Friday, June 30, 2006

Pat Robertson helps out victims of Hurricane Katrina

They say Pro-lifers only care about the unborn. Quite frankly, that is blind prejudice. Pat Robertson operates a charity that helps out people in various settings. Here's an article:


Given Pat Robertson’s intemperate remarks of late, it’s all too easy to cast stones at anything that bears his stamp. But when it comes to his Virginia Beach-based charity, Operation Blessing, hang onto those rocks.

O.B. is best known for its work abroad, distributing food in Africa, for example, and earthquake and tsunami relief in Asia. A photo mural featuring the group’s global efforts even greets disembarking passengers at the Norfolk International Airport.

But it’s the charity’s largely unnoticed work here at home that is overdue for praise.

In a forgotten corner of obliterated eastern New Orleans, where desperate locals have been without medical facilities for nearly a year, Operation Blessing has stepped in to fill the void. It has spent some $1 million on a free medical and dental clinic that serves almost 100 patients each day.


Read More

The politics behind the definition of pregnancy

By Ruben Obregon, found on ProLifeBlogs.com


Contraception Deception: The Abortion Rights Movement Plays Word Games to Hide Abortion

Abortion rights advocates have been accusing the pro-life movement of trying to redefine pregnancy and reclassify certain contraceptives as abortifacients. In essence, they have been charging that the movement has not been telling the truth about contraception but instead has been playing word games in an effort to ban it.

The truth is, it was the abortion rights and family planning movements that have been playing word games for the past few decades, and the pro-life movement is simply trying to correct the damage.

This decades old controversy revolves around the definition of a single word: conception.

Up until the mid sixties, the question of the beginning of pregnancy wasn't a subject of serious debate. It was well accepted, based upon sound science, that, that conception occurred at fertilization (that is, the union of sperm and egg).

It was also accepted that anything which prevented implantation in fact caused an abortion, as recognized by the US Government and described in a 1963 public health service leaflet:

"All the measures which impair the viability of the zygote [newly created human] at any time between the instant of fertilization [union of sperm and egg] and the completion of labor constitute, in the strict sense, procedures for inducing abortion" [1]
This acknowledgement posed a problem for the family planning movement which was moving away from "pure" contraceptives and more towards drugs which also caused early abortions by preventing implantation of a newly created human being. The only way to make these drugs legally and morally acceptable to the general public was to change the definition of conception.

This is where the American Academy of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) stepped in. In 1965 the ACOG issued a medical bulletin which "officially" changed the definition of conception from union of sperm and egg to implantation: "Conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum [egg].” [2]

Suddenly, under this new definition, drugs which were recognized as abortifacients now only prevented pregnancy – and could now be called contraceptives.

The excuse the ACOG gave for the change was that fertilization could not be detected – a fact that had been already well established. Prior to 1965, this flawed reasoning was never formally accepted as reason for change. It was political agenda, not scientific progress, which prompted the change by the ACOG – it had nothing to do with advances in biology, embryology, or gynecology.

As a result of this change, over the decades women have been told that their contraceptives drugs didn’t cause abortions, and that they would not work if they were already pregnant – and therefore morally acceptable.

But this is deceptive and based upon misinformation and distortion of scientific fact. Changing a definition does not change reality – that a woman’s body is carrying a distinct and new human being and hence pregnant, whether or not that fact is detectable.

Women aren’t being told the entire truth about their contraceptives, and it’s time for members of the ACOG to tell their patients the truth.

The same deception is being played out in the debate over emergency contraception. Notice what the makers of Plan B state regarding how their drug works:

"Plan B® is similar to a birth control pill and is believed to act as an emergency contraceptive by: …Altering the endometrium, which may inhibit implantation …Plan B® is not effective once the process of implantation has begun; it will not affect an existing pregnancy... " [3]
The ACOG has been heavily promoting Plan B with its “Ask Me” emergency contraception campaign. In essence, they are peddling drugs which are capable of causing early abortions as a solution to preventing abortion. It doesn’t take much to realize that abortion isn’t prevented with an earlier abortion.

Pro-life advocates are not changing definitions – they are simply restoring them to their scientific meanings, free of agenda driven bias. If the pro-choice crowd can't do this because many contraceptives would be known as abortion drugs, that is no one's fault but their own.

Footnotes
[1] Public Health Service Leaflet no. 1066, US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1963, 27
[2] American College of Gynecology Terminology Bulletin (September 1965)
[3] The official Plan B website, “For Prescribers: How Plan B Works”.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruben Obregon is the the President and co-founder of No Room for Contraception. He has worked in the pro-family movement for the past 16 years on issues ranging from education to marriage.

Abortion is not a Charter Right

From the CLC Newsletter:


Joseph Goebbels was Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief in Nazi Germany and he famously said that if you tell the big lie often enough, people will eventually believe it. Ultimately, however, the lie was exposed and resulted in Hitler’s downfall.

In Canada, the big lie seems to be that abortion is a ‘right’ either enshrined in the constitution or created by the Supreme Court of Canada. The most prominent abortion lobby outfit is called the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, and Joyce Arthur, a pro-abortion propagandist, routinely calls abortion a ‘constitutional right.’ One such example of Arthur’s foray into untruth is a position paper from June 2005, but forwarded to MPs following the March for Life in May 2006. The paper is about the supposed medical necessity of abortion, and it she claims that abortion is “unlike any other medical procedure” because “legal, accessible abortion is also a Charter right.” She’s wrong. Read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, abortion is not mentioned.

There was a debate in 1982 on how to deal with the issue of unborn life and, for whatever reason, it was not addressed in the actual Charter. That’s why Joyce Arthur is forced to clarify that it isn’t in the Charter itself. Instead, she claims, it is a Charter right “as per the Supreme Court’s Morgentaler decision in 1988.”

The problem is, the abortion laws of that time (which required permission from rubber-stamping therapeutic committees, which were not available in free-standing abortuaries) were deemed unconstitutional on purely procedural grounds by four of the five justices that voted to overturn the abortion law. This is a far cry from declaring a “right to abortion,” a fact noted by another judge, Bertha Wilson. She was the only justice to declare that there was an abortion right.

So what did the Supreme Court do in 1988? It ruled that the therapeutic committees were unconstitutional and it left it up to Parliament to decide to draft new abortion legislation. It did so because, in the words of one of the judges, “the court cannot presume to resolve all of the competing claims advanced in vigorous healthy, public debate.” That is, Parliament, which ostensibly reflects the will of the people, should act on the issue.

In 1991, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney introduced the fundamentally flawed C-43 which would have done nothing to reduce abortions. The bill was defeated on a tie vote in the Senate, and Parliament has ignored the issue ever since.

So there is a void in the law, with no restrictions; but neither is there a declaration of abortion as a right. That gaping hole should be filled with some law that protects the unborn from injury and lethal violence, and vulnerable women from exploitation and harm; but to do so, the politicians, the press and the public must know the truth: there is no right to abortion in Canada. In fact, if one can understand that one does not have the right to do wrong, no legitimate case can be made for permitting abortion. The lie will ultimately be exposed.

PM Stephen Harper is not pro-life-- the Evidence

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Not Pro-Life – The Evidence
Part II of Two Part Report

By Steve Jalsevac

See Part I
Canadian Prime Minister Big Improvement Over Liberal PMs But Clearly Not Pro-Life
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06062702.html

Introductory Comments

June 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Stephen Harper has sent mixed signals on life issues although he has recently been more consistent in openly stating the abortion issue is not something that neither he nor the party will address.

In 1993, responding to a CLC candidates' questionnaire, Harper said he would follow the wishes of his (then-future) constituents on moral issues and that, after polling them, he found they wanted abortion to be kept legal.

In the 2000 Canadian Alliance Leadership Contest, Harper endorsed the socially liberal and pro-abortion Tom Long over the two then regarded as pro-life candidates, Stockwell Day and Preston Manning.

Harper returned to politics in 2002 to succeed Day as leader, and, when Day himself entered the race, Harper used Day's social conservatism and pro-life position as a major issue against Day. In fact, at times, it seemed that Harper was more interested in attacking the pro-life movement and social conservatives than he was in staking out his own position in the race against pro-life candidates Day, Grant Hill, and Diane Ablonczy.

Harper's campaign specifically attacked Campaign Life Coalition for its efforts to encourage pro-life supporters to participate in the Canadian Alliance leadership vote.

In the midst of the 2002 Canadian Alliance leadership campaign, he told Global news that he was pro-life. During that same leadership race, he told The Interim that he opposed embryonic stem cell research and went on to vote against Bill C-13 (on reproductive technologies).

On Garry Breitkreuz's private member's motion M-83 - which, if it had passed, would have had Parliament study the medical necessity of abortion - Harper did not vote. An analysis of the political scene in the March 2004 issue of the CLC National News notes that in all his time in the House of Commons, and with several pro-life issues brought before the House, C-13 is the "solitary" vote Harper has cast "with parliamentary pro-lifers."

As leader of the Conservative Party during the 2004 election campaign, Harper said that Conservative MPs would have a free vote on the issue but framed the issue as “a woman’s right to choose.”

During the 2006 election campaign most Conservative candidates felt severely pressured by party staff to totally avoid the abortion issue and often even the marriage issue. CBC News produced a January 19, 2006 news item on this phenomena. Reporter Terry Milewski stated, with some compelling evidence from individual Ontario campaigns, that “This time a number of candidates seem to be under wraps, unavailable to the media.”

However, they were not only unavailable to the media. Campaign Life Coalition encountered the most severe resistance ever from Conservative candidates to simply stating their views on life issues. Even many of the staunchest pro-life Conservative candidates refused to complete the CLC questionnaire and, in general, the Party did everything it could behind the scenes to withhold its candidate’s view on life issues from the electorate.

This was clearly another Stephen Harper strategy, if not devised by him, obviously approved by him.

Even now, well after the election, many Tory MPs are reluctant to publicly discuss the abortion issue, undoubtedly due to party pressure. At the May March for Life comments on the hill from Tory members tended to be more subdued and cautious than normal. Two Conservative MPs, Gord Brown and the strongly pro-life Cheryl Gallant, oddly stayed in the crowd and did not join the other MPs on the podium or address the crowd.

Evidence

1.
June 15, 2004 Election English debate:

Harper: Let me be very clear on the positions I’ve have taken on that. I want there to be no misunderstanding. I’ve said repeatedly, that I will not, that my Conservative government will not be tabling any legislation impacting in any way a woman’s right to choose.

Layton: Mr. Harper, what if someone brings forward a law that actually comes before parliament? You always counter by saying the government wouldn’t do it, but what if somebody put forward a proposed law that said a woman’s right to choose should be removed? Would you override a decision of the House? Would you take some leadership? Would you hide behind these free votes?

Harper: I won’t be supporting that kind of legislation

Martin: you’ve given us an example, you would take away a woman’s right to choose.

Harper: No I would not Mr. Martin,

Harper: I will not have legislation limiting a woman’s right to choose Mr. Martin.

2.
Harper told his caucus that, at the upcoming March 2005 policy convention, the party leadership would be backing a resolution that would institute an official policy of not taking any position on abortion.

The day before the convention vote on the abortion resolution, Harper said during his speech, "as prime minister, I will not bring forth legislation on the issue of abortion." This speech at the March 2005 convention is said to have produced the successful, although narrow passage of the motion that officially shut down abortion debate in the party and which has been used as a club to silence pro-life candidates and members of caucus.

3.
In a December 11, 2005 letter to the editor of the Washington Times, Harper went out of his way to distance himself from the Bush administration by writing: "a new Conservative government will not initiate or support any effort to pass legislation restricting abortion in Canada."

4.
During an election stop in Quebec on January 17, 2006, Harper told reporters, "The Conservative government won't be initiating or supporting abortion legislation, and I'll use whatever influence I have in Parliament to be sure that such a matter doesn't come to a vote."

5.
CTV News Jan. 18, 2006
Question to Stephen Harper from CBC’s Lloyd Robertson: Do you personally support a woman’s right to choose?

Harper: Well you know Lloyd, this is kind of a stuck record. We dealt with that at our convention. It’s clear in our platform. A Conservative government doesn’t intend to re-open that issue. I have a lot on my plate. I don’t have time to re-open that issue.

Robertson: But what about you personally?

Harper: Well, on my views, as I said, I’m not on either extreme on that issue.

6.
Maclean's Magazine, March 1, 2006 – Harper interviewed by Linda Frum

Macleans: But you fed the "hidden agenda" fear during the campaign when you said "never is a long time" when it comes to introducing abortion legislation.

Harper: The truth is, that was just a frank answer. No politician can ever guarantee to you that an item will not be debated sometime in the future. Nobody can make that commitment. But in my entire career, I've made it clear that I have no intention of getting into the abortion issue. It has not been my issue in my entire career. And it won't be in the future.

7.
An ominous indication of where Harper may be taking Canada was reported by Catherine McDonald, Executive Director of Action Canada for Population and Development, on January 26, 2006. She wrote:

"The Conservative government made a key commitment during the election campaign by signing on to the commitment to women's human rights prepared by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA).. Harper wrote: 'Yes, I'm ready to support women's human rights and I agree that Canada has more to do to meet its international obligations to women's equality. If elected, I will take concrete and immediate measures, as recommended by the United Nations, to ensure that Canada fully upholds its commitments to women in Canada. (January 18, 2006).'"

McDonald went on to write "Women's equality rights include sexual rights and reproductive rights, and this is an area where it will be very important to remind the government what they have agreed to uphold."

Others Confirm Harper’s Abortion Policy

8.
Excerpts from CBC National News January, 2006 biography of Stephen Harper by Gillian Gindlay:

Then as now, his party was a magnate for Reformers of all kinds. Question to Harper researcher William Johnson: You think it was an uncomfortable time for him to be in a party with some of those people and some of those ideas that were being espoused.

Johnson: No, I don’t think so. They knew it would attract secessionists, it would attract the gun rifle lobby, it would attract the abortion, you know, Campaign Life all these they knew all they had to do was control these people

At the Reform Party’s 1991 convention that year the talk was all about electoral breakthrough, how radicals had to be controlled and no one knew that better than Stephen Harper.

Harper Speech at that Convention: “We must not allow ourselves to be shot in the foot by radicals who have done this to new parties before.”

9.
At a 2006 meeting, a strongly pro-life former Reform and then Alliance MP related he had a lengthy private meeting with Harper five years ago. The MP stated he came away from that meeting with the realization the Harper "is not a social conservative. He has differing viewpoints than I do on homosexuality, abortion, those kinds of issues and I don't think he's changed his mind."

The MP continued that "My two years of being in his caucus once again demonstrated to me that he is a very strong, opinionated leader and if you want to survive in his caucus, in his government, you will be a hard driven person and you will do what he says."

10.
Mike Duffy Countdown Program - CTV Jan. 13, 2006
Guests Rona Ambrose, Belinda Stronach, Alexa McDonough

Stronach: I have seen the emails that went back and forth this week from Don Plett, the party president, that said once we get into power we’re going to bring forward a private member’s bill on abortion.

Ambrose: This is unbelievable the amount of fear mongering going on. On abortion, there will be no private member’s bill, no legislation ever supported or introduced in a Conservative government and for you to fear monger Belinda is absolutely unacceptable.

We have a party position the Conservative government will never interfere with a woman’s right to choose. Our caucus stands behind that and our membership voted on it. And for you to fear monger on such and important issue…There will never be a vote.

11.
Mike Duffy Countdown Program - CTV Jan 13, 2006 (following above section)
Guests: Liberal strategist John Duffy, Conservative Party strategist Bill Pristanski

John Duffy: “The Conservatives would allow a free vote on abortion…

Bill Pristanski: “Stephen Harper has said very clearly there is going to be no changes.

John Duffy: Stephen Harper will allow a free vote on abortion.

Pristanski: No, he will not. He has and it is on Page 20 (of policy book) that we are not going to change abortion. Stephen Harper is not going to do it.

12.
On Stephen Harper's failure to address the abortion issue, Fr. Raymond de Souza, in his March 2, 2006 National Post column, noted that Harper’s position is “de facto support” for the current slaughter.

De Sousa states “[Mr. Harper’s] position on abortion invites only two conclusions, neither of them flattering. Either he supports abortion on demand, but thinks there is political gain in dissembling; or he simply thinks the whole matter not important enough to do something about. The latter conclusion should offend both sides of the abortion debate.”


Harper On Euthanasia

French language debate January 10, 2006

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said that he opposes assisted suicide and has no intention of raising the issue in parliament. He would, however, allow a free vote on the issue if it were raised in parliament. “I can simply say it isn’t the intention of our government to propose this type of change to the law,” Harper said. “I think it’s important to resist the idea of giving the power to kill.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jan/06011904.html


Harper On Marriage

During the first of the Dec. 12, 2005 Leaders debate, a French-language debate, Harper said, "the Conservative party has made a commitment. Voters can now vote and a Conservative government would put forward a motion so that Parliament could freely vote on the issue of marriage. Even if members decided to change the definition and bring it back to the traditional definition, we have to respect same-sex marriages that already exist."

In response to the charge that he would have to use the charter's notwithstanding clause to defend marriage Harper said in that same debate, "I will never use the notwithstanding clause on that issue."

Critics have pointed out that the Conservative Leader has moved the marriage issue to a low priority, since the comment does not rule out use of the notwithstanding clause, but only its use to defend marriage.

In related news, Harper also dismayed conservatives by writing a letter to the conservative Washington DC paper the Washington Times on Dec. 11, 2005 in which he distanced himself from American conservatives. "And while I have promised a free vote in Canada's Parliament to reconsider the recent change of law to allow same-sex marriages in Canada, and will vote myself for a return to the traditional definition of marriage, I have said any changes must protect the existing status of same-sex couples who have been legally married."

In Feb. 2005 Harper proposed granting “other civil unions...the same rights and benefits and obligations as married persons". That is, Harper’s only objection to same-sex ‘marriage’ appears to be the use of the name.

Harper rejected the candidacy of pro-marriage candidate John Pacheco during the Dec. 2005 Ottawa West nominations in order to protect the party’s star candidate, homosexual activist John Baird. Baird, is a staunch proponent of homosexual 'marriage'. In the provincial legislature Baird spoke in favour of a provincial gay marriage law striking the words "husband" and "wife" from all Ontario legislation. In the legislature, Baird went so far as to heckle one of his own provincial Conservative colleagues who opposed the gay marriage law.

In 2003 Baird was asked by Stephen Harper to serve as co-chair for his leadership campaign. And in the federal election of 2004, John was again asked by Stephen Harper to serve as Ontario co-chair for the National Campaign.

Harper Will Do Nothing For Social Conservatives - Montreal Gazette Editorial – Jan. 20, 2006
“...a fair-minded observer can see that Harper has little enthusiasm for rolling back the socially liberal status quo. On abortion, the party and leader have promised to change nothing. On same-sex marriage, his position is frankly preposterous, but you can almost see him wink as he advances it: a free vote on the definition of marriage, but no use of the notwithstanding clause, and existing same-sex marriages would never be annulled. It's not easy to imagine such a free vote leading to a new law, even if Harper had a majority. In any case, by far his best way out of this morass would be to drop the issue.”
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.h...


Harper On Religious Freedom

Jan./Feb. 2006 Faith Today EFC

"It's perfectly legitimate for citizens and legislators to take into account their own deeply held faith convictions in developing public policy," said Stephen Harper.

Harper added, “Government must respect these convictions and not attempt to interfere in the free public expression of religious belief. Sadly, freedom of religion has come under attack in recent years in cases ranging from religious organizations being expected to rent facilities for same-sex marriages to pastors being threatened with human rights charges for expressing their religious beliefs. A Conservative government will be vigilant to ensure that freedom of religion is protected in Canada”.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Pro-Life Group Purchases Building Housing Abortion Clinic


Pro-Life Group Purchases Building Housing Abortion Clinic forcing Abortion Business Closure

WICHITA, June 29, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The pro-life group Operation Rescue has announced that it has purchased the building that housed Central Women's Services, an abortion mill located at 3013 E. Central in Wichita, Kansas. Central Women's Services had not been able to pay the rent, and the property was put up for sale. When Operation Rescue purchased the property, under the stipulation that the current tenant not be allowed to remain, it forced the mill to close.

The facility is to be renovated and serve as the pro-life group's corporate headquarters, and will feature a memorial to the pre-born victims of abortion.

The abortion business operated at the location for 23 years and it is estimated that about 50,000 children were killed on the site.

Conditions in the abortion 'clinic' were deplorable said Operation Rescue staff member Cheryl Sullenger who walked through the building with a realtor.

"There was mold, and general filth," said Sullenger. "The carpets outside the abortion rooms were stained with blood, even though it was evident that some effort had been made to clean them. The ceiling nearby was broken. All of the walls were dirty and some were covered with cheap contact paper instead of being properly maintained."

Operation Rescue President Troy Newman also commented on the abortion facility. "Under the sink was one of the biggest garbage disposals I have ever seen," said Newman. "The entire area had the stench of death. It was the sink where the suction machine bottles were washed. In fact, dried blood could be seen that had seeped out from the metal band that surrounded the sink top. There was a bucket marked 'biohazard' next to the sink. We were all sickened by the thought of all those thousands of innocent children whose blood had been washed down that sink. It was an experience I will never forget."

The abortion mill captured the attention of local pro-lifers during the 1991 Summer of Mercy when a Pastor's Rescue, led by Operation Rescue tactical director Jeff White, resulted in the arrests of 80 members of the clergy in what was likely the largest incident of civil disobedience by pastors in the history of the pro-life movement.

Operation Rescue had previously purchased the lot behind the abortion business and erected a huge pro-life billboard there, which was easily viewable by women coming to the facility for abortions.

Feminists Anonymous...and its twelve-step cure

From a column by Carey Roberts:



It's a condition that's known to be chronic, progressive, and highly contagious. With my own eyes I've seen bright, caring women fall under the sway of its deceptive allure. They soon begin to speak and act like someone possessed.

Its initiates are taught that women are "strong and invincible," but at the same time are the victims of an implacable patriarchal conspiracy. These self-contradictory beliefs induce a stress-producing condition known as cognitive dissonance. To relieve the discomfort, the girls are instructed to immerse themselves in the radical ideology.


Read more



The solution is a 12-step self-help program — you guessed it: Feminists Anonymous. With no apologies to the Friends of Bill, here are the 12 Steps to gender recovery:

1. We admitted we were powerless over feminism — that our lives had become bitter, lonely, and meaningless.

2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (That's right, Him. Now's the time to get rid of that Wiccan broomstick stashed in your closet.)

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (Hint: Humility is the first step in the path to self-awareness.)

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character — despite the self-professed good intentions of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.

7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. We made a list of all men and women we had harmed, living and unborn, and became willing to make amends to them. (Practice saying, "I'm sorry" in front of the mirror each morning.)

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would be impossible, or would injure them or others.

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. (If you haven't already taken your name off the Feminist Majority alert list, do it now.)

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to feminists, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Over the years I've seen far too many families destroyed, too many men broken, too many children harmed, and too many women forced into "choices" that they later came to regret.

These women deserve our compassion and understanding. Let's put an end to the insanity.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

If it didn't come from an abortion clinic...

you'd be told it was "anti-choice" propaganda. Christina from Real Choice has uncovered a webpage advertizing for an abortion clinic.The clinic writes:


Please beware of some unethical clinics that falsely claim to do surgical abortions at 3 weeks, which is definitely not safe to attempt, since the pregnancy cannot be
seen at 3 weeks.


She writes:


Why, to even intimate that some abortion facilities might be unethical! Clearly this is antichoice propaganda!


I won't steal her thunder and quote all her blog post. Go over there and take a look!

I also loved this passage:


The patient has the second step of the second trimester abortion performed by a gynecologist with special expertise in second trimester abortions using a method called dilatation and evacuation (D&E)[which involves dismembering the fetus], which is the safest method for second trimester abortions. We use only sterilized surgical instruments and sterile, one-use-only, disposable plastic uterine curettes. In order to increase the safety for our patients, we always use ultrasound guidance during every second trimester abortion, rather than doing the abortion blindly, which is commonly done at other facilities and which is far more dangerous.


When they have to insist it's all sterile you have to wonder....

Even sexual libertines can be pro-life

Christina Dunigan at the Real Choice blog has some interesting comments about prejudices about pro-lifers.

She writes:


I was quite a sexual libertine when I first became a prolifer. I became more conservative after seeing the damage that casual sex does to people -- to women in particular. One kind of damage I saw sexual "liberation" doing to women was putting them on the abortion table. So we started with "Abortion is an awful, dreadful thing," as a premise, and "Therefore having sex with a woman when you're not prepared to support her through a pregnancy is wrong" grew out of it. Cheap sex is bad because it leads to the abortion table, not vice versa (abortion bad because it arises from cheap sex). And I wonder if there's a degree of "All sex is good. Sex sometimes leads to abortion. Therefore abortion is good." in the prochoice worldview.


A poster by the name of Lauren had a similar experience:


In my pro-choice days I was as sexually "liberated" as they came. In fact, I was more than willing to spout the benifits of sexual liberation to anyone who would listen.

I didn't see myself as being objectified, but I wouldn't have cared if I was. I saw objectification as some sort of badge of liberation. Like "yeah look at me and my body, I want to have sex with you as bad as you want me".

After I realized the harms of such an attitude(none of which had to do with abortion at this point) I began to question the validity of being sexually "free".

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

New Research says: Fetuses feel pain

I think I'd like to preface this press release by talking about the current discussion about fetal pain that I've encountered in the blogosphere, in the context of debating Canada's late-term abortion bill. The poor-choice side says that, as per a literature review published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, fetuses don't feel pain before 28 weeks because there's not enough activity in the cortex, meaning not enough consciousness for the unborn to experience pain. In order to believe that, you're asked to dismiss all physiological responses that mimic pain as "reflexes", along with any psychological symptoms, such as crying and avoidance of stimuli. Also, note that two of the researchers in this study are actively involved in the pro-abortion movement. One is a former member of NARAL, and another owns an abortion clinic that does partial birth abortions. Both of these people failed to disclose those conflicts of interest to the editor of the JAMA

Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand has for years maintained that fetuses are capable of feeling pain from about 20 weeks gestation, onward. He's being doing research on this issue for two decades, and his work was ground-breaking. Here's a press release about his article. I've highlighted the more salient points that debunk the thought of the poor-choice side:



UAMS, ACHRI Researcher Affirms Fetal Pain Findings



‘Pain: Clinical Updates’ Publishes Essay by Anand

LITTLE ROCK – Available scientific evidence on brain development demonstrates that fetuses feel pain as early as the second trimester, says a leading expert in pain research from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI).

Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand, professor of pediatrics, anesthesiology, pharmacology and neurobiology in the UAMS College of Medicine and director of the Pain Neurobiology Laboratory at ACHRI, wrote an essay about ongoing research into fetal pain for the June 2006 issue of Pain: Clinical Updates.

The quarterly publication on issues related to pain management, treatment and research is published by the International Association for the Study of Pain, which has declared 2006 as the Global Year Against Pain in Children.

The article follows research published in the May 2006 issue of the scientific journal Pain by Anand and other researchers that pointed to responses to pain by premature babies suggesting the infants consciously felt pain. In 1987, Anand, who is also the Morris and Hettie Oakley Chair in Critical Care Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine, proposed his initial theory on neonatal pain.

The essay “Fetal Pain?” is now available online at www.iasp-pain.org.

“The available scientific evidence makes it possible, even probable, that fetal pain perception occurs well before late gestation,” Anand wrote in his essay summarizing the evidence concerning fetal pain and discussing future research in the field. “Our current understanding of development provides the anatomical structures, the physiological mechanisms and the functional evidence for pain perception developing in the second trimester, certainly not in the first trimester, but well before the third trimester of human gestation.”

Anand said pain perception is not controlled by a hard-wired system that passively transmits pain messages to a certain part of the brain until it is perceived. Rather, he said, the signaling of pain in prenatal development is dependent on the type of stimuli causing the pain, for example intrauterine invasive procedures or fetal surgery.

Pain perception also cannot be assumed to employ the same neural structures in fetuses as in adults, he said. “Clinical and animal research shows that the fetus is not a ‘little adult,’ that the structures used for pain processing in early development are unique and different from those in adults, and that many of these fetal structures and mechanisms are not maintained beyond specific periods of early development,” Anand wrote.

Until now, the prevailing theory was that premature babies react to pain through reflex, but do not actually perceive pain beyond their nerve fibers or spinal cord, and certainly not in the highest sensory center of the brain. Using near infrared spectroscopy, Anand and colleagues studied pain responses in the brains of two-day-old premature babies, correlated with changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen saturations through touch and pain stimuli.

“Pain activates cortical areas in the preterm newborn brain,” the article documenting research by Anand into pain perception in premature babies, was published in the May 2006 issue of Pain, the official journal of the IASP.

UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, five centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has about 2,320 students and 690 medical residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 9,300 employees, including nearly 1,000 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital and the VA Medical Center. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in Arkansas of $4.4 billion a year. For more information, visit uams.edu.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) is the comprehensive clinical, research and teaching affiliate of the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. UAMS pediatric faculty physicians and surgeons are on staff at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Research is a major component of the missions of UAMS and ACH. ACHRI was created to provide a research environment on the ACH campus to meet the research needs of UAMS faculty.

###

Monday, June 26, 2006

Homosexuality misrepresented by fabrication and bias


Homosexuality misrepresented by fabrication and bias
By Catholic Insight staff
Issue: June, 2006




Homosexuality used to be classified as a psychiatric disorder but this was changed in 1973. The question is: why? In 2005 Dr. Jeffery B. Satinover, M.D., published an investigative, 25-page article, tracing the motives and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

Dr. Satinover is a psychiatrist and also a physicist. He is the Director of the Durckheim-Gladstone International Center for Quantitative Analysis (ICQA) in Washington, D.C. In cooperation with the Heritage Foundation and under the auspices of the ICQA, he is overseeing the development of a fully cross-linked international database of medical, social science and legal citations with associated meta-analyses and aggregated data tables. The purpose of the database is to assist concerned scholars, attorneys, social scientists, policy analysts and citizens worldwide in addressing the nearly-universal problem of embedding gross distortions (or even wholesale inventions) of social science conclusions in legal documents. These distortions are ideologically driven to make the public believe that these policies are founded in science. The 1973 ruling of de-classifying homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder is one of these public policies.


Read More at Catholic Insight

Few Homosexuals Interested in Tying the Knot


Date: 2006-06-24

Same-Sex Marriage Flounders: Few Homosexuals Interested in Tying the Knot

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, JUNE 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- After the clamor to legalize same-sex marriage, it turns out that not many homosexuals really want it. Following a bitter battle last year, the Spanish government gave homosexuals the right to marry. Since the law took effect last July 3, until May 31, only 1,275 same-sex marriages took place, reported the Madrid daily newspaper ABC last Saturday.

Comparatively, that would add up to a mere 0.6% of the 209,125 marriages contracted in Spain during 2005. Of the total number of same-sex marriages, 923 were between males and 352 among females.

A recent study by the Virginia-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy did a roundup of same-sex marriage trends. The study, "Demand for Same-Sex Marriage: Evidence from the United States, Canada and Europe," was published April 26.

So far the highest estimate of the proportion of homosexuals who have used the new laws to marry is in the American state of Massachusetts, with 16.7% tying the knot. But this seems to be an exception. In the Netherlands, where same-sex marriage has been established the longest, the percentage was far lower.

The authors of the study, Maggie Gallagher and Joshua Baker, warn that it is often difficult to obtain precise data, either on the number of same-sex marriages, or on the number of homosexuals in a given geographical area.


Read the rest at Zenit.Org

Compassion's Monopoly... I couldn't have said it better myself

This is from Daniel Dufort's Blog. It's a rant on how the left thinks it has the monopoly on compassion:


Throughout the years, a political myth, which taken to face value is frivolous at best, has propagated itself to the status of absolute truth. If you were to listen to the common ‘wisdom’, you’d be lead to believe that leftists have the monopoly of virtue, generosity and compassion.

It then comes as no surprises that whenever you are identified as a rightist, you are de facto considered a servant of big companies, who themselves are the sole nemesis of social peace and who, of course, are eating our babies. But then it gets worse: we are incapable of any sort of compassion or generosity toward another because the individualism monster that we are too busy looking at our navels.


Read the rest! He deserves your visit for articulating this!

CHINA: Pregnant woman forced to abort at seven months


From the Epoch Times

QUOTE:



A 25-year-old unmarried woman was seven months pregnant when staff members from the local government family planning office forcibly took her to a clinic to give her an abortion.


QUOTE:



At about 6 p.m. on May 31, 2005, Wang was stopped on the street by a group of people who identified themselves as staff members from the township family planning office. They forced her into their car and took her in turn to the town clinic, an air force hospital, and Tangli Clinic. All three institutions refused to abort her fetus. At about 11 p.m., they took her to Laoyachen Clinic.

Without her consent or any pre-operation tests, the staff from the family planning office and several doctors and nurses held her arms and pushed her to the ground. She screamed for help. They also beat her, stripped off her pants, and injected a syringe of drugs into her abdominal area. She was then taken to a patient room and tied to the bed.


QUOTE:



She said that at about 3 a.m. on June 2, after violent pains, the infant was born. The infant cried for a few minutes and then became silent and motionless. At that time, no hospital staff was around to help her. Deeply fearful, she shouted for a while before a yawning nurse appeared.

The nurse asked, "What are you shouting about?"

Wang said, "Could you check on my baby?" The nurse walked over to the bed, looked at the baby, and said, "The baby is already dead." She then tossed the body aside.

Wang was so shocked by the news that she fainted. When she woke up in the morning, a doctor was standing by her bed and asked her to pay a fee to handle the baby's remains.

When Wang said that she had no money, the doctor put the body in a plastic bag, put it on her bed and said, "If you have no money, it's easy, just take the body and handle it yourself."

Fetuses can be born alive after 18 weeks

This is an older article I found, but very pertinent in light of Canada's proposed late-term abortion bill. British research shows that some fetuses younger than 24 weeks-- Britain's upper limit for abortion-- can be born alive, and some do survive for a short period. The research shows that between 1996 and 2001, there were 31 cases of this in one region alone.

An interesting quote from the article:


Although 14 of the babies had only a heartbeat, in four cases there were regular breathing movements. In two cases there was a gasp and another two babies gave out an audible cry.


Another interesting quote:


Dr. Trevor Stammers, senior lecturer in general practice at St. George's University Hospital in London, said the latest research was "deeply distressing."

"I know of obstetricians who have been doing abortions for many years who have broken down saying they cannot carry on any more," he said.

"Despite all attempts at emotional neutrality, the heart does not work that way when you get a baby in front of you that colleagues on another floor of the same building would be trying to keep alive. For the parents it must be extremely upsetting, as it is for the doctors."

Sunday, June 25, 2006

The Face of Partial Birth Abortion (Literally!)

I would like to share with you some pictures of a fetus who was killed through dilation and extraction, aka, Partial Birth Abortion.[Edited to add, I found out the fetus was 7 months along] The pictures are not *that* graphic, as terrible as the procedure is. I say "fetus", but when you look at the picture, you can see full well she's a baby. Tess was executed for the crime of having Cystic Fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis is an extremely difficult disease to deal with. As a mother of an autistic child, I can somewhat sympathize with dealing with a child who has a condition that requires extra attention, although I am certain the amount of energy I need pales to the efforts needed to care for a child with Cystic Fibrosis. That being said, children with Cystic Fibrosis are people, too, and deserve better.

The website that hosts these pictures is KGOV, right-wing (Christian?) radio station from Colorado. The parents of Baby Tess had her killed in the clinic of the infamous abortionist George Tiller, located in Wichita, Kansas. His specialty is late-term abortions. When he's finished killing the fetus, he has a memorial ceremony to help the parents grieve. Note that big wound on the baby's head. The mother has repented of her act. Baby Tess had a sister born in 2000, also with Cystic Fibrosis. She was allowed to live. I'm sure the sister has enriched the lives of the parents, in spite of the energy and resources needed to deal with this disease.

Bill C-338, the late-term abortion bill would outlaw these very acts of barbarism.















And note that the mom wrote a note regarding these pictures:






The note says:


Dear Sharyn:

Thank you for listening. Here are the pictures of Tess. I feel so bad for the smiles on my face in some of the photos. I was in shock by no means was I happy. To me Tess was beautiful because she was my daughter. I left the somewhat naked photos out because they are graphic and I am somewhat ashamed of having allowed someone to leave those horrible marks on her body. What kind of mother am I? I let that butcher slash her up. I was supposed to protect her. Now all I do is miss her.

Thanks again

CANADA: More accurate numbers on late-term abortions

Thanks to pro-abortion activist Joyce Arthur for posting a link to the number of late-term abortions in Canada Via Politics N Poetry

The table reveals there was a total of 103 619 abortions reported in Canada. Of those records, 46 322 were detailed. Of that sample, 0.7 per cent were late-term abortions past 20 weeks. So that's approximately 325 late-term abortions a year that we know about. In all likelihood, there were more. If we use the same rate of 0.7 per cent for the total number of abortions in Canada, we arrive at approximately 726 late-term abortions in Canada. Of course this is somewhat speculative. It could be more, it could be less.

So we can infer that in Canada, several hundred late-term abortions take place every year.

Joyce Arthur cites some other numbers, but doesn't give a source for the data. On Politics N Poetry, She states:


Latest stats from Statistics Canada and CIHI: 320 abortions done in 2005 over 20 weeks. (This figure obtained from StatsCan on a proprietary basis and released by the National Abortion Federation at the NAF Annual Meeting in San Francisco, April 22, 2006.) Almost all of these occurred between 20 and 22 weeks, a small number for compelling social reasons (e.g., teenagers who were in denial of their pregnancy, women in abusive relationships, etc.)


Interesting. How many are done for "social reasons"? And why are teenagers allowed to kill their babies? Why should babies have to suffer because of their own denial? Women in abusive relationships? How about protecting the woman instead of killing the fetus? And why not have a fetal protection law to serve as a deterrent to men who beat their pregnant wives?


Please note also that the 3rd trimester is after 24 weeks. The numbers of abortions done after 24 weeks in Canada is a tiny handful, although we don’t have exact numbers, and ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION are for cases of lethal fetal abnormality, where the fetus cannot survive after birth. No doctor in Canada will perform abortions after about 22 weeks, except for reasons of lethal fetal abnormality, and we actually know of only TWO doctors in all of Canada who are able and willing to do those.


I'd like a source on that.

Assuming these numbers are correct, it begs the question: why won't any doctors perform abortions past 22 weeks?

Perhaps it's an issue of being able to perform the "technique". After all, if you don't get a chance to perform this so-called procedure very often, maybe you just don't have what it takes to kill a late-term fetus. But I wonder how hard it could really be? Or does the nature of the procedure lend itself to a great risk of error or damage to the woman? It bears investigation.

Quebec Health Minister, Philip Couillard, a doctor himself, had one insight into one reason doctors won't do late-term abortions:


"It is extremely hard for a woman to have a late abortion and also hard for the doctor that performs it, both psychologically and other ways, Couillard told CBC radio. "


Henry Morgentaler also has issues about late-term abortions. According to one article by Margaret Somervile, reprinted on from Christianity.ca:


But even Henry Morgentaler, the "grandfather" of the current legal vacuum around abortion in Canada, has qualms about such procedures. From his Toronto clinic, Morgentaler responded to the Quebec announcement [to find a late-term abortionist]: "We don't abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies.


Interesting.

I suspect that many abortionists share those same issues. Killing late-term fetus is tough. It's hard to watch the baby suffer.

What is perplexing is why they will not allow for these babies to have legal rights.

Sounds to me like ideology is trumping reality. Women love their unborn children. The medical establishment calls them "unborn children". Everyone loves them. Until they're inconvenient. What segment of the population is treated like that? We even have laws in Canada that regulate how and under what circumstances you can terminate animals. That late-term fetuses are not accorded the same consideration is outrageous.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

On the Feast of Saint John the Baptist

June 24th is the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Quebec celebrates it now as la Fête Nationale, but it's still called "La St-Jean".There are only three people whose birthdays the Church celebrates: Jesus, Mary and John the Baptist. Catholic author Amy Welborn has an interesting post on the subject. She quotes St. Augustine regarding the Feast:


The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John is born of an old woman who is barren; Christ is born of a young woman who is a virgin. That John will be born is not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born is believed, and he is conceived by faith.

I have proposed some matters for inquiry, and listed in advance some things that need to be discussed. I have introduced these points even if we are not up to examining all the twists and turns of such a great mystery, either for lack of capacity or for lack of time. You will be taught much better by the one who speaks in you even when I am not here; the one about whom you think loving thoughts, the one whom you have taken into your hearts and whose temple you have become.

John, it seems, has been inserted as a kind of boundary between the two Testaments, the Old and the New. That he is somehow or other a boundary is something that the Lord himself indicates when he says, The Law and the prophets were until John. So he represents the old and heralds the new.

Because he represents the old, he is born of an elderly couple; because he represents the new, he is revealed as a prophet in his mother’s womb. You will remember that, before he was born, at Mary’s arrival he leapt in his mother’s womb. Already he had been marked out there, designated before he was born; it was already shown whose forerunner he would be, even before he saw him. These are divine matters, and exceed the measure of human frailty. Finally, he is born, he receives a name, and his father’s tongue is loosed.

Zachary is struck dumb and loses his voice, until John, the Lord’s forerunner, is born and releases his voice for him. What does Zachary’s silence mean, but that prophecy was obscure and, before the proclamation of Christ, somehow concealed and shut up? It is released and opened up by his arrival, it becomes clear when the one who was being prophesied is about to come. The releasing of Zachary’s voice at the birth of John has the same significance as the tearing of the veil of the Temple at the crucifixion of Christ. If John were meant to proclaim himself, he would not be opening Zachary’s mouth. The tongue is released because a voice is being born – for when John was already heralding the Lord, he was asked, Who are you and he replied I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

John is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word. John is a voice for a time, but Christ is the eternal Word from the beginning.

Friday, June 23, 2006

On the number of late-term abortions in Canada and their significance



EDITED JULY 10th: I see that some people are using Google to research the number of late-term abortions in Canada. I would also ask that you come to this post, which has more accurate and more up-to-date information.




Getting information on abortion in Canada can be difficult. Basic things like the number of abortions in Canada per year—around the 100 000 mark or so—are easy to find. But once you need to know more detailed information—like for instance, the gestational age of the fetus being aborted, this becomes problematic. For one thing--not all provinces require that it be noted. And even if this information is gathered, it has to be complied. StatsCan and CIHI—the Canadian Institution for Health Information—provide reports on these topics, but neither of them has recently compiled the data they do have on gestational age during abortion. (At least not to my knowledge) Bureaucrats and public officials fear distributing the numbers for fear of stirring the “abortion issue”. So what we end up with is an incomplete picture of the data.

Some bloggers have attempted to extrapolate the number of late-term abortions performed in Canada. Robert McClelland of MyBlahg, alleges that only about 7-10 late-term abortions are performed in Canada. However, he is basing this guess on an American figure from Fox News, which cites Planned Parenthood in return. The number "100" was for abortions later than 24 weeks, not 20 weeks. The Centre for Disease Control reports that in 2000, 1.4% of all abortions were on fetuses older than 20 weeks. Now if you use that same proportion to calculate the number of abortions past 20 weeks in Canada , you get a figure of 1470 late-term fetuses killed. Pretty scary stuff.

Another poster on a feminist forum, Bread and Roses, who was commenting on my blog, was insistent that only .4 % of all abortions were late-term. She wrote: Suzanne is using the same 'old' argument about partial births as if SHE CAN'T READ the stats that say only 0.4% of abortions occur after 20 weeks.

I don’t know where those stats are from. But assuming they are correct, basing oneself on the widely accepted figure of 105 000 abortions per year in Canada, .4% would amount to 420 abortions a year.

Margaret Somerville, writing in the Globe and Mail in February 2004, cited Statscan in saying that in 2001, 246 abortions were known to be later than 20 weeks.

Another helpful indicator, but by no means definitive, is a 1998 editorial in Canadian Medical Association Journal which cites that in 1995, .4% of all abortions were late-term (between 20 and 23 weeks) . The author, Dr. Flegel, said there was no information regarding abortions beyond 24 weeks. He extrapolates that 40 abortions were very late term (beyond 24 weeks) out of 70 549 that same year. If we assume that the rate has not declined in 11 years—a very hesitant, but the best I can do right now, that would mean approximately 480 late-term abortions are performed in Canada. It’s somewhat speculative, but we do know that it’s on the order of hundreds, certainly not dozens.

When poor-choicers look at the situation of late-term abortions in Canada, they figure: why bother dredging this up, it only represents a small percentage of abortions, and with the maternal health exception, the numbers that would actually be affected is so small.

I think this is a near-sighted approach. The point is to protect the fetus. At 20 weeks, we are certainly talking about an individual capable of feeling pain and suffering. Here’s an example of an ultrasound of a fetus crying. If a fetus can cry over a loud sound, you can just imagine what he must feel as an abortionist injects saline solution or jabs his skull. (For more information on late-term abortion methods, check out this blog post).

And this occurs hundreds of times in Canada. Most people in Canada don’t oppose abortion in the first trimester, because they conclude a first-trimester baby doesn’t suffer. But thanks to progresses in ultrasound and perinatal science, they know that third trimester fetuses are sentient and can react to external stimuli, just like any baby. Many Canadians can see the contradiction between the fact that medical staff in one section of the hospital will be working hard to save a preemie, but in another section, they will be terminating a fetus for the crime of being diagnosed with an inconvenient disease.

The pain and suffering inflicted on the fetus because of late-term abortions is not something we can glibly ignore. Fetuses are considered members of our own species, members of our families, yet when it suits people’s desires, their human value is repudiated. Even domestic animals get more consideration, and those who must be put down are given sedatives. How is it that those who are considered family members at 13 weeks are so readily given up at 20 or 21 weeks because they have a genetic anomaly?

As you can see, you do not have to be a religious person to raise these issues. The morality of causing suffering to humans and animals is something that people of all religions and none inquire about.

This is not a matter of a small pin prick or a minor bruise. Having one's brains sucked out, poisoning and suffocation are horrible ways to die. How do we reconcile our own humanity—that is our humaneness—with allowing these awful things happened to defenseless creatures? Screaming “my body, my choice!” does not settle the issue. It just obscures it in order not to be able to deal with it.


3 abortion methods used after 20 weeks gestation (re: Bill C-338)



EDITED APRIL 25, 2007: I have subsequently done more research on late-term abortion in Canada.

Late-term abortion in Ontario.

Late-term abortion research.

How *do* they do late-term abortions in Canada. The Abortion Rights Action Coalition says prostaglandin abortions are the most common kind of late-term abortion. I provide a description here.

You are encouraged to browse through my Late-term abortion archive.




EDITED JULY 4, 2006: A number of people have entered this page through a Google search for late-term abortions. You are also encouraged to view my post on D and E abortions, which are common for second trimester babies (20-24) weeks.



The classic picture of an abortion is the suction aspiration of a 6-week embryo. But babies with calcified bones can't be dismembered and suctioned so easily. Abortionists need other cruel methods to kill the fetus. Canada's late-term abortion bill would diminish the number of times they would be used. Here are the descriptions of three horrible late-term abortion methods.

1) Saline injection, aka salt poisoning. A long needle with poisonous salt solution is inserted through the mother's abdomen into the amniotic sac. The baby swallows it and therefore dies. The solution also burns the skin, in effect, burning the fetus. It takes about an hour for the fetus to die. So he has to go through an agonizing death. The mother gives birth to the dead baby a day later, although sometimes the baby survives that horrible experience. Sometimes the babies are left unattended to die. Sssh, no one issue a birth certificate and no one will ever know...

2) Hysterotomy or C-section abortion. It's just like a c-section, except the umbilical cord is cut and the baby is allowed to suffocate to death. Would we even let an animal die like this? Sometimes the baby survives the operation and is left in a corner to die.

3) The infamous intact dilation and extraction. Poor-choicers really hate it when we call it by its more appropriate name "Partial Birth Abortion". Labour is induced, and the fetus is positioned so that his body is hanging out, but his head remains in the birth canal. The abortionist uses a sharp instrument to jab the baby's skull and open it up. Then the abortionist uses a suction machine to suck the baby's brain out.

Here's a diagram:





Sometimes, if the head still won't come off, the abortionist just rips off the baby's head.

This method is especially touchy, because it's especially graphic and relies on technicalities to make it acceptable.
Anyone who knows anything about pregnancy and babies knows it's a live human being we're talking about, and leaving the head in the vagina doesn't make the procedure any less cruel.

Sometimes poor-choicers call us liars and say we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to abortion. I guess that explains all the poor-choicers counteracting our ignorance with frank discussion and graphic pictures of real abortions. I would love pro-choice activists to come out with explicit details about abortion-- in layman's terms, not in medicalese. Heck, provide the pictures! Let's compare! It's supposed to be only a medical procedure; there shouldn't be any shame in all this. Nothing to be horrified about, is there?

If you've ever been to a pro-abortion site, you'll see they couch the details in vague language, and euphemism such as "product of conception" to make sure that the potential client isn't disturbed by the potential ickiness of it all.

Here's an excerpt of a blog entry I submitted to another blog. It's legal testimony of abortionists, describing PBA's in detail.


http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/apr/04040503.html

Quote:

"After Westhoff said that some women like to hold the dead baby to facilitate grieving, Judge Casey asked "Did you tell them you were sucking the brains out of the same baby they desired to hold?" "They know the head's empty," Westhoff replied. "I don't tell them I'm sucking the brain out.""

Abortionist Timothy Johnson corroborated this testimony :

[Judge] Casey also wanted to know if women were informed that the abortion involved "sucking the brain out of the skull." "I don't think we would use those terms," Johnson replied. "I think we would probably use a term like decompression of the skull or reducing the contents of the skull."

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/apr/04040102.html

The fetus can also dismembered as well in order to facilitate delivery. Abortionist Timothy Johnson testified:

Quote:

[Judge] Casey also wanted to know if women were informed that their child would be dismembered before dying. "So you tell her the arms and legs are pulled off?" he asked. "I mean, that's what I want to know. Do you tell her?" "We tell her the baby, the fetus, is dismembered as part of the procedure, yes," Johnson replied.

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/apr/04040102.html


And if the baby's head gets stuck, the abortionist simply rips the baby's head off:

Quote:

The abortionist continued his horrific testimony by saying: "I have continued to pull the body and the head comes off. I have also used scissors to pierce the base of the skull and suction out the brains, or I have also used an instrument to reach up and crush the skull."

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/apr/04040807.html


There you have it, straight from the mouths of people who do late-term abortions for a living. And as if this weren't bad enough, the abortionists give no consideration to the suffering of the child. Abortionist Timothy Johnson said he was not aware as to whether the child suffered and was unaware of any studies as to whether the fetus feels pain-- as if you'd need a study to know that!

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/apr/04040102.html

And we're the extremists for opposing this?

Medical Journalist Says Reliance on Condoms Spreads HIV/AIDS



By Gudrun Schultz

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A medical journalist has added her voice to claims that the explosion in HIV/AIDS infection rates is directly linked to reliance on condom use as a virus preventative.

Writing for Crisis Magazine, prize-winning investigative journalist Sue Ellin Browder said the growing consensus among public health professionals is that condoms should only be used as a last measure of protection for persons involved in extremely high-risk activity such as sex-trade work.

Zenit News Agency reported yesterday on Browder’s conclusions. “So far, there’s no good evidence that condoms will reverse population-wide epidemics like those in sub-Saharan Africa,” Browder wrote. She offered evidence that dramatic increases in condom distribution in African nations paralleled an explosion in HIV/AIDS infection rates within the population.

Citing statistics from South Africa, Browder stated that condom distribution between 1994 and 1998 leaped to 198 million from 6 million, but death rates from HIV/AIDS in the years between 1997 and 2002 saw a massive 57 per cent increase.

A report from the UNAIDS agency in 2003 confirmed the dangers of relying on condoms to protect against the HIV/AIDS virus. The report showed that condoms are ineffective in protecting against HIV an estimated 10% of the time. That estimate, although itself a major blow to population control activists who have consistently claimed condoms to be 100% effective, is still far lower than some studies which have shown more than a 50% failure rate.

Ms. Browder’s report echoes the warnings of multiple medical experts, among them Dr. Norman Hearst of the University of California, who raised the alarm on condom use as an AIDS preventative in 2004. Dr. Hearst presented statistics showing a marked correlation between increased condom sales in the African nations of Kenya, Botswana, and others, and a parallel increase in HIV rates by year.

Promoting abstinence and marital faithfulness has had the only significant measurable impact on reducing HIV infection rates in Africa. The country of Uganda has achieved an unprecedented reduction in HIV transmission rates, up to 18%, with a program known as the ABC approach—‘A’ stands for ‘abstinence’ and ‘B’ for ‘be faithful.’ ‘C’, for ‘condom use’ is suggested only as a last-ditch effort to find some protection from the disease, recommended as a partial safety net for those who insist on engaging in high-risk sexual behaviour.

“Most sub-Saharan African nations, following the pro-condoms model, continue to suffer from rising HIV infection rates. Ugandan surveys show a reduction in premarital sexual activity among Ugandan youth and a reduction in extramarital activity among adults,” wrote Population Researcher Institute’s Joseph A. D’Agostino.

Ms. Browder herself has blamed the sexual revolution in Western society for leading directly to today’s AIDS epidemic, stating that, “If truth be told, the revolution has been a disaster…. Today we have more than two dozen varieties [of sexually transmitted disease], from pelvic inflammatory disease…to AIDS (which presently infects 42 million people worldwide and has already killed another 23 million),” in an article for Crisis Magazine in 2004.

Read Zenit News Agency coverage:
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=91414


See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

United Nations Report says Condoms Fail to Protect against AIDS 10% of the Time
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/jun/03062303.html

New Research Confirms Condoms Not Effective in HIV Prevention
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jan/04011408.html

UN Anger Over Uganda's Successful Abstinence Program Fueled by Loss of Funds Says Researcher
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05101404.html

Fetus dolls create a stir for parade

Source



Parma Jaycees seek to stop handouts by abortion foes

Friday, June 23, 2006
V. David Sartin
Plain Dealer Reporter
Parma- There's no place for fetus dolls in the July 4 parade, organizers say.

The Parma Jaycees want to stop the Ohio Right to Life Society from walking along the parade route to give children a doll resembling a 12-week fetus.

The Jaycees' action follows complaints about people distributing the dolls to parade watchers at Christmas in Parma and Memorial Day in Seven Hills.

"We don't have any kind of political stance on abortion," said Neil Lozar, a Jaycees vice president and parade committee chairman. "We just want our event to go off without a hitch and be enjoyable to everyone."

Ohio Right to Life executives wonder what the Jaycees are worried about.

"It looks like a little baby doll," said Denise Mackura, Right to Life spokeswoman. "This is a very positive expression of human biology. It's a beautiful thing. People should know the beauty of unborn children."


I think fetuses are cute. I wonder if the pro-aborts who complained would have a problem if they were distributed by a non-pro-life group.


Spare me the hysteria

I was just reading an op-ed piece by an author trying to link criminalization of abortion with despotic regimes, such as Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Ceaucescu's Romania.

I was disgusted to read this guy was a professor of history (which was my major) because he should have better use of critical thinking skills.

Abortions were largely illegal at the same time in the US and Canada. Were those despotic regimes? No.

The despotic regimes in question had natalist reasons to ban abortion. Basically they were trying to increase their population, which is not the best justification for restricting abortion.

The writer completely sidelines the nature of the debate, trying to make irrelevant the notion that those who oppose abortion are making a case for the equality of the unborn child.

Many pro-abort militants don't believe that we're really serious about fetal rights. I think pro-aborts are afraid to entertain the possibility that unborn children are possibly worthy of love and respect based on their own intrinsic value, because if they concede any value whatsoever to the child, it will destroy one of the core foundation of their arguments: that the unborn child has no intrinsic value.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The Scoop on the Paul Steckle’s late-term abortion bill, C-338

A Big Blue Wave EXCLUSIVE!

Yesterday, Liberal MP Paul Steckle (Huron-Bruce) introduced a Private Members’ Bill restricting late-term abortions. Big Blue Wave has the insider scoop on many of the questions that people have been asking about this bill.

The first thing that jumps at you is the name of the Bill: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (procuring a miscarriage after twenty weeks’ of gestation). What’s the deal with the avoidance of the term “abortion” and substituting “miscarriage” instead?

No, it’s not about having a hidden agenda, says Paul Steckle. It’s about using terminology that is consistent with the criminal code and that reflects the mind of the medical establishment. The term "miscarriage" was used in the 1988 abortion law that was struck down by the Supreme Court. The Canadian Medical Association defines an abortion as a pregnancy termination before 20 weeks.So the bill was written to conform to these precedents.

The Bill contains exceptions for the health of the mother, but no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal deformity. The Bill states that a late-term abortion would be legal in order “ to save the life of a woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself; or to prevent severe, pathological, physical morbidity of the woman. " In other words, if the pregnancy would kill or harm the woman in a serious way, a late-term abortion would be allowed.

Steckle defends the absence of exceptions for rape and incest on the grounds that a late-term abortion can further traumatize women. (In my opinion, twenty weeks is plenty of time to obtain an abortion, and I don’t believe that inflicting pain on a viable third trimester fetus will really treat the trauma of the rape itself.) Steckle cites one study that found that when women went through an abortion after rape, they felt like they had been traumatized one more time; and another study that showed that women who carried their babies to term made a negative situation into a positive situation.

As for the lack of exception on fetal disabilities, the member says “Aborting a child because of a possible abnormality is an act of discrimination against people with disabilities. We cannot cure the disease by killing the patient. Instead, we need to pursue medical solutions to help the patient. Attempts to create a perfect society by destroying those who are less than perfect leaves all of us vulnerable—because we are not perfect. And one day, we too may not pass the arbitrary and capricious 'quality of life' test. "

The penalty would range from two to five years with a possibility of a fine up to $100 000. The sentence is meant to reflect the understanding that women who choose abortion often do so through pressure, in difficult circumstances, and often as a last resort to solve problems. The penalty is comparable to that of infanticide, whereby the mother is thought to be disturbed through depression or the effects of lactation, which carries a penalty of five years.

To those critics who say that abortion is an absolute right, and that religious zealots are attempting to impose their version of morality, Steckle raises a number of points. First, the notion of human rights is a philosophical issue, and the bill acknowledges the obligation of the state to protect members of our own species who are in the perinatal period of development—from the seventh day of life until the 20th week of development. The Supreme Court of Canada recognized this vested interest of the state in protecting the unborn child in the 1988 Morgentaler decision. The decision never made abortion an absolute right—only one of the seven judges, Justice Wilson, believed it to be. The law that was struck down was said to have violated the notion of the “security of the person” because there was no legal definition of “health”, and the uneven access to therapeutic abortion committees could prevent some from obtaining abortions until later stages when it was more dangerous. It did not declare abortion a right.

In answer to the point that pro-lifers are a minority trying to impose morality, he cites an Environics poll commissioned by Life Canada stating that 30% of Canadians favored protection to the unborn child from conception; another 19% favoured it after 3 months and another 11% after 6 months. This bill is quite in sync with the mindset of Canadians on fetal protection.


Wednesday, June 21, 2006

First Bill Restricting Abortion Tabled in Canada



First Bill Restricting Abortion Tabled in Canada Under Conservative Government

By John-Henry Westen

OTTAWA, June 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Liberal MP Paul Steckle stood today in the House of Commons to introduce the first piece of pro-life legislation in the current parliament under the Conservative Government. In introducing Bill C-338, 'An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (procuring a miscarriage after 20 weeks of gestation),' Steckle called on the House to debate the issue noting that Canada was one of the only countries in the world with absolutely no protection for the unborn in law whatsoever. The bill would restrict abortion after twenty weeks gestation; currently in Canada abortions are performed at tax-payer expense up birth.

Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), the political arm of the pro-life movement in Canada, told LifeSiteNews.com "We applaud the initiative of Paul Steckle, Liberal MP of Huron-Bruce, in addressing the abortion issue with his Private Member's Bill, tabled today."

"Every poll on the abortion issue, taken in the last ten years, has indicated that a majority of Canadians favour some restrictions," said Mary Ellen Douglas, CLC National Organizer. "Too often, political parties have ignored the wishes of the people to discuss crucial issues and have feared even to address the abortion topic," she stated.

Statistics show that a majority of Canadians are supportive of at least some legal protection for unborn children. The latest statistics on the matter, from October 2005, showed that 60 per cent of Canadians would like to see human life legally protected some time prior to birth (at conception or after 3 or 6 months of pregnancy). Those numbers have remained fairly consistent since 2002 when LifeCanada, the educational arm of the pro-life movement, began commissioning Environics Research to poll Canadians on the matter.



Pro-life Canadians: if you're reading this, write your MP's NOW to tell them to support this bill. Even if you think your MP is the biggest pro-abort in the world, just the momentum alone will make an impression. If you do not know the name of your riding or MP, you can do a look-up by postal code here:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/index.asp?Language=E


And if you need your MP's contact information, go here

I strongly recommend writing a letter and sending it snail mail for the time being. But whatever you do, just CONTACT THAT PERSON!

Environics Poll on Child Care Biased

Received by email...

REAL Women of Canada


“Women’s Rights Not at the Expense of Human Rights”





NGO in SPECIAL consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations





Media Release

Ottawa, Ontario June 21, 2006



Environics Poll on Child Care Biased


Environics has published the most hilarious poll we’ve seen on any issue. The questions asked are biased and directed to responses most favorable to institutional child care as proposed by the previous Liberal government. One can’t help but marvel at the effrontery of Environics in manufacturing a poll with such an obvious political purpose.



The Environics poll was commissioned by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, which received $1,362,209 in government grants from 1992 to 2002 and an additional $483,753 from Status of Women from 2004 to 2005. They can afford to manufacture polls.



The fact that parents have already spoken quite clearly on the issue of child care – not by incredibly slanted polls but by the kind of child care they have selected. Statistics Canada reported in February 2005 that only 13.1% of children are actually in child care compared to 47.5% of young children who stay home with their parents while one or both of them work or study. The remaining 40% are looked after by relatives, friends or in other private arrangements. A growing number of parents are opting for care by a family member. Between 1995 and 2001, the proportion of children cared for by a relative rose from 22% to 32%.



The Environics poll was commissioned by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, which received $1,362,209 in government grants from 1992 to 2002 and an additional $483,753 from Status of Women from 2004 to 2005. They can afford to manufacture polls.



What the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada neglected to mention was that in 1986 The Report of the Task Force on Child Care, a universal institutional day care would cost $11.32 billion annually. A leaked Federal discussion paper from Department of Health published in 1999 estimated the cost would be $12 to $15 billion dollars a year.



-30-

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Umberto the Unborn: Womb Service


Cute pro-life cartoon...Umberto the Unborn

Planned Parenthood Will Use Political Power for Pro-Abortion Candidates



by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 14, 2006


Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The president of Planned Parenthood told a liberal political conference that her organization plans to use its political muscle and full financial coffers to elect pro-abortion candidates in 2006, 2008 and beyond. The comments come after new reports indicate the abortion business is flush with money thanks in part to state and federal taxpayer funds.
Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's president told an audience at the "Take Back America" conference that, "We're going to channel our strength, our outreach, our power, and work with our pro-choice allies to help progressive voices win across America."

Planned Parenthood has considerable resources to make that happen.

As LifeNews.com previously reported, the abortion business' latest annual report shows Planned Parenthood, as of June 2005, had net assets valued at $784.1 million, of which $302.1 million is unrestricted. PPFA has another $107.6 million that is temporarily restricted.

Despite sitting on a huge nest egg of hundreds of millions, the abortion business is still working overtime to get state and federal tax dollars. Nearly one-third of its income ($272.7 million) comes from American taxpayers.

"We have the potential to swing the vote in 2006, 2008 and 2010, and that's a lot of power," Richards said, according to a Cybercast News Service report.

"The question is: What are we going to do with it? And the answer is: We're going to use it," Richards declared, according to CNS. "We're going to marry our current reality as the largest reproductive healthcare provider in this country with our opportunity to be the largest kick--- advocacy organization in this country.

Planned parenthood is also focused on painting a grim picture of the status of legal abortion to rake in the donations in advance of the 2006 elections.

"The skies are looking better for progressives this November, but the threat to Roe v. Wade and the threat to family planning in this country are probably as great as they have been for the last 30 years," Richards said.

"And with Sandra Day O'Connor gone and Samuel Alito now sitting on the Supreme Court, anti-choice extremists have the bit in their mouth, and they're ready for action," she added, according to a CNS News story.

Richards told the audience that Planned Parenthood needed to become more "political" -- something it started doing in 2004 when the abortion business made its first presidential endorsement.



It's not okay for conservatives to throw big money around to promote their causes and "buy" elections, but it's perfectly okay for tax-sponsored corporate welfare bums to do that in the name of a "progressive" cause. Sounds like somebody's bottom line is in danger.

Families include unborn children

I think a lot about pro-life strategy. I know I sound like a broken record, but I will say it again: one of the weaknesses of the pro-life movement is its overemphasis on the act of abortion, and not enough on the equality of the unborn child.

The unborn victims of crime bill is giving Canadian pro-lifers a golden opportunity to emphasize that unborn children are members of the family. With abortion, the perception is: we're telling women what to do with themselves. With this bill, we are doing this FOR OURSELVES. Who among us wouldn't love to have our unborn children protected and acknowledged as flesh-and-blood members of our families? I think the average person will be a lot more sympathetic to this cause, not only because they already recognize the unborn child as worthy of some protection, but also because they see we're not doing this to tell others what to do with themselves, but because we want it for ourselves.

And so, I think we pro-lifers should repeat ad nauseum to the world: Families include unborn children. It's a fact. Even people who support legalized abortion believe this. The law should reflect this. I think this would be an easy sell.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Canada Unborn Victims of Violence Bill to be Resurrected in Coming Months Says MP

Canada Unborn Victims of Violence Bill to be Resurrected in Coming Months Says MP

By Gudrun Schultz

OTTAWA, Ontario, June 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Conservative MP Leon Benoit has said the bill for unborn victims of violence that was declared “non-votable” earlier this month will be back for further debates and another vote, in modified form.

Private Member’s Bill C-291 would amend the Criminal Code to make injuring or killing an unborn child while committing or attempting to commit an offence against the mother a separate crime under law, carrying equivalent penalties to causing injury or death to the mother.

The bill was drafted in response to the violent deaths of two pregnant Edmonton women, 19-year-old Olivia and her unborn child Lane, who were shot and killed when the Edmonton woman was 27 weeks pregnant with baby Lane, and Liana White, who was killed along with her unborn child.

The bill never made it past the five-member Subcommittee on Private Members Business, which deemed it non-votable. The committee members stated that the bill “clearly” violated the Constitution including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

MP Benoit defended the constitutionality of the bill before the Standing Committee on Procedural and House Affairs on June 6, but the committee members voted to uphold the earlier decision and again declared the bill non-votable.

In a press release on June 6, MP Benoit expressed concern that “the Subcommittee provided no information whatsoever regarding what section of the Charter/Constitution was violated, nor what part of my bill was in violation.”

In a letter to supporters June 15, MP Benoit said he is confident the bill will be successful on the next round.

See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:

Canada Unborn Victims of Violence Bill Loses Appeal to be Declared Votable
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06060608.html

Unborn Victims of Violence Bill Proposed in Canadian Parliament by Conservative MP
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/may/06051705.html

VIDEO: Why Would You Kill a Living Miracle?

Another big "merci" to Blog Pour la Vie. They've once again pulled through with another great pro-life video.






The author calls it a commercial, but it's three minutes in length. It's more like a montage. Spread the word.

Canadian Tourism Commission to Woo Gay Couples

See here:

http://www.cfra.com/headlines/index.asp?cat=2&nid=40152

Taxpayer money is being used to promote sodomy.

Please write to make your opinions known. Americans should write in, too, because goodness knows the homosexual couples will use their Canadian mariage licenses to get their unions recognized in the USA:

http://www.canadatourism.com/ctx/app/en/ca/contact.do

Make sure you put a valid email address in the "From" line.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Report: Traditional Marriage Rally in Ottawa (with pictures)



I went to a rally in defense of traditional marriage today in Ottawa. Before I begin my narrative, I have to give some background information. This rally was organized in a very ad hoc fashion. From what I have heard, the decision to hold it was practically spontaneous. I understand that a man by the name of Warren Booth is responsible for organizing it. The word went out about it two days ago. Three buses from Toronto were charted to bring about a hundred people to Ottawa. Now, most rallies don't happen that way. They're planned weeks, even months in advanced. The organizers often try to get a permit to rally on Parliament Hill so that they get priority on the grounds and not be drowned out by some other event.

This was very grassroots, very impromptu-- dare I say it-- kind of amateurish. That's not to say it was without value, but it did lack a bit of professionalism. Although you have to hand it to the organizers: getting 100 people to sit a bus for five hours to demonstrate in Ottawa on such short notice is no small feat, so they defintively deserve an "A" for effort.

I arrived at Parliament Hill a little before 2 p.m.,the schedule time. There were only a handful of people there. I was a bit worried this thing was not going to happen. I saw some anti-abortion and anti-sodomy signs, and I knew that someone else had heard about it. So I went up to an elderly gentleman who was responsible for the signs, and who did I meet but the (in)famous Father Tony Van Hee. He is known for constantly picketing on the subject of abortion and sodomy on Parliament Hill.



I chatted a little bit with Father. There was another woman there. She also had some signs, and she was trying to place them in strategic places. Father Van Hee had a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a little two-wheeler thingy (the kind you use to move big appliances when you move into a new house-- but I forgot the name). The lady was trying to put one of her signs on it, but the wind blew it over, knocking both it and the icon. Father became somewhat adamant about not wanting any signs there-- the icon of Our Lady had to be shown and respected. He is obviously a very devout son of Our Blessed Mother.



So the minutes passed. Finally the buses arrived twenty minutes late. I was quite relieved. They were about a hundred people. They had lots of signs. I was pleasantly surprised.




One man had a shofar and blew it.





They began to gather at the foot of the steps to the Parliament buildings.There were many school children, some were intrigued, others bemused by this protest.



A man and a woman dressed as a bride and bridegroom posed on the steps.



Many of use started taking pictures. I also took lots of pictures of the signs.








Speaking of being amateurish, I felt like that myself, as my batteries died, and I had forgotten to recharge my spares. Kind of makes me think of the parable of the Foolish Virgins who didn't bring enough oil. So I don't have any pictures of the event past this point.

I noted that there were about eight guys,wearing pink bandannas and/or pink shirts who were skateboarding on the Hill during our event. I thought it was the counterprotest. I mean, it's a bit easy to confuse- eight guys with pink shirts and bandannas, doesn't that have gay connotations? But no, I learned later they are men skateboarding across Canada for Breast Cancer Research. I was getting a little miffed because they were getting camera time from a local tv station, and we weren't, but as this was probably a well-publicized event, I could see why they would get attention.

The main crowd gathered at the top of the steps, but I stayed down. I was with my daughter Francesca, and she was strapped into her stroller. I did not feel like going all the way around to join them, as it was almost time for me to leave, and I was very hot and thirsty. A man with a bullhorn started chanting slogans, and the crowd repeated, things like "One Man! One Woman! One Man! One Woman!" and "Jesus is Lord!" They seemed to be at a loss of what to say behind the bullhorn. There was no apparent MC to this thing, which is another way it lacked a bit of polish. Lots of enthusiasm and desire, but it lacked structure and direction. Now mind you, I had to leave half way to get home to meet my other child who was arriving from school.

They at least understood one thing about rallies: they rallied at about 2:45, which is about the time MP's and staffers leave Question Period.So many people of influence heard what they had to say.

I'm glad that the good folks from Toronto had the desire and the courage to stand up in defense of marriage, but I hope that next time they give more notice to us folks in Ottawa, so we can bring more people along. And maybe get a permit. And an MC.