Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Like most writers, I aim to stand by everything I say, but, alas, that’s near impossible. Still, it’s bothersome to have to amend something so shortly after writing it. In the July/August edition of The Interim, I stated in my article, “How to talk about abortion,” that it’s important to acknowledge that “pregnancy is very difficult.” [...]
Josie Luetke It may just be my impression, but this past Pride Month seemed particularly vociferous. On numerous occasions, socially conservative friends and coworkers dutifully noted: “Pride cometh before the fall.” Now, I mean no offense to them and believe they were just offering a sincere warning, but it’s easy to see how this verse could be recited proudly, as [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke What a whirlwind of a month, with abortion bubbling up in the public consciousness more so than ever before in my memory. The excitement began for me on the Tuesday prior to the National March for Life, at a screening of Unplannedin Ottawa. Friends who had already seen the film were raving about it, but I [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Acknowledged: This method of abortion, RU-486, marketed in Canada under the brand name Mifegymiso, has downsides. It poses dangerous health risks to women and makes abortion more difficult to protest due to the decentralization of the pill’s consumption and the age and size of the embryo it kills. Abortion proponents are thrilled with Mifegymiso because of [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I recently attended presentations by Rebecca Oas, the associate director of research for the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), on how the United Nations misrepresents data in order to advance their anti-life and anti-family agenda. She pointed out the U.N.’s habit of confusing lower prevalence rates of contraception usage with lack of access when [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I’ve felt quite embattled this past month – by the media’s persecution of the Covington Catholic kids, by some Americans’ embrace of third-trimester abortions and flirtation with infanticide, and by Ottawa City Councilor Shawn Menard’s open discrimination against pro-life citizen transit commissioner Michael Olsen. Most of all, I’ve felt embattled by internal divisions in the pro-life [...]
We make two mistakes when it comes to using social media for pro-life outreach: The first is not relying on it at all, and the second is relying on it too much. Social media can be a crucial tool for amassing support for pro-life candidates, recruiting activists, promoting events, and educating peers on life issues. I am quite sympathetic to those who [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I have argued previously that your average member of the public has more in common with pro-lifers than with pro-choice theorists, but I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize that our movement is the new counterculture, a reality which I think some pro-lifers haven’t really internalized. Our common self-perception is that of defenders of tradition, [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I was recently reflecting on Save the 1’s drawing on of the Parable of the Wandering Sheep (Matthew 18:10-14). Save the 1 is a pro-life organization advocating against the rape exception for abortion (in either our personal views or in legislation). In the parable, the shepherd leaves 99 of his herd to find the one sheep [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke As the story of CLC Youth Coordinator Marie-Claire Bissonnette being assaulted during Life Chain by Jordan Hunt has been covered by everyone from conservative figures like Ben Shapiro and Andrew Scheer to millennial media sites Narcity, blogTO, and Vice, to YouTubers h3h3Productions, Chris Ray Gun, and Sargon of Akkad, I felt I shouldn’t miss the opportunity [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Chalk it up to our difficulty eking out cultural ground. Whenever a pro-life politician or other influential figure makes it into the spotlight, many pro-lifers immediately make it our personal mission to defend said person against any and every criticism, simply because we’re so grateful to just have someoneon “our side” to root for, and simultaneously [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Not-so-breaking news: The Progressive Conservatives won the Ontario election and nine pro-life PC candidates whom CLC green-lighted now have seats in the legislature. I’m sure their activities will be closely monitored and reported on over the next four years, so at least for this column I want to direct my attention to those pro-life candidates who [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I’m well aware that by the time you read this, the Ontario election may have already passed. If that is the case, then, if you live in Ontario, you have the next four years or so to mull over these words. With the dropping of Tanya Granic Allen as a Progressive Conservative candidate, though, I just [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke On March 20, 2017, famed white supremacist Richard Spencer declared, “We should recognize that the pro-life movement – this is not the alt-right, this has nothing in common with identitarians … Pro-lifers want to be radically dysgenic, egalitarian, multi-racial human rights thumpers – and they’re not us.” In response, I commented on my Facebook wall, “Well, [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke March 10 was quite the emotional roller coaster. The widely-anticipated release of the Ontario PC leadership election results was delayed. Rumours swirled that Tanya Granic Allen had placed in third, and Doug Ford and Christine Elliott were neck and neck and battling it out in the backrooms. Then, out of Saskatchewan: News that Brad Trost had [...]