As you were: No dead baby here, no sir

People have a sense of right and wrong, no matter how much they try to suppress it. That’s why everybody, from the police to news commentators to politicians, spoke of the stabbing murders of Aysun Sesen and her seven month unborn child as two murders with two victims. Everyone spoke of the doctors who tried to save the “child” but couldn’t. There will be two caskets at the funeral. As soon as I saw the news reports on TV and read them in the paper I said to my wife “just wait, there will be big climb down tomorrow as the word foetus crops up everywhere.”

Now, today, they are no longer speaking of two victims. There is no mention of a dead “Mother and child.” As the Star explains today, correctly, under Canadian law even a full term baby is just a clump of cells until such time as it has the temerity to draw a breath on its own, whereupon society is immediately inconvenienced by having to afford it protection under the criminal law.

Now everyone knows this is nonsense. That’s why we all understood that two murders had taken place. But the pro-choice chill has made us once again shutter what is right and true up into the deep recesses of our consciences.

Let me make another prediction: At this scumbag’s trial, no one will be able to even mention that the victim was pregnant.

That might inflame the ordinary folks on the jury. And we can’t let a little thing like dead babies get us all hot and bothered after all, now can we?

(Hint: Maybe we should stop and ask ourselves why the fact that the victim was pregnant is so inflammatory? I mean, if the child really just was a clump of cells, no more deserving of legal protection than a cyst, then no one would be inflamed, would they? Think about it....)

Toronto Abortion Clinic Hit Hard

There was some controversy at a Toronto abortion clinic yesterday, as a group called Show The Truth blitzed the street with a photo Burma shave-style protest. For the uninitiated, this means that dozens of people lined the street holding giant (4x6 foot), full colour photographs of aborted children at various stages of foetal development. Each placard was clearly (and accurately) labelled (e.g. 21 weeks, 4 weeks). Each photo was very graphic and clearly showed what pro-abortion types call the "products of conception" as they appear when removed from the mother during an abortion.

The typical reaction this group receives (they’ve even been called terrorists) is highly negative. These photos are very disturbing (pictures of murdered babies are about as offensive as you can get, after all) and no one is more disturbed than, naturally, pro-abortion advocates.

But I do not understand why. On what basis could anyone pose any rationale objection? If they object on the basis of offensive aesthetics, the reply is that our courts have consistently ruled that people living in a free and democratic society do not have the right to live free from offence, especially where peaceful demonstration is involved. On a more subjective level, I suppose the reply would simply be that, as abortion itself is offensive, it’s quite natural that photographic records of it would also be offensive.

What if they object on the basis of truth or factual accuracy? Well, they can’t; the photos are accurate, real and correctly labelled. They are, in every sense of the word, "true".

How about an objection on the basis that these photos may deter women from having an abortion, or make their decision more difficult? Well, that’s the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it? Surely pro-choicers are in favour of an informed consumer? A woman seeking an abortion, when confronted with new, factual information about the procedure, is placed in a superior position to a less-informed one, surely? A woman so informed may indeed choose not to have the procedure. Another may press on regardless. Surely the latter would be viewed as all the more virtuous by abortion advocates, and all the more hellish by the rest of us? But at least the decision, and the moral choices involved, were all the more informed for the new information? And the associated consequences more clearly chosen?

That is the troublesome nature of truth: it can be decried as very inconvenient, or even as offensive, but it can never be successfully attacked – on any front.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Abortion Clinic Pics and Lost Irony

Yes, yes, I know – abortion is no laughing matter. But sometimes, the pro-aborts have their heads shoved so deep in the sand that even their most painfully obvious double-speak is lost on them. Take the website of Toronto’s Bloor West Village Women’s Clinic as a prime example of just how forked a tongue can actually become.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Check this out – the abortion clinic’s website offers a slideshow tour of the clinic, pictures of which I’ve reproduced here with “stating the bloody obvious” running commentary. The headlines below are the photo captions exactly as they appear on the website (click photo to enlarge):

Reception; where you’ll meet some of our friendly staff
(Gee, they must be hiding behind the desk. Don’t these kinds of “welcoming” reception area photos for “health clinics” usually show smiling faces, waiting to greet the customer?)





Have a seat in our waiting room
(What? No smiling, happy customers? No proud women extolling “My body, my choice!”?)







All questions answered by our counsellor
(She must be on the speakerphone. Do the pretty bags help the guilt go away? Do you get two if you abort twins? And take note of the tissue box…it becomes a theme as you’ll see)






Enjoy the view
(Anything but think about that baby you’re about to snuff out. Gee, aren’t those pretty houses…the kind families live in, right? At least there’s more tissue!)






Ultra-sound and procedure room
(Hey, do they get to see the baby’s heartbeat too? Before I mean? Those machines can do that you know….)






Enjoy a variety of snacks and beverages
(Cause there’s nothing like the munchies after offing your kid, right? And just why, do you think, do they seem to need so much tissue? Every recovery chair gets its own box. These women – they’re not, you know, upset and crying are they? Whatever for? It’s just a clump of tissue, a mass of the products of conception, right? Gee, you’d think someone had died or something….)


Seriously folks, if you're about to undergo a procedure at a place where no one will show their faces, and the clients needs counselling and endless boxes of tissue to get through the process, maybe you want to think just a little longer about this irreversible thing you're about to do. (Hint: Women who have had abortions it regret it, but those who didn't, don't).

The Flipside of the Autism Breakthrough

Perhaps I am the only one, but I greeted the recent breakthrough in autism research with more than just a little trepidation. My concern, located in the bottom paragraphs after the turn, relates directly to the following snip:

Every week parents of autistic children ask Wendy Roberts, a developmental pediatrician and co-director of the autism research unit at Sick Kids, whether there are prenatal tests to screen for autism. “At this point, we say that we can’t.” The study won’t have any immediate impact on clinical practice, said Roberts, a co-author of the study. It will take time to design a prenatal test for autism, precisely because there are so many genes involved.

Now, you ask, of what possible value could a prenatal test for autism be? To treat it in the womb with some kind of as yet undiscovered gene therapy? Not likely. No, the purpose of prenatal testing for autism would be exactly the same as the reasons behind prenatal testing for cystic fibrosis and Downs Syndrome – to allow the parents to abort the baby and save themselves from a lifetime of having to care for a special needs child. That this so-called "breakthrough" will lead to a cure for autism is probably true enough – but only if you think you ought to cure a disease by killing everyone who has it.

I recall my wife being told to go for an amniocentesis during her pregnancy and upon being told why (her age and the risk of birth defects) we asked what good the information would do – and were told it would allow us to terminate the pregnancy. We looked our doctor right in the eye and told her that we weren’t terminating anything, and where she could stick her needle. You should have seen the look, as if to say "What do you mean you wouldn’t abort a Downs Syndrome child?" All through the pregnancy we constantly had to explain to various medical professionals that the reason the amnio test wasn’t in our file was because we refused to allow one to be done.

Our child, thankfully, is fine. I say thankfully, not because we would not have loved a disabled child, but because we wanted a healthy, happy baby just like every other parent. And what of those parents of autistic children? Would they turn back the clock if they could and abort their child? Their answers are, emphatically, "No."

So, yes, all hail the god of science, but pardon me for not jumping on the eugenics bandwagon to Hell. Call me a simple minded Catholic, but that’s how I feel.

Cure autism? Good. Aborting autistic children? Bad.