A roundup of news and commentary from around the interwebs.
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A note on Canada’s ridiculous government:
The irony of the Canadian gov't worrying about "anti-abortion violence" is that in Canada over the past decade, violence has *exclusively* gone the other way–aimed by abortion supporters, at pro-lifers. https://t.co/WDDT9CRut6
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released abortion data for the year 2020. This new data contain some good news for pro-lifers. Among the 47 states reporting abortion data in both 2019 and 2020, the number of abortions decreased by 1.5 percent. After a long-term decline, the CDC reported increasing abortion numbers in both 2018 and 2019. And so this 2020 abortion decline is welcome news.
Some of you may remember that Heidi Crowter, a young woman with Down’s Syndrome, had challenged the UK’s barbaric abortion law, which permits abortion at any stage if the child in the womb is diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. She has now lost her legal challenge, and the targeting of children like her can—and will—carry on, with a kill count closing in on 100%.
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First the New York Times published a report on how puberty blockers reduce bone density in adolescents. Then Reuters wondered why so many girls were coming out as trans. And now the Guardian is asking the same question, in an essay titled “‘An explosion’: what is behind the rise in girls questioning their gender identity?” An excerpt:
Several parents said they had been relaxed when their daughters initially began identifying as non-binary, but became uneasy when they said they wanted to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones and began binding their breasts. Some spoke of their anxiety and uncertainty about how to respond, particularly when their child was unhappy.
The mother of one girl who came out as trans at the age of 12 said it was “very difficult to describe the feeling of being the parent of a trans-identified child”. This mother feared they were heading towards medical intervention that might prove unnecessary. “As she got older … we had less control. Living with that fear is one of the toughest experiences I’ve had.”
What the Guardian doesn’t mention is that they were part of the mainstream monolith that dubbed any parent who asked questions “transphobic” and helped enforce the overnight dogmas that assisted the mad rush towards transition. Some commentators, like Andrew Sullivan, think that this new openness to questions that got people cancelled just moments ago means that the herd is moving. We’ll see.
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Readers will know that in 2018, Irish voters decided to remove protections for pre-born children from the constitution. I wrote an entire book about it and was recently on tour in Ireland to promote it and discuss what happens next for the Irish pro-life movement. But, as predicted, the sexual revolutionaries are moving to erode the Irish constitution further. From First Things:
Ireland’s next constitutional referendum has appeared on the horizon.
Last month, at a meeting of the Irish government’s Joint Committee on Gender Equality, Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach (prime minister), said that he is committed to holding a referendum next year on the clauses of the Irish Constitution that deal with motherhood and the home. In the government’s sights is Article 41.2:
The State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.
In April 1992, Vanessa Williams’ “Save the Best for Last” topped the Billboard 100, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for the White House, “Who’s the Boss?” aired its final episode, and the babies born to Rachel and Philip Ridgeway a couple of weeks ago were frozen as embryos.
Born on October 31, Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from what may be the longest-frozen embryos to ever result in a live birth, according to the National Embryo Donation Center.
The previous known record holder was Molly Gibson, born in 2020 from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 27 years. Molly took the record from her sister Emma, who was born from an embryo that had been frozen for 24 years.
Read the whole thing. And if you’re interested in the subject of embryo adoption, check out the booklet I wrote with my colleague (and sister) Justina Van Manen.
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Unsurprisingly, plenty of government officials don’t quite want to give up the powers they acquired during COVID—like Theresa Tam, for example, who is now warning that extraordinary health powers may be needed to combat (you guessed it) climate change.
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Canadian euthanasia regime update:
The Trudeau government is explicitly stating that the reason for the permissiveness of Canada's euthanasia regime is to remove guardrails that might otherwise keep people from killing themselves. https://t.co/LyM3KeWEkO
Imagine having Down’s syndrome and knowing the position of the State is that you would have been better off dead.