Soconvivium

Jill Stanek has ten tips for pro-life bloggers. All very good. Especially useful for campus pro-life groups.

Stephen Taylor notes that Liberal MP Hedy Fry 1) called the Canadian ambassador to Poland the "Polish ambassador" and 2) elevated refusing to fly the rainbow flag abroad to an affront to the Charter of Rights. From Fry's letter to Ambassador Daniel Costello and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon: The refusal of the Canadian Embassy in Poland to fly the rainbow flag [...]

The Weekly Standard has an article this week on that most endangered of species, the pro-life Democrat. John McCormack goes over familiar territory: Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt, and numerous other Democrats were pro-life until they ran for the party's presidential nomination; more recently, Bart Stupak and a bunch of his ostensibly pro-life colleagues voted for Obamacare once it came with a dubious gimmick -- an [...]

In the wake of the G20 summit and the police reaction, Rod Breakenridge writes in the Calgary Herald how conservatives, who usually are skeptical of state power, are very often supporters of the police. (See, for example, Michael Taube's column in the Toronto Star today.) It certainly is curious. Breakenridge notes that all too often the possibility of violence or the use [...]

Our July cover story on 50 years of The Pill (in the US, just over 40 in Canada) is now online. Our lead editorial on The Pill as false liberator is also available. An excerpt: So, instead of fulfilling the promise of temporary infertility, that could be turned on and off like a switch, the pill has made infertility the default option [...]

Our editor is away this week. There won't be any blogging although we hope to have a selection of our July stories on the website by the end of the week.

This stories did not appear in the print edition. "Obama’s SC choice raises serious concerns" by Pauline Kosalka "March for Life media coverage" by Joseph Jalsevac

The Wildrose Alliance held its annual general meeting and more than 40 policies were voted on. Of special interest to social conservatives, on the good side of the ledger, they voted to adopt a measure to protect conscience rights for health care workers and defeated a resolution that would have softened the party's school choice policy. However, the party did not support axing Section 3 [...]

The Campus Pro-Life Club has been reinstated at the University of Calgary. The club vows to continue with its Genocide Awareness Project witness this Fall.

Over at ProWomanProLife, Andrea Mrozek suggests that the media coverage of the science of fetal development, if not the science itself, depends on the context: wanted or unwanted. Unwanted unborn children do not feel pain up to 24 weeks, but, "With wanted babies, we are told science shows us that babies are learning in the womb. That prior to birth they are [...]

Andrea Mrozek And Rebecca Walberg, manager of research at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada and president of the Wakefield Centre for Policy Research respectively, have a very good article in the National Posttoday on how the pro-abortion side plays fast and loose with abortion numbers in the maternal health debate. Mrozek and Walberg note the multiple assumptions that pro-abortion researchers employ in [...]

Patrick Lee and Robert P. George have an article at NRO entitled "Debating when life begins." My problem is with the title: when life begins is not debatable -- the beginning of life is scientific fact, as Lee and George make perfectly clear: With the fusion of the sperm and the ovum, the tail of the sperm is lost, and the membrane surrounding [...]

Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health held an event last month to present its William K. Rashbaum, MD, Abortion Provider Award. The mind boggles at the idea. Does the PRCH honour the abortionist who eliminates the most unborn children? Or the abortionist who does so most efficiently (abortions per hour, perhaps)? Or an abortionist who contributes to some advance in technique or research-based improvements in their trade? Really, [...]

Bill Saunders, senior vice president of legal affairs at the Americans United for Life, writes in today's Roll Callabout Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagan: Elena Kagan has expressed a deep affection for the Supreme Court justice she clerked for, Thurgood Marshall. While personal affection of a clerk for her judge is certainly normal and understandable, it goes beyond that. She admired his judicial [...]

The Winnipeg Free Press issues a pro-abortion press release reports that pro-abortion feminists are calling for Stephen Harper to include abortion as part of his maternal health initiative at the G8 summit. The Freeps says:  Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation Canada, told a news conference Tuesday that Harper's decision to exclude abortion funding from his initiative will create generations [...]