Prime Minister Trudeau just announced that Canada will spend $650 million dollars to help fight anti-abortion laws in dozens of countries.
This policy is far different from the one under Prime Minister Harper.
And in Canada, Planned Parenthood Ottawa is receiving $285,000 for a three-year project to improve services for women in the Ottawa area who are “experiencing gender-based violence, in particular, violence related to sexual and reproductive coercion.” Maryam Monsef, Minister of Status of Women said “Gender-based violence is a reality that far too many women in our communities still face. That’s why the Government of Canada is taking this action to improve services for women experiencing violence in the Ottawa area, particularly coercion related to their sexual and reproductive health and rights. It is part of our multifaceted approach to preventing all forms of violence against women and girls.” Do these women care about the number of female fetuses destroyed because the family wanted a boy?
The abortion debate is based on the premise that it is about women’s health. This is disingenuous obfuscation and downright deceitful. Edward Said, in his seminal work “Orientalism,” wrote that a discussion that sits on an incorrect first assumption will lead to false conclusions. The abortion debate is sitting on the premise of the best interests of the woman’s health and the idea that it is her life and her decision alone. False nonsense. Pregnant women in the West have the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world because of the first class medical care. In America about 650 women die each year as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.
Senator Marco Rubio “I think future generations will look back at this history of our country and call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies who we never gave them a chance to live.” We are not to think of abortion that way: barbaric; despite the fact that in truth, innocent life is being snuffed out.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President was asked why he had changed his views on abortion from being in favour to being against it. He said it happened the day he was with his wife, pregnant with their second child, during an early first term obstetric exam. He heard a heartbeat. His child’s heartbeat. And he had what is often called an “aha” moment. He realized that very early on there is life within the womb.
He was accused of flip-flopping. And playing to the base. Why did he not have this epiphany with their first child? It seems one is not allowed to question one’s beliefs, or change one’s moral and ethical stance over time. He went from positively pro-choice to against abortion, starting with late-term abortion. And that can only be political expedience and not a change of heart.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than 685,000 abortions have been performed in the USA since January 2015, approximately 33,000 were performed after 4 months gestation, approximately 6600 as the result of rape or incest. And more than 17,000,000 black babies have been aborted since 1973. The good news is that although 1.06 million abortions were performed in 2011, it’s down from 1.21 million abortions in 2008, a decline of 13%.
Senator Marco Rubio remarked “I think future generations will look back at this history of our country and call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies who we never gave them a chance to live.” We are not to think of abortion that way: barbaric; despite the fact that in truth, innocent life is being snuffed out.
Abortion isn’t about women’s health; physical or mental. Abortion is rarely associated with life and death of the mother. It’s all about life and death of the fetus – not a tumour nor a hangnail, but a potential fully formed human being that is more often than not, not wanted.
Pro-abortion advocates are more concerned about women’s rights than potential future life. Many female journalists pointed out that the Planned Parenthood scandal—the videos surreptitiously taken of leaders in Planned Parenthood talking about the best method of aborting a fetus in order to save the body parts for sale—please note the term body parts, as in a living being, is really a red herring. And the Women’s March in Washington also spoke to Women’s Rights and the feared attack on their freedoms.
And what freedom are they discussing? The freedom of a woman to take life? What of the freedom of the father? His freedom to choose to be a parent? Unless the woman became pregnant by immaculate conception, he is an equal in the conception. The genetic material is equal. That only a woman can incubate the fetus is not the fault of the fetus or the father.
I think the problem is the difficulty we have in imagining an abortion. After all, you really can’t see the fetus, except in an ultrasound sonogram. But even the three dimension sonograms don’t give you the opportunity to really connect to the fetus. Touching is so much better. We can’t touch a human fetus in development but we can duplicate the feeling by cradling the fetus of a kangaroo.
A kangaroo “incubates” the fetus outside the body in her pouch for four months to a year depending on the type of kangaroo. I suggest that those in favour of abortion, on demand, any time, unfettered, take that “baby” out of the mother’s pouch and twist the head off. Or take scissors and cut the baby into pieces. That’s an abortion. How many of you would do that to a baby kangaroo?
So keep this in mind while you debate about aborting a fetus. Latest research tells us that premies feel pain. “As recently as the mid-1980s, the medical community believed preemies and even some newborns could not feel pain because their nervous systems weren’t yet completely developed. As a result, medical procedures, including major surgeries, were routinely performed on days-old babies without anaesthesia.
We aren’t performing surgeries on premies without anaesthetic anymore.
And hold that picture as you think about Canada’s position supporting abortion. Canada is going to help replace money that President Trump refuses to give toward procedures-particularly abortion. “All women have the right to choose whether and when they want to have children, and how many,” said Marie-Claude Bibeau, Canada’s International Development Minister, in announcing the $20-million in new funds.” The policy would only support abortion in countries where it is legal – a small minority of African countries.
The time has come, if you pardon the mixed metaphor, for women to man up. Have the decency to acknowledge that abortion is the taking of a life. It’s time to move this discussion from false assumptions to truth and fact.
