Rebecca Walberg

In the National Post today:

When Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, new leader of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, suggested there are more laws protecting organ transplants in Canada than fetuses, he gave the abortion debate shock therapy. One predictable outcome was disdain, and a call to focus on important things, namely the economy, in these uncertain times. Yet there is an economic angle to the abortion debate. In Canada today, abortion is available and publicly funded at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason. That’s our tax dollars providing free and timely elective surgery, in spite of the waiting lists and chronic resource shortages that plague our health care system in many other areas. Based on abortion statistics and the cost of the procedure in clinics and hospitals, that translates into $90-million a year, as a conservative estimate.

Read the rest here.

But if the government does want to put its fingers into this particular thorny mess, there are better and worse ways to do it.  Quebec’s example is one of the poorer approaches to the issue, as borne out by an MIT study that found kids in Quebec’s universal daycare have more physical and psychological problems, their parents become less attentive parents who are more depressed and have more tense marriages, and the whole scheme is a net money loser for the province.  A longer discussion of this is in today’s Winnipeg Free Press.

Last week, a Saskatchewan aboriginal man pled guilty to neglect causing the deaths of his toddlers when he took them out in -50 winds almost naked and they froze to death.  Although he claimed at the time to have been too drunk to dress them, he managed to dress himself in more adequate clothing, and also to get himself to safety while his daughters were dying of exposure.  Right now, two Manitoba natives are on trial for the murder of a 5 year old girl.  Phoenix Sinclair, the woman’s daughter, was treated with a level of sadism and cruelty that is reminiscent of the worst of Abu Ghraib, by her own mother and her mother’s live-in boyfriend.  There are recriminations flying all around about who is to blame for what, but so far nobody is talking very much about the profound dysfunction that lies at the root of both of these criminal cases, as well as the pervasive child abuse, substance abuse, mental illness and teen suicide that plague First Nations: the collapse of the family.  My column on this topic, paired with two other takes on it, is in today’s Winnipeg Free Press.

One of the more distressing aspects of the culture war is the way in which consumerism, mass media and the popular culture in general seem to conspire against parents’ best efforts to raise sane, healthy, happy kids. An interesting new book, So Sexy So Soon, takes on this theme from a liberal perspective, and it is refreshing to see that proponents of healthy childhood from across the spectrum can agree on the importance of letting kids be kids, and not tiny, sexualized and commercialized adults, for as long as possible. I reviewed this book for the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, and the full review is posted here.

Summer is not conducive to voluminous writing.  Here are reviews of some thought-provoking books.  Fareed Zakaria, whom I reviewed here in the Winnipeg Free Press, is always worth a read.  Although his Post-American World isn’t 100% on the mark - he still subscribes to the “Iraq as eternal quagmire” meme, despite a rather dramatic turnaround in 2008 - it’s well worth reading.  Save the Males, also reviewed in the WFP, is a bit disappointing, since the topic is a rich one, and the writer is talented; all in all I expected better, although her treatment of the Jessica Lynch affair is provocative and thoughtful.  Much better, on the gender wars front, is Dr. Meg Meeker’s Boys Should be Boys, which I discussed here for the Institute of Marriage and Family, Canada.  Meeker’s earlier book on the medical perils of teen promiscuity was very valuable, and her thoughts on parenting boys are a useful addition to the burgeoning parenting section of the bookstore.

The question of when to fight to keep a patient alive and when to let nature take its course is very difficult, and it’s one that we will all have to face as the Boomers age and enter their peak healthcare-consumption years.  Usually, patients, their families and their doctors can arrive at a mutually acceptable solution, and the majority of elderly patients on their deathbeds are under no illusions about the possible benefits of heroic medical interventions.  When patients can’t express their own wishes, though, or when doctors wish to disregard the wishes of patients or their advocates, the problem gets very ugly.

Another deeply disturbing trend, seen in the Schiavo and Golubchuk cases, is the description of removing a feeding tube as “withdrawing care.”  This may be technically accurate, if the hospital considers the provision of the necessities of life to be “care”, but most people who agree that they don’t want extra measures to be taken to prolong their life in extreme cases probably don’t understand that they may be consenting to be starved to death.

Here’s the conclusion of a column I wrote for the Edmonton Journal about the more troubling aspects of the Golubchuk case and the issues it should raise in the minds of all Canadians:

The role of doctors is to provide advice and expertise. Administrators are charged with organizing and regulating health care.  Whether a given person’s life is not worth living is not a medical decision, much less an administrative one.  It is a moral decision, and a deeply personal one, and any attempt to put this decision in the hands of doctors, bureaucrats or judges, instead of individuals and their families, must be very closely scrutinized.

Read the whole thing here.

Juggling small children and work is a challenge for everybody, single or married, solidly middle class or just scraping by.  The economics of it are only one factor; the emotional, social and physical needs of the kids are of utmost concern, but it’s also important that both parents be happy with the arrangement they choose.  We often hear of the benefits of Scandinavian daycare schemes, and Quebec’s $7 a day plan; on closer inspection, such universal daycare is bad economically, harms children, and increases stress on parents.  Here’s the introduction of a column I wrote for Sun Media on Quebec’s daycare:

Proponents of universal day care often claim that institutional care is good for children, and meets the needs of parents. Further, they argue it makes good fiscal sense because it gets parents back in the paid workforce sooner and grows the economy.

A decade after Quebec instituted universal, heavily subsidized care, costing parents $7 a day (originally $5), a paper by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists makes clear that none of these assertions stand up to reality.

Read the rest here.