Andrea and I have an op-ed in this morning’s Ottawa Citizen about Rod Bruinooge. We’re in favour. Read it here.
Dear Colby: Huh?
It could be me. Those vacation days have a way of softening the noodle (I blame Chimay; nobody ought to make beer this good). But I must say I have very little idea what Colby Cosh is saying in this piece.
I am amazed a hundred times a year that pro-life Christians get away with claiming that they stand on eternal principles when it comes to abortion, even though, if you prod them, they will start talking rot about DNA (whose existence and nature somehow went undisclosed through centuries of religious revelation) and will admit that it was the progress of scientific understanding which obligated them to suddenly promote abortion in the panoply of sins, circa 1968. They faced a choice concerning which principles they chose to modify under the pressure of technological change, and opted for the direction that allowed them to signal resistance to modernity. Their stance is about as deserving of deference as the Western Church’s 12th-century ban on crossbows, and no more tenable.
I guess it shows how much I don’t go out, but I have never been confronted with rot about DNA while discussing abortion-related issues (“a hundred times of year”? Gosh, Colby, where do you hang out?). Most of the pro-life folks I know are pretty keen on modernity – at least, the parts of it that gives us flush toilets, laptop computers under $1,000 and awfully cool gadgets like the “smarter smartphone” I just got. I’m also cool with crossbows.
I admit I don’t go to great lengths to justify how I became pro-life (or, as I prefer to call it, anti-casual-abortion). It’s quite simple, really: As a rule, it is wrong to end the life of innocent human beings. And I side with Rod Bruinooge whe he says it’s at best bizarre that a country would outlaw the sale of my own individual body parts but allow me to terminate the life of an unborn child at any point in a pregnancy for any reason whatever.
______________________________
Andrea adds: I wish I had written this before now, because now you won’t believe me, but I absolutely knew when Bruinooge said the bit about kidneys that some clever individual would come forward to say “Indeed! And this is why we must deregulate organ sales.” If I had thought about it harder, I might have guessed Colby Cosh—as I know his stuff and read it with interest, because he’s a good writer and I like him. Today’s offering isn’t really his best, in my opinion. It’s really… emotional. I recognize the visceral hostility to Christians–and by extension, Christian pro-lifers–because, er, I used to share it. So he’ll have to get over that, somehow, because being pro-life is not a religious stand, or rather, need not be. This column reads like a host of unresolved personal issues in national columnist clothing.
____________________________
Tanya adds: Good, so I wasn’t the only one to pick up on the bitterness vibe in this editorial.
Mind you, he lost me way before that. He lost me at:
I don’t claim to know what most Canadians think about kidney donation; my guess is they don’t think about it at all.
Cosh followed that up with his own opinion of what he believes most Canadians would think of organ-selling on e-bay if they ever gave much thought to the issue at all, which they don’t.
(Not my fault. That sentence was only as confusing as his thought process.)
____________________
Andrea adds: And Tanya, we are not alone in picking up the bitter vibe. So did Charles Lewis in this quick rebuttal. (You’d have to be a rock not to notice. Compare and contrast God and Morgentaler? Really?)
This is what it looks like when people do research
Kady O’Malley has a lovely post this morning: Dear Liberal Party: That’s not actually an answer. Read and enjoy.
_______________________
Tanya loves:
To put it bluntly, Ms. Fairbrother may not be able to confirm the existence of this caucus, but if she’d bothered to ask around, anyone who has spent any time on the Hill would have been able to fill her in.”
Oh SNAP! (I learned that expression from my 11 year old niece. It’s my pathetic attempt to recapture my youth.)
A new slogan
I say! This Rod Bruinooge character is really starting to gain traction, isn’t he. Most excellent. I especially like this from him:
The bottom line is that people like myself are not going to stop until, at the very least, unborn children have more value than a Canadian kidney,” he said.
How about we make a t-shirt that says:
People are kidneys too
In Canada, body parts have more rights than entire fetuses.
Are we really that dumb?
Any other ideas?
________________________
Andrea: I’ll put forward “People for the Ethical Treatment of People” and keep thinking about it.
________________________
Brigitte passes along Dear Husband’s suggestion: He says “People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans” (or PETH) would be easier to pronounce than “PETP”. He’s obviously not French.
________________________
Andrea had already thought of the pronunciation difficulty: It’s PET-“P” –as in sounds like “pet peeve.” Come to think of it, that leads to all kinds of very witty advertising slogans. “Is killing people one of your pet peeves–in particular when they call it abortion? Join PETP today…” (I’m still working on it, ironing out the details.)
________________________
Brigitte is working so hard she belongs in a Dickens novel:
Make custom t-shirts at CustomInk.com
Oh what a beautiful morning
I do not know this Rod Bruinooge, the MP from Winnipeg and new chair of the Parliamentary Pro-life Caucus. I do, however, like him. It’s a good morning when you wake up to read an article called “Why I am pro-life.” It’s a nice little piece, and I find this part particularly interesting:
My aboriginal elders have taught me that the cycle of life honours both birth and death, and respect for the unborn is a foundation of this philosophy.
I had heard that the aboriginal mindset is against abortion, and I’d like to know more about that, actually. I think it is interesting to look at a cultural view, one that doesn’t value choice and expediency over the cycle of life.
_____________________
Andrea adds to her own post that she is grateful to the National Post for not being scared of taking this topic on.
_____________________
Andrea continues to be thrilled: The Globe and Mail ran a cover story on Rod Bruinooge, calling him a modern crusader. Indeed, he is a crusader for human rights, and I’m really happy to see someone act so boldly and publicly on this issue.
Pssssst
Rod Bruinooge, MP and chairman of the “secretive” Parliamentary pro-life caucus has taken his secrets to the media. Read all about it:
The new chairman of a secretive pro-life Parliamentary caucus is pledging to rekindle the abortion debate in Canada and bring “more value” to the lives of unborn children.
Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he’s not interested in reopening the divisive issue, Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge told The Canadian Press people need to be better educated about Canada’s abortion stance, which he says puts the country in a “class of its own.”
Interesting is that the pro-abortion side simultaneously claims that Canadians are pro-choice, and uninterested in debate. Is that one and the same thing? Because I don’t take apathy as support.
In any event, many Canadians are pro-choice, and many are simultaneously concerned about our status quo–they don’t like abortion on demand til the day a baby is born. This is something we must discuss instead of pretending the issue isn’t there, and discussion, free discussion, is nothing to be scared of. I’m up for it, in any case.
__________________________
Brigitte doesn’t understand: The guy who chairs a parliamentary committee talks to the media about what he wants his committee to do and that’s considered “secretive”?
__________________________
Andrea thinks the secrecy refers to the fact that the Parliamentary pro-life caucus doesn’t advertise who its members are. I recall wanting to know this as a journalist myself. And it was possibly the first question the media asked when I did a press conference with the PPLC on sex selection abortion year before last. But when the chair goes to the media with his plans, well, you can’t get much more open than that and more power to him, I say.