O'Brien does not deny the harm of abortion, but he does seek to contextualize it in the intimacy of gestation. The reality of pregnancy—the unique, intimate relationship of the human being in utero and the pregnant woman—changes the ethics of feticide: "The pregnant woman's womb is not just a geographic location for an independent entity that would be the same if it were located someplace else." To deny this reality is to reduce the pregnant woman to a "container."
The intimacy argument, as articulated by O'Brien, begs an important question: Why should independent moral status require independent physical status? We don't think that one conjoined twin may licitly or legally authorize a third party to kill her conjoined sister in order to terminate their intimate relationship. Indeed, the intimate relationship that always exists in pregnancy is a powerful argument against abortion. Every human fetus is a mammal, and every mammal has a mother. Sound ethical reasoning and just laws hold that human mothers and fathers have serious duties to care for and, above all, not harm their own dependent progeny. So, the intimate relationship that exists in every pregnancy gives rise to the duty of the mother not to harm her own child prior to or after birth, including by prematurely ending the child's life. Precisely because an expectant woman is a mother rather than a mere container, she has duties to her dependent unborn child.
Canada will start funding International Planned Parenthood again. This time only in countries where abortion is illegal.
Planned Parenthood, which provides an array of sexual and reproductive health services, including abortions, abortion counselling and training for providers, is getting the federal funding after Oda let the agency's previous request sit on her desk for a year without a response, and after a Conservative MP told an anti-abortion group that the government wouldn't be giving the organization any money.
Oda's decision to approve Planned Parenthood's proposal comes more than a year after Canada was embroiled in controversy over whether to fund abortions as part of a G8 commitment to improve maternal health in developing countries.....
The funding is worth $6 million over three years for Planned Parenthood to work in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania, where abortions are illegal except in cases where the mother's life is at risk.
Pro-Life News of the Day reviews a recent story on Jezebel about a woman who allegedly went to a CPC in New York, thinking it was an abortion clinic.
Some things are just too much for the human heart to handle, and the knowledge that you're responsible for the death of a real live human being is one of them. She initially felt that the pregnancy center volunteers were honest and kind. But she can no longer feel that way, not after making the decision she made. And so, she demonizes the pregnancy center movement in an effort to avoid her grief. It isn't working, though: she says that "It's taken me the two years since [the abortion] not to break down every time I think about it."
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