an update, plus some things a few years ago

No luck in going to the vigil tomorrow at the hotel.  The other driver had agreed to work, but didn't realize his school project was due Wednesday, not Friday, so he had to back out this morning.

They’re thinking of reestablishing a booth at the San Diego County fair in the summer.  This is something that pro-life did many years ago which I always looked forward to, and I always hated it when work kept me from going.  I embarked on a walking program beginning in the spring of 2006 so I would be able to do that kind of stuff again.   It consisted of driving around to a number of supermarkets and drugstores and walking the circumference of those stores.   I would stop at one pair of stores, walk the circumference of them, then drive to another set of stores, and do the same.  I got up to around 10 or 12 such stores before making the jump to walking the mall at Parkway Plaza in the fall and winter of 2008 and 2009.  I was on cloud nine when I got to this point, but events would soon bring a big damper on this. 

My dad often suffered falls, which they thought was benign positional vertigo.  In February 2009 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  They gave him some medicines and assigned a couple of physical therapists to help him try to walk better, but he continued to fall.  In March 2009 they told us to take him to the hospital, which we did.  He never came home.  He was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy, which is a very severe form of Parkinson’s disease that doesn’t respond to the medication Parkinson’s normally responds to.  He was shuttled back and forth between the hospital and the nursing home about every two weeks.  The chairs at the nursing home were quite uncomfortable for both me and my mom when we visited Dad.  I tried to hide it as best I could, but he sensed something was off.  My dad died on May 3 of that year, after he died I learned I had an old compression fracture of one of the vertebrae.





Dad's_Caringbridge_Page


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Could_Shy-Drager_be_a_type_of_Alzheimer's?

Russia's efforts to combat abortion

I just saw an article by liveaction.org, which describes a bill in Russia to disqualify abortion as a medical service and thus allow doctors to refuse to perform one. I remembered an article by another publication a couple years ago that Russia has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, with about 70% of pregnancies being aborted, and that a city in Russia was to observe a week without abortion. 

Russia has such a high abortion rate because it legalized abortion in the 1920’s, even before the Scandinavian countries.  This was also long before the Pill or even some of the barrier methods had become widely available.

When a country legalizes abortion, we tend to see a new demographic of women seeking abortions.  Before legalization most women who have abortions did so because their birth control methods failed, and after legalization abortion is more likely to be used as a substitute for birth control.  There has been discussion within the pro-life community on whether contraceptives are a solution, but in Russia’s case by the time these methods were available abortion had already become ingrained as a solution to unwanted pregnancy.

An update 7/03/2011:

Lifesitenews reports Russia is expected to enact a law requiring warning labels on abortion ads describing risks to health from abortion, including permanent infertility.

Pro-life Stations of the Cross

I went to the Good Friday Stations of the Cross ceremony in San Diego today to protest abortion.  We started at St. Joseph’s cathedral and walked over to Horton Plaza and said the mass, then walked back to the church.  I saw Pat, Molly and Debbie there, along with Roger and a few other familiar faces.

The next event is a vigil at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel on Tuesday, April 26, when Planned Parenthood hosts a fund-raising dinner.  I’ll have to ask to have that day off, as I normally work on Tuesdays.  I would have posted about this here, but we got a notice saying not to post it on a public website.  40 Days for Life has since posted it on Facebook, so I’m guessing it’s ok to post here.  I attended such an event last year, but there weren’t that may protesters, less than I’ve often seen at the local PP clinic on Fridays and Saturdays.  It was in contrast to a huge turnout five or six months earlier when Planned Parenthood hosted a “cocktails for choice” event at a bar in San Diego.  There were about 40 or 50 protesters then.  There were a few teenage girls who were screaming, “It’s a child, not a choice!”  There was nothing of this at the Hotel a few months later, at least in the time I was there.

Upcoming pro-life events

I went to the closing ceremony for the 40 Days for Life Campaign in Poway today.  I didn’t stay that long, because the folding metal chairs were quite uncomfortable.  They were similar to those in the nursing home where my dad was at a couple of years ago.  Those chairs were quite uncomfortable for both me and my mom when we visited Dad.  I tried to hide it as best I could, but he sensed something was off.  After he died I learned I had an old compression fracture of one of the vertebrae.

I did pick up some flyers about some upcoming events.  I had a CD containing articles on the Pill, but decided not to share it at this time. I’ve already given a number of people copies of this.  Apparently beginning in 1998, some pro-life doctors began to challenge pro-life’s position that the pill causes very early abortions, arguing that the child can implant in environments far more hostile than endometrial linings thinned by oral contraceptives, such as ectopic pregnancies.  I privately wondered about this discrepancy back in 1979, and when I first saw this work I began thinking I may have been on to something after all. Stuff I've been reading since then suggests most contraceptives, including IUDs and emergency contraception, seem to work at least primarily by preventing fertilization.  A notable exception may be when IUDs are used as emergency contraception. When I’ve taken part in vigils at the local Planned Parenthood clinic, they’d sometimes hand out literature saying the Pill causes early abortions, and it makes me wonder about younger people who would join our group for about a week or two, and then drop out.

These were things I didn't feel I could talk to my parents about when I was younger, even though they were pro-life, partly because I knew they had relied on the Pill after we kids were born.  I wish very much I'd been able to talk to them.  This knowledge compromised my ability to form a relationship, and it was compounded a few years later when I saw an article linking spermicides to birth defects. (A few years after that I saw another article saying that study had been flawed.)   I felt the best approach was to throw myself as wholeheartedly into pro-life activities as I could, while my parents were more concerned with my ability to find everyday work.  Efforts to do both proved unsuccessful.  When I was younger my dad and I were close, but over the years some things went horribly wrong, stemming in part from how I didn't feel I could talk to him about those issues.  At the end, his last words to me were to tell me to go to hell. 
And then there's the next day.

The next post dealing with my own activities is here.

Earth Day

They're having Earth Day at Balboa Park, and Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust are having a booth set up there.  See here.  I was hoping to go today, but have to work.  In theory I might be able to squeeze in a short time there and head on over to work, but a lot of things could go wrong.  Tomorrow evening they're having the closing program for 40 Days for Life at 7pm at St. Michael's Parish Center in Poway, and Friday they're having the pro-life Stations of the Cross at Horton Plaza at 1:15 pm.