Stories about abortion:
Bill C-484 is all about abortion
Suzanne Fortin engages in a distortion of facts in her article "Canadian women need a fetal homicide law" (March 10). Bill C-484, which passed second reading in Parliament before the Easter break, would create a separate offence for the death of a fetus when a pregnant woman is attacked.
Joyce Arthur, National Post, April 1
Pro-choice's guinea pigs
The most harrowing risk of an extremely pre-term birth (XPB) -- under 28 weeks gestation -- is cerebral palsy. The risk is about 38 times higher in XPB than in the overall newborn population. Sometimes XPB is just bad luck. Sometimes it isn't. According to obstetrician Barbara Luke's classic Every Pregnant Woman's Guide to Preventing Premature Birth, "If you have had one or more induced abortions, your risk of prematurity with this pregnancy increases about 30%." After two, a woman's chance of an XPB doubles. A woman who has had four or more abortions runs nine times the risk of XPB, an increase of 800%.
Barbara Kay, National Post, April 2
Earlier: Stories about abortion
Other stories from the past week:
Pastor gets 4 years for sex assault on woman
Frank Seeko Lawrence abused position of trust, sentencing judge says
Toronto Star, March 27
Edgy art will be homeless once more
It's a case of "Not in my back yard, but maybe yours." A controversial piece of public art depicting an inverted church will soon be removed from Harbour Green Park.
Vancouver Sun, March 27
Earlier: Device to root out evil?
Former United Church minister makes startling claims of native abuse
Decades after the doors closed for good on Canada's last residential school, explosive allegations about mass graves continue to surface. But police and the former United Church minister who has made some of the allegations admit they haven't found anything to back up the claims. "The evidence was coming out anecdotally from people's stories," Kevin Annett, the former minister who has criss-crossed the country with his own "truth commission" on residential schools, said in an interview this week.
Canadian Press, March 28
Earlier: Stories about Native issues and the Easter protest
Secularism is the new default position - almost everywhere
Despite the incredibly lively dialogue that readers are having about "heaven" in the blog posting below, it is becoming common to say we live in an increasingly "secular" global society. But the word "secular" is fast becoming inadequate.
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, March 28
The polygamy problem
Canadians don't condone the practices of fundamentalist Mormons, yet nothing is done about plural wives, 'lost boys' and abuse. Daphne Bramham's analysis is a must-read
Don Grayston, Vancouver Sun, March 29
Earlier: Stories about the polygamous cult at Bountiful
From Dutch roots
The Occupied Garden unwinds in a slow, orderly fashion as if a metronome were in the background, quietly setting the pace. The story is more preoccupied with the day-to-day existence of the conservative, God-fearing den Hartogs than with the raging military conflict that has restricted their freedoms, rationed their food, sent their Queen Wilhelmina into exile in England and Crown Princess Juliana to safety in Ottawa.
Paul Gessell, Vancouver Sun, March 29
A Democratic 'Dude' and his big decision
The hero lives in an old white trailer with black shutters, and the blinds are closed tight. It's raining hard when I pull up in the pebbles and puddles and get out of the car and knock at his door. I've been driving all day on old side roads that wind through slanted hamlets, past faded red barns and flooded fields and signs that say NO DOE HUNTING. HUNT SAFELY. JESUS IS LORD. This is Somerset County in western Pennsylvania, the setting for yet another make-or-break presidential primary on April 22, and until that day -- and forever after it -- a land of fast, angry water and cliffs that rub the fog, pitted with tragedy and history and faith and stubble and mud.
Allen Abel, National Post, March 29
Dr. Smith and the price of justice
Today, Justice Stephen Goudge will begin hearing final oral arguments at the Smith inquiry. Last year an outside review found that Dr. Charles Smith, a senior pathologist in the Ontario coroner's office, had provided incorrect findings that led to miscarriages of justice in some 20 homicide cases. The proceedings of that inquiry ought to shake the confidence of all Canadians in what we still call the "justice" system. The Smith cases were not a matter of nailing some serial killer for the wrong crime -- the cases were about parents and caregivers being wrongly convicted of molesting and killing their own children; it would be hard to imagine a more painful miscarriage of justice. The Smith inquiry was called to determine how the justice system --police, prosecutors, courts -- could have failed in such an utterly grotesque way.
Father Raymond J. De Souza, National Post, March 31
A bright spot in a poor neighbourhood
Angelina Barnes pushes a loaded shopping cart out of the way as she walks toward a designer leather sofa and a flat-screen television, neatly arranged inside the newly redecorated Union Gospel Mission Women's Drop-in Centre.
Vancouver Sun, April 1
Floods -- not Apocalypse -- draw cultists from cave
They left their homes and most belongings to spend a Russian winter in a bunker beneath a windswept, snow-covered field. They would not come out, they warned, until May, when they predicted the world would end. Now, a handful of the roughly 35 Russian cave dwellers, members of a Christian doomsday cult, have emerged from their hideaway, forced out, not by the Apocalypse, but by spring flooding.
Globe and Mail, April 1
Taking it all, and then some
We're spending the next six weeks getting reacquainted with the deadly sins. Last week, we preened about pride. This week we gorge on greed. Are excessive downloaders peer-to-peer pigs?
National Post, April 1
"Emotional intelligence" is the key to health, happiness
Unlike many bestselling books, Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence is one that has deserved to sell five million copies. The psychologist is coming to Vancouver for four days to talk about how the evidence is now overwhelming that children who are taught to understand their own feelings and those of others do much better in school, careers and long-term relationships.
Douglas Todd, The Search, Vancouver Sun, April 1
Legal trailblazer Delwin Vriend urges Alberta government to protect gays
Gay rights trailblazer Delwin Vriend returned Wednesday to mark an event that polarized a province and led to a court ruling that transformed the lives of homosexuals across Canada. . . . Vriend's seven-year legal odyssey began in 1991 when he was fired as a chemistry instructor at King's University College, a Christian institution, after school officials learned he was gay.
Canadian Press, April 2
'Persecution' of the religious gets curiouser and curiouser
Out for a hike in some lovely snow showers punctuated by sun bursts the other day, I checked the weather on my radio, caught a talk show interview and found myself listening with rapt fascination. I learn that "mainstream" science is suppressing the publication of evidence that supports the case for some intelligent force or supernatural being -- perhaps even aliens -- designing the universe we inhabit. Yep, those annoying "mainstream" scientists are at it again, muzzling the Darwin skeptics just as they've already muzzled the global warming skeptics. They don't seem to be too hot at repression, though, considering how much exposure the skeptics get.
Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun, April 2
It's a life of joy and gratitude
Author of Eat, Pray, Love attracted millions of fans -- before doing Oprah Winfrey
Rebecca Wigod, Vancouver Sun, April 2
April 3/2008
