G8 and Maternal Health

Finally, a little common sense and clarity from the Government.Can't quite say the same for the opposition.

The Federal government is spearheading a program to improve maternal and child health in the third world. I'm not sure of the details, but I bet most people aren't either. The Opposition is making such a big stink about abortion funding not being in a program to protect maternal and child health, that everything else gets drowned out. Maybe it would help them to read the dictionary a little:
- Abortion: the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy
- Termination: the action of bringing something or coming to an end
- Pregnancy: the condition or period of being pregnant
- Pregnant: having a child or young developing in the uterus

Those were taken from the dictionary application on my computer (Dictionary, v. 1.0.2, copyright Apple Computers Inc, 2005)

So, I'm not sure how "abortion" and "maternal and child health" can even be in the same sentence. But that's a debate for another time.

Back to the CBC article. The writer suggests the Conservatives, by not including abortion, are going against what they said last month about not "closing doors on any options, including contraception." Well, let's pull out the dictionary again:

contraception, noun. the deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse.
conception, noun. the action of conceiving a child or of a child being conceived.

So, by my reading, the Conservatives are in the clear here. Abortion is not a form of contraception because conception has already happened. How can you prevent pregnancy if your already pregnant? Huh. You can still include all forms of contraception in a policy without including abortion.

Well, what does Mr. Bob Rae (Liberal) have to say about this?

"They just reopened the abortion debate," Rae told reporters outside the House of Commons. "We are saying to the countries that are the poorest: 'We won't apply the law that we have in Canada.'"

Actually, Bob, we CAN'T apply the law we have in Canada because THERE IS NO LAW. That's right, no law on abortion in Canada. Abortion is legal anytime, from conception until birth. One could actually see the baby coming out and kill him/her, and get off scot free with no charges (partial birth abortion). That's where we're at odds with other G8 nations.

We are the only developed country in the world that has no law whatsoever in regards to abortion. I wonder if THAT position will cause problems with other G8 members.

Does anyone else see the irony when Mr. Paul Dewar (NDP) says: "It's just unusual to see the ignorance of a government that claims to be a member of the G8"??

Against the grain

More wisdom from the late Richard John Neuhaus:

"Of course this business about losing our lives in order to find our lives goes very much against the grain. On second thought, maybe not. Maybe we have grown so accustomed to living against the grain of our humanity that we have confused ourselves about which way the grain runs. Maybe, if we follow the true grain of our humanity, it leads to our surrendering our all to the Other. Recall again St. Augustine's "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Recall those old catechisms, both Protestant and Catholic, that asked the question, "Why did God make me?" Answer: "To know and love and serve him in this life, and to enjoy him forever in the next." Why did God make me? If we get the answer to that wrong, we get everything else wrong. Mary, following Christ, got that right. "

From "Death on a Friday Afternoon"


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Good Friday?

Atonement. At-one-ment. What was separated by an abyss of wrong has been reconciled by the deed of perfect love... Today, here at the cross, our eyes are fixed on the dying derelict who is the Lord of life. We look at the One who is everything that we are and everything that we are not, the One who is true man and true God. In him we, God and man, are perfectly one. At-one-ment. Here, through the cross, we have come home, home to the truth about ourselves,home to the truth about what God has done about what we have done. And now we know, or begin to know why this awful, awe-filled Friday is called good.

From "Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross", by Richard John Neuhaus