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Defending eugenics

September 17, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek 6 Comments

Note to this dude’s family members: Guard your health. If you don’t–he’ll take you on a cruise only to pitch you overboard. Something about people who are not self-sufficient requiring too much “constant care and supervision.” What a classy guy.

So in the anti-abortion advocate’s eyes, a parent’s desire to raise healthy children by squelching unhealthy fetuses while the are still in the womb is little more than a pernicious quest, but it is not considered a pernicious quest to knowingly bring severely disabled children into this world. On the contrary, such a choice is held out as an great example of upstanding morality.

Um, yes, you got it. It is upstanding morality to care for the weak and disabled. 

This group “The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism” says they are “dedicated to advancing individual rights and economic freedom through Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.”

They might want to update the mission statement: “Dedicated to advancing the individual rights of healthy folks…” “economic freedom for self sufficient types” etc. I’d be happy to help them toward greater accuracy.

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Update: The words above are the “upclass” version of this. You can pretend to be erudite to conceal your contempt, or you can just make a t-shirt. (Quoting Kathy Shaidle on this one: “Stay classy, liberal America!”)

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Véronique adds: Hmmm, you know what I find “interesting”? I have recently been reading several Human Rights Tribunal proceedings through my day job. Regardless of what you think about the CHRT, all I will say is that there are some pretty messed up individuals out there. Anyway. Reading the quote from Andrea’s post reminded me of a lot of sample hate material dealt with by the tribunal. Except that you replace “severely disabled” by “blacks” or “jews” or “gays.” Now, you would never get away with that. But it is worth remembering, when arguing for “the rule of reason,” that you can make a reasonnable case for eliminating just about anyone on the planet. Well, except yourself of course. Because we all know that were everybody like me, the world would be a much better place. Lonelier too.

Update: I was looking for something on the National Post website when I stumbled upon this video http://www.nationalpost.com/multimedia/video/player.html?video=71742a12-b27c-4a66-a6e5-f49bf9e7c4da

At some point toward the end the mother comments about a letter-writer who posted a comment to the effect that had her daughter been a dog, she would have been put down by now. 

So yeah. All this to say: there are some pretty sick people ou there. And I’m not referring to Kenadie.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Ayn Rand, Down Syndrome, objectivism, Sarah Palin, The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

“The uneasy conscience of feminism”

September 16, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek 3 Comments

I did not want to comment on this Camille Paglia piece until I read it in full. I’m glad I did. On top of being splendid prose, this piece is a boon to the pro-life movement. 

Let’s get straight to the part that has raised the ire of pro-lifers. Paglia says abortion is murder and then adds she fully accepts abortion. Is this shocking? Perhaps. But every woman who has had an abortion is grappling with that very sentiment. This is the essence of the debate and why pro-lifers care at all in the first place. Never to curtail anyone’s choices–but rather to identify that a person is a person, even in the womb (was tempted to say no matter how small, with apologies to Dr. Seuss) and therefore elimination is not a choice. Paglia has put on the page what every strident pro-abortion activist accepts and knows. They simply don’t say it.

Paglia speaks of “the uneasy conscience of feminism…” and I know that well. It’s that silence that descends most every time the “A word” comes up. I like to think it’s the sound of people’s conscience contorting, writhing around what they know to be true and what they’ve been told they must say. Most women will never accept that murder is their special privilege.

Abortion is “the extermination of the powerless by the powerful,” again, Paglia’s words, which I will be sure to repeat. (If you don’t think abortion is the extermination of the powerless by the powerful, you’ve not watched one in progress, and you should.) Pro-abortion types fare better in the public square if they conceal, conceal, conceal. This is why Bill C-484 had to go. Because it would have started women and men thinking, thinking, slowing realizing–what are we doing? And that is the frightening consistency of pro-abortion types: keep abortion out of the public mind, because free thought is out of bounds.

I’ll take Paglia’s words one step further: the extermination of the powerless by the powerful begins with conniving and devious so-called supporters of women’s rights–those who lie about what abortion is and then convince everyone that access to abortion is a right–hey! this isn’t evil! It’s empowering! They know what Paglia knows–and cloak the act in comfy euphemisms. They meet women in their personal deserts and offer a refreshing drink of cyanide. Only they call it Sprite and add ice and one of those fun paper umbrellas.

Though Paglia’s conclusion is repugnant to me, she is not coercing anyone to her view. She hardly could–it’s not a very good slogan–“Murdering millions–in particular those who have done absolutely nothing wrong and can’t defend themselves! Join today!”  

She says:

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.

Bottom line: this kind of disquieting article does the pro-life movement a great service. 

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Véronique adds: I doubt that Camille Paglia is a closet pro-lifer. Or that she would be delighted by our endorsement. That being said, I want to say how much I liked reading her article. She takes a strong position and she defends it to its logical end without rhetoric or slogans. This is someone I feel like I could have an intelligent conversation with. On the pro-choice side. That in itself gives me hope. Not so much that I could convince her because I don’t think I could. But it gives me hope that we can engage in these issues instead of avoiding them.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Camille Paglia, Joyce Arthur, Salon.com, Sarah Palin

Nothing wrong with a good election spoof

September 15, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Saturday Night Live spoofs Sarah Palin, here.  And north of the border, Justin Trudeau, ici (below):

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFneYVJDbsY]

Both clips are pretty funny. Enjoy.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Justin Trudeau, Sarah Palin

I love the way these people don’t exaggerate

September 14, 2008 by Brigitte Pellerin Leave a Comment

 Senator Claire McCaskill, on McCain-Palin:

But women of America are going to kick the tires the next 55 days, George, and they’re going to going to find out that this is a ticket that wants to put women in prison for having an abortion after they have been raped.

[h/t The Corner]

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Claire McCaskill, John McCain, rape, Sarah Palin

Oh well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree, I guess

September 13, 2008 by Brigitte Pellerin 3 Comments

“Pamela Anderson: ‘I can’t stand’ GOP Vice President nominee Sarah Palin”.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Animal rights, NRA, Pamela Anderson, Sarah Palin

More evidence that sex and pregnancy are indeed related

September 12, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

This study from the Guttmacher, says:  

Half of respondents had experienced at least one unintended pregnancy. Respondents described three categories of pleasure related to pregnancy ambivalence: active eroticization of risk, in which pregnancy fantasies heightened the charge of the sexual encounter; passive romanticization of pregnancy, in which people neither actively sought nor prevented conception; and an escapist pleasure in imagining that a pregnancy would sweep one away from hardship. All three categories were associated with misuse or nonuse of coitus-dependent methods.

Now I have not read the Guttmacher study in full. But my translation on the “scientificese” above is this: Pregnancy is linked–strongly–to sex and sometimes women get pregnant the result of having sex. Furthermore, oftentimes unintended pregnancies are not unintended at all.

You know, I don’t like the idea that everything we do, including pregnancy, ought to be fully and completely planned. All it nurtures is a sense of failure if you can’t get pregnant the very moment you so desire, and a sense of failure if you get pregnant when you did not so desire. (If life is aaaaaalllll about planning, I might add that I’m way off track as per the official Andrea Mrozek 1995 high school graduation power point. See graph four, slide 15 for more information…)

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: babies, contraception, fertility, Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood, planning pregnancy, Sarah Palin

Thoughts on equality

September 9, 2008 by Véronique Bergeron 5 Comments

Naomi Lakritz wrote a funny piece published in yesterday’s Citizen  about gender equality.  I guess my marriage has arrived since I often find myself at the sending end of the cell phone call going “The peanut butter, you want it crunchy or smooth???” On the other hand I often write detailed grocery entries to my husband’s attention reading:  “2 cans of crab meat in tuna aisle, not in frozen fish section. If only frozen avail. 1 can of crab meat will do. Strawberries: preferably not rotten. ” And so on.

But to be honest, the fact that my husband and I work as a team to feed the kids, change the kids and drive the kids is of little comfort in a society that I still perceive as profoundly sexist. Yes, women have more opportunities than they used to and they can be mechanics or doctors or vice-presidential candidates just like the guys do. But unlike the guys, they can expect brutal scrutiny into the why, the how and the where of their career/family choices. And I am not talking only about Sarah Palin, who is a readily available example of this sad situation (on that topic, I found that column right on the money) .  When my husband took a sabbatical to look after our 5 month-old son while I went back to school full-time, I faced a barrage of criticism – including the silent treatment – from friends and acquaintances who couldn’t believe, in turn, that I would do this to my kids or ask this from my husband. The fact that he was looking forward to his “pat” leave did nothing to assuage their sense that I was somehow cheating my family or going against the natural order of things.  At the same time, one of my university professors was confiding that when her husband asked his employer for parental leave, his superior instead offered him a pay raise with the advice to hire a cleaning lady. Equality, yes but…

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I didn’t always approve of “working mothers” (by the way, I profoundly dislike that term. Working mothers. As opposed to what? Women of leisure? Since I joined the ranks of the “working mothers” not only do I get a lunch break but I can go pee when I need to, so there.) But I realised that the vehemence with which I criticized mothers who left their children in daycare was nothing more than the energy I needed to justify my own choice to stay at home to myself. It seems that this attitude has become pervasive, with each woman becoming an illustration of the way things should or shouldn’t be when in reality, individual choices are made for very personal reasons having nothing to do with a social statement. We will have reached full equality when women no longer bear the sole responsibility of making the world go round.

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Rebecca adds: What I’ve noticed about the stay-at-home/work-outside-the-home dilemma is how hard it is to predict, before the fact, what will work for you. I have friends who had serious careers in which they’d invested years and thousands of dollars of tuition, who decided, to their own surprise, to stay home, and at least one friend who was very snippy about daycare until she had a baby and thought she’d go nuts if she didn’t go back to work after the first year.  As for me – I thought when I was expecting my first that I’d put him in daycare at 12 weeks, the soonest they take them in Manitoba.  Then when he actually arrived, the thought made me sick to my stomach, so I was a full-time SAHM for a while.  Since then, I’ve somehow muddled into a compromise that involves working (largely) from home, grad school part time (night classes) and a part-time nanny whom I adore who takes care of the baby at our house, often when I’m working in a different room.  Most days, this seems like the best of all possible worlds – in the same place as my kids most of the time, intellectual gratification, slow but steady work on my degree, and not putting the baby in an institutional daycare, which I think is a different set of pros and cons than for toddlers.  Of course, some days it seems like I get all the cons – deadlines and pressure and seminar reading, while juggling kids and, as Véronique points out, no guarantee that I’ll have time to use the toilet, let alone eat a balanced meal.

So I’ve learned, at the end, that not only can you not know what’s right for other women, it can take a while to figure out what’s right for you and your kids.  And it doesn’t bother me that other women make different choices, or prefer different trade-offs than I do.

 

And speaking of Sarah, one of the things that delights me about her is that she is a feminine, fulfilled woman running for high political office.  It’s nothing new for women to be able to achieve what they want, despite NOW’s claims to the contrary.  We’ve had women astronauts (two of them Canadian), Secretary of State (Condi), head of major earth-shaking corporations (Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman come to mind) surgeons and generals.  Few of them, though, have families. 

 

Whole books have been written about how super high achieving women are much less likely to have children and solid marriages.  No, what’s new is for a young woman, with an adoring husband, a large (five children!) family, who is, let’s face it, stunning and could pass for a decade younger than she is, to be a serious contender for Vice-President of the USA.  Sarah Palin isn’t forced to pretend to be a man in drag, or even to make her candidacy one built around gender.  Canadian women of my generation were brought up being told that we could be whatever we wanted, and that was true, as far as it went.  Our children’s generation will see that little girls can grow up to be whatever they want, without giving up marriage, family and femininity.  You know, as has always been true for men (mutatis mutandis.)

 

Does that make me a feminist?

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: gender equality, Naomi Lakritz, Sarah Palin, working mothers

Working and mothering, mothering and working

September 9, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

‘She’ll be with Piper or Trig, then she’s got a press conference or negotiations about the natural gas pipeline or a bill to sign, and it’s all business,’ Burney, who works across the hall, said. ‘She just says, ‘Mommy’s got to do this press conference.’ “

A little more insight into Sarah Palin and how she works. I like this story because it highlights how there are a myriad different reactions to pregnancy: how a mother can tell others (or not), be excited (or not), mull things over on her own (or not), keep working (or not), ask for support (or not)–the list goes on. In short, we all have choices in pregnancy, including adoption.

I’m not anti-choice. It’s just some things are not a choice and every single person on the planet acknowledges that. (Think to those clear cut cases, the ones our culture accepts and acknowledges broadly, like slavery.)

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: choice, Sarah Palin

The quiet success of the pro-life movement

September 8, 2008 by Brigitte Pellerin 1 Comment

David Frum tries again, this time with a much better tone…

Whoever imagined that we would see a Republican convention rapturously applaud an unwed teen mother?

Yet that is just what happened on Wednesday night in St. Paul. At the conclusion of Sarah Palin’s triumphant speech, the Alaskan Governor welcomed her family onto the stage: her husband, her five children and the fiancé of Bristol, her visibly pregnant 17-year-old daughter.

That moment confirmed a dramatic evolution in American politics: the transformation of the pro-life movement from an unambiguously conservative force into something more complex.

Well, maybe not. It’s quite possible it was something more complex for a lot longer – in fact, from the very beginning of the culture wars. I am happy to say I’m too young to know for sure… My guess is that the sudden emergence of Sarah Palin has emboldened many a quiet pro-life person; it is now OK to declare oneself in favour of life (or against abortion), and many are relieved finally to say so.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: David Frum, pro-life movement, Sarah Palin

Read while waiting in line at the grocery store…

September 8, 2008 by Véronique Bergeron 3 Comments

An entertainment rag (can’t remember which one) showing this picture of the Palin family pre-Trig (their youngest child). The caption – loosely quoted: “Rumours about Bristol being Trig’s birth mother were sparked after the publication of this picture showing Bristol apparently pregnant and Sarah Palin, well, not.”

Sounds like some entertainment columnists have seen too many photoshopped pictures of anorexic teenagers for the good of the rest of us. It’s called an abdomen and most of us have one, including my 12-year-old daughter. And my 11-year-old son. Scary.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Bristol Palin, pregnant, rumours, Sarah Palin

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