If you care to follow this twitter feed, you will glean some insight into what groups will be represented in today’s March for Life in Ottawa. A quick perusal reveals: CampgnLifeCoalition, MomsAgainstAbortion, Catholic Canada, Women of Grace, Right to Life, Archdiocese of TO, and even Liberal4life, not to mention Pro-Life Humanists.
Notable by its absence is a contingent of clergy from the Anglican Church of Canada; it can’t be an aversion to marches brought on, perhaps, by an outbreak of debilitating corns, since so many ACoC clergy are only too keen to march in the Toronto Pride Parade. The fact is, the Anglican Church of Canada is mysteriously silent on the issue of abortion. The church that tirelessly trumpets its commitment to prophetic social justice making is too fearful to take a stand on the sanctity of an unborn baby’s life; after all, it could be viewed as controversial.
Before you ask, no I’m not there, either; my excuse is I have a lawsuit to pay for.
We were all children once. When do we stop being precious children and become worthless adults, in your view? What’s the cutoff line? Is a child who will identify as homosexual in ten years any less precious now?
What are we doing for the born?
Vincent,
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I believe a person who is homosexual is worth less as a human being than one who is heterosexual. To to set the record straight: I believe every person is of immense worth both intrinsically and to God.
Hmm. Passing lightly over the tenor of many articles on this blog, I dimly see where you’re coming from. I can just about apprehend a worldview where you can be virulently nasty about many different groups while, in the abstract, honouring the essential worth of members or perceived members of said groups. I’m not convinced it actually works on the ground — I’m not sure it’s of any great comfort to anyone — but I can sort of get it as a position. I’ll try to keep that in mind. Thank you.
Homosexuals are not the issue, it is what they do that is. It seems to me that Scripture is pretty clear.
Jeremiah 1:5 is pretty clear on where God thinks life begins and tampering with that invokes the Thou Shalt Not clause.
It seems to me to be a matter of obedience.
As has been said before the blessing of homosexual unions, is only the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg is dis-obedience to God’s Word, and God’s Laws.
Thank you for Jeremiah 1:5. Do you know the Chapter-verse were we are told He even knew us in the beginning of time?
On top of the horror, is the horror of Gendercide– Killing a female life in the womb, just because she is a women. A double tragedy for women, for the mother, and for the child, and of course a tragedy for all society.
I read today the 2009 Canadian census statistics:
93,755 abortions –24.6 % of conceived children in 2009.
One in four!
And Jesus wept.
Tears never stopped the operation of a single gas chamber.
Christians have a long history of protecting the vulnerable: the widows, the orphans, the sick, the poor. From the very beginning of the church, when the Romans used abortion and infanticide (yes, Gosnell would have been at home) as birth control, the Christians were there trying to rescue the vulnerable.
If gays were not protected by law, conservative Christians would be out there campaigning for their safety. The babies are not protected by law, so there we are.
I heard a sermon preached once in an ACofC church on the “Sanctity of Life”. However, abortion was never so much as mentioned. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Apparently, it has something to do with backing Feminism. I am not surprised.
The argument goes like this: “We need safe and legal abortions to keep perhaps 40 women a year from dying at the hands of back-alley abortionists.” But, they don’t mention that they will kill 100,000 or more unborn children a year in order to save those 40 women, who had other options to begin with. Adoption is open to everyone.
I have to say that I simply cannot get over the fact that so many women refuse to offer their own unborn children so much as nine safe months in their womb. I am shocked at my fellow human beings.
Are you a woman?
What does that have to do with it? Frankly such a question is extremely insensitive, insulting and hurtful to people like me. That you would even ask such a question gives clear indication that you are more than willing to silence half of the parents and grandparents, if for no other reason than to remove from the discussion a lot of people who disagree with you. But why should I be surprised that you seem to have no respect for the oppinions of those with whom you disagree. If you are a pro-abortionist than you have no respect for the hundreds of thousands of dead children who were murdered by their own mothers!
And in case you are wondering…
I am a man, a husband, and a father. My first child died in my wife’s womb and I fealt the loss of our child every bit as much as my wife did.
I’m a man, a husband and a father too. We’re all clear now. Lovely.
I don’t like the abortion statistics anymore than you.
So, what next? Forcing women to give birth at the point of a gun? Really, how do you enforce a complete ban on abortion?
“So, what next?”
1. We start by teaching everyone the truth, which is that a human life begins at the moment of conception and that person has as much right to their life as anyone else. That way fewer women will consider abortion an acceptable option.
2. We treat all abortions for what they really are. Murder. That would mean that any doctor who provides an abortion would be found guilty of first degree murder, have their licenses permanently cancelled, and sentenced to many years in jail.
3. We provide proper funding for adoption agencies. The taxpayers money that would no longer be used to murder our children should be more than adequate.
And by the way. Being a man, a husband, a father is “Lovely”. Your sarcasm is not appreciated.
I am sorry for your loss, AMP.
Let me say, however, that some people would consider this an extreme, even misogynist, point of view. They would be appalled at the thought of sacrificing a 30 year-old woman for a three-week old foetus.
Unplanned and planned pregnancy are joined at the hip, and the best conditions for child-rearing touch on so many areas … economics, culture, family structure and background, religion and traditional mores ….
I think the place to start is with appealing to women’s better nature, which includes their maternal nature, and winning them over to adoption as an alternative.
Hello Lisa,
I would agree that the place to start is with an appeal to the better human nature that God has gifted to all of us. My first point, I think you will agree, goes in that direction.
I do not see how you figure that a 30 year old woman would be “sacrificed”. Surely you are not suggestion that the woman will die if she does not have abortion? Conversely I am saying, and deliberately so, that the a child will most certainly die every time an abortion occurs.
Some may consider my position as “misogynistic”, but that will be because they perceive my position as being “anti-woman”, which it (and I) am definitely not. My position is the protection and preservation of human life, including the preparing to be born children. If for that I am judged to be “anti-woman” or more accurately “anti-feminist” than I would conclude that the feminists are anti-children and anti-life.
I realize that my position on this will be considered offensive by many. Please understand that I am unyielding in my position that the murder of innocent children is beyond offensive.
Respectfully
AMP
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, AMP.
“I do not see how you figure that a 30 year old woman would be “sacrificed”. Surely you are not suggestion that the woman will die if she does not have abortion?”
Among other considerations there are medically-necessary abortions. If, for example, a 30 year-old woman has an ectopic pregnancy then –yes, if she doesn’t have an abortion it may kill her.
AMP, you and I hold exactly the same position. I applaud you heartily for it.
Also, AMP, see my two comments below about the murderer Kenneth Bianchi. An end to abortion doesn’t solve the problem of how children are conceived or borne. This relates to the “gay marriage” issue and the children being conceived in those arrangements. What is the difference between Kenneth Bianchi’s mother and a woman who would serve as a surrogate for two gay men? Or two women who would deny a child’s paternity so completely as to use an unknown sperm donor?
It all comes back to Mark 12:30-31.
I’m a Yank, but if there are 100K abortions in Canada per year, what number of them do you think would ever be adopted? I’m reasonably sure it would be a small percentage. If even 50 percent were promptly adopted, how, and by whom, would 500 adoption agencies be put to house 100 children each? And the next year you’d need the same number again. And again.
As always, serious questions.
Actually, Dan, we have waiting lists for adoptions in Canada, and an enormous number of couples who wish to adopt have turned to the options in places such as China. It is fairly standard to see Canadian couples of non-Asian ethnicities with one or two adopted children from China — always girls.
And Dan, 100,000 abortions per year in Canada is a low estimate. I recommend the recent article by Barbara Kay, in the National Post (archived online by the paper). She discusses the fact that Ontario has even outlawed the release of accurate abortion figures. They seem to be hiding something, in other words.
So, you think it is better to abort them?
Thanks for the information on adoptions in Canada. And I am NEVER suggesting that it is better to abort them. Just to be clear, let me state my personal beliefs/values on abortion.
1. Abortion is morally wrong. I think it should be an exception rather than the rule.
2. A woman is responsible for her own body, including that which is placed into it, whether with or without her consent. That of course includes sperm and the possible results thereof. If the woman chooses to have an IUD, a douche, a morning-after pill, or an abortion within the first three months, that is her business, not mine.
3. I would always counsel that the woman never use abortion as routine birth control. However, I understand the reasons in cases of rape, incest, and other criminal activities that may be perpetrated. I would hope that the woman would have competent professional counseling before choosing an abortion OR choosing to carry the infant to term.
I would no more try to tell a woman what to do with her body than I’d expect her to tell me what to do with mine.
All that being said, I’m in favor of capital punishment for particularly heinous murders where there is absolutely no question that the perpetrator is the one convicted. Yes, the church disagrees with that, too. Oh well. That’s one of the reasons I’m Anglican/Episcopalian: I don’t have to turn off my own brain, logic, beliefs, etc, to be a member.
I must correct that. Ontario, B.C. and Quebec all prohibit public access to abortion statistics, not just Ontario.
If there is nothing to hide, you have to ask why they do so.
Do they prohibit access to the raw data, that would potentially identify patients (murderers, either the docs or the women), or do they prohibit access to even the numbers aggregated for the Province? I can (more or less) understand the opposition to releasing data that would compromise an individual’s privacy, but it would seem that the totals would be public information, including the number of them paid for by taxpayer funds. In the USA people would be all over the governments in question for that information (the numbers by state, if not by county or region), and would indeed get it.
Hello Dan,
If we as people would accept that abortion is murder than we have to consider how many fewer unwanted pregnancies would occur. For as things are now many people view abortion as a form of “birth control” and consequently (I believe) give considerably less thought to other contraceptives (the ones that would accurately be described as pregnancy preventers).
Still, even if 50,000 children a year were not adopted I would rather they live in an orphanage than be murdered. Sad thing is that the choice now isn’t even between the orphanage and the grave. Instead, because a murdered fetus is treated as “medical waste” the child’s body is sent to a hazardous waste landfill site.
And before you write off orphanages, please consider this
http://www.wgrz.com/news/daybreak/article/169249/37/Father-Baker-Boys-Reminisce-About-Life-At-The-Orphanage
http://fatherstefan.wordpress.com/father-baker-story/
So please do not tell me that it cannot be done.
Respectfully
AMP
I did not say, and did not intend anyone to infer, what could or could not be done. I was simply considering the data provided and asking questions.
I do not believe, as stated in a post just made above, that abortion should ever be routine birth control. It should be used only in particularly difficult situations. But it must be legal for those things to happen.
Yes, all other methods of birth control are almost 100 percent effective, are less expensive, and certainly less invasive, than abortion.
Dan, why do you think it is alright to abort within the first three months? Does human life begin at three months and one day?
Another question. Why is abortion alright in cases of rape? A lot of people throw this choice bit of morality around. I have always questioned it. The unborn child must pay for its father’s sin with its life? Wouldn’t adoption be a good choice here?
In that horrible kidnapping case in Ohio, it is reported that the perpetrator beat the women so they would lose their unborn children when they were pregnant by him. There is general outrage about this. But why? Many of the same people feel that abortion is alright. If so, wasn’t the biological father simply taking care of the abortion himself? Of course not! So why is it alright for “official” abortions to take place?
And for anyone who thinks we always get to choose what happens with our bodies, let me remind you of cancerous tumours, and the little choice we have with those. Many unfortunate souls have to carry them for more than nine months. Where did this notion come from of being able to choose anything and everything that happens to the physical body?
To the women out there, I say, “Ladies, someone obviously carried you in the unborn state for the requisite period; can you not pay it forward?” If not, how selfish.
There is always the chance of becoming pregnant if a certain act is entered into by a healthy woman of child-bearing age. With this in mind – it being a fact of human life — either use the most fail-safe contraception available, or accept the consequences. Simple as that.
Being Episcopal, you must have heard of high-clergy Katherine Hancock Ragsdale. She is Dean of one of the Divinity Schools, even. In 2009, she gave a notable speech in which she vehemently declared that “abortion is a blessing.” Horrible stuff. Sometime later, I prohibited my young son singing with his choir in her parish church, as — for all I knew — the congregation might have the same notions as Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, and I was afraid he would think such notions are right. You don’t want children to pick up that garbage.
My comment about abortion in the first trimester is based upon law. In the USA it is legal during that time period. Thus I consider it her business if she does so, not mine. However, don’t forget I’m opposed to abortion, and would counsel women to NOT abort.
The choice to abort in case of rape is up to the woman, not me. I can understand why a woman might prefer to not carry a fetus that is the result of a crime. In those cases I hope she simply takes a morning after pill. That way there may or may not be an abortion, as no one knows if she’s pregnant. God would/could know, of course. But he has given us free will since the Garden of Eden.
As to Rev Ragsdale, yes I’ve heard of her. I would guess that you’re equally troubled by the fact that she is married to another female priest. (Legally married in Massachusetts). I am not opposed to female or lesbian priests, nor gay male priests. And if such priests become bishops, that’s not up to me, but their diocese. It is highly unlikely it will be an issue in this diocese, although our bishop is Japanese American, and relatively young. (to me almost everybody is relatively young) 🙂
On control over our own bodies, we have control within limits. My brothers each when in the later stages of cancer decided to give up control by physicians and let God decide when they would die. In the late stages of cancer one of my sisters fought it to the last day. Her choice to spend several hundred thousand dollars and incredible suffering for something she had been told was terminal, and was. I’d have rather given that amount of money to help others, but she made a different choice.
I choose to make some control on my body by taking my blood pressure medicine and my statins, by exercising, by watching my diet, and getting regular colonoscopies and prostate checks. I have friends who do none of that. Yes, God can take any of us at any time of His choice. I often tell people that I have NO fear of dying, but I’m also not trying to hurry it up.
Dan, it is the numeric statistics on abortion that are being held back from the public. There was never any question that the government would distribute any names or private information; that just does not happen. But we can find out, say, the number of open heart surgeries done annually in Canada, or lung transplants. Just not abortions (in the provinces I noted). Something to hide? And I do not see any of the usual activist types yelling for redress here, as it does not suit them to be honest and open on this topic.
It would seem to me that some here, or others with similar feelings opposing abortion, would be fighting to get those statistics. Or do those opposed to abortion in Canada lack the organization or structure to fight it? I wouldn’t think so.
I know in the USA groups opposed to abortion would be all over those governments.
No, not criticizing anyone, just expressing surprise.
I was sharply reminded of the “freakonomics” argument last night–which I am not endorsing merely by mentioning–that abortion has had a positive impact on the homicide rate, when–in a completely unrelated matter, I was looking up ‘Peter Lorre’ on wikipedia–I came across a detail about his only daughter, Catharine. Anecdotal, yes, but no less true.
Catharine was once stopped by Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin and fellow “Hillside Strangler” Angelo Buono, disguised as police officers but let her go upon learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre. Impersonating police officers was how this pair succeeded in abducting, torturing and murdering at least ten young women.
And, because I was unfamiliar with this case, in looking up Kenneth Bianchi, I found: “Bianchi was born in Rochester, New York, to a prostitute who gave him up for adoption two weeks after he was born. He was adopted at three months by Frances Scioliono and her husband Nicholas Bianchi in Rochester. Bianchi was deeply troubled from a young age, and his adoptive mother described him as being ‘a compulsive liar who had risen from the cradle dissembling’.”
Every abortion is a specific act, but all nonetheless connect to everything else as a register of the health of the society. Where the author of “freakonomics” would look at Kenneth Bianchi and see proof of his thesis vis-a-vis abortion and homicide, I think that would miss the point that Kenneth Bianchi surely absorbed in utero plenty of his prostitute mother’s grief and spiritual toxicity. As Flannery O’Connor said, “Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.”
I am. And I have given birth to five children, thank you, so none of your standard remarks. I think you would love to string-up any male writing this, wouldn’t you?
AMPisAnglican is so right. Is it only women who are allowed to grieve for deaths of any kind, because we give birth to the the babies of the world? When an abortion is carried out, the child lost is the child of its father as well as its mother.
Let me go down on the record saying that I utterly despise feminism, and I say this as a well-educated woman, not yet in my dotage. It has done so much harm to our society, and it is so self-serving. The most worthwhile women I know feel the same way. What will rid us of this blight?
Men and women making the same wage for the same job, possibly?
Possibly, Vincent. I never had any trouble with that, actually….a lot of the feminist rants have been hugely overstated. And you think the feminists have the monopoly on morality? No one else would have thought of fair play without the Sisterhood? Spare me. I repeat — I cannot stand them. Out of my way, “Sisters”.
You make more assumptions about me than I make about you. 😀 What’s all this “You think this, that and the other stuff”?
Mind you, I don’t like myself very much when I post here. We’re all so angry all the time in this place.
Why do you post here, then? I notice you always change the subject suddenly when someone outdoes you, usually with logic. Best to try to move their attention to another topic, right?
Surely you are not saying that you value money more than you value a human life?
“Forcing women to give birth at the point of a gun?”
Christian culture in British North America was thrown off a cliff about 1965. Other than an epic need to stop smoking– a few fine-tuned adjustments, such as a few more doors opened in education and the work-place to women and minorities, were all that were needed. Instead we got a wholesale overthrow of the traditional order — and then some.
Yes, unplanned pregnancies happened before legalization of abortion and there was shame attached to them. Shame both to the women and the men. There was also a whole heap of emphasis on maturity, responsibility and impulse-control too. Along with the larger context of cultural and historical greatness and longevity to inspire and elevate people’s thinking. There was also a respect for maternity and an emphasis on adoption.
That’s all gone now. The culture’s about as narcissistic, amnesiac, godless, irresponsible and degraded as you can get now.
See, I’m Québécois. We’re having this conversation because I learned your language, and I can assure you that where I live, it is _not_ a prerequisite to success. I speak English because I like it. So this “British North America” rhetoric? It doesn’t stir anything much in me.
Well, Quebec isn’t exactly the highlight of British North America, is it?
And….aren’t you going severely off-topic there, Vincent? Lisa was not making a point about the place, but about the fact that cultural values all across North America changed so severely at a particular time. You Quebecers always think that every comment revolves around you.
😀
Childish.
OK, Anonymous, what is childish. The smiley face? Or the comment before it? Or???
Which one is the cutest or most cryptic?
Dan Lester, Vincent uses emoticons a great deal, particularly when he has made comments that others call him on. And didn’t you say you are a Yank? Do you have the background to comment with authority on Vincent’s standard Quebec-as-perpetual-victim comments? I lived there for a long while. I think I do. Then again, as I am an Anglo, I would have had no voice in that province, as we give Vincent here.
Yes, I’m a Yank, though not a fan of the ones from NYC. I’m a White Sox fan. 🙂
And I do thoroughly understand the “Quebecois as perpetual victims” bit. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Canada, and would have moved there many years ago for an excellent job, but at the time the exchange rate was such that I couldn’t afford to pay off my Yank debts from college in what were then “mini dollars”. I’ve been in all provinces/territories/areas except PEI, NFLD, NWT. And with no skill at all in French, I too was always not just a “tourist” but a “Yank Tourist” in Quebec. I still enjoyed visits there, but have no interest in living there. I now live in the desert where it will be 35 tomorrow (95 for any other Yanks who may be reading this). Only 33 today.
You took the words out of my mouth, Lisa. When I buy books for my children to read, I always look for the pre-1970 publications, because the mid-to-late 60s was when the new politically correct world order took over, and all the innocence, values, and just plain good human stories began to disappear and make way for stories that reinforced the idea that dwelling on racism, sexism, genderism, multi-culti-ism and feminism are all that human life consists of. What a very, very dismal outlook. Reading a classic 1955 book, for instance, makes you think you now live on Mars. Or maybe in Hell. Wow…what we have lost.
What we have lost is the country and the society our parents, grandparents and those before them worked, fought and died for.
Amen.
Yes we have. However, we also can not turn back the clock, or recover “the good old days” and must continue to adapt and change, lest we die. The church must adapt to survive. But we’ve gone around on that before.
Dan, that old blather about “we cannot turn back the clock” is dead and buried. You need to become progressive in its true sense. Standard left-wing tripe, is that.
We don’t pine for “the good old days,” only the good old truths. The nature of truth is that it never changes, Dan — it only takes on the guise of the age it lives in. You don’t think that a set of values can find reflection in 2013 just as they found reflection in Christ’s day? We are not looking for sameness. We are looking for truthfulness. You need to learn the difference.
Well, darn few people would consider me “left wing”. I’m appalled at what our President and government are doing in most arenas. My Christian values are unchanged from when I was first taught them over 65 years ago. But the last two parishes I’ve served in (Lay Eucharistic Minister, Lay Reader, Usher, etc) were at first filled with those over 60 and almost no young adults, much less children. Both have since then brought in young families, and active Sunday School and children’s ministry, and so forth.
They have NOT done it by watering down values, bringing in guitars and rock music, alternative hymnals, or anything like that. They are moderately “high church”, have quality choirs and organists, dynamic preachers, and a large community presence, serving the homeless and hungry, the women who need shelter, and so forth. I hope you don’t view that Christian outreach and charity as “standard Left-wing tripe”. I certainly don’t.
Dan, going back to your 5:05 posting, I think you are confusing something being legal with it being moral. There is no law at all against abortion until the very moment before birth, here in Canada. That does not make it morally acceptable. Legal it is though.
No confusion at all on moral vs legal. I’m well aware of the differences. On the flip side there are a few things I think are moral that aren’t legal, too. I said that I consider the abortion the woman’s business because it is legal in the USA. I did not say that makes it right. I said I’m opposed to abortion in almost all situations. Whatever our moral beliefs are, there are always issues integrating them into real life. I don’t expect that any of us will be able to perfectly follow our beliefs in real life, no matter how we try. We just can’t be that perfect.
Is the morning-after pill intrinsically immoral? If your daughter was raped by a multiple murderer would you let her take one? It might or might not cause an abortion, since she might or might not be impregnated. We must also remember that there are vast numbers of spontaneous abortions every day when the body (or God) (or both) decide that the fetus is not viable. And of course miscarriages that the woman is aware of frequently happen as well.
I’m not asking for answers to my questions necessarily, as much as I’m suggesting that we can never, in this life, have easy or perfect answers. But we can continue to struggle and pray to know His direction for us.
It’s all of a piece in the war on the family as the basic unit of society, beginning decades ago with male-bashing feminism and postcard divorce — which is now bearing fruit in the suicide rates, and other pronounced health and psychological disorders, of those children of divorce now at middle age — and of which “LGBTTTIQQQ2SA marriage” rights constitute simply the latest barrage.
I remember passing by an Anglican Church a couple of years ago while on my way to a Life Chain event along the highway, less than a mile from the church. I saw a group of people gathered in the parking lot of the church and initially thought perhaps they were gathering to join the Life Chain. A quick glance of the church sign board corrected me. They were gathered for a “Blessing of the Animals” service. *SMH*
I’m not judging blessing animals vs. marches for sanctity of life, or the relative timing of events, but don’t most Anglican Churches in Canada do an annual “blessing of animals” on or around St. Francis Day?
Some do.
What’s wrong with blessing the animals? The world we live in today is sick and all the perversions are connected. Needless to say the leaven of wickedness spreads and I guess threatens us all.
http://www.occupyforanimals.org/animal-rape-and-animal-brothel.html
I agree.
We talk as though it is us mortals who are doing the blessing. But I think (cannot honestly say “believe” as I have not given the matter much thought) that it is God who is doing the blessing, perhaps as a result of our requests or through us as His followers.
Perhaps it might be appropriate if we were to ask ourselves why we are requesting God’s blessing upon something? Is it for our own benefit? Do we want God to bless the crops so that we can have a profitable farm industry? Or is it so that there will be enough food for not just ourselves but also the starving? When we ask God to Bless a ship is it because the ship’s owners want to make money from the business of that ship? Or is it for God to be present in the lives of the passengers during the voyages, or so that they may have a safe journey?
If the reason for the request is our own shelfishness than I think that we are in the wrong. If the reason is instead for the glory of God, for His presence, for Him to give us the ability to do His will, than I think that to be ok.
We ask God to bless us; it is a request. God may not grant our request. Likewise, a church can ask God to bless a same-sex relationship. But, it does not mean that God must grant this request.
“[A]ll the perversions are connected …. ”
I mentioned surrogate motherhood before in this discussion thread, and Laura Wood writes on the topic this morning. Her link has a link to the photos she discusses. Women and men in alarming numbers– as you say, Sandy, “the leaven of wickedness spreads”– are dissociated from reality; they are neurotically and psychotically alienated from healthy embodiment and expression of femininity and masculinity.
“Mrs. Pursley, who apparently showed no concern for how her son may someday view this spectacle, is an extreme manifestation of the feminist view of motherhood. It’s all a beautiful hobby. See the photos of her husband, Jacob Pursley, the boy-man who sits on the sidelines of this orgy of maternal lust, dazed and submissive.”
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2013/05/motherhood-the-extreme-sport/
The emasculation of men Daniel Greenfield addressed in an essay last week, and articulates the same bizarre approach to parenthood, of the domineering mother and the strangely absent father, Wood describes.
“The little boy whose mother dressed him up in girlish clothes once used to be a figure of contempt while the little boy pretending to be a marine was the future of the nation. Now the boy in the dress is the future of the nation having joined an identity group and entirely new gender by virtue of his mother’s Münchausen-syndrome-by-proxy and the aspiring little marine is suspected of one day trading in his sharpened pencil for one of those weapons of war as soon as the next gun show comes to town.”
“It’s not about preventing school shootings, but about asserting a value system in which there is no place for the aspiring marine, unless he’s handing out food to starving children in Africa in a relief operation, serving as a model of gay marriage to rural America or engaging in some other approved, but non-violent activity.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.ca/2013/05/the-playgrounds-of-war.html
Follow-up comment on the article on surrogacy,
“It strikes me that the NY Times has painted surrogacy in the most glowing possible terms: as a sisterly transaction between two women who are in the same family, motivated primarily by a desire to help.
Surrogacy is well on it’s way to being a cash business, complete with baby brokers and womb rental agents. When same-sex “marriage” kicks in, all those homosexual couples will crave children to complete (they hope) the masquerade. Given that they are unable to produce them, and that adoptable babies are scarce, they will turn to reproductive prostitutes to make up the difference. These will be cash transactions, strictly business, and will likely involve poor, Third World women doing the work Americans won’t do.
We keep finding new ways to debase humanity.”
Third world men and women have been selling their organs for cash for many years now. I can easily see the women deciding that surrogacy is a better option. As long as these situations are allowed, or fill a selfish motive somewhere, the market will exist. Can you imagine the stories in twenty or thirty years from individuals who were conceived in such circumstances? They cannot fail to be harmed by it. Their “parents” probably will not have stuck around, either. The whole picture makes one gag. A sordid mess.
The NY Times is so left-wing, you can count on at least 90% of the content being heavily slanted. I have to say that in grad school, I used to love getting the thick Sunday edition and spending an hour or two with it, when the stories still had a bit of objectivity. No longer.
Elsewhere in this thread I mentioned the convicted mass-murderer Kenneth Bianchi, born of a mother emotionally-detached from her pregnancy; not unlike what a surrogate may experience. The “gblt married,” who would seek the services of surrogates, experience higher rates of “divorce” and infidelity within “marriage.” And, as to what individuals conceived in such circumstances might have to say, this is what a 66 year-old Frenchman raised by two lesbians advises about gay-parenting.
“I also suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation.”
“If two women who raised me had been married prior to the adoption of such a bill, I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of the rights of man, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad.”
http://englishmanif.blogspot.ca/2013/01/le-figaro-runs-confessional-of-man.html
I just saw the figure of 16,000 as the number of abortions Kermit Grosnell performed. Of course, there were also 16,000 women who came into that office seeking same.
In the age of super-contraception, there are all of these “mistakes?”
“Whoops, I forgot the pill…No problem, I’ll just kill my child.” Isn’t that how it goes?
What is wrong with these Monster women? Has Feminism addled their souls?
Well, other than my standard refrain the world’s gone insane and Sandy’s point all the perversions are connected …. I don’t have a simple answer. I do know the poor, black child-women — like so many of Grosnell’s “patients” — I have known, conceived and had children out-of-wedlock because a) it is/was the legacy of US marxist/socialist welfare policy that undermined the place of fathers and husbands in the black family and b) see (a) & because, being largely un-parented themselves, they wanted someone to love them.
The Grand Jury report raised the question Grosnell’s abuses went on so long because the women were poor and black/minority. But then, people are by-and-large stuck in a pre-1965 view of race relations, and I say the right question for them to ask was, did it not go on so long, since 1979 — almost the whole of the period since Roe v Wade (when abortion was legalized in the US) — because Grosnell was black. That is, wasn’t it because he was a black doctor people looked the other way?
The late, great Lawrence Auster was writing about this — and I’m not getting away from the focus on abortion in raising this; it’s simply it all connects in that people see ideology, or what it is they want to see, rather than taking a hard look at what’s actually in front of them and asking the difficult questions … Davila’s “An irreligious society cannot endure the truth of the human condition”. This is from a long discussion, one of a number on the subject, in which Auster gives this summary.
“I don’t want to make an all encompassing theory out of it, but in general I think we can say that whites’ false, self-excoriating guilt about white racism (or, alternatively, white liberals’ false condemnation of supposedly non-liberal whites for their racism, which is another side of the same phenomenon) became the template in the white mind by which all the other false guilt trips were formed—“sexism,” “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” etc.”
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/019843.html
Because he was black, people looked the other way? I can certainly believe that. Minorities, apparently, have no human sin. They are utterly perfect human beings. Therefore, we are not allowed to criticize them. If we do, we are not allowed to wear the “I am superior” button anymore.
Lisa, I think it all comes down to vanity. The left-wingers are just dying to think of themselves as sublime individuals…..the top of the pops. To be sublime, you must out-do everyone else in proving how politically correct you are. That is the supposed virtue in this warped society. To face the truth, however, makes you worse than a nobody; it makes you an enemy of the system. The truth is like garlic….it drives them into their holes.
I just came across something Lawrence Auster, again, — a Jew who converted to Christianity — wrote that struck me because I’d been thinking about just what ‘transcendence’ means.
“This is a typically liberal fallacy, though many conservatives today are infected by it as well. They assume that morality means a single, monolithic system, so that you’re either following that system or else you’re being “hypocritical.” And since it’s impossible for anyone to follow such a single monolithic system, and since it’s not good to be hypocritical, people should just drop the notion of morality altogether. That’s what liberals want. They turn morality into an impossibility so that morality will simply be junked.
The truth is that there are degrees of morality appropriate to different circumstances, and common sense tells the difference between them. This is not liberal subjectivism, but traditional morality. An example of this traditional morality is the idea that we condemn the sin, not the sinner. This is a differentiation that modern people reject, because for them there is only the self, there is no truth beyond the self, so it’s impossible to make a distinction between the sin and the sinner, or between a defect and the person who is defective. Therefore, if you say that homosexuality is not the normal path of mankind and should not be officially endorsed, to a modern that means that you hate all homosexuals as people. If you say that blacks are on average less intelligent than whites, that means that you hate blacks as people. If you say there is too much immigration, that means that you hate immigrants as people. As I said, this outlook affects many conservatives today. Thus, when I argued once to a well-known conservative writer that he was denying the objective truth of morality, he replied that I was claiming to be morally superior to him. On such a basis, it becomes impossible to discuss anything, it becomes impossible to have politics, because if you say someone is wrong, that’s tantamount to saying that you’re superior to him as a human being. All this is the result of the liberal loss of the experience of transcendence, so that for modern people there is only the self—with no truth, no logos, no right and wrong, outside the self.”
And, to return to your question of why all these abortions …. I just came across this explanation of Steve Sailor’s:
“The most striking fact about legalized abortion, but also the least discussed, is its sizable pointlessness. Legalized abortion turned out to be a lot like Homer Simpson’s toast: “To alcohol! The cause of, and solution for, all of life’s problems.”
Legal abortion is a major cause of what it was supposed to cure — unwanted pregnancies. Levitt himself notes that following Roe, “Conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent …” So for every six fetuses aborted in the 1970s, five would never have been conceived except for Roe!”
http://www.isteve.com/freakonomics_fiasco.htm
I can certainly agree with Auster. I have read his brand of thought for many, many years. Trouble is, though, that fewer and fewer people think. They have become a mass of surface-dwellers, as if they all have ADD. I rarely even find anyone to argue with, as my perspectives are so far off from theirs, we have no common ground whatsoever. Their basic assumptions about life are full of rot.
Yes, as in, “We don’t have to be careful anymore, dear….there’s always abortion.”
Yes, undoubtedly.
But it was a different dynamic in the case of the black unwed teenage mothers I’ve known, as I suspect was so for the poor black women who would have seen the worst of Grosnell’s clinic. And this goes back to my earlier point of how undermining of the black family federal welfare programs have been. It also makes me wonder what are the on-going ramifications for children of divorce, of “gay marriage” — in short, children without fathers — especially in light of economic decline …. And as David wrote originally, where is the Anglican clergy in any of this?
In a follow-up piece, Sailor writes — and this is so important:
“Fatherless teenage girls feared, correctly, that if they refused sexual relations, they would risk losing their boyfriends, who may well represent the only steady source of male affection they have ever had in their young lives.
Is the picture starting to become clearer? We really aren’t talking about rational post-Enlightenment adults making considered choices. We’re talking about hurricane-strength social forces battering the most vulnerable members of the population.”
http://isteve.blogspot.ca/2005/05/why-legalizing-abortion-didnt-cut.html
Have you read Heather MacDonald and Myron Magnet’s work over the years? Very enlightening. Anything out of the Manhattan Institute is worthwhile. Trouble is, though various people have warned of the welfare state and family breakdown — particularly of black family breakdown — since Moynihan in the 60s, very few listen. A small handful, perhaps. That’s all.
I’ve read Heather MacDonald. And Moynihan caught hell for speaking out back then.
People think, conveniently — if you care — then you naturally support a left-wing government program geared toward solving the problem. And if the government program doesn’t work, the thinking is never that it was because it was a lousy idea that did more harm than good; no, it’s that, obviously, the program wasn’t comprehensive enough and adequately funded. And so, you get an ever-expanding government until there’s nothing left outside of government, to include a productive economy or society’s traditional institutions.
I sometimes try to point out to people who claim to be atheist, or non-religious, they’ve made their politics into their religion. It permits them, as described above, to set aside considerations of actual cause-and-effect as they charge religious people do, while freeing them to jump on whatever self-righteous, clamorously-progressive bandwagon is rolling by — all while sparing them the inconvenience of upholding a morality that makes actual claims on them as individuals, their consciences and their time and energy.
I never hear people speaking on behalf of the interests of the children in the latest enlightened social-engineering craze, gay marriage. What is Vincent’s comment, we were all children once? Yes, we were, and we were all uniquely products of a heterosexual union in that too. And looking to the sanctity of that union is, ultimately, the best way to prevent abortion. What does Bruce say, oh my, how the child-rearing turns the “gay marrieds” into child-centered homebodies, just like the heterosexuals. No, if the real interests — not their own self-serving fantasy projections — of the children were of priority they would leave behind the homosexual lifestyle and fully commit themselves in matrimony to someone for whom they both had affection and with whom they could procreate.
Again, where are the Anglican clergy?
Lisa asks
“Again, where are the Anglican clergy?”
I suspect some of them are working on this years floats for the annual Toronto Pride Parade.
I reminded some Anglican clergy of my acquaintance of that. They confirmed.
I know of an Anglican Cathedral just a few blocks away from Parliament Hill. They could have strolled over.
Might I recommend “Motherhood Interrupted: Stories of Healing and Hope after Abortion”, by Jane Brennan.
However, it is best if there is no “after abortion.”
Lisa — Have you read Laura Wood’s “Thinking Housewife” blog? She was a friend of Lawrence Auster.
And speaking of a morality that makes claims on people as individuals, that is exactly what I found the ACofC does not do. There is no indivdual conscience or moral responsibility amongst mainstream Anglicans (the few of them left) — it’s all about supporting this group or that cause. ACofC is moral groupthink, as if paying lip service to (or even donating to) the next engineered “social justice” project is all it takes to please God.
Yes, she’s very good. I read her even more now that Auster’s gone. And I think she’s trying to help fill the gap he left.
I am an clergyman in the ACC and attended joyfully the March for Life in Ottawa and will do so again. Sadly I was the only one but was heartened to join with some ANiC clergy. Watch for the formation of a Canadian chapter of Anglicans for Life. Keep up the good work, David. Dr. Mark