Canada Curling Team Member Just the Third Pregnant Athlete in Olympics History
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 18, 2010
Vancouver, Canada (LifeNews.com) — The Winter Olympics isn’t typically a place where pregnant women are involved in competitions, but the 2010 games in Vancouver is an exception. Kristie Moore, an alternate on the Team Canada curling team, is just the third pregnant athlete to compete in the modern-era Olympics.
And Moore has a distinction that the other former competitors did not have — she is well into the second trimester of pregnancy.
Moore, who is 30 years-old, is five-and-a-half months pregnant — which puts her well past Swedish figure skater Magda Julin, who won a gold medal at the Antwerp Games some 90 years ago while in her first trimester.
And Diana Sartor of Germany finished in fourth place in the skeleton in 2006.
In a new interview, Moore says her visible pregnancy hasn’t impaired her ability to participate on the team, but she says that may not be the case if she were closer to her due date.
“[In] the eighth month or so, that might be an issue,” she told Yahoo Sports.
Moore didn’t find out about her pregnancy until just weeks before officials with Team Canada invited her to join the team. Her coach has been very supportive and says her baby will have no adverse effect on her ability to help the team.
Team Canada leader Cheryl Bernard told Yahoo Sports, "she is young and fit. There’s no reason we’ll have any problems, and she’ll be out there."
Moore’s participation in the Olympics is a delight to pro-life advocates, who say pregnancy shouldn’t necessarily mean an athlete is encumbered and unable to participate.
Thomas Peters, a blogger at American Papist, responded, "Yet another instance of popular culture at least realizing that a ‘wanted’ child equals a ‘real’ child. Now to work on acknowledging that ‘unwanted’ children are just as real."
Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek noticed that Yahoo Sports, in its story, included the following line: "As with all curling teams, Team Canada features five members. Well, six, if you really want to get technical with it."
She points out how abortion advocates are already riled up about it — "Pro-aborts couldn’t let that one go."
A blogger at the pro-abortion web site Feministing responded, "Thank you, Chris Chase at Yahoo! Sports for perpetuating the myth that fetuses are people and that they are capable of Olympic curling."
"Actually … it would only be an ignorant person of Olympic proportions who would call it a ‘myth’ that ‘fetuses are people,’" Stanek rebuts. "[The pro-abortion blogger] needs to retake 8th grade biology. Or maybe she hasn’t taken it yet."
The responds reminds some of the pro-abortion reaction to the Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad — claiming it somehow fostered violence against women because it playfully featured Tebow "tackling" his mom.
Team Canada is the favorite to win the gold medal but, as is the case with any alternate, Moore will not likely see any action unless one of the other members’ is injured or is unable to participate for some other reason.
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