Stephen Harper pockets communion wafer: “Worse than kidnapping”?

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, showed his ignorance of church etiquette by attending mass, putting his hand out for a wafer, then slipping it into his pocket and leaving the church with it. This is behavior that has been condemned by Catholics as being “Worse than kidnapping,” since they believe that the  magic cracker is now literally Jesus–at least that’s what they fulminated last year when a student taking a wafer back to his pew to show it to his seatmate was assaulted by other churchgoers in an attempt to make him drop the cracker.

What is natural?

Last week was gay Pride Week in Toronto. Thousands of visitors poured into the city to celebrate love and acceptance—of their children, their chosen life partners, and the people around them who insist on equal rights and tolerance for those who are born different from the usual pattern or develop differently. Human sexuality is complex and I’m not surprised to find variations in what “turns people on.” Outside narrow limits such as height, weight, coloration, or bustiness, some other people condemn the way it develops and would reject those people unless they deny their inner reality.

'WHO CARES if my MOMMIES get married?'

Meanwhile, some people have a developing fetus whose characteristics are incompatible with life or with growing up. There are groups (and web sites) dedicated to convincing us that we should accept everything that God sends us and appreciate the deformed fetus, letting it enjoy its “brief but wonderful life”—with or without a brain, a functioning heart, cancer, functional bones, or the need for multiple painful surgeries. They encourage women to disregard the emotional strain and physical danger of giving birth to such a baby, alive or dead or dying.

Conjoined twins

I wonder: why the acceptance for drastic and life-limiting birth defects and the rejection of relatively minor and common variations in forms of love

What causes third-trimester abortions?

After the murder of abortion provider George Tiller for doing third-trimester abortions, there were a lot of hysterical accusations about the number of abortions he did and the reasons for them. I looked for solid research on the reasons. I read the personal experiences of people who had to face third-trimester abortions. They wanted to have a baby, but genetic or developmental errors intervened. Given the frequency of these defects, Dr. Tiller probably did about a 100 – 200 a year, but that’s just a rough estimate on my part. It’s certain he didn’t do 60,000, which would keep him working feverishly every day for two lifetimes.

The reasons they gave were basically the same as those I found in a research paper from 1999. This paper studie second-trimester and third-trimester abortions at one hospital over several years. Only “singletons” were studied, so none of the fetuses were conjoined twins. About 2/3 were done in the second trimester and 1/3 in the third trimester. The reasons for a third-trimester abortion were:

* In 40%, an earlier test indicated that a defect existed but not how serious it was. Doctors delayed and re-tested to see if the defect was serious enough to be life-threatening. Some genetic conditions can be mild or severe, so to prevent unnecessary abortions the doctors waited.
* In 37%, an earlier test failed to find the serious defects that showed up later.
* In 18%, a diagnosis for this kind of defect can’t be made until the third trimester. This often seems to include anencephaly, a fatal birth defect.
* And in the remaining 5%, doctors or parents delayed the decision to abort. I correlated this with what I’ve read about doctors ordering yet another another test to make sure, waiting for a referral, parents not able to believe the news, having hysterics and going home, and praying for a miracle.

Reference:
Dommergues M, Benachi A, Benifla JL, des Noëttes R, Dumez Y., British Journal of Obstetrical Gynaecology, 1999 Apr;106(4):297-303. The reasons for termination of pregnancy in the third trimester. PubMed ID: 10426234.

If third-trimester abortions are outlawed, some parents may choose earlier abortions when it’s not certain they are needed.

Some critics mentioned club foot as a reason for abortion. Club foot means that at least one foot is turned in. It is not a reason for abortion, but it is a warning to screen very carefully for other health problems. The same goes for other deformities of the digits or limbs. Club foot is associated with spina bifida and anencephaly and other birth defects, some of them fatal.

One defect that can be missed at the second-trimester scan is anencephaly, in which the brain fails to develop. It is uniformly fatal, often before or during birth.

Anencephaly, view of back of head

Domestic terrorist murders doctor in Kansas

An anti-abortion terrorist with links to Operation Rescue has shot down a doctor in church. The irony is fairly thick, here. The religiously motivated murderer hits his unarmed target, who was an usher at his church while his wife was singing in the choir. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada responds to the news.

Dr. Tiller was one of the very few doctors in North America who was able to perform late abortions on women whose pregnancies had gone wrong, or whose lives depended on the ability to get an abortion at a later stage. Women travelled from all over, including Canada, to access his services. Dr. Tiller has long been a target of anti-abortion protests, mostly by “Operation Rescue.” He suffered continuous harassment, including death threats, baseless lawsuits, pickets at his clinic and staff residences, vicious slander, and a previous assassination attempt in 1993, when he was shot in both arms outside his clinic by anti-abortion protester Rachelle Shannon.

“I’m in shock, I’m completely devastated. He was a friend of mine,” said
Joyce Arthur, Coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. “Dr. Tiller was called a saint by many of his patients, and ‘Saint George’ by abortion providers across the nation. His incredible courage was inspirational.”

This was a doctor who performed abortions for women who were in danger of permanent injury if they continued the pregnancy or whose prospective child would have been damaged or suffering and perhaps doomed.There were three doctors in the U.S.; that’s one for every 50,000,000 women. And that should tell you how rare and non-frivolous a late abortion is. Most doctors won’t do one after four months because at that point, abortion is more dangerous than childbirth.

Outraged members of the public are sending money to support abortion, abortion funds for women who need financial help, and especially Medical Students for Choice, who opt to learn techniques of safe abortion in medical school.

Ancient fertility rite or early football? Bottle-kicking

Bottle-Kicking, originally uploaded by Documentally.

I found this story on flickr in the form of a photodocumentary of an old village custom.

The full story is at “Bottle-kicking in Hallaton.”