Canada

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is at it again. He is giving $30 million Canadian tax dollars over the next five years to developing countries to push his homosexual and gender identity agenda. Global Affairs Canada, through Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau, said Canada “is committed to advocating for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirited (LGBTQ2) and intersex persons and partnering with LGBTQ2 communities to address the barriers to equality that continue to limit their ability to enjoy their human rights, both within Canada and around the world.” Everyone’s human rights should be respected, a departmental press release said, “regardless of their identity.” Bibeau said in comments announcing the new initiative that self-identified “LGBTQ2 communities continue to face discrimination and injustice because of who they are.” The $30 million financial support for “equality movements in developing countries,” was described in the press release as an “investment.” Bibeau was accompanied by Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault, special advisor to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ2 issues. Global Affairs Canada further states that at the end of five years (assuming the Liberals are still in power), a further $10 million per year will be spent to “advance human rights and improve socio-economic outcomes for LGBTQ2 people in developing countries.” This comes on top of the $650 million over three years that the Trudeau government earmarked to push for the legalization of abortion in developing countries in 2017, in reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump bringing back the Mexico City Policy that prohibits American taxpayer funds being used to promote or carry out abortions abroad.

Women and Gender Equality Minister Maryam Monsef told the CBC in an interview that breaking down barriers for women and individuals who self-identify as LGBT is “an economic imperative” for the Liberal government. Monsef said, “We can’t afford to leave anyone out. The economy is changing. The solutions to our most complex challenges will be developed and implemented by people of various backgrounds and experiences. Voices that haven’t always been at the table can hold those solutions we have not yet thought about. Canada will be stronger when we include everybody.” In terms of government policy, Monsef explained, “Not only are we formalizing the focus of this new department to ensure that women and persons of different gender identities and sexual orientations have a voice within the federal government, we’re also going to further strengthen our relationship with organizations on the ground doing this work to ensure that we are as relevant and responsive as possible, and that we meet the needs and also seize the opportunities that exist in greater inclusion.” That means that LGBQT2 activist groups will be consulted and receive money from Ottawa in a never-ending self-congratulatory cycle. On queue, Helen Kennedy, executive director of EGALE, a gay rights group, told the CBC that Canadians who self-identify as trans face obstacles obtaining and keeping jobs and face higher rates of sexual harassment and violence in the workplace.

Minister of Democratic Institutions Katrina Gould said the federal government will spend $7 million to hire monitors to “critically assess online news reporting” during election-year coverage. Gould said the feds would not release the names of the government-sponsored fact-checkers and insisted that “it’s not our job to tell Canadians what is good or bad information,” but rather “provide them the tools and the resources, when something comes to them, to make a choice on their own, and to say where this information is coming from, who is behind it, and what their objective is.” That sounds a lot like Ottawa is going to tell people what is good and bad information. The monitors will focus on news distributed online and will ignore newspapers. Notably, the Canada Elections Actdoes prohibit publication of “false statements of fact” about candidates or political parties.

United States

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, talked to Planned Parenthood CEO Leana Wen for Interview Magazinein which they made the abortion giant sound like a victim of a hostile government despite the fact that the Republicans in Washington have not defunded the organization although promising to do so. The most noteworthy part of the interview, however, was the not the usual political complaints, but their discussion of labels in the abortion debate. Wen told Clinton, “I also want us to consider our choice of language when we define these movements. The pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy is problematic to me.” The former first daughter replied that she agreed, saying I “refuse to refer to the anti-choice movement as anything other than anti-choice.” But Wen went further, attempting to drape the pro-life mantle on the work of killing preborn babies: “Our nurses and our clinicians are all here because we believe in life. Being pro-choice is being pro-women. It’s being pro-family. It’s being pro-community. It’s being pro-life.” And up is down.

Senator Ben Sasse (Rep. Nebrasaka), has reacted very strongly to Virginia’s Democratic Governor, Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, who supports leaving newborn babies to die if the mother, who has just given birth, doesn’t want her baby. Sasse remarked that “this is morally repugnant; …in just a few years pro-abortion zealots went from ‘safe, legal and rare’ to ‘keep the newborn comfortable while the doctor debates infanticide’.” He continued, “I don’t care what party you’re from, if you can’t say that it’s wrong to leave babies to die after birth, get the hell out of public office.”

Roe v. Wadeallows abortions up to fetal “viability” which is around 23-24 weeks of gestation. Three in four Americans support substantial abortion restrictions even though 55 per cent of Americans consider themselves “pro-choice,” while 38 per cent consider themselves pro-life, according to the latest Marist Poll Survey. The pro-abortion Economistmagazine recently described the position of support for abortion to the very moment of delivery – the abortion license which is increasingly demanded as the standard by which abortion advocates and Democratic leaders judge as “pro-choice – as extreme. The Economistalso describes the pro-life position as extreme, but seldom is any pro-abortion position judged extreme in the mainstream media and on par with the pro-life position. So it is worth noting a growing dissatisfaction with what passes as the minimum for being considered pro-choice by the abortion movement.

A typical pregnancy is of 40 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are considered preterm babies. Preterm, or, premature babies are beating the odds of surviving outside the womb, and not only surviving but doing so with few or no neurological issues. A 2017 Duke University study found that babies today born at 23 to 24 weeks are surviving at double the rate of 23 and 24 week premature babies of 20 years ago. The reasons are speculative at this stage, but one suggestion is that expectant mothers are being prescribed steroids during risky pregnancies which increase the rate of growth of the baby. The real improvements in the Duke study were seen in babies born at 23 weeks and 24 weeks. The impairment-free rates went from 7 per cent to 13 per cent in the 23-week group and from 28 per cent to 32 per cent in the 24-week group. However, for babies born at the 22-week gestation, there were no comparable improvements over the 12 year study. The youngest preterm baby to survive beat all the odds and was born at 21 weeks 4 days in San Antonio, Texas in 2014. She is a healthy little girl today.

The state of Utah has just passed a bill in the state house, the Down Syndrome Non-discrimination Abortion Act, that prohibits a person from “performing, or attempting to perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman who is seeking the abortion solely because an unborn child has or may have Down syndrome.” Republican state representative Karianne Lisonbee, sponsor of the bill, said that abortion of Down syndrome babies is “eugenics” and reported that countless women contacted her to say that when their doctor gave the news that their unborn baby had Down syndrome, they were immediately pressured to abort. The bill now goes to the Republican-dominated state senate for confirmation. A similar bill on appeal from the Indiana Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court in January was rejected.

International

Britain presently has an organ donation system that relies on residents having given prior consent to their organs being removed from their body after they die for transplantation to a living patient. However, a new ‘opt-out’ or ‘deemed consent’ system for England has passed in Parliament and will be in place by 2020. Under the new system (already in force in Wales and being considered in Scotland and Northern Ireland), every person over the age of 18 will be considered a potential organ donor unless they have specifically registered with the health services register that they do not want to donate their organs upon death. It is vitally important that all adults make an informed decision and have it registered, or the decision will be left to the doctors. A spokesperson for England’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children cautions that, “we should be concerned because of the ethical implications but also the issue of bodily integrity. The state cannot presume ownership of its citizens’ bodies, however well-intentioned.” There is also the question of brain death, and the moral questions surrounding removing an organ when the body is not yet clinically dead. See the excellent two-part series on YouTube by Brad Mattes of the Life Issues Institute entitled “Shocking realities of ‘brain death’ and organ transplants,” to learn about this issue.

Christopher Inglefield, a leading British surgeon, has called for transgender women to be offered womb transplants in order for them to be able to bear children of their own. He believes that trans women – that is a man who identifies as a woman, and, in this case, one who has completed the surgical transfer from a man to a woman — deserves a uterus implant. He noted an operation in Brazil in 2018 where a woman had delivered the first baby from a uterus transplant, and says that the same operation can be done for trans women. He further stated that, “once the medical community accepts this (womb transplant) as a treatment for cis-women (a biological woman), then it would be illegal to deny a trans woman who has completed her transition” According to medical authorities quoted in the Daily Mail story, harvesting a womb from a donor is a bit “tricky” but transplanting to a trans woman is not difficult. Although a trans woman has a narrower pelvis than a biological woman, there is still room to carry a child. Delivery would probably be done by caesarean section. Inglefield’s view is not yet mainstream in medical circles, but he is supported by some surgeons in Britain and America.

We are not fans of anthropomorphizing animals, but here is an amusing story and one that has gotten little attention. Bibi and Poldi are centenarian Galapagos tortoises living at the Reptilienzoo Happ in Klagenfurt, Austria. Both were hatched in 1897 and grew up together in a Swiss zoo. They became mates in the 1920s and moved to the Austrian zoo in the 1970s. Atlas Obscura reports that “they had built a longstanding, comfortable relationship with a healthy physical component.” For nearly a century they seemed to enjoy each others company, “loitering (together) in sunny spots, as well as shady spots” and they shared tomatoes. They slept together with their shells touching. How romantic, it all seemed. Then one day in 2011, they could not longer be together, as Bibi (the female) drew blood after biting a chunk of Poldi’s shell. They were separated although the zookeepers made numerous attempts to reunite the pair. What we find so interesting is the lack of coverage of this animal-interest story. We are subjected to numerous articles about supposedly gay penguins – they are usually sexually omnivorous birds or stories that are manipulated by zoos to promote an agenda or (more likely) get some free publicity. But that does not stop some commentator from suggesting that human beings can learn about same-sex “marriage” or whatever from the black-and-white birds. But if penguins can teach us a lesson, cannot the story of a century of monogamy among tortoises teach us anything?