Canada
Doug Ford, Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative Premier has announced that the province’s colleges and universities have until January 2019 to have in place a free-speech policy or face funding cuts. “Colleges and universities should be places where students exchange different ideas and opinions in open and respectful debate,” he stated. The Canadian Federation of Students slammed the move as “an unprecedented overstep” by the government into campus activities, ignoring the fact that many students have been shut out of debate because the “bullies” do not want to allow dissenting opinion. This comes as a welcome relief by campus pro-life groups and others who hold pro-liberty views. John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, and a columnist with The Interim, welcomed the move by the Ford government as “a significant step toward the Justice Centre’s proposal for legislation to protect freedom of expression on campus.”
Aura Dolls Brothel was scheduled to open in a commercial neighbourhood in north Toronto on Sept. 8, but the city enforced some bylaws that prohibit “adult entertainment” establishments from setting up shop in Willowdale. This wasn’t any brothel; newspapers reported that it was going to be the first sex-doll brothel in North America. The website for Auro Dolls had a price list of services that included $120 per hour with one doll with slight discounts for multiple hours and it advertised there were six different dolls to choose from (diversity!) and that it reassured potential clients “the dolls are thoroughly sanitized to meet your expectations.” The website also “highly recommended” using condoms when with the “classy, sophisticated, and adventurous” dolls. The fact that this establishment was closed before it opened is good news, although it is still disturbing that there is a potential market for this sort of thing. Yet theToronto Sun reported there is indeed a similar operation just a ten-minute drive from the banned shop, Kinky S. Dolls, which sell and rent as part of their “adult love dolls brothel.” The owner told theSunhe has 500 male clients and that some men use dolls because they lack confidence and want to avoid being judged.
United States
A study, commissioned by the American Academy of Pediatrics, entitled “Transgender Adolescent Suicide Behavior” has just been released. The object of the study was to “examine prevalence rates of suicide behavior across six adolescent gender identity groups.” The following are the identity groups and the risk of suicide for each group, as found by the study: transgender female-to-male (50.8 per cent); transgender not exclusively male or female (41.8 per cent); transgender male-to-female (29.9per cent); questioning (27.9 per cent); female (17.6 per cent); male (9.8 per cent). The study concluded that, “suicide prevention efforts can be enhanced by attending to variability within transgender populations, particularly the heightened risk for female-to-male and non-binary transgender adolescents.”
A coffee table book celebrating abortion will arrive in bookstores in November. Shout Your Abortionwill feature stories of women bragging about having killed their preborn babies. The movement, which spawned the book, began in Seattle in 2015 when a woman shared, on Facebook, her experience of having had an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic, calling it “a near inexpressible level of gratitude.” Since then, the “party” has ramped up with balloons, buttons, tattoos and clothing, all gathered together and showcased in this book with stories of women proclaiming abortion “a normal thing that normal people do.” Emotions of grief, sorrow and guilt have no place in the lives of these women who have terminated the life of the children in their womb according to the book’s promotional material.
International
Britain’s National Health Service has introduced a campaign promoting “anti-motherhood.” Aimed at young people, posters show “choices that girls can make.” For example, one poster features pictures of high heel shoes and lipstick in the centre of the page and a baby’s soother in the corner, with the words “Would you give up this? For this?” In another poster aimed toward young men, a video game controller is matched against a baby’s soother, again with the words: “Would you give up this? For this?” A spokesperson for the NHS defends the campaign, saying it “has played an important role in tackling teenage pregnancy and poor sexual health.” In contrast, a member of the UKIP describes the campaign as “thorough nonsense.” David Kurten stated that “we should be doing everything we can to celebrate and support motherhood and women who choose to have children, not discourage or cheapen life.” He further noted that, “to imply that motherhood, a woman’s greatest vocation, is somehow less desirable than owning a pair of stiletto shoes and a tube of lipstick is to cheapen human life itself.”
A German pro-life activist has lost his appeal at the European Court of Human Rights following an order from the German courts, in four separate injunctions, to stop comparing abortions to the Holocaust, and claiming that doctors who do abortions were committing “aggravated murder.” The EC judges admitted that censoring Klaus Guenter Annen did violate his freedom of expression, but was “necessary in a democratic society.” They also said that the German activist’s comments “had not only been very serious, but might also have incited hatred and aggression.”
