More Harper purging

The Harper regime claims another victim. Luc Pomerleau (declaration of interest: I know him and have worked with him in the past), a scientist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, has been fired and formally blacklisted for passing on information to his union that was on a CFIA server and accessible to all of its employees.

The information was indeed sensitive: it signaled the intentions of the Harper government to deregulate food inspection, allowing companies to, in effect, be self-regulating, inspecting their own products. Obviously the union--the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada--has a stake in this. And Luc Pomerleau was a union steward at PIPSC. But so does every Canadian citizen who buys and eats food.

This information, in the form of a letter from the Treasury Board secretary to the President of the CFIA, was not kept confidential as per regulations. As noted, it was scanned onto a server and hence made available to literally thousands of people. While there was a small "confidential" stamp on the first page, the ensuing pages were not stamped: genuinely confidential documents are marked on each page.

Moreover, the fact that Pomerleau was immediately identified as the person who transmitted the information to PIPSC indicates that there was no attempt, either on his part or on that of his union, to cover up his actions. The media have not yet made anything of this, but it strikes me as salient. It goes to Pomerleau's state of mind: whether he knew he was doing something seriously against regulations.

The gross overreaction by CFIA may well indicate something other than a difference of opinion about the status of the document in question. Its existence could indeed be a serious embarrassment to the government in the run-up to an election. Canadians like to know that what they're eating is safe to eat, and they trust--perhaps naively--that the government will ensure their safety in this respect.

After the Linda Keen affair, and the bizarre actions of the government with respect to Elections Canada, I no longer can bring myself to believe that our federal public service is free from direct political interference from on high. Here, admittedly, I am speculating: I knew the President of CFIA back in the day as well. Carole Swan is an ambitious sort, unlikely to want to be Keened into the ranks. Safer by far to throw another sacrificial victim on the fire.

The firing and blacklisting are being challenged by PIPSC. Godspeed, say I. Who, after all, was acting in the interests of ordinary Canadians here--Pomerleau the whistle-blower, or the Harper government? But for public employees these days, it seems, no good deed goes unpunished.


(Crossposted from Dawg's Blawg)

Bummer, eh, "pro-lifers?"

Two-thirds of Canadians support the Order of Canada award to Dr. Henry Morgentaler.

So far, three snowflakes have been turned in, two from dead people.

I'll be at the Governor-General's residence tomorrow. But the war's over. Time for the so-called "pro-lifers" to campaign for sex ed and contraception if they want to reduce the abortion rate. More useful than writing squibs for the National Post any day.

(Crossposted from Dawg's Blawg.)

Bits 'n' bites

Eunuchs make good tax collectors.

Is Hell freezing over? Satan signs with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Paypal, the conservative's friend.

Nazis scribbling swastikas on their kids and sending them off to school? The usual suspects are down with that.

Chess champ wallops his opponent.

A few snowflakes short of a flurry: one child-abusing priest, a dead judge and a pre-saint.

US Presidential Campaign 2008: Obama the Marxist. Obama's Islamist links. Obama the terrorist. Obama the AntiChrist.

(Crossposted from Dawg's Blawg.)

The legacy of Dubya

This probably never crossed your dessert plate, but here it is anyway. A few of you will remember George W Bush deciding that Southern Methodist University would be the site of his Presidential Library. (It would presumably include works other than The Pet Goat.)

The George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation today announced that SMU in Dallas has been chosen as the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, consisting of a library, museum and institute.

President Bush said in a letter to SMU President R. Gerald Turner: “I look forward to the day when both the general public and scholars come and explore the important and challenging issues our nation has faced during my presidency—from economic and homeland security to fighting terrorism and promoting freedom and democracy.”

Meeting Feb. 22 in Dallas, the SMU Board of Trustees unanimously approved an agreement with the Foundation to locate the Center at SMU.

“It’s a great honor for SMU to be chosen as the site of this tremendous resource for historical research, dialogue and public programs,” said SMU President Turner. “At SMU, these resources will benefit from proximity to our strong academic programs, a tradition of open dialogue, experience hosting world leaders and a central location in a global American city. We thank President Bush for entrusting this important long-term resource to our community, and for the opportunity for SMU to serve the nation in this special way.”

That's so... touching, in a Bush kind of way.
However, Bush just doesn't have the traction and he may end up situating his "library" in Uncle Fred's ice cream truck if he doesn't watch it. Apparently, SMU has another body that is none too happy with Dubya and his performance over the last eight years.

At the United Methodist General Conference Meeting in Fort Worth, TX, an overwhelming majority of the membership (844-20) rejected the idea of siting the Bush Library on the grounds of a Methodist university (SMU).

In other words, just to be clear about this: the President of the United States was just told in no uncertain terms by the legal body of his own supposed church that he can’t put his library where he wants to put it.

Oopsie!

This rolls the project back further than Square One. The Bushies, by trying to use their political clout in Texas to sidestep the national UMC membership in effect and if for no other reason, pissed them off. The General Conference has the power to reject the project, and they just have.

Jeez, George. Ain't democracy and payback a real bitch?

Cross posted from The Galloping Beaver

IDiocy's defenders

I guess a fellow who thinks that homosexuality is a disease to be cured can believe just about anything, but I was a little taken aback, I must admit, to see Rabbi Reuven Bulka's endorsement in today's Ottawa Citizen of Ben Stein's junk-science exploit, Expelled. After all, my own alma mater gave Bulka an honorary degree a while back, based on what the President at the time called his "outstanding career as a community leader and scholar."

I'll leave the scientific debunking of that mockumentary--not to mention the producers' on-going mendacity, hypocrisy, historical revisionism and plain sleaze--to others more qualified. But I'm interested in some of the other issues that Bulka raises.

To begin with, he's no slouch at confronting Mike Godwin head-on. The first several paragraphs of his piece are about Nazi atrocities: eugenics, forced sterilizations, mass murder of the "unfit," and so on. He argues that, yes indeed, it can happen here:"[E]very now and then some issue arises, and shades of the past appear menacingly on the horizon, with a loud message, a simple message: Do not go there."

And for the good Rabbi, Ben Stein is here to hoist the warning flag.

This "well done documentary," Bulka informs us, is the tale of "scientists expelled from their universities for looking positively on the notion of intelligent design." Oh, no. The horror!

Will we get sequels? Say, about "scientists" expelled from geography departments for teaching students that the earth is flat, or from medical faculties for claiming that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, or about "historians" booted from history departments for using The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a textbook and claiming the Holocaust didn't happen? The possibilities for new instances of conspirazoid persecution mania, not to mention the promotion of bogus theories under the umbrella of free expression, are simply endless for intrepid film-makers like Ben Stein. And as Bulka himself demonstrates, there's always a credulous audience out there, if not a large one.

So, what does Intelligent Design have to do with Nazi atrocities? you might be tempted to ask. Isn't it obvious? Well, if not, let Bulka explain.

First, we are told, Darwin was "arrogant" for calling his book "The Origin of Species," because he didn't explain how life began. It's clearly the height of arrogance to publish a book on a specific topic (speciation), and fail to address unrelated topics, like the origin of life itself, or the body-mind problem, or auto mechanics.

Darwin thus disposed of for his failure of character, Bulka moves on to Stein's denunciation of the alleged "religion" of "scientism," which, if it existed, would certainly be worthy of trenchant criticism. Religion should be left to the religious, be they believers, scatalogical pastors or scholarly rabbis. But hold on a minute: Bulka wants us to inject religion right into the heart of science:

You are left wondering why seemingly intelligent people have zero tolerance for intelligent design. It's not as if intelligent design is any less scientific than the gaping hole in how life began that Darwinists greet with an "I do not know" shrug.

Wha...Whoa! Where to start? Comparing ID to a "gaping hole" is promising enough, but let's not accuse Darwinists of shrugging. Darwinists don't do shrugging. A few paragraphs of Richard Dawkins or P.Z. Myers should disabuse anyone of that notion. What scientists don't know is precisely what they zealously investigate. They are extremely interested in such questions, but insist on things like evidence, testable propositions, falsifiability and the like.

But in any case the ID folks don't spend much time themselves on the origins of life--there's always the Bible for that sort of thing. Instead, they run around claiming that specific features of life today--an eye, a flagellum--couldn't have evolved randomly. (Oh, no)?

Rabbi Bulka himself doesn't have a problem with evolutionary theory. He just wants equal time for the quacks. There's a serious problem with the official Darwinists, however. According to Bulka, Stein "skillfully shows how Darwinism moves people to reject religion," he says (although somehow it didn't work that way on Darwin himself). "In a Darwinist system" (whatever the heck that is), "...we are bereft of values. And the scientists seemingly want it that way. If nothing is sacred, anything goes -- there are no restrictions."

Well, no. No one except a person raised by wolves is without values. Every society has values: they don't derive from science, but from the social processes of which society consists. But this sort of thing worries religious folks, who are foundationalists by definition. If God did not exist, Dostoevsky's character Ivan Karamazov said (and Bulka here repeats), everything is permitted. Except that it isn't: we wouldn't have a society, but a short-lived free for all. The notion of a society without values is just as meaningless as Quine's round square cupola.

Stalin and Hitler killed tens of millions "in the absence of any values." Well, once again, no. One could argue, certainly, that they were the wrong values, but values they clearly had. They both wrote books of an incessantly moralizing character. Neither were what one might call scientists. And, as Bulka concedes, religion is not free from "taint" in this respect in any case.

But he proceeds (and at this point I begin to wonder about his alleged scholarly abilities):

As bad as religion may be, the argument can be made that absent religion, things would be worse. Mr. Stein drives this point home incessantly, as he juxtaposes scientific tyranny with Nazi imagery. A valueless society enslaved by scientism desacrilizes life. And Mr. Stein is not oblivious to the scientism of eugenics as it impacted then, with the implicit warning that it could happen again.

"[J]uxtaposes scientific tyranny with Nazi imagery," eh? Is Bulka really not able to tell the difference between argument and a crude propaganda technique? Apparently not. So if, for example, I were to "juxtapose" pictures of Ben Stein with candid shots of howler monkeys, I trust the rabbi will agree that this is a sufficiently cogent response to Expelled.

Our values are intact, they do change and develop over time, they are susceptible to all sorts of influences, and they are continually contested. Rabbi Bulka is a part of that very process. So are we all. We alone are responsible, as social participants, for what we value, and how, and how much. That realization is almost vertiginous, and frightening indeed for those who need sky-dwellers to set the rules. But those of us who do not still manage to hold values of our own, and hold off the Nazi hordes. Not to mention the scientific illiteracy of Ben Stein and Reuven Bulka.


(H/t BigCityLib for the Whatcott reference. The Godly do worship in odd ways, sometimes.)

Never forget: Chretien stands against Harper and Day, March 2003

17 March 2003:



This is a shameless crib from Impolitical, but to me this is such an important part of our historical record that it deserves to be passed on as widely as possible as quickly as possible.

I talk almost every day to Americans who are in anguish over what has happened in Iraq and in their own country since that shameful, dishonest war and occupation began, and I don't feel all that innocent about many of the crimes that have been committed by most Western nations in the name of the fantastical war on terror.

But I do feel lucky that once we had an old fox as prime minister who had at least half a memory of what serious foreign relations should look like. I feel lucky that Stephen Harper was not prime minister in the spring of 2003. Had he been, we would be mired in Iraq right now, and Maher Arar would still be in Syria, if indeed he were still alive.

Salute to sparqui at Bread and Roses for the tip.

Cross-posted to POGGE.

Another speech-warrior meme bites the dust

You've heard this one before, haven't you? Until recently, no one stood a chance of defending successfully against a Section 13 complaint before a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. There's been a 100% conviction rate. Everyone dragged, hauled, or otherwise transported to these kangaroo courts, Inquisitions and Star Chambers can be assured that the upshot is never in doubt.

But now, the kangaroos are blinking. You'll see that b-word used a lot in this connection on the right side of the aisle. First, the CHRC dismissed the infamous complaint against Maclean's magazine. And then it dismissed another one, against Catholic Insight. The usual suspects, once they got over their initial disappointment, began to claim victory.

It reminds me of a hoary old joke. A man goes to a psychiatrist. He keeps snapping his fingers during the session. Finally the psychiatrist asks, "Why are you doing that?" The man replies, "To keep the elephants away." "But," says the shrink, "there aren't any elephants within miles of here!" "Works pretty well, eh?" says his patient.

The sound of speech-warrior finger-snapping is getting deafening these days. They're making the kangaroos blink. But it ain't so.

Between 2001 and May 9 of this year, there had been 70 Section 13 complaints lodged with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Yes, you read right. 24 of these were either under investigation or were awaiting the conciliation/hearing stage. Since then, the Maclean's and Catholic Insight complaints have been disposed of, leaving 22 unresolved complaints. That makes 48 resolved complaints. What happened to them?

Well, most of them, like the Maclean's and Catholic Insight ones, didn't make it as far as a Tribunal hearing. 26 have now found themselves in the "closed/dismissed/no further proceedings" category. 7 more have been successfully mediated. One was closed at the Tribunal stage. Another was dismissed by the Tribunal. Complaints in the remaining 13 cases were upheld by the Tribunal.

So, to sum up: 13 of the 48 cases that the Commission dealt with ended up with "convictions" (a term best reserved for criminal, not civil cases, but most speech-warriors either don't know the difference, or don't care). This tells me that the efficacy of the preliminary screening processes and mediation options is pretty good. Nearly three-quarters of the complaints were weeded out before the hearing stage. The wheat was well and truly separated from the chaff.

None of this, of course, will deter the speech-warriors from claiming a dubious political victory. After all, there aren't any elephants (or, for that matter, kangaroos) within miles of here. Keep snapping, guys. You could have taught Frank Sinatra a thing or two.

Potential Canadians

Randall Denley of the Ottawa Citizen has a few words to say about Morgentaler's Order of Canada today. So does David Warren, no doubt sending in his column from an undisclosed location. Denley fusses about the loss of "more than two million potential Canadians": Warren, about "three million aborted babies." (In the "pro-life" rhetorical sweepstakes, what's a million?)

I get a little intellectually twitchy when people talk about "potential Canadians." What is a "potential Canadian" (other than an immigrant or a would-be immigrant)? The 25% of pregnancies that end in miscarriage? Every sperm and every ovum, potentially together? The biochemicals that are transformed into sperm and ova? The elements that are the building blocks of those biochemicals?

When does life begin? A trick question. Sometime in the Archaean, I'd say, in an unbroken chain to the present.

But there's a companion argument, which everyone has heard countless times: "I'm glad I wasn't aborted!" Variations on this theme include "You just aborted Beethoven! Martin Luther King! Jesus Christ!" Or Hitler, Stalin and Robert Mugabe. Or (as Henry Morgentaler unwisely observed), a lot of common-or-garden criminals.

I don't want to get into the ontological status of possible worlds, but just let me note this: the self-same argument can be used about contraception, including the Vatican-approved rhythm method, and even abstinence, the form of birth control most favoured by George W. Bush. "If you hadn't made love that night, I would never have been born!" "If Beethoven's mother had waited for a non-fertile period in the ovulation cycle, think of all the music we would have lost!" Voilà! Conservative Popes and Presidents join ranks with the abortionists.

The moral conclusions here aren't even summed up in the "Every sperm is sacred" Monty Python song, because ova are presumably sacred as well, and when a sperm fertilizes any one ovum, it isn't fertilizing any other ovum, reducing an almost infinite number of potential pairings to one actual pairing. The only morally acceptable solution, if one follows the logic of the "I'm glad I wasn't aborted" crowd, would be to clone all of the sperm and ova in existence so that every conceivable (no pun intended) combination is realized. Oh, wait, what about identical twins? Triplets?

All that vast potential, unrealized. Which, I suppose, is the whole point: potential isn't actual. Potential isn't anything at all. Potential doesn't exist. Potential is only possibility: and as I'm suggesting, possibility is infinite.

Ezra Pound once famously speculated about what "America would be like if the Classics had a wide circulation." I wonder what Canada would be like if journalists knew a little basic philosophy?

Will someone please get this guy a cross?

And help him mount it?






As a writer who does not subscribe to the "politically correct" ideology, it is reasonable to expect that, sooner or later, they will come for me. Of course I also realize that, in making this statement, I will be mocked by the usual jackals. But in light of what has already happened in this province and country, my assertion is reasonable.

Moreover, I write with the sincerity of a man who has already tasted the New Canadian tyranny, and the threat of imprisonment without due process, under the feminist rewrite of Ontario family law.

I was born a free citizen of the Old Canada and before her God I declare, that I will go to jail rather than acknowledge the legitimacy of any "human rights" commission. I invite other journalists and indeed, every other Canadian, to declare likewise.

[An urgent request from Dr. Dawg Jackal.]

"Longing for the Old Canada"

Here's a trip down memory lane for the nostalgic Ian Hunter and David Warren.

Capital punishment. The lash. Deaths from illegal abortion. Residential schools. Inuit starvation. Red squads. The padlock law. Polio epidemics. The Head Tax.

Internment. Christie Pitts. KKK meetings in Ontario.

Indians couldn't vote. East Indians couldn't vote. Japanese Canadians couldn't vote. Chinese Canadians couldn't vote. Women couldn't vote.

Homosexuals were jailed. Contraception was illegal. Domestic rape was legal until 1983. Women were paid less than men for the same job, never mind for work of equal value.

Jewish children were turned back to Nazi Germany to be gassed. It was legal to refuse to serve Blacks in a restaurant. It was legal to segregate Blacks in a theatre--and arrest them if they wanted to sit with the white folks. There were quotas for Jewish students at McGill.

Ah, the good old days. When men were men and women were girls. Dominion Day. "A Canadian citizen is a British subject." God save the King. The Queen. People knew how to behave. To think. We had values. We had standards. We were civilized. All downhill since then.

Photos from England 2

One of the Dianna and Dodi memorials in Harrods. Yeah, yeah, I know, but its still sort of sad...


Windsor Castle, which appears to be right under Heathrow's flight path.


A tin flute player and his two dogs at Bath.


Stonehenge


Imperial War Museum


Christ Church gardens.


Oxford, set for dinner.


The "foole" at Stratford-upon-Avon.


The "dog" at Warwick Castle.

Here is Photos from England One

When the lobbyists scramble over the side...

Shouldn't that tell you something?

Grab onto this for a second.

Ian Brodie shucked his job as the Prime Minister's Office Chief of Staff... effective July 1st.

General Rick Hillier, formerly the most senior serving member of the Canadian Forces, did what all regular serving members of armed forces eventually do. He sat there long enough, pulled up his trousers and decided he had had enough. Resignation effective July 1st.

Sandra Buckler announced last Thursday that she was leaving her job as communications director for the Prime Minister's Office. Effective date of leaving government to spend more time with the family? July 1st.

What are these people going to do with themselves? I mean, the adrenaline is still pumping and it will be for some time to come!

Ian Brodie.

Mr. Brodie did not give any indication of what he is planning to do.

Rick Hillier.

Fresh from running a war, Rick Hillier, who stepped down as chief of the defence staff this week, is temporarily joining Gowlings, a huge law firm in Ottawa, to consider a future “career in the private sector.” The general is not a lawyer and says he has not made any firm decisions about his future. Still, a statement provided by the firm said he “has indicated that when he assumes a new career in September, he is looking to provide strategic advice, leadership training and other consulting services.” And Gowlings can help him with all that. Does this spell lobbying? Certainly, Mr. Hillier's name and expertise in the defence world will add even more cachet to the national firm, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP.

Sandra Buckler.

Wow! Listen to those crickets!

So, the former PMO Chief of Staff isn't really sure; the former Chief of Defence Staff, not a lawyer, is joining Gowlings LaFleur Henerson LLP; and, the former communications director and former lobbyist is being as tight-lipped as she was when she should have been providing information.

Since Steve fixed government and imposed a five-year ban on people leaving designated positions and high office from lobbying, it would stand to reason that they can't go out and become lobbyists. Not for five years.

Or can they?

Oh! Look at that! The Lobbyist Registration Regulations, lovingly referred to as The Clean Lobbyist Act. And take a look at paragraph 13.

COMING INTO FORCE

13. These Regulations come into force on July 2, 2008.

How fortuitous! The former PMO Chief of Staff, the former Chief of Defence Staff and the former PMO communications director escaped the force of Big Steve's cleaning up of the lobbyists by ONE. FUCKING. DAY.

Life and death in the blogosphere

"I had to interrupt my internet fast to bring you this important rumour."

With luck, this could even surpass the "internet traditions" meme: "The blogosphere: bringing you important rumours."

But on to the actual rumour in this case, which the so-cons are all over, many doing their best to appear pious and all: and that rumour is that Dr. Henry Morgentaler has terminal cancer, and two weeks to live.

I'm not as dubious as my friend JJ: it could be true, maybe not. In any case a group of young CLCers (and that threw me for a moment, but it's not my CLC) is holding a novena to pray for his conversion before death.

Meanwhile the loving Connie Fournier of Free Dominion has this to say:

His death couldn't be too imminent or too painful for my taste.

Sweet. In fairness, she's almost alone on that thread. But it's a grim sight when the mask of a far-right ideologue slips for a moment, eh?

Oh, and by the way, congratulations, Suzanne.

"If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all"

.

Anti-choice "expertise"

Meet Susan Martinuk, a right-wing Canadian syndicated columnist. Native people? They're "cashing in on victimhood." Supervised safe-injection sites? "State-sponsored addiction." Unions? Forget it. Same-sex marriage? Well, what do you think her position might be? Do you really need to follow this link?

So it's hardly a surprise that she's weighed in on the Morgentaler Order of Canada award.

All too typical of far-right ideologues, she begins with character assassination. "Dr. (I use this term loosely) Morgentaler" -- that sort of thing. And this:

His great healthcare legacy is a chain of private abortion clinics where doctors can make great wads of cash outside of the medical/ethical oversight of hospital committees and other doctors.

This is what my mother used to call lying by implication. The impression is given of big profits made outside the official health care system. In fact most of Morgentaler's clinics are non-profit, because they receive funding from the provinces and are licensed by provincial health departments. Doctors and other health professionals who work in these clinics are subject to the same rules of practice as they would be working anywhere else, rules that are enforced by provincial licensing bodies.

What Martinuk is referring to here is the discredited Therapeutic Abortion Committee system, overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada two decades ago. This was a system under which women had to plead their cases before a three-doctor panel, some of which never approved a single request. And TACs were only set up in about one-fifth of Canada's hospitals at the time.

She claims--this time lying directly--that Morgentaler was found guilty of medical negligence in 1998 by the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. He wasn't even a respondent in the case. And she makes reference to an earlier (1976) charge by the "Quebec College of Physicians" (sic) that he had failed to take a patient's history, and run some routine tests. In fact, the Disciplinary Committee of the Professional Corporation of Physicians of Quebec suspended Morgentaler's licence for one year because he had just been convicted of performing illegal abortions.

(That conviction, as everyone knows, was overturned. A jury had found him innocent of wrong-doing and a higher court had reversed the verdict and found him guilty. Morgentaler was acquitted by juries once in Ontario and three times in Quebec. Parliament passed the so-called "Morgentaler amendment" to the Criminal Code in 1975 to prevent the substitution of guilty verdicts by higher courts. But the persecution continued. Only the victory of Rene Levesque's Parti Quebecois in 1976 stopped the abuse of judicial process in the latter province. And his trial in Ontario resulted in the overturning of the restrictive abortion law in effect at the time, Section 251 of the Criminal Code, by a 5-2 decision in 1988.)

But it's when Martinuk delves into the alleged dire medical sequelae of abortion that she truly outdoes herself. She is described, disingenuously, as "a former medical researcher who conducted PhD studies in the field of infertility and reproductive technologies." The implication is that she is an Authority, with the expertise to comment. Except that she isn't any such thing.

Back in the early '90s, as a PhD student, she co-authored a few publications on human and animal ovulation. But she abandoned her PhD. Since then, she writes newspaper columns for a living. She is no more an expert on the abortion issue than I am, so I offer this point-by-point rebuttal of what must appear to the uninitiated to be an impressive array of sources and authorities that claim that abortion is dangerous for both mother and any babies she might have subsequently.

• Abortion causes subsequent prematurity and low birth weight.
  
  Studies of this alleged connection have, until recently, been inconclusive and contradictory. But Martinuk fails to cite the most recent study, by Tilahun Adera et al, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (December 2007), which surprises me a little, because it concludes, on the basis of a massive data-set, that having a miscarriage or induced abortion is indeed linked to prematurity and low birth weight. However, that data-set, as the authors themselves admit, is problematic for several reasons.
  
  The data was collected from the period 1959-1967, when abortion was still illegal (and hence likely to be underreported, skewing the statistics). Abortion techniques more than forty years ago were not nearly so refined as they are today--coathangers versus vacuum aspiration in antiseptic conditions. Spontaneous abortions (miscarriages, which occur in about 25% of all pregnancies) and induced abortions are not distinguished in the data. Indeed, Adera himself concedes that the public health implications of his study might be more applicable to "developing countries."
  
  Martinuk is not only not up-to-date, but the source she seems to prefer is the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly the Medical Sentinel) which, despite its academic-sounding title, has a politically far-right axe to grind. JPANDS has, in the past, published commentaries and articles that have claimed, inter alia, that evolution and global warming are bunk (the latter article co-authored by our old friend Arthur B. Robinson), that the Food and Drug Administration is unconstitutional, and that the HIV virus doesn't cause AIDS. JPANDS has duly found its way onto Quackwatch's list of "fundamentally flawed" journals.
  
  
• Abortion causes breast cancer.
  
  I'm amazed that this old canard still has legs, but once again our reliable JPANDS is cited--twice! The US National Cancer Institute isn't buying it; neither is the American Cancer Society. As the ACS puts it, " the public is not well-served by false alarms and at the present time, the scientific evidence does not support a causal association between induced abortion and breast cancer."
  
  
• Abortion causes psychological and physical harm.
  
  Martinuk had me going for a while on this one. It wouldn't surprise me that many women are uneasy, ambivalent and stressed about the abortion decision, living in North America, where "pro-life" propaganda is prevalent and Church, mosque and synagogue call abortion murder. That could well cause emotional problems of one kind or another. So I had a look at the most recent study that she cites but doesn't source: Coleman, P.K., et al., “State-Funded Abortions Versus Deliveries: A Comparison of Outpatient Mental Health Claims Over 4 Years” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 2002, Vol. 72, No. 1, 141–152. It's an oddly-written study, with a suspicious amount of moralizing in it, but the evidence, based on a survey of women in California, looked pretty conclusive to me: women are more likely to seek medical attention for mental disorders following an abortion than following a live birth.
  
  Then I checked into the authors of the study. Phyllis Coleman. Jesse Cougle. David Reardon. Vincent Rue. They co-authored another study on the same subject with Martha Shuping and Philip Ney. As it happens, I once ran into Ney on Parliament Hill: he's a veteran anti-choice crusader from Vancouver. That made me curious. I soon discovered that Shuping and Reardon are "Physicians for Life." Reardon and Ney claim that women who have abortions abuse their children. (That one's been so utterly debunked that it no longer seems to be part of the anti-choicers' armamentarium.) Rue is what might be called a professional anti-abortionist, and Cougle and Coleman, associates of Reardon, are not exactly above the fray either.
  
  Now, lest I be accused of crude ad hominem here, let me simply note that none of the authors of these scary studies is dispassionate on the issue of abortion. Just as I'm a little wary of global warming denial funded by Exxon, or other less-than-disinterested research, I am entitled, I think, to a healthy scepticism when authors of scientific studies on the evils of abortion turn out to be raving pro-life lobbyists.
  
  Next I turned to the unsourced 2001 study by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. That would be "Health Services Utilization After Induced Abortions in Ontario: A Comparison Between Community Clinics and Hospitals," Ostbye, T., et al., American Journal of Medical Quality, Vol. 16, No. 3, 99-106 (2001). Now, what is the comparison that Martinuk is using when she talks about women having higher rates of this and that when they have abortions?
  
  The comparison is between the relative safety of hospital abortions and clinic abortions. [Not solely: see UPDATE below--DD] Clinics appear to be safer than hospitals. What point did Martinuk think she was making here?*
  
  It gets worse (for her). I quote the conclusion of this study in full:
  
  Overall, the rates of postabortion health services utilization and hospitalizations are low, which emphasizes the relative safety of abortion services in Ontario regardless of location of service. The rates of postabortion health services utilization including hospitalizations were lower in patients undergoing abortions in community clinics than in hospital. This may be partially attributed to higher surgical volumes, which are associated with better outcomes and mandated clinical quality assessments. The findings are also partially attributable to the referral from clinics to the hospitals those patinets considered to be at high risk in a clinic setting during an induced abortion. The referral structure allows the community clinics and hospitals to work together to ensure that the safest alternative is provided to women seeking abortion services.
  
  Administrative data can be used to derive patient outcome information that is of value to service providers. However, it is not possible to fully control for systemic differences between patient groups (eg, gestational age or procedure used) using such administrative data.
  
  Then we go to the claim that women who have abortions are five times more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. That's "Abortion and Subsequent Substance Abuse," David C. Reardon and Philip G. Ney, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Volume 26, Issue 1 (2000), 61-75. Some old familiar faces! It's starting to feel like Anti-Choice Homecoming Week here.
  
  And then (for the sake of completeness) there is the rather dated reference to the alleged suicide/abortion connection: "Suicides after pregnancy in Finland, 1987-94: register linkage study," Mika Gissler, et al., British Medical Journal, Volume 313: (7 December, 1996), 1431-1434. The first thing to note here is that suicide as a cause of death of women in Finland is approximately four times higher than in Canada. (I have taken 1996, the year the study was published, as the year for comparison purposes.) About 4% of all deaths of Finnish women were as a result of suicide. In Canada, 848 women committed suicide in 1996;101,107 women died that year, so that suicide accounted for less than 1% of all deaths. The suicide rate (per hundred thousand population) is 10.7 for Finnish women, and 5.7 for Canadian women.The number of confounding variables, and the generalization of the results of this study, are highly problematic. Indeed, on the latter, the authors themselves conclude:
  
  Abortion might mean a selection of women at higher risk for suicide because of reasons like depression. Another explanation for the higher suicide rate after an abortion could be low social class, low social support, and previous life events or that abortion is chosen by women who are at higher risk for suicide because of other reasons. Increased risk for a suicide after an induced abortion can, besides indicating common risk factors for both,result from a negative effect of induced abortion on mental wellbeing. With our data, however, it was not possible to study the causality more carefully. (Emphasis mine-DD)
  

There is no gentle way to put this: Martinuk quotes several sources, some dubious, and others that do not say what she claims that they say, in order to buttress her anti-Morgentaler polemic. This is sloppiness at best, dishonesty at worst. Her credentials as a "former medical researcher" speak for themselves. And so, quite frankly, do her credentials as a journalist.

UPDATE: Eamon Knight pointed me to a comprehensive fisking of JPANDS' abortion/breast cancer "study" here.

*UPDATE: (July 6) Whoops. Although the authors of the study outline a number of confounding variables (e.g., previous hospitalization for psychiatric problems is significantly higher among patients who subsequently seek abortion), Martinuk is correct on her figures, although these apply to the hospitals: the clinics have a better record. The study measured the relative safety of clinics v. hospitals re abortion patients, but a control group was also used, and post-abortion patients did not fare as well as either the general clinic or hospital population.

The authors' conclusion stands, however: the rates of post-abortion complications are low in Ontario. Hence Martinuk's figures apply to a fairly small percentage of patients overall. Even so, I mischaracterized both the extent of the study and the figures that she provided.

Mea culpa, and I'm just glad that no one had to point my errors out to me. I'm indebted to reader "plum grenville" at my joint for prompting me go back and look at the study again. That will teach me to be overly snotty.