Canadian women deserve better

While I have not been formally involved in the pro-life movement for very long, I've been an educator at the post-secondary level since 1974. People have trusted me as a consultant to address problems and give well-reasoned opinions. I was also a municipal politician for 21 years. I think that I know something about the information that is necessary to make an informed choice. And Canadian women are not getting such information with respect to the abortion question

It is time that women young and old in this country were treated as human beings with brains and critical thinking abilities and not, on the one hand, as people who have to be protected from anything upsetting or controversial, nor on the other hand, as willing partners in something that is clearly wrong. They also need to be taken seriously by our federal and provincial politicians.

So I am about to write three pleas--one to pro-choice activists, one to the prime minister, and one to my pro-life colleagues--with none of the nice academic sugar-coating that I normally employ in my writings. Too many women are being hurt and victimized to always write with equanimity.

First, to the (self-labeled but not at all obvious) pro-choice activists. You are really as committed to choice as I am to having a frontal lobotomy without anesthetics. You simply do not trust women to make fully informed choices for themselves.

• Rather you push a few slogans relentlessly (particularly the illogical and odious "Every child a wanted child") while vilifying anyone whose views are different from your own.
  
• You attack what you call (legitimately or not) false information that you say will mislead a woman about medical and psychological issues surrounding abortion, while ignoring information that is either erroneous, exaggerated, understated or just plain missing from your favoured websites and literature.
• You demean women who join, often in very large numbers, organizations that take a contrary position to yours. I guess this isn't a woman's 'choice' that you feel 'pro' about.
  
• And perhaps most surprising of all, you push the male agenda when it comes to abortion legislation.

Beyond this, you have chosen for yourselves spokespeople who, whatever be the state of their IQs and the extent of their education, are capable of writing some of the most irrational opinions that I have ever read, Joyce Arthur's column in today's National Post being a prime example (see "Fetal homicide laws are not the answer," National Post, Tuesday, November 13, 2007, p. A17).

I have written on all of the above points in numerous posts in the past, and space does not permit a review of them all. But I'll briefly address two.

First, the male agenda. If you go back just two posts from the one you are reading now (look for the picture of my baseball hero Hank Aaron in his Atlanta Braves uniform), you will see my analysis of the latest statistics from American and Canadian polls on abortion-related issues. There you will read that many more men than women want unrestricted access to abortion, and far fewer men than women call themselves pro-life. The pro-choice cheering section has a decidedly baritone sound. Apparently their views are carrying the day.

Second, Joyce Arthur's column (which would get a D at best in my classroom). Let me take just two quotes to show you how empty the reasoning is:

Creating a "fetal homicide" law that would allow murder charges to be laid for the death of a fetus would be an unconstitutional infringement on women's rights...

How is a law protecting unborn victims of crime an infringement on choice? The woman has made her choice--she is pregnant after all, and has not chosen to have an abortion. A killer ignores that choice and murders the baby. Where is the infringement? In fact, in some of the recent cases in Canada, the father killed the mother because she refused to have an abortion.

A "fetal homicide" law would completely sidestep the issue of domestic abuse and do nothing to protect pregnant women.

What!? Parliament is capable of passing only one law? If it puts one legal restriction in place, it is shut out from also passing another dealing with the issue? Wouldn't that be like saying that if the government passes a law saying that a homeless person can't steal my money that it is bypassing the broader issue of homelessness? Ridiculous.

While many pro-choice activists are too addicted to ideology and too immersed in groupthink to take an arm's-length look at themselves, I would make this plea to those ordinary women and men who have, perhaps somewhat uncritically, taken a pro-choice position:

Take stock. Do you have all of the information necessary to make a fully informed choice? Are you ignoring possible sources of information because they have been ruled out in advance by yourself or others? Are you even aware of public opinion on the issue? If you say that you believe in choice, start looking everywhere for what you need to make that choice. Don't be bullied, manipulated or otherwise kept from seeking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It's there if you really look. But there are those who are trying to keep it from you. If the pro-choice activists don't trust you, trust yourselves.

Next, to my pro-life colleagues. I used to host an open-line radio show in Sudbury, ON. It was aimed at young people (14-22), although over half of the audience was adult (the young people's parents listened in large numbers). I used to get high-schoolers calling in to complain about their dad or mom. One of the things that I used to do with such callers was to ask them to do a role play with me. First I would set the scene, along such lines as these:

MGS (my good self): What does your father do for a living?
CYC (complaining young caller): He works for INCO. He's a miner.
MGS: Does he like his job?
CYC: Not very much. Who would?
MGS: How does he feel when he gets home from work?
CYC: I never thought about it. Pretty tired, I guess. Bummed out. [Sorry, that's how we talked in the 1970s.]
MGS: OK, you play the tired-out, unfulfilled father coming home from another lousy, hard day of work, and I'll play the 15-year old son who intercepts him at the door to complain about..... (whatever the issue was that the caller had raised).

It's amazing the effect this had on the caller's perspective. I wish that my pro-life friends would do the same with respect to the way they approach their task of addressing what they feel is a huge moral wrong. Put yourself in the shoes of:

• The fourteen year old girl who got high, had sex with three different guys at a party, is now pregnant, has no idea who the father is, and is afraid to tell her parents. [I'm not making this up. I had just such a call from a girl on my open-line show. Of course, it was the "girl's friend" who called on her behalf.]
• The seventeen year old who wants to keep the baby but doesn't know how she will ever complete high school now if she has an infant to care for. [It was just this common scenario that led my school board to start our New Beginnings program at one of our high schools, providing both daycare for the young moms so that they could go to school, and parenting skills classes for these children having children as well.]
  
• The nineteen year old woman whose boyfriend, having gotten her pregnant, now threatens to leave her if she doesn't abort.
• The recent university grad who, having started on a promising career, finds that she is pregnant and will have to abort the career unless she aborts the baby.
• The female member of a church who sees how unmarried mothers are treated (see my post from this past August entitled 'Why I am occasionally sympathetic to Bertrand Russell'.)

How do these women feel when they see your signs? Read your rants? Sense your hostility? Will they likely turn to you for help? The pro-choice people may have vacuous arguments, but they do withhold judgment. Jesus treated the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42), or the women "taken in adultery" (John 7:53 - 8:11) better than many pro-lifers treat such women as I've outlined above.

Ask yourselves--Is lobbying to make abortion illegal the answer? Or is it an easy solution to a vexing moral question while ignoring all of the fall-out? Being moralistic is not the same thing as properly addressing moral issues.

Finally, to our Prime Minister. You have shown yourself to be a good leader in a number of ways that most people approve of (e.g., cutting taxes, reducing the nanny state). You are not afraid to tackle some moral issues (e.g., Canadian participation in the war in Afghanistan, Parliamentary ethics). But on the pro-life vs. pro-abortion issue you are an abject failure. Let's start with your limited discussion on the issues:

"I've been clear. A Conservative government led by me will not be tabling abortion legislation. It will not be sponsoring an abortion referendum," Harper said, adding he has no intention of discussing the subject further during the election campaign....Harper said his own views on abortion fall somewhere "in-between the two extremes." (CBC , Tuesday, June 1, 2004).

That's it. On this subject, you are silent. You can be very blunt on many controversial topics. But you treat this one like it has leprosy. Doubtless recognizing the political difficulty it could cause, you have run very hard in any other direction.

I don't respect you for this.

• Fetuses enjoy less protection in our criminal code than do people's pets (see my post entitled 'Of hamsters and Nellie McClung'.)
  
• The majority of Canadians don't approve of public funding of abortions as is permitted now (Environics October 2007 poll). You simply dismiss such issues as provincial responsibilities--but campaign on reduced hospital wait times in those same provincial jurisdictions.
• Your Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, was prepared to risk his leadership aspirations of the Ontario Tory party in 2002 by publicly taking a pro-life stance. You won't even take a Henry Morgentaler stance (no abortions after 24 weeks).
• Many Canadians think that it is immoral, and should be illegal, for a man to kill a pregnant woman and her baby and yet be charged with only one crime; i.e., murder of the woman. In the U.S. that killer would be charged with two murders. You are satisfied with this state of affairs?
  
• You are accused (wrongly in my view) of being too close to the current U.S. President George W. Bush. I would be happy if you were within hailing distance of the next U.S. President, Hillary Clinton, who said: [Abortion is] a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women. There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances.

Can't you muster up enough compassion for women, and respect for public opinion, to at least propose an unborn victims of crime law? Is an extra seat or two in Quebec and Ontario more important than stemming such violence? Do you really find yourself convinced (or intimidated) by the likes of Joyce Arthur? Judy Rebick? The Bloc? Aren't Canadian women and their unborn babies worth as much of your concern as their Afghan counterparts? Right now they're not worth as much as a couple of hamsters in the Canadian Criminal Code.

Canadian women deserve better from you.