone a-ringing.

This is very important, in particular as Canada Day approaches. And to think I almost missed this item.

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Brigitte disagrees: But Andrea, isn’t Mario kinda cute? If he doesn’t deserve front-page treatment, who does? I’m no rural dating expert, but I did spend a few years in farm country many moons ago and I distinctly remember young people there not having special difficulties finding dates.

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Andrea again: Mario does look cute, and that’s why this is a most egregious situation. If he can’t find a date–who can?? I ask you.

Two Quebec staples

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Steamés and $7 a day daycare.

I was sitting on a terrace yesterday enjoying lunch of hot-dogs and fries with my daughter (because, apparently, Listeria doesn’t scare me one bit). Along came a 50-something woman, asking if she could share our table. “But of course!”

The conversation quickly turned to childcare. (For some reason, she believed a woman having a weekday lunch with her 3-year-old could be some sort of a resource.) This woman’s daughter is looking for a daycare for six-month-old twins, but keeps encountering waiting lists up to 4 years long.

I suggest: “Why not enroll them in private daycare and pay $30 a day only to get it all back on her income tax?”

She comes back with: “Oh, well she and her spouse make too much annually to qualify to get any money back.”

Yes, of course. When it comes to daycare, it’s deplorable to think that a family making 6 figures should have to pay more than $1,820 a year per child. Thank goodness even those families receive $100 a month per child under 6 in childcare benefits. How ever would they make ends meet?

And there you have it. Another example of how enviable our childcare system is in Quebec.

Some people scare easy

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I am a bit conflicted on Bill C-484. I don’t object to it, but in a strict legal sense I don’t believe it to be necessary. I’m also far from convinced it would work as a deterrent or do anything to protect pregnant women from violence. But as a political expression of a society’s belief that unborn children are human and fragile and as such, deserve protection, it’s a fine dandy piece. So I guess that puts me in the “pro” camp, if somewhat reluctantly.

It’s not an easy topic, and deciding whether to be in favour or agaisnt Bill C-484 can be difficult. But scary? Not one bit, unless of course you are so entrenched in your pro-abortion views that you consider any indication that society may find the indiscriminate disposal of tiny human beings morally objectionable a threat to your position. I find it hard to believe that’s where most pro-choicers are.

The elite versus the rest of us

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On Bill C-484, the unborn victims of crime act, a new poll commissioned by Ken Epp and done by Angus Reid shows 53 per cent of Quebec women support the bill.

Who would have guessed?

Still, if journalists and doctors and lawyers keep up the pressure, I’m sure they can change those stats around–turn that frown upside down! Normal, non-activist people are so resilient, answering simple questions reasonably. But what they need is a good dose of Where this Bill Might Go, how it would be Very Scary and Doors That Are Closed Could be Opened…

La Presse–you have your work cut out for you.   

Girls having sex

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The Conseil du statut de la femme has raised the question of choice. No kidding:

The question is to know if girls really make a clear and educated choice to experience a precocious sexuality, or if this is purely a direct impact of the media.

Are we, in Quebec, calling sexually active teens ‘girls?’ Are we raising the issue of ill-informed choice as a potential problem regarding sexuality (and therefore reproduction)?

The article goes on to say:

Among adolescents in a couple relationship, one in five girls (20%) affirms having had a sexual encounter without actually desiring it. These are “extremely worrisome statistics,” figures the CSF.

The CSF confirms that the younger a girl starts being sexually active, the more sexual partners she will have and the higher the likelihood of her contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Hmm…That sounds a bit like a dose of abstinence education to me.

There was no mention of unintended pregnancy and subsequent (ill-informed, undesired) abortion risks.

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Rebecca adds: “… purely a direct impact of the media.” That’s a handy bit of slicing and dicing of reality, isn’t it? Are those really the only two possibilities: a) “girls” are making informed and rational choices to be sexually active or b) it’s the media’s fault? Parents, teachers, clergy, and all the other adults who are more directly connected to individual children have a responsibility to provide young people with not only facts, but also moral guidance and support. I can gripe about the media with the best of them, but there are some rather more specific culprits in the discussion of why teenage girls might be making regretable choices.

No decay of the human family here

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Quebec is only meeting the increased demand for daycare by half. We have the coveted $7 a day daycare system in place here in this province, and, apparently, we can’t get enough of it. Essentially, we’ve created a monster that can never be quenched. Daycare here is the norm. It’s so normal, that everything else is abnormal. Attempting to illustrate:

Mary to Doris: I’m sending my son to the Big Daycare down the road. Where are you sending your daughter?

Doris to Mary: Oh, I’ll be staying home with her. (or My mother will be watching her 5 days a week.)

Mary to Doris (gasping for breath): What? Aren’t you terrified that she won’t be socialized?

Yes, that’s right. Many in Quebec believe that, if you don’t send your child to daycare, they will be that weird kid who sits in the corner and talks to himself. A fallacious stigma once reserved only for homeschooled children has now attached itself to those kids who spend their early formative years with (brace yourselves) family.

Bill C-484 as abortion debate

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Chantal Hébert in The Toronto Star today on Bill C-484. Predictably, she has equated abortion access with equality for women. But also has equated Bill C-484 with a recriminalization of abortion.

Seeing as the Bill is not about recriminalizing abortion, we ought to ask why it is that every pro-abortion critic believes that is the case. The answer is fear: Would recognizing the fetus in cases where where the mother wanted it result in recognition of the fetus in other places as well? It is still not immediately clear to me why that would have to result in “recriminalization,” but I’m perhaps not well-positioned to comment on that, seeing as I aim to have women recognizing the hypocrisy of abortion and the ills for their own person prior to doing so “for The Government tells me so.”

Bill C-484 so far as I can tell might well result in a recognition of the hypocrisy of our current system: This is a baby when wanted, not a baby when not wanted. “Wantedness” is such a funny concept, and yet our current ideas of what constitutes humanity rest on that notion. Not comforting.

Quebec being misled

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La Presse, a popular Montreal news source, has called Bill C-484 the “federal abortion law.” (For those who may not know, it’s actually a bill to protect pregnant women and their fetus from violent crimes against the mother.) Translated:

According to many, including physicians, women’s groups and affiliated unions, [the bill] opens the door to some recognition of fetal rights, therefore to the abortion debate.

Supposing that there is much meat to the statement above (which there isn’t) why shouldn’t the abortion debate be opened – I should say ‘remain open?’ In 1988, when the Supreme Court struck down the abortion law, it was left to Parliament to introduce a new law on the issue. It’s now 20 years passed, and thank goodness I wasn’t holding my breath.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt

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Abortion is legal in Canada right up until the mother goes into labour. No one can argue that point. What is often disputed back and forth is whether late-term abortions actually occur for non-medical reasons. Here (thanks to Big Blue Wave) is an example of such a debate.

 Says the pro-abortion side:

Although there’s no abortion law in Canada, doctors do adhere to the CMA recommendation of no abortions on request after 20 weeks. Even then, so-called “elective” abortions after 16 weeks are rare…

Though Joyce Arthur is quoted above, I’ve heard many an abortion rights activist cite similar information. Patricia LaRue, Executive Director for Canadians for Choice, claimed late-term abortions “don’t happen… No Canadian doctor agrees to do an abortion past 23.6 weeks for social reasons.” 

But fact responds in the form of Margaret Somerville’s personal experience. She enumerates such examples as a woman, 34 weeks pregnant, who did not want to have a baby with a cleft-palate. Or again, a 29 year old student who “was 32 weeks pregnant and wanted an abortion for social reasons.”

 There is an abortion clinic… in Montreal that… does all the very late term (over 22 weeks gestation) abortions… It’s been reported that the Quebec Government has sent at least one obstetrician to the US to be trained to do these abortions – if they were not happening, why have a clinic and why train someone to do them?

Denying that these late-term abortions occur would, I suppose, make the idea of them less haunting. How is it, then, that we who oppose abortion are faced with their very reality, while those who support their existence get to shield their eyes? In the words of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, I say to those abortion supporters: “Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”

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