So Tavarish published his “last reply” defending failed pro-choice rhetoric (at his blog ironically called The Usual Rhetoric), tackling my recent response to his five so-called counter-arguments against the pro-life stance. Since his arguments have not changed in any way, and my response already confronted them head-on, there is very little for me to add to this dialogue. This will be, then, a very brief summation.

Read the rest of this entry

In what is thus far the most commented article on this site, penned by our newest staff member Adam (see “How to respond to empty pro-choice rhetoric”), one of our regular visitors and a gentleman I enjoy talking with, Tavarish, recently posted five counter-arguments against the pro-life stance advocated by our staff writers. Not wishing for these issues to get archived deeper into the site as the article ages, I am addressing his five counter-arguments in a fresh article. And I am addressing each of them head-on, as he seems to suggest that no one has directly confronted them. For a full and proper context, please see the comments field to Adam’s article.

Read the rest of this entry

Last weekend, our very own Adam brought to our attention an article that was published in Australian’s Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday 5 May. The author, Ms Nina Funnell, lamented that she believes women still do not have total authority over their own bodies. There is the Pill (which, I might add, recently became 50 years old) but yet there is still no widespread abortion-on-demand in Australia. On the latter, she is of course right: in Australia, only the State of Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have decriminalized abortion. In all other states and territories, abortion remains illegal in just about all circumstances. As Ms Funnell points out in her article, a 19 year old woman and her boyfriend face a possible jail term of up to seven years for procuring an abortion in the state of Queensland. She doesn’t, however, provide any reason as to why this couple sought an abortion but we are expected to feel sorry for them, regardless.

Read the rest of this entry

I found this gem in a Sydney newspaper a couple of days ago. The article by Nina Funnell generated many comments, but it was the responses to Ms Funnell by one person in particular (Adrian) that I wanted to isolate here to highlight the bankruptcy of the pro-abortion view. I encourage you to read the article first, it’s not very long. 

The following exchange has been edited for clarity only (e.g. spelling, formatting, etc): 

Reproductive rights? Just because you give something a name it doesn’t mean it brings a concept into existence. You just made that rubbish up. And it’s a total nonsense. 

It’s just like a bloke who doesn’t want to pay child support simply claiming he is exercising his financial rights! It’s his money and he should be able to do what he wants with it. 

Or someone swearing and carrying on in a public place simply claiming that they are exercising their vocal rights. It’s their voice and they should be allowed to do what they want with it. 

Or someone going around breaking shop windows simply claiming they are exercising their physical rights to put their own fist wherever they see fit. It’s their fist and they should be allowed to do what they want with it. 

The concept of reproductive rights is as [ludicrous] as those three examples, and on par in its level of stupidity. 

Does the word “responsibility” mean anything to you? 

Nina, a philosopher you’re not. Stop trying. You really are failing quite miserably, even if your cheer squad think you’re a big thinker with big ideas!! Go on, make me laugh… 

Adrian | Adelaide – May 05, 2010, 11:06AM 

… Finally I think the best post here is the one that clearly articulates that abortion is first and foremost a MEDICAL issue. 

Nina Funnell | Sydney – May 05, 2010, 1:44PM 

[Nina Wrote:] “Finally I think the best post here is the one that clearly articulates that abortion is first and foremost a MEDICAL issue.” 

LOL!! Me dying from laughter is a medical issue much more so than abortion is. 

I’d love to know how you managed to reach that conclusion? My retort is quite simple – pregnancy isn’t a disease!! 

Dehumanise it if it makes you feel better. But remember that history [has shown] that dehumanisation is a standard pre-requisite to genocide. 

Abortion is a human rights issue Nina – encompassing rights of parents as well as children, born or unborn. That’s the philosophical spectrum that it falls into. 

If you can’t see that, then it’s no wonder that all your conclusions on this issue are so wrong. 

Adrian | Adelaide – May 05, 2010, 2:19PM 

Read the rest of this entry

There is little doubt in my mind that the pro-choicer today doesn’t have much of an argument that he can hang his hat on. When flailing and pontificating about abortion as a “choice”, his only real avenue is to resort to a discussion of rights. He cannot say that the unborn are not human – it is a medical fact that they are – and therefore that abortion doesn’t kill human beings. No – the pro-choicer must resort to other arguments; in fact, in advocating abortion he attempts to rationalize for the legal killing of an innocent human being by advocating for women’s rights. Hence, while his argument may concede that the unborn are indeed human beings he then declares that that ought to have no bearing on a pregnant woman’s rights to her bodily autonomy. But does the woman really have the right to kill her own offspring? Does the bodily autonomy argument hold up under close scrutiny? Well, if a recent discussion I had on the topic is anything to go by, I really do think the argument is left wanting. And if so, then surely the pro-choicer has no choice but to abandon his ill-fated position.

It Started at the End

I had been reading Ravi Zacharias’s book, The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists, which was written in response to the vitriol published by Sam Harris in his book, Letter to a Christian Nation. There was one particular discussion in Zacharias’s book that I took a liking to – not at all related to Harris’s book when taken out of its context, but one which served effectively well as a conversation starter on the topic of abortion and morality. Read the rest of this entry

If Mathew will forgive me for stepping into what is normally his arena, I would like to share an editorial published today in The Daily Courier, a local Kelowna newspaper.

Over the last few years, pro-life advocacy and activism has really begun to blossom in Kelowna, especially among the Millennial Generation (those under 30), and of course this is really getting under the nose of abortion supporters. In response to an editorial published last week by Kevin Ade, in which he vilified the pro-life movement (probably in response to the recent 40 Days for Life campaign across North America which had participants in front of Kelowna General Hospital), today Marlon Bartram, Executive Director of Kelowna Right to Life, wrote a poignant response to Ade that cuts succinctly to the heart of the matter, which I simply must share with you.

The following is Bartram’s editorial (almost) in full:

 
Normally I do not bother responding to ignorant, pro-abortion rants such as the one put forth by Kevin Ade in last Wednesday’s edition of The Daily Courier, but considering that his harsh attack was directed at my fine colleagues at Trail-Rossland Right to Life, I feel it my place to chime in.

There is not enough space here to comment thoroughly on Ade’s tacit support of China’s barbaric one-child policy (wherein forced sterilizations and abortions are routinely carried out on unwilling women and dead babies are found washed up on riverbanks), nor his approval of the mass culling of the most defenseless and innocent members of the human family in the name of “population control” … or his hateful demonization of pro-lifers as “deceitful,” “liars,” and “terrorists.” I will take time to respond on what I perceive to be the thesis of his column: the denial of any causal link between abortion and breast cancer.

Ade might be surprised to discover (if he dares to engage in a little open-minded research) that 80 percent of the 70 studies done on the issue since 1957 show a positive correlation between breast cancer and abortion. In addition, Ade seems to have missed the rather abundant media reports revealing that (former) fellow denier Louise Brinton of the National Cancer Institute (U.S.) admitted in a 2009 study that abortion does indeed raise the risk of breast cancer by 40 percent.

Although some of the aforementioned studies show as much as a 200 percent risk increase, let’s go with the lower 40 percent figure and put that into some context.

It is estimated that living with a smoker increases a non-smoker’s chances of developing lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent. So I think it is safe to conclude that the risk of contracting lung cancer from public second-hand smoke is far less, given the comparatively reduced exposure. Yet that minimal public risk has resulted in massive anti-smoking campaigns and scores of legislation aimed at deterring, reducing, or outright banning smoking in public places.

Surprise, surprise, no such campaigns aimed at deterring, reducing, or banning abortion are undertaken when its harmful effects are uncovered. Instead, abortion groups, the media, and misguided politicians all minimize, ignore, and even libellously attack anyone who points to any health risk associated with abortion.

It is not just the breast cancer they rail against, but infertility, sepsis, hemorrhaging, death, depression, trauma, substance abuse, and scores of other physical, emotional, and psychological harms known to be associated with abortion. They do so not because it is in the best interest of women to be denied information on these risks; rather, they do so in order to preserve and promote their abortionist ideology.

Ade recklessly purports that “proselytizing is an abuse of privilege” and “the enforcement of bias upon others is terrorism.” Call it a hunch, but I suspect the self-avowed social activist and environmentalist fails to see any ‘terrorism’ involved when he proselytizes and enforces his left-wing, environmental, population control, abortionist bias on others. Let me guess: it’s only ‘terrorism’ when people with views different than your own speak out. Otherwise it’s just another benign editorial in a newspaper. Is that it?

So who, really, is acting in the best interest of women, children, and society here? Those who work to make the harmful effects of abortion known, or those who deny them in order to preserve their abortionist ideology at all costs, even at the cost of down-playing or ignoring very serious health risks to women?

Ade closes out by suggesting the pro-life movement “do the right thing and apologize.” In reality, when the day comes that abortion is seen for the horror it truly is and the terrible harm it has done to women, it will be the Kevin Ades of the world doing the apologizing.
 

Bartram, Marlon. “Only Those Who Disagree Are Apparently ‘Terrorists’.” The Daily Courier (Kelowna) 6 Apr. 2010, Letters sec.: A7. Print. (For more information on the link between abortion and breast cancer, see www.abortionbreastcancer.ca.)

But then who could put it more powerfully than John Piper did?

The truth of the phrase “a picture tells a thousand words” holds much persuasive power. The media has long used a variety of images to convey the truth and reality of situations far removed from the every day viewer; we use images to provoke, to emotionally stir and to captivate people’s attention. We are, by and large, a visually stimulated people. The success of the movie industry and of TV programming is testament to that. Yet can we intentionally use graphically disturbing pictures to promote a cause or to bring awareness of an issue to the uninitiated? Can we use images to sway our opponents on the abortion issue? If they’re used appropriately, then the answer is an emphatic, “yes”.

The use of pictures does have its place; the use of factual pictures entomb the truths of an event for future generations. One man who understood this in totality was General Eisenhower who, on visiting the Nazi concentration camp at Ohrdruf on April 12th, 1945, ordered that every citizen of the nearby town of Gotha visit the camp; that media personnel make full documentation; and that military cameras be sure to capture the horrific scene, immortalizing in photographs the barbarity and cruelty.

Said Eisenhower, “I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”^[1] Eisenhower envisaged that the documentation was necessary because, at point in the future, he believed there would be people who would deny that such astrocities ever took place, perhaps thinking them some elaborate conspiracy to stir the hearts and cloud the minds of a gullible people. Yet there are groups who deny the holocaust; I’m sure Eisenhower would not be surprised.

Read the rest of this entry

The other day I was accused of being something that, to be honest, I hadn’t heard of before (and I’ve heard a lot different accusations!). It’s a seemingly innocuous term and at first I puzzled at what it meant. The term and accusation that was levelled at me was that I was pro-birth. Notice I wasn’t accused of being pro-life – which is ordinarily how I would label myself and am quite comfortable to be accused of being – but pro-birth. This arose out of a discussion that had developed over the course of a few of days (via Twitter) on the subject of abortion – a discussion which has been interesting and which I will go into further in a separate post (soon to be published) – but on the branding of the term pro-birth, I had to pause.

Shortly, it occurred to me that the term was to mean a world view which would hold that – under every circumstance of pregnancy – the mother must bear the child to full term; that the mother must birth the child, no matter what. It then occurred to me that the term is used as a euphemism for someone who forces their view onto others (namely, in this instance, that a pregnant woman must give birth), effectively making (forcing) an un-welcomed decision onto another, inhibiting their freedom of choice. In a nut shell, being pro-birth “robs” women of their choice.

I’d like to think that I’m open to the criticisms that come my way (I try to look at them as opportunities for self-evaluation and improvement; I also think this is a biblically sound manner in which to live a Christian life and certainly appears to be the psalmist’s approach (Ps 139:24)), hence, I pondered the pro-birth label for a while and searched inward to see if there was truth to it.

Read the rest of this entry

“Baby killer’s day out from prison to go shopping”

“Baby killer let out to visit mall”

Just two of the many headlines from several pages of The Daily Telegraph’s (DT) diatribe on Friday 26th June 2009 rallying against the supervised shopping trip of one Phillip King, who was imprisoned after he “killed his own baby son in a fit of rage when he punched and kicked Kylie Flick’s stomach after she refused to have an abortion”, the DT reports.

“He didn’t steal a car, he stole a life”, was one expression used by Kylie Flick to express her anguish over the memory of the birth of her stillborn son, whom she Christened Jonathan.

The DT also point out that Ms Flick’s son “never drew breath” – a seemingly redundant piece of information – and that King’s “horrific 2002 crime led to a new law with a maximum 25-year jail term for people for people who kill a foetus…”

This attack by the media you might say is fair game. He did take the life of a defenseless human being after all, and injured several others both physically and emotionally in the process. So why shouldn’t the media have their pound of flesh? Well it’s the inconsistent way that they go about it that irks me. Here are some more of the headlines and comments from the same articles.

Read the rest of this entry