JohnOnLife

I hate women....apparently

2010-11-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

It would come as quite a surprise to my sophisticated wife, my feminist daughter, my dear female friends, and the many female colleagues with whom I have worked closely over my long professional career, but apparently I hate women according to the geniuses who run (roughshod over, some might say) the Carleton University student society. My crime above all crimes? I don't believe that women have to be identical to men to be equal to men.

If truth be told, I believe (and I'm not being frivolous here), that in more ways than not women are, on balance, superior to men in meeting our society's needs these days. Men are excellent at starting wars (though not finishing them), painting themselves into rhetorical corners (which is why we also excel at blustering and prevaricating), setting up structures that artificially boost men's chances for success vis-a-vis women, hoarding power, failing to sense when another person is trying without success to articulate deep problems or confusion, taking credit, committing crimes, abusing people of the opposite sex, rape, coercing abortions, constructing glass ceilings, and exploiting the vulnerable generally.

For some reason, the people who ~~ruin~~ run the student society at Carleton University have set men as the standard by which women's rights should be measured. Unless women have the same rights to undermine the chances for a just society as men do, they fall short of the glory of God.

How do I know this? The Carleton intelligentsia has determined that suggesting that abortion is not in a woman's long-term best interests is hate speech. Better to view the incredible gift of life-giving, and the apparatus that goes with it, as an enormous obstacle for women inching their way up the mountain of male attainment than to do the hard work of removing the artificial barriers to women being fully women and fully equal.

[And look what we've attained!! Stalin. Hitler. Pol Pot. Al Qaeda. The My Lai massacre. China's one child policy. The Taliban's 70 virgins promise. The Indian Act. Honour killings. Female circumcision. No wonder the Carleton bunch are so jealous!!]

Well, the Carleton brain trust may prefer women who are merely men in skirts, but the world would be a much worse place were it to actually happen. But for now, what these fearless proponents of a ~~bitter~~ better society should really do is continue to respect freedom of expression and test their theories in a court of law. If being pro life is legally hateful (and I don't believe it is), then they can pass their draconian laws to their little hearts' content.

It won't happen, of course. If they went to court they'd lose. So they will just go on suppressing legitimate protest, and otherwise acting like, er, men. And if they ever get bored with the life issue, they can always nip over to York University and squelch the concerns of the Jews over what they perceive to be discrimination on that campus. It would be the manly thing to do.

Plus ça change...

2010-11-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

I have thought for a long time that we, the great unwashed electorate, vote with everything but our brains and the fruits of our research. How else does one explain the benches lined with dolts that get sent to Parliament without a significant thing to commend them.

At times I wondered if I was just too arrogant or too demanding to make a valid judgment of our elected representatives, although the Lord knows that I have had personal acquaintance with enough of them to retain my long held view. But then this letter appeared in a recent edition of the National Post:

Re: Repelling The Best And The Brightest, editorial, Nov. 5. I was struck by the words "the duds kicking around the backbenches of many political parties." It seems the Canadian electorate at federal, provincial, and civic levels tends to elect more "duds" than "the brightest" from among the choices. How else to explain the large doses of silliness that masquerade as intelligent discourse in provincial parliaments, city halls, and in Ottawa. The few bright ones are overshadowed by the duds who seem to make more noise and attract more attention. I base my comments on 35 years of participating in politics, seven years as a ministerial assistant (National Post, Nov. 6, 2010, p. A21).

This "silliness" has come to the fore again with Rod Bruinooge's private member's bill called Roxanne's Law. To give you the gist of the bill, here is an excerpt from a fact sheet put together by my colleague Andrea Mrozek of ProWomanProLife

1. What is Bill C-510?
Bill C-510 is a private member’s bill that aims to add coercing or attempting to coerce to have an abortion as an offense to the criminal code.

2. Why is it also called Roxanne’s Law?
Bill C-510 is named after Roxanne Fernando, a Manitoba woman whose boyfriend viciously beat her and left her in a snow bank to die because she would not have an abortion. She died in 2007 at age 24.

3. Why do we need this bill?
This bill offers support for women who want to keep a pregnancy to term in face of intimidation and violence. The bill also identifies threatening a pregnant woman as a unique form of intimidation, one we should expressly identify is wrong. Faye Sonier, legal counsel for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada explains in one media interview: “You could compare, for example, to the crime of assault. In the criminal code it’s broad; it includes all forms of assault. So one could easily ask why do we have a section dealing with assault with a weapon, or sexual assault or aggravated assault? It’s because the legislator and Canadians want to single out some crimes as being specifically worthy of condemnation. So for this case we want to make it clear that it is wrong to try and force a woman into aborting a child she wants to keep.”

4. Who brought it forward?
This bill was brought forward by Conservative Member of Parliament for Winnipeg South, Rod Bruinooge. He is also chair of the parliamentary pro-life caucus. Mr. Bruinooge does not have the support of Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Bill C-510.

5. What is a private member’s bill?
A private member’s bill is a piece of draft legislation brought forward by a Member of Parliament who is not a Minister of the Crown or a parliamentary secretary. The order in which they are debated is subject to a random lottery. Following introduction in the House of Commons, there are two hours of debate on two separate occasions and then a vote. If the vote passes, the bill progresses to the committee stage where it is studied and changes are suggested. Once through the committee stage, the bill returns to the House of Commons for a final vote. It is then introduced in the Senate.

6. What stage is Bill C-510 at?
It has just had its first hour of debate in the House of Commons on November 1, 2010. The second hour of debate will likely be December 6 or 7, followed by the Second Reading vote on December 8. If it passed on December 8, it would go to committee.

7. Is there precedence for Bill C-510?
Germany, Italy, France and 13 U.S. states have similar laws; e.g., in Texas, a 16-year-old pregnant girl obtained a restraining order against her parents, who were trying to force her into aborting her child. The girl’s mother had taken her to local abortion facilities, but the daughter refused to comply with the mother's wishes.

The Prime Minister of Canada, who deals fearlessly with all issues save one (abortion) has recommended that the Conservative caucus vote against this bill--a bill that does not address the appropriateness of abortion or threaten a woman's right to choose in any respect. It simply attempts to allow for real, uncoerced choice for pregnant women who have considered their options, made their choice, and now want to follow through on that choice without fear of reprisal.

Daniel Petit, Bruinooge's Conservative caucus colleague and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, chimed up from the government benches. Clearly his ~~lips~~ brushes are not far from the Prime Minister's ~~butt~~ shoes:

Bill C-510 proposes making an offence out of certain conduct that is already prohibited under the Criminal Code and other acts—again, already prohibited under the Criminal Code and other acts—by way of offences such as assault (section 265 of the Criminal Code), uttering threats (section 264.1 of the Criminal Code) and intimidation (section 423 of the Criminal Code). It also proposes prohibiting interpersonal conduct, which is generally outside the traditional domain of criminal law—again, outside criminal law—such as non-violent disputes between spouses or between parents and their children where one of the parties is opposed to the continuation of the pregnancy and favours abortion. I am talking about non-violent conduct and discussions between various parties.

The usual suspects from the opposition, Irene Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP), Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.) and Nicole Demers (Laval, BQ), among others, immediately pounced on the bill as a way of weakening a woman's right to choose rather than an honouring of choice. Here's a typical remark:

They can try to dress this bill up and manipulate people in all kinds of ways, but the fact is that it would restrict access to freedom of choice. (Demers). That this is utter nonsense does not stop these intrepid representatives of the people (except for the coerced pregnant women, of course) from ranting on like morons.

In contrast, consider the speech given by Ujjal Dosanjh, former NDP premier of British Columbia and federal Liberal Minister of Health, who mused that South Asian and other woman should not be allowed to practice gender-specific abortion of female fetuses because of a cultural preference for male babies. Not a word of objection emanated from the opposition benches. Bruinooge wants to buttress choice--he's savaged. Dosanjh suggests limiting choice--no problem.

....plus c'est la meme chose.

One kind of death culture is much like another

2010-11-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended the International Pro-Life Conference 2010 in Ottawa. Like all such gatherings, it seemed to this Protestant a little bit like Pope Benedict Bible Camp. All that was missing were Gregorian chants around the campfire.

I do wonder about the strategy of Campaign Life Canada to not only make the conference primarily a religious event, but to root it in one of the Christian denominations. One got a little weary of hearing about the twin evils of abortion and contraception.

But what really got up my nose (to use that old but still emotionally stirring analogy) was a speaker named Bill Saunders of Americans United for Life. He identified himself as a former Democrat who was driven from the party, I gather, because of its pro-choice ethos. He gave us his take on today's American elections and was elated because the move to the Republicans was great news from the pro-life perspective. His enthusiasm was matched by the audience, which applauded vigorously.

I didn't.

Every time I hear a Republican or a Tea Party member talk about the twin virtues of being pro-life and pro-gun I want to scream. I consider the NRA to be a truly evil organization. If somebody wants to own a .22 for target practice, or a gun for hunting (animals that is), my response is "It's not for me, but fill your boots." But the NRA moves to protect the most heinous of behaviours through their insistence that virtually any kind and number of guns is acceptable. In my view, they aid and abet widespread death in the United States.

Voting in the Republicans, who genuflect by and large before the NRA altar, means trading one culture of death for another.

Shame.

Times change--so do the heroes

2010-10-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Back in the mists of time--the latter half of the 1960s--the U.S. of A. was involved in a rather unpopular war (the Afghanistan of its time). The war in Vietnam led not only to many war dead, a major slump in the popularity of the Democratic president (Lyndon Baines Johnson), and the arrival in Canada of many draft dodgers (including one brother-in-law in my case), but also the breakout of protests on university campuses all over the U.S., Canada, and around the world. A popular chant of the students was "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

Many members of society despised what these students stood for. "My Country Right or Wrong" signs appeared as a counter protest. But unless things got really out of hand (e.g., somebody started burning down buildings or shooting guns), the protests were permitted.

I thought of these bygone days as I read about those Carleton University students having the police sicced on them by the university, and then charged with trespassing on their own campus. Their crime?--exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression in a well-traveled part of the campus instead of in a room where mushrooms grew on the walls.

I'll admit that I don't support the approach these pro-life students are taking, putting up graphic images of aborted fetuses. Abortion isn't wrong because it's ugly, and by now only the willfully ignorant (or certifiably idiotic) deny that unborn babies are human beings (personhood is the issue). I know that similar graphic images of bludgeoned blacks were used to fight for civil rights. But different times call for different measures.

But all of that is beside the point. Aside from the constitutional issues, these students were simply doing what we did back in the sixties--only we were heroes then, and the establishment was the enemy. Now we have the opposite. Bob Dylan will definitely have to re-write "The Times They are A'Changin'."

What has happened to our universities? They used to protect academic and personal freedom. Now they protect every special interest that might be offended. Are we the better for it?

I've looked at life from both sides now.....

2010-10-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Doubtless Canadian songwriter/singer Joni Mitchell (yes, my American reader, Canadian) was not thinking of the abortion issue when she wrote and recorded her sad but lovely little song Both Sides Now.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose and still somehow,
It's life's illusions I recall.
I really don't know life, at all.

But it kept running through my mind as I read articles from the past few weeks regarding that poor, vulnerable little human we call the embryo or unborn baby.

First, the not so lofty as it once was but still significant Nobel Prize:

Father of in-vitro fertilization wins Nobel Prize
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — British biologist Robert G. Edwards, whose contributions to the technology of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) have made more than 4 million couples parents, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Working with Dr. Patrick Steptoe, Edwards, now 85, developed techniques for removing mature eggs from a woman's ovaries, fertilizing them in test tubes and inducing them to begin dividing before implanting them back in the mother.

Their efforts yielded the July 25, 1978, birth of Louise Brown, the first "test-tube baby," demonstrating both the success and the safety of the technique and bringing hope to infertile people around the world. An estimated 10 percent of couples are unable to conceive naturally.

The Vatican's top bioethics official said Monday that Edwards opened "a new and important chapter in the field of human reproduction" but also is responsible for the destruction of embryos and the creation of a "market" in donor eggs.

Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the newly appointed head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said Edwards' research didn't treat the underlying problem of infertility but skirted it.

"Without Edwards, there wouldn't be freezers full of embryos waiting to be transferred in utero or, more likely, be used for research or to die, abandoned and forgotten by all," said Carrasco, saying that was his opinion, not a Vatican statement.

Second, the tussle between a surrogate mother and her employing couple over the child being carried (or not) to term:

Couple urged surrogate mother to abort fetus because of defect

National Post Staff October 6, 2010
By Tom Blackwell

When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.

Under the agreement the trio signed, the surrogate’s choice would mean absolving the couple of any responsibility for raising the child, the treating doctor told a recent fertility-medicine conference.

Dr. Ken Seethram, revealing the unusual situation for the first time, said it raises questions about whether government oversight of contracts between mothers and “commissioning” parents is needed.

A bioethicist who has studied the issue extensively argues that contract law should not apply to the transaction, unless human life is to be treated like widgets in a factory.

“Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” said Juliet Guichon of the University of Calgary. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”

Dr. Seethram’s presentation to the Canadian Society of Fertility and Andrology conference suggested the accord signed by the three in B.C. may have undermined the surrogate’s right to make decisions in a “non-coercive” environment.

The surrogate, a mother of two children of her own, eventually chose to have the abortion, partly because of her own family obligations.

Third, I want to note stories associated with a private member's bill presently before the Canadian House of Commons. Bill C-510 was introduced by MP Rod Bruinooge of Winnipeg as a result of the murder of a pregnant Winnipeg woman after she refused to have an abortion. Mr. Bruinooge became aware of cases in which women were pressured into having abortions, and decided that something should be done about it.

Bill C-510 would make it a crime to coerce a woman to have an abortion by assaulting her or someone else, by committing or threatening to commit an offence against a federal or provincial statute, by denying or threatening to deny her financial support, or "by pressure or intimidation including argumentative and rancorous badgering or importunity."

Consider the response of Mr. Bruinooge's boss, the Prime Minister of Canada:

Harper to 'recommend' defeat of Tory MP’s abortion bill
David Akin, Canwest News Service
Jana Chytilova, Canwest News Service

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper will vote against a private member's bill promoted by one of his own MPs that would add new Criminal Code penalties for those who coerce women to have an abortion.

A senior government official also says that while the prime minister will not "whip" or demand Conservative MPs vote as he votes, it will be "very strongly recommended" that Conservatives vote to defeat the bill.

Next we have the response of a writer in Catholic Insight:

Why, as a Catholic, I cannot support Bill C-510
By Geoffrey F. Cauchi, LL.B.
Issue: October 2010

“[A] well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine.”

Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, DOCTRINAL NOTE on some questions regarding The Participation of Catholics in Political Life (2002), II, 4. (the “Doctrinal Note 2002”)

On April 14, 2010, Member of Paliament Rod Bruinooge (MP-Winnipeg-South) introduced in the Canadian federal House of Commons a bill that would make it a criminal offence for anyone to coerce a woman to abort her unborn child.

Bill C-510, also known as 'Roxanne's Law,' is named in memory of a pregnant Winnipeg woman who was murdered by her boyfriend after she refused to have an abortion. Working as the chair of the multi-party Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus (the “PPLC”), Bruinooge said he became aware of several cases where young pregnant women had been coerced into having abortions, and hoped making it a crime would curb such instances.

There is no question that the goal of the Bill is laudable. However, the Catholic Church has always taught that “a good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbour) does not make behaviour that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just.” “It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object....One may not do evil so that good may result from it.” (Catechism, #1753 - #1756).

According to Catholic teaching, if a proposed Bill is an intrinsically unjust law, it cannot, in good conscience, be publicly supported by Catholics who are faithful to the Magisterium.

It is arguable that the text of the Bill satisfies ALL of the Church’s criteria for an “intrinsically unjust” law, but there can be no doubt that its qualifications and exemptions:

(a) “contradict the fundamental contents of faith and morals;”
(b) admit in principle the liceity of a person’s formal cooperation in the performance of an abortion, and therefore the liceity of abortion itself;
(c) purport to assign to an unborn child’s mother the right to decide whether or not to terminate the life of her child; and
(d) deny to a category of unborn children (the unborn children of women who have not been coerced into an abortion, but rather merely “persuaded” to have an abortion) the protections of the civil law extended to other human beings.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have bloggers such as Sister Sage's Musings saying this:

Does anyone remember this Supreme Court case from 1989: Tremblay v Daigle? This was a landmark decision that basically says that a fetus is not legally a person in either Canadian Common law or Quebec Civil laws. I also believe that if Bill 510 were to pass, the decision of Tremblay v Daigle could end up being moot in the long run and certainly a prelude to a dangerous precedent.

Or this from the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada:

Pro-Choice Group Calls for Law Banning Coerced Childbirth
NATIONAL – A bill recently introduced by a Conservative MP to criminalize “coercing” a woman into abortion should be scuttled in favour of a bill prohibiting the much more common practice of coercing a woman into childbirth, says the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), a national pro-choice group.

“It’s wrong to pressure women into an abortion, but this does not occur on the grand scale often claimed by anti-choice propagandists. It mostly stems from situations of domestic abuse,” said Joyce Arthur, Coordinator of ARCC. Arthur pointed to a recent U.S. study that examined reproductive control of women by abusive male partners.

“Some were pressured to have an abortion, but women also reported that their partners prevented them from obtaining or using birth control, threatened them with pregnancy, or forced unprotected sex on them. If they became pregnant and wanted an abortion, some partners threatened or pressured them to carry to term.”

OK, what to make of all this? In the first case, involving in-vitro fertilization, we have the Vatican in high dudgeon over the awarding of the Nobel prize because while the process honours the desire of couples to have babies (a typical pro-life perspective) it does so at the cost of unused embryos being discarded.

This same issue of embryo as commodity comes up in the surrogate mother case. But here the concern for the misuse of embryos is coming not from the Vatican but rather from a bioethicist, a person one might expect to be lodged in the pro-choice camp.

[In a live discussion regarding surrogate mothers, abortion, etc., the ethicist in question, Dr. Juliet Guichon said, "A carrying woman is like any other woman. She can decide what happens to her body", the legal reality in our pro-choice country.]

Talk about strange bedfellows! But it gets more complex. In the Bruinooge controversy, we have Catholics divided on whether his bill should be supported, with one spokesperson saying that it should not be because the bill does not go far enough (whereas Priests for Life supports it).

But this Catholic pro-life purist finds support for his opposition, as it were, from some of the Canada's foremost pro-choice advocates such as Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition. She and other pro-abortionists see the Prime Minister's invisible hand in this, while that self-same first minister is urging his Conservative colleagues to vote against the bill.

But Dr. Seethram, a person I'm guessing would be in the pro-choice camp (I've never heard him say that he is, I hasten to add), does believe that the abortion decision should be made in a non-coercive environment.

Curiouser and curiouser.

In case anyone had doubt about the significance of personhood

2010-10-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Remember when we used to debate when life began. That debate is over. All the "it's only a bunch of cells" silliness to the contrary, virtually everyone agrees that life--heck, even human life--begins at conception. The issue is not life, not humanity, but personhood.

If there was any doubt, consider the article that follows, written by a philosophy professor at formerly Roman Catholic St. Mary's University in Halifax, and published in the Ottawa Citizen. Emphasized portions are not those of the author, but simply my way of drawing your attention to major points of Prof. Mercer's argument.

"The overall point is that abortion is not in any degree a morally fraught option. A woman considering whether to have an abortion or, instead, to raise a child is making a practical decision, not a moral one. This is what we who are pro-choice have to make more widely known....from an ethical perspective, there is nothing at all to say against ending an unwanted pregnancy."

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/fetus+person/2979302/story.html

A fetus is not a person
By Mark Mercer, Citizen Special
May 3, 2010

Those of us concerned that abortion should be legal, safe, and easy to obtain, both in Canada and around the world, need to set aside talk of a woman's right to choose, at least for a moment. Women's reproductive freedom is today under threat, and that's partially because talk of choice seems irrelevant in face of the fact abortion involves killing human fetuses.

Opponents of abortion insist that an individual's right to do with her body what she wants doesn't include or imply a right to do to other people's bodies what she wants. And they are right, it doesn't.

For that reason, if we are going to show that abortion should remain a private matter, of no interest to the law, we have to address directly the question of killing human fetuses. The point we must make is that killing a human fetus is not killing a person. The reasons a woman might have for seeking an abortion cannot be outweighed by the fetus's right to life, for, not being a person, the fetus has no such right.

Debates about abortion are often misconceived as debates about when human life begins or whether the fetus is human. Let's remove these misconceptions right away.

The question when human life begins gains no purchase because nowhere in the process of reproduction does anything non-living come to life. The egg is alive, the sperm is alive, and, should the sperm fertilize the egg, the zygote is alive. At conception comes a new human being.

Abortion, then, involves the killing of a human being. But that abortion involves the deliberate killing of a human being is no reason for abortion to be illegal. Nor should one be morally troubled by it.

To kill a reader of this newspaper would be to kill a creature richly aware of its environment and full of beliefs and desires, including the desire to continue living. To kill him or her would be to kill a self-conscious creature. Thus, to kill a reader of this paper would be to destroy a self-aware locus of experience, one, moreover, that prefers not to die.

That is why only extremely strong, ethically sound reasons could justify killing a reader of this paper. Absent such reasons, we're enjoined to let her live.

A human fetus, on the other hand, though human, has only a rudimentary awareness of its environment and lacks self consciousness entirely. It has no interest in living, for it can have no interests at all.

Because a fetus is not a person, killing a fetus is not killing a person. That established, now comes the time to speak of a woman's right to choose. A pregnant woman is a person, and because easy access to abortion helps her to live her life as she wishes, we as a society should make sure abortion is easily available to women generally.

Now it is true that each human fetus is potentially a person, in that, most likely, in the fullness of time, any particular fetus will become a person. But this is an argument against abortion only if it is better to have that particular future person walking around than it is to respect a here-and-now person's autonomy.

The overall point is that abortion is not in any degree a morally fraught option. A woman considering whether to have an abortion or, instead, to raise a child is making a practical decision, not a moral one. This is what we who are pro-choice have to make more widely known.

Certainly, people who don't want to raise a child should practice contraception, but that's because abortion is a surgical procedure and surgical procedures are risky and consume time, money, and emotion. But from an ethical perspective, there is nothing at all to say against ending an unwanted pregnancy.

Mark Mercer is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Saint Mary's University.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Middle ground or sinking sand

2010-10-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

Some months back a gentleman named Jonathan Merritt wrote a column in The Huffington Post entitled "Common Ground on Abortion, Finally." I had not heard of Merritt, but in looking up his background found him to be a fairly impressive spokesperson in the Excited States to the south of us here in the Great White North.

Jonathan Merritt is a faith and culture writer and author of Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet. He has published over 100 articles in respected national outlets such as USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newsweek’s “On Faith” and Relevant magazine. As a respected voice for people of faith, he has been interviewed by ABC World News, NPR, PBS’ Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, UK Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post. He's also a graduate of a Baptist seminary, in case you were wondering.

A brief selection of excerpts should give you the gist of his article:

1. Perhaps no social or political issue produces more anger, more animosity and more anguish [than abortion]. Just utter the word "abortion" in mixed company and see if it doesn't ignite fiery arguments without warning. Today, about 42 percent of Americans call themselves "pro-choice" and 51 percent call themselves "pro-life." It is an ideological stalemate.

2. Surprisingly, there are many commonalities on abortion among Americans. According to a 2009 Gallup poll, even though most Americans soundly reject the idea of overturning Roe v. Wade, a whopping 71 percent of Americans support some form of limits on abortion. And according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 66 percent of Americans support finding "a middle ground on abortion laws."

3. [P]ro-life Christians and pro-choice political progressives have struck a partnership. Their goal is to reduce the need for and occurrences of abortions in America, and their strategy includes providing additional aid for expectant mothers, increased access to contraception for low-income women and greater incentives for adoption.

4. Some all-or-nothing advocates from both the right and left have responded with disdain. The founder of the Pro-Life Action League called abortion reduction a "sell out" and Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee called it the "burial ground" for the pro-life movement. Progressive writer Frank Clarkston claimed that the movement is rooted in "anti-abortion tactics" while Sarah Posner wrote in The American Prospect that it's "incrementalism masquerading as progressivism."

5. [M]ost Americans support an abortion reduction agenda. According to a recent poll by Public Religion Research, 83 percent of all voters agreed that "elected leaders on both sides of the abortion debate should work together to find ways to reduce the number of abortions by enacting policies that help prevent unintended pregnancies, expand adoption and increase economic support for women who wish to carry their pregnancies to term." The poll found similar percentages among "pro-life" voters, white evangelicals and Catholics.

Merritt is not alone in such thinking. A group I tremendously admire, the Feminists for Life, take a similar stance. Consider this excerpt from The American Feminist, Summer/Fall 2004, p. 32:

For too long we have screamed at one another. “What about the
women?” “What about the baby?” That gets us nowhere. We need
progressive solutions that challenge the status quo. We need to listen
to the needs of women. Where are the family housing, the childcare,
and the maternity coverage? Why can’t a woman telecommute
to school or work? Why can’t she job share? Why doesn’t she make a
living wage?

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s own research
arm, has given us our task list—the long list of reasons that women
have abortions. These can be divided into two basic categories: lack
of financial resources and lack of emotional support. We can redirect
the abortion debate and work together addressing the root causes of
abortion with women-centered solutions.

Since 1996, Feminists for Life has been focused on serving pregnant
and parenting collegians.

Pro-lifers and pro-choicers come together and work to address the
unmet needs of women through Pregnancy Resource Forums.

Many people I know in the pro-life movement here in Canada would decry this view. They would see the need to condemn the decision to abort at all on moral grounds and view any other thrust, such as abortion reduction, as irrelevant at best and a complete abandonment of the cause at worst.

I'll be frank with these brothers and sisters of mine--your moralizing approach is allowing more unborn babies to die than you save. The majority of women who consider abortions--and I get this from all sides--do it for someone else or out of a sense that there is no option. Work on this and the abortion rate will plunge like an anchor.

Am I oblivious to the moral issue? Of course not. I believe in the sacredness and dignity of life from conception. That is why I am committed to social justice. But even the sage who wrote the book of Proverbs recognized that morality came much easier when temptation was removed:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God (Proverbs 30:8-9).

Perhaps that is why even our Lord prayed, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

Personhood

2010-09-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

As my regular reader knows, I am a public school board trustee (and have been since 1983 which is either admirable or obsessive, I'm not sure which). In that time I have visited many schools and classrooms, evaluated numerous programmes for students, and listened to countless delegations from parents and advocacy groups. I've read peer-reviewed and popular articles, interpreted the results of surveys, attended professional development sessions, and been advised by top-flight professional educators.

What all of this boils down to is simple. No matter how difficult the challenge or the expense of meeting it, or the disruption it causes to others, every child deserves full and equal opportunity to be all that they were meant to be.

Is there anyone reading this who disagrees? Hands up? That's what I thought. No matter how big or small, whether "red or yellow or black or white" (to quote the politically incorrect old song), male or female (or both or neither for that matter), verbal or non-verbal, at whichever end of the bell curve, possessing however many of the seven intelligences from zero to eight (allowing for the unrecognized ones), regardless of the social station of the family, a child is a deserving child by definition.

It wasn't always this way, of course. There was a time when society considered only some children to be deserving of the best education, with others not really needing any at all. Think of the opening scene of the marvellous movie The Miracle Worker where non-verbal, deaf and blind Helen Keller (played by academy award winner Patty Duke) goes from person to person at the dinner table, taking food from their plates to eat with her hands. No one could imagine that she should be educated save for her parents and Anne Sullivan (Anne Bancroft).

As a society we place a high value on personhood, and in our egalitarian way of thinking, would not rob any person of the fullness that life has to offer them. Personhood is a treasure above all others. Nothing compares in significance to it. It is the terminus a quo (starting point) and terminus ad quem (end point) of every discussion of human worth.

Think of the individuals and groups who have been denied full personhood, not just in horrific societies created by people like Hitler (Jews, gypsies and homosexuals), but even here in North America (Indians as we called them, women and girls, blacks, Chinese, and so on). It seems incredible that only in 1971 did women receive the right to vote in Switzerland. Further afield, women in Bhutan were so empowered only in 2008. While Canadian women were allowed to vote in 1917, Chinese Canadians, even those who had fought for Canada in World War II, did not receive this right until 1947. First Nations people had to wait until 1960.

We shake our heads in wonder at such bias, such hatred, such injustice. Why? Because we feel that these persons already had such rights by definition. The government's job was not to deem them worthy, but rather to recognize what they already deserved morally, and stop blocking them from their rightful place in society.

The question for me is this: does the government confer personhood or recognize it? In other words, is a person only a person when a legislative body deems them so, or is every living being a person on moral merit, whether society and the government have yet recognized it or not?

The future of abortion and euthanasia hang on the answer to this question. We give Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada because government deems the unborn baby to be a non-person (and therefore unprotected by the human right to security of the person), and we put Robert Latimer in jail because he is seen to have killed a helpless person.

Needless to say, I recognize the personhood of the unborn baby (and the comatose dying senior for that matter) on the moral principle of the sanctity of life from conception. This is not simply an academic exercise for me. My wife and I have experienced a problem pregnancy. And I have had to deal (along with my siblings) with what to do about my dying father as the doctor asked us to consider "pulling the plug," as it were.

What difference would it make if the government (this won't happen under the leadership of the feckless Prime Minister Harper) were to accept my moral principle and to extent personhood and the rights that go with it to unborn children?

Before someone throws out the red herring of the reappearance of (mostly mythical) back-alley butcherings, the obvious things would be the birth of many more native-born Canadians (right now there are 30 abortions for every 100 live births in Canada), some women re-arranging their plans (and some men as well), many more females born in cultures where male babies are preferred, as well as more babies with physical and mental challenges (e.g. 80-90% of fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted presently). Other examples readily come to mind.

What impact would this have on Canadian society? I think that the modern classroom contains most of the answers. As we have integrated into regular classrooms more and more children with challenges to being educated in the typical fashion, we have had to pass more educational policies, increase educational funding, provide help to the classroom teacher, and generally balance the rights of all members of the class so that all persons present benefit but with no one, perhaps, benefiting as much as they could if everyone in the class were "mainstream" students (as was the case during my boyhood).

Would anyone say that this is too much bother? Too expensive? Indefensible? Well, to be truthful some do, but most don't. They feel that the moral principle of personhood trumps the other concerns, and accept the necessity of cost, and the frustration of balancing rights.

We have not yet extended this same way of thinking to the abortion issue. I find this unacceptable because my principles are moral, not economic or political. My understanding of my faith (and as a Protestant I'm not obliged to hold this as are people from other faith arenas) is that life is sacred. That is why I hold to neither abortion nor capital punishment. That is why I don't think of the abortion question as primarily a political one, any more than did those thousands of church leaders in the nineteenth century who waged holy war with the government over the slavery issue.

I'm with Robert Fulghum, author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. As he put it, "Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living."

Amen and amen.

Rights vs. power

2010-09-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

My blog-friend and sparring partner Suzanne (Big Blue Wave) made the following comment in response to my post on woman as life-giver:

John

No matter how you square it, men have power, and women have less because of their childbearing function. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just the way it is. Men and women will never have equal power. But God was never really big on insisting on equal power. God tends to love those who are less powerful.

I don't disagree that in our current cultural climate that childbearing and child-rearing can have an impact on a person's ability to influence certain kinds of events. But I hadn't equated rights and power. While they are related, the measure of one isn't necessarily dependent upon the exercise of the other.

What do I mean? First of all, some definitions. Here's a common one for human rights: "The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law" (West's Encyclopedia of American Law).

A longer one from BusinessDictionary.com: "Fundamental rights which humans have by the fact of being human, and which are neither created nor can be abrogated by any government. Supported by several international conventions and treaties (such as the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human rights in 1948), these include cultural, economic, and political rights, such as right to life, liberty, education and equality before law, and right of association, belief, free speech, information, religion, movement, and nationality. Promulgation of these rights is not binding on any country, but they serve as a standard of concern for people and form the basis of many modern national constitutions. [They] were defined first by the UK philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) as absolute moral claims or entitlements to life, liberty, and property..."

Finally, from that magnificent document the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, this excerpt pertaining to motherhood:
1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Whether based on religious convictions or some other moral basis, such rights are seen as ours simply on the basis that we are humans (Jews and Christians might add "...humans made in the image of God").

These rights are ours. Morally, nothing can take them away from us. In liberal democracies it would politically unthinkable (and political suicide) to consider any significant diminution of them. Those among my southern neighbours who want to deny the erection of the mosque near Ground Zero (however ill-advised such a move would be from a human relations point of view) don't understand what they are demanding--an arbitrary limitation placed upon the fundamental human right of freedom of religion. It would be no different morally than taking away their right to vote, slapping them in irons, and sending them out to the fields to break rocks.

Obviously, having such inalienable rights should carry with it access to certain kinds of power. But first of all, let me define power. Here are some excerpts from Dictionary.com:

1. ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something.
2. great or marked ability to do or act; strength; might; force.
3. the possession of control or command over others; authority; ascendancy: power over men's minds.
4. legal ability, capacity, or authority: the power of attorney.
5. delegated authority; authority granted to a person or persons in a particular office or capacity.

Let's explore this further. Power takes several forms. First is "position power" which has nothing to do with competence and everything to do with an office or position one holds. One has access to position power by virtue of being, as it were, the boss. Whether this person can actually wield any meaningful influence in the long run, however, depends upon other kinds of power.

The first of these is the power of competence. I am more likely to be motivated to readily obey a person who has proven expertise. I can be confident that I will not get into any personal trouble, and in fact will be part of a successful venture, by working with a person who knows what they're doing. In fact, someone with competence power may have considerable influence without a formal position.

Another high form of influence is personality power. People are attracted to others with certain traits or behaviours. People of character often have influence far beyond any formal position they might hold.

Thirdly, and this is a long-time management professor and consultant talking here, one's influence (or ability to wield power effectively) is greatly enhanced if one learns to delegate appropriate amounts of authority and responsibility to people closest to the situation with which the organization is dealing. Empowering others increases one's own power in terms of the results gained by the unit, department, team, etc. that one is in charge of.

One can't ignore three final sources of power: brute strength, the willingness to flout the law and hope to get away with it, and societal sanction.

Now, how would I relate human rights and power as challenged by Suzanne?

First of all, one can decide to forgo the power associated with a human right by not exercising it. I have been a municipal politician since 1983 and have seldom seen the participation of eligible voters in our city to rise above 30%. I have spoken to more than one young woman who quit their jobs because of sexual harassment. They just didn't want to go through the ordeal of appearing before a human rights tribunal to prove their case.

Secondly, one can can have the power that adheres to a right taken away illegally. People face all kinds of discrimination that are illegal but often very difficult to prove; e.g. discrimination based on age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and motherhood. When such are uncovered, the ramifications can be significant. Just ask Denny's and Shoney's, two restaurant chains that paid heavily for racial discrimination in the 1990s.

Thirdly, one can be denied access to position power for a number of good reasons (e.g., not willing to move, track record, lack of necessary education or expertise) or bad reasons (e.g., assumptions about women--too emotional, race--too lazy, age--too old or too young).The first are quite legal and defensible; the latter are not.

Then there is the interpretation of the extent or scope of the right. For instance, I noted the statement on motherhood and childhood in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some would argue (I among them) that this would include the provision of generous maternity leaves and so-called "mommy tracks" (Wikipedia: Women are discriminated against for choosing to have children and society should force private enterprises to make allowances for childbearing. These typically include job protection, wage protection, child care, time off for birthing and pregnancy, and increased medical coverage). Life-giving should be honoured and protected, not treated like a disease.

But society allows for another understanding of this issue that up to now has been deemed acceptable in law: Having children is a lifestyle choice as birth control and family planning are fully controllable by individuals. Nor should businesses be forced to pay wages and salaries to those that haven't earned them by putting forth the time and effort that others have done. Also, such desired benefits are an undue burden on companies with insufficient revenue to fully implement them, nor is it prudent for gender politics to be legislated to benefit the whims of a small, but vocal, lobbying group (Wikipedia).

Alright, to summarize, women (pregnant, child-rearing or otherwise), can have every bit as much power of competence and power of personality as anyone else. And as we know, these are highly effective forms of influence. Their access to position power continues to improve, although social sanction does permit pregnancies and child-rearing to be a major stumbling block to moving ahead in one's career. See this excerpt from The Washington Post as an example:

Why unpaid maternity leave isn't enough

By Sharon Lerner
Sunday, June 13, 2010

When it comes to paid maternity leave, the United States is in the postpartum dark ages.

One hundred and seventy-seven nations -- including Djibouti, Haiti and Afghanistan -- have laws on the books requiring that all women, and in some cases men, receive both income and job-protected time off after the birth of a child. But here, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 provides only unpaid leave, and most working mothers don't get to stay home with their newborns for the 12 weeks allowed by the law. Many aren't covered by the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act); others can't afford to take unpaid time off. Some go back to work a few weeks after giving birth, and some go back after mere days.

So social sanction still limits women, and many women's groups are taking full aim at this, as they should. Illegal activities still play a role as well.

Suzanne is right in one sense when she says that men have more power than women. Is this a comment on their rights, however, or on the perverseness of some men, and some societies, to engage in unsavoury and illegal means of taking the power inherent in their rights from them? I say the latter. There is nothing in the theory of moral rights that suggests that women have fewer rights, even when they are bearing or raising children. It is the barriers to women's full exercise of their equal rights that we should be eliminating, not the unborn babies. Until the feminists get this, women will not progress as they should.

We have to quit meeting like this....seldom or never!

2010-09-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

I like to do my postings in multiples of five; i.e., every five weeks or even five months. My goodness, one does get distracted. I know that I promised to say something about Ann Coulter, but that dubious character's many charms (logical and balanced reasoning, unfortunately, not being among them) were no match for selling our condo, purchasing and extensively renovating our new townhome, and entertaining company nonstop all summer.

But here I am, back at the old stand after once again taking a hiatus of considerable length. I really must get back to a schedule of frequent postings. Otherwise, I'm risking the loss of my reader.

I have much on my mind, but I'll start with this. I have been thinking for some time about the view of most modern secular feminists that women's rights are somehow subordinate to men's rights if women do not have full and convenient access to abortion services (often disguised with such ironic phrases as "maternal health"). I have emailed large numbers of Christian women in leadership capacities in the church and educational institutions about this matter, and have heard back from nary a one. Either I am too off-putting to correspond with, or else they consider the subject either too obvious or too baffling to address.

What is a poor oblivious male to do?

Well here's one sorry effort on my behalf. I preached at our church recently and shameless inserted into the sermon a reference to childbearing, which had little to do with the topic at hand. I went even further and suggested that the ability to give birth to children gave women more rights than men could ever have. I followed up with a question and answer session about the sermon, and no one in that sanctuary full of females brought it up.

So I'll try it here. I'm going to reproduce the first half of the sermon with the reference to having children, and ask you to comment via the little survey I'll post right alongside.

Don't let me down.

Okay, here goes. I've italicized the relevant portion.

The Gospel as Simply as I Can Preach It

I was a guest last month at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. In the men's washroom, of all places, I found a familiar booklet printed by Chick Publications. I say familiar because these dubious little booklets have circulated for decades, although it had been many years since I had last seen one.

This particular issue is entitled “This Was Your Life.” Someone had hand-written 'Free' on it, although given that it was situated on the toilet tank, I was pretty sure it wasn't for sale. It depicts a middle-aged man, successful and wealthy, a pipe-smoker with drink in hand, stricken by a heart attack and now dead and buried. His spirit is bidden to rise from the grave by the angel of death who shows him what a sinful life of self-indulgence, carnality, and indifference to spiritual realities he had led. He is then handed over to a demon to enjoy the Devil's gentle ministrations for eternity.

Having now hopefully scared the you-know-what out of the reader, the tract goes on to offer a similar man the chance to make a better choice. This gentleman confesses his sins, receives Christ as Saviour, asks God to reveal his will, prays before meals, reads bible stories to his children, visits the sick, puts money in the offering, shares from the Bible with others, and becomes a champion employee. He too has a heart attack and dies, but is received directly into heaven.

The booklet ends with a prayer for you to recite to become a Christian yourself, and encourages you to, among other things, read the Bible in the KJV every day.

And that, in three short paragraphs, is the Gospel according to St. Chick.

It was Einstein who said that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." I have entitled this meditation The Gospel as Simply as I Can Preach It.” As that will take me the twenty or so minutes that remain, I will never be asked to become a writer for Chick Publications, a lost opportunity that I will endure stoically.

Now to be completely candid, I was raised in a church whose depiction of God's good news was little different from what I quoted above from Chick. Perhaps your experience was the same. And I did, in God's grace, decide that I wanted to be a follower of Christ and a child of God at a relatively young age, although a broader understanding of what all of that actually meant did not follow for many years. I do not mean to disparage, in any way, the small slice of the Gospel that the booklet represents.

But it is narrow and disproportionate. Its depiction of the Christian life, the Christian mind, the nature and will of God, life's purpose and priorities, and the joy and challenge, and sometimes heartache—even heartbreak—of Christian experience is barely touched. It's a gospel of bones with little meat. And a good number of the bones are missing as well. Not to mention much of the brain and heart.

Well, where do we start? As the Apostle Paul and the other early disciples set Asia and Europe ablaze with the good news, they had only the Old Testament as their Scripture. So for me, it's back to the beginning, the Garden of Eden.

I understand this story, and many of the others in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, as theological parable or metaphor, not history. Whether you agree or disagree with me on historical matters, the theology is the same. So let's skip the arguing over minor details and get to what God wanted us to learn from the story.

Humankind is depicted in an idyllic state where she and he (Eve and Adam) are to steward the perfect creation handed to them by God. Work was to be as normal for our ancestors as it was for God. God is depicted throughout the Scriptures as a working Deity, and humankind was to be no different.

'Idyllic' didn't mean that there was little or nothing to do. It meant that humanity could realize all that we were created to be in an environment of full equality, peace, justice, love, joy, mutuality, respect and self-respect, challenge and creativity in full partnership with the Triune God, Him and Herself. This, I believe, is what heaven will be like.

It was only after the fall from grace, when Adam and Eve gave up their idyllic experience through trying to improve upon God's will, that economic scarcity entered the scene, and that work became a monotonous drudgery, with notions of equality and respect for others set aside in favour of exploitation, prejudice, greed and self-indulgence, murder, and so on.

While male and female were equal in Eden, and both were charged with stewarding the earth through pleasant and creative work, the woman was given an additional privilege that made her, in one glorious sense, even more like her Creator than man could ever be. She was made Life-giver!! Only the woman would participate in adding to God's perfect but incomplete Creation through the miracle of new birth. There is no better picture of this than the story of Mary, mother of Jesus, when apprised of her coming pregnancy by the angel Gabriel. You can read each thrilling word at your leisure in the Gospel according to Luke chapter one.

Do not underestimate the importance of this in God's eyes. St. Paul, the champion of female worth and equality in the New Testament, alludes to this special status for women in his rather obscure reference in 1 Timothy 2:15: “But women will be saved through childbearing.” I don't believe that this means that bearing children guarantees a spot in heaven. It is also obvious that it doesn't assure women that having babies will be a breeze or that every woman will make it through the event unscathed. So what does it mean?

In other of his writings, St. Paul tells us to “work out our salvation.” He means that salvation is both an experience of choosing to become a child of God, and then living for God by doing the kinds of things that God has empowered us to do in full partnership with himself and his people. Paul often describes women as having full equality with men in the reception of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and in the exercise of those gifts in even the most senior leadership positions. But as an additional act of the greatest honour, woman continues to partner with God as Life-giver.

Marvelous!

This indescribable privilege was also marred as human imperfection and disobedience to God replaced the perfect state. God noted, with incredible regret I have no doubt, that the inevitable consequence of Eve’s choice would lead to this:

"I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master." There goes perfect equality with her husband as a spouse, and joyous partnership with God as a mother, in one fell swoop.

We have since seen a history of men suppressing and exploiting women while hogging all the top positions, whether in the family, the church, or in society generally. Most modern feminists have bought this nonsense that the man's life is somehow the superior one, and that life-giving is an unfortunate side effect of being female that must be controlled by having full access to abortion, in order to have full and equal rights with men. My goodness, in God’s perfect world they have more rights.

How can so much nonsense happen in one month?

2010-03-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

The proprietor of this space apologizes for his prolonged absence from The Blog. He has been lumbered with the Olympics (of blessed memory), trips to the far reaches of Ontario, numerous guests, reduction to one car as the normally reliable Camry remains in intensive care, wrestling with serious school district issues, and trying to maintain his new sylphlike figure after losing 25 pounds (I had to get that last item in somehow).

And look at what has happened during this five weeks of enforced silence! Canada, a country of which I feel privileged to be a citizen, seems to have plumbed new depths of nonsense. I'll go further. Nonsense is irritating but normally harmless. Some of these happenings to which I am alluding are downright harmful.

First the chattering baboons we sometimes call Members of Parliament, and even more ironically, Honourable. Here is an utterance from several female M.P.s (one of them a medical doctor if you can believe it) about a government plan to urge the G8 countries to combat maternal health issues:

While immunization, access to clean water, better nutrition and improved training for health-care workers are all important to the health and safety of women and girls, addressing the real issues underlying poor maternal and infant health requires that the full gamut of options be made available to promote educated family planning and gender equality. Anything less is a mere band-aid solution.

We have in our little city a marvelous fundraiser called Run for Water, begun by a former student of mine named Ken Baerg. Its purpose is to ensure access to clean water in Ethiopia. Their website includes this observation:

By competing in the Run For Water you are helping villages in Ethiopia acquire the clean drinking water they need. Roughly 80% of Ethiopians require improved drinking water facilities, and Run For Water is partnering with an experienced development agency to contribute to that need.

Lack of clean drinking water is an enormous problem in the less developed world. It is a major contributor to serious health problems and even death. As noted above, in Ethiopia alone, eight out of every ten citizens are affected by it. But to those honourable ideologues of ours in Ottawa, addressing the issue is a mere band-aid solution compared to that problem beyond every problem--the provision of abortions.

Are these women out of their minds? Probably not, but they are obsessed. Beyond this, they can't seem to think of women anywhere else in the world outside of a Canadian context.

Imagine approaching a pregnant African woman with three living children (the fourth, fifth and sixth having died in infancy), all with distended bellies, bad drinking water, poor nutrition, and no one trained to help them, and saying to them, "Look, we could deal with all of these illnesses and untimely deaths by addressing your water and nutrition needs, your various diseases, the absence of good medical care and so on. But heck, these are mere band-aids. What you really need to do is to abort that child (oops! fetal material) you are carrying. So here's a coupon to get you into the new abortion clinic we built in the nearest city. And by the way, we affirm you as a full and equal sister."

The fact that a) the woman probably wants the child, b) this coupon does nothing for her existing children's unhealthy state or her own, c) there is no one trained to look after her when she returns (probably on foot for many kilometers) to her village, and d) she won't even be able to safely slake her thirst after her many days' walk, is nothing compared to the inestimable privilege of a safe abortion.

These women give pro-choice a bad name.

Related to this is the strange leadership being given to this nonsense by the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Dr. Ignatieff.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he will not abandon his fight to include reproductive rights in any Canadian-inspired G8 initiative to improve the health of mothers and their babies in the world’s poorest countries (Globe and Mail, March 24/10).

The reason that he has to fight is that his motion to include, in the government's plan for maternal health, the provisions for abortion discussed above was defeated in the Canadian House of Commons, despite the fact the government is in a minority position and the rest of the parties in the House supported his motion. Regrettably for Ignatieff, sixteen of his own Liberal M.P.s either skipped the vote or supported the government, thus ensuring that the motion would fail.

The once dominant Liberal party has suffered under three consecutive flawed leaders--first Paul Martin, then the hapless Stephane Dion, and now Ignatieff. Their last successful prime minister, Jean Chretien, remained in power through a combination of a splintered and largely ineffective opposition, and by doing little except allowing an improved world economy to solve his budget deficit problems. It has been a long, long time since the Liberals have had genuinely inspired leadership.

Given the mixed performance by the robotic Prime Minister Harper and his band of merry sycophants, Canada needs a strong alternative to ensure that the government's feet will always be kept near the fire. This is becoming less and less likely. The Conservatives have done little to address the issues that lead Canadian women to choose to abort. They are really no improvement over the Liberals in this regard. Yet they may have open season for years to come if the Liberals do not get their act together.

But Ignatieff does not appear to be the person to accomplish this. Ironic, isn't it, that his leadership flaws should surface over a motion regarding abortion?

Finally, I want to address the supreme nonsense associated with the (odious to me) high-profile right-wing spokesperson Ann Coulter. The suppression of her vacuous views should be of concern to those who, like myself, want to be able to say things that are important to me but that fall outside the boundaries of acceptability drawn by the chattering baboon class.

More on this soon.

Relief is just an abortion away?

2010-02-17T09:07:00.000-08:00

This is my third consecutive post on information vital to making an informed choice about a crisis pregnancy. I am posting these to suggest that Canada is a pro-choice country in name, but in fact insufficient information is available to women to make a fully-informed choice. And the withholding of this information has to be deliberate.

In this post, I want to illustrate how women are not warned of the psychological damage that many suffer from choosing to abort.

While in the short-run a majority of women feel relief from having had an abortion, for too many of them various kinds of post-abortion trauma set in over time. There is a North American group of women who have suffered physically and emotionally from abortion, called Silent No More, devoted to this very issue.

Nevertheless, the website of Planned Parenthood states:
Serious emotional problems after abortion are much less likely than they are after giving birth.

A different page on the website of Planned Parenthood states:
Serious, long-term emotional problems after abortion are about as common as they are after childbirth.

Another page on the website of Planned Parenthood states:
Beware of so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" that are anti-abortion. … [They] will lie to you about the medical and emotional effects of abortion.

But the country of Finland has socialized medicine and keeps detailed health records of its citizens. A search of these records over the years 1987-1994 found that 1,347 women of reproductive age (15-49 years old) committed suicide. A 1996 study of this data found that women who had an abortion were about 5.9 times more likely to commit suicide in the year following this event than women who delivered a child.

In 2008, the Los Angles Times reported:
Several studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals suggest that women who have had abortions are more prone to depression or drug abuse. “But the research does not prove cause and effect, [said Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association]. It may be, she said, that women who have abortions are more emotionally unstable in the first place.”

The California study cited above controlled for mental disorders by eliminating those women who had been treated for a psychiatric problem in the year prior to their childbirth or abortion. When this was done, it was found that women who had an abortion were about 3.3 times more likely to commit suicide in the eight years following this event than women who delivered a child.

To conclude, in theory we are a pro-choice country. But abortion is easier to obtain than it is to really learn a lot about. When groups such as Abbotsford Right to Life bring up legitimate concerns about the safety of abortion, they are routinely attacked as being anti-woman and anti-choice, and are accused of lying and deceiving women.

Now our local regional hospital does not allow abortions, but nearby hospitals do. Women in Abbotsford could arrange for their pregnancies to be terminated for whatever reason and with reasonable dispatch on the public’s dime. And everything would be all right for them--right? Well, in the case of abortion, ignorance is not bliss. They are being deliberately kept in the dark. Canadian women deserve better than this. Don’t you agree?

I am not simply ignoring the crises that pregnancies can genuinely represent in some cases. Much needs to be done by way of public policy and other forms of support for women and their babies. Regrettably, abortion does not rid society of abusive husbands and boyfriends, bad employers, inflexible education systems, unsympathetic families, judgmental churches, and many of the other problems that women will continue to confront even after recourse to an abortion has been taken.

But for the purposes of this post, I am looking at the easy in-by-nine-and-out-by-five, no muss, no fuss, “Are you worried and distressed? Can't seem to get no rest? Put our product to the test. You'll feel just fine now” solution that is pushed on women without regard for the potential risks.

So I say, if Canada really is pro-choice, let’s have all the voices at the table, and all the facts on the table. A woman’s health, and a woman’s future, is too important to do otherwise.

Look at those cells go!

2010-02-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

Most abortions take place in the first trimester; i.e., approximately up to 13 weeks. Women are typically told that the fetus is nothing but a clump of cells at this point.

To give just one example, the National Abortion Rights Action League nominated a pro-life organization called Personhood USA to its Abortion “Hall of Shame.” In announcing the nomination, NARAL claimed that Personhood USA "... exists solely to establish legal rights for fertilized eggs and trigger legal battles over abortion that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Not only could the strategy outlaw abortion, but it could even threaten birth control, stem-cell research, and in-vitro fertilization.”

Now in actual fact, every human being of whatever age and size is a clump of cells. But the impression that medical people and others who use this description want to give, as a way of easing the pregnant woman of any qualms, is that what is inside her at this point would be little more than those frog’s eggs we used to find in swamps when we were kids.

But what is the truth? Here is what those frog eggs are really like:
a. At fertilization
At fertilization, the genetic composition of a preborn human is formed. This genetic information determines gender, eye color, hair color, facial features, and influences characteristics such as intelligence and personality.

b. At 3 weeks
The eyes and spinal cord are visible and the developing brain has two lobes.

c. At 4 weeks
The heart is beating and a circulatory system is in place. The portion of the brain associated with consciousness (the cerebrum) and internal organs such as the lungs are beginning to develop and can be identified.

d. At 7 weeks
Muscles and nerves begin working together. When the upper lip is tickled, the arms move backwards. The portion of the brain associated with consciousness (the cerebrum) has divided into hemispheres.

e. At 9 weeks
More than 90% of the body structures found in a full-grown human are present. The medical classification changes from an embryo to a fetus. Embryologists chose this dividing line because from this point forward, most development involves growth in existing body structures instead of the formation of new ones. The preborn human moves body parts without any outside stimulation.

And at this point we are still four weeks short of completing the first trimester.

Many women who have learned about fetal development after having had an abortion feel like they were deliberately deceived and regretted their choice.

The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

2010-01-31T21:17:00.000-08:00

My professional life has been spent mostly in the academic world. For much of my time, that world held without reservation to letting evidence take a researcher to whatever conclusion the data seemed to demand, and that the conclusion could be voiced without fear of discrimination. Regrettably, times have changed somewhat.

Certain conclusions are now seen as inappropriate rather than merely unsubstantiated. In some fields, a researcher who feels led by her or his research to take a position can fear being attacked for their motives rather than their research skills. Climate-gate is a stellar example.

An area that has puzzled me greatly along those lines is the alleged abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link. Dozens of studies have substantiated this risk, but none of the relevant authorities will admit to it. Breast cancer is not merely an academic discussion for me. It took my mother at age 59, as well as two of her sisters. A third sister is a survivor. In the past 18 months, three of my sisters-in-law have also contracted this potentially deadly disease.

If you were to look up the alleged abortion-breast cancer (or ABC) link in that well-known resource Wikipedia, you would read this:

The abortion-breast cancer hypothesis posits that induced abortion increases the risk of developing breast cancer. This position contrasts with the scientific consensus that abortion does not cause breast cancer.

The Canadian Woman’s Health Network recommends an article published by the Childbirth by Choice Trust that outlines the medical debate concerning the possible link between abortion and the development of breast cancer later in life. It summarizes the results of recent studies showing no credible link between the two.

The Canadian Cancer Society says this:

At the present time, the body of scientific evidence does not support an association between abortion and increased breast cancer risk.

We base this perspective on the findings from a workshop of over 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer risk. The workshop was organized by the US National Cancer Institute and it took place in 2003. The experts reviewed existing human and animal studies on the relationship between pregnancy and breast cancer risk. Among their conclusions were:
• Induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk
• Spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk

By the way, the American Cancer Society makes the identical claim, also referencing this 2003 study, among others.

You might conclude from this that there is no link between the procurement of an abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. When Abbotsford Right to Life sponsored a public lecture on the abortion-breast cancer link a couple of years ago, our local university student newspaper had as a headline on the front page, “The Myth of the Abortion-Breast Cancer Link”.

But I want to explore a little further the reference by the Canadian and American Cancer Societies to the conclusive 2003 workshop that is the basis of their opinion. Here is a summary of that workshop:

In February 2003, Dr. Louise Brinton, the National Cancer Institute's chief of the Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, served as chairperson at an NCI workshop in Bethesda, MD, to assess whether abortion was implicated as a breast cancer risk.

In the opinion of "over 100 of the world's leading experts," said the subsequent NCI report, including Dr. Brinton, the answer was no....

At the time, 29 out of 38 studies conducted worldwide over 40 years showed an increased ABC risk, but NCI workshop experts nevertheless concluded it was "well established" that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk."

It should be pointed out that none of the authors of the 29 studies that did find a link of anywhere from 30% to 100% were invited to that workshop.

But then a funny thing happened. In April 2009 that same chairperson, Dr. Brinton, co-authored a research paper published in the prestigious journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, which concluded that the risk of a particularly deadly form of breast cancer that attacks women under 40 raises 40 percent if a woman has had an abortion.

Now a cancer society “insider” had found the missing link.

The Toronto Globe and Mail wrote to the NCI on Jan. 8/09 and reported the results of their correspondence as follows:

An e-mail to Dr. Brinton on Friday was returned by an Institute spokesman named Michael Miller who said: "NCI has no comment on this study. Our statement and other information on this issue can be found at http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/ere." That link turns up [the] 2003 document that says a workshop of more than 100 leading experts concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.

Requests for an explanation of the apparent discrepancy between that position and the information contained in the study released last spring went unanswered by NCI…

The Globe concluded:
[T]rying to prevent abortions by scaring women with breast cancer would truly be wrong. But so too would be suppressing the risks of abortion or any medical procedure.

But if you go to the NCI website, you will see no reference to Dr. Brinton’s 2009 article, nor does she refer to it herself in the list of research interests on her personal page. NCI continues to hide the remarkable conclusions of the study of one of its own decorated scientists. She herself has never repudiated the results, but she doesn’t promote them either.

The Liberal Party of Canada would prefer that they remain deep-sixed as well. When Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott referred to the issue and the Globe and Mail’s coverage recently, the Liberals' Status of Women critic Anita Neville was quick to call on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to silence Vellacott for his supposedly "false and misleading" statements. In a media release, Neville claimed Vellacott had denigrated "women and their rights and freedoms, adding "enough is enough . . . women deserve better from their elected representatives."

By the way, a 40% increase in risk is not considered to be particularly high. But to put things into context, governments and cancer agencies have done everything they can to reduce our exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke in order to protect us from contracting cancer. The increased risk of cancer from second-hand tobacco smoke is 20 - 30% according to that self-same NCI.

But consider the way second-hand smoke risk is dealt with compared to the higher-risk associated with abortion.

A report from the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 concluded that the evidence regarding secondhand smoke and breast cancer is "consistent with a causal association" in younger women. This means that the secondhand smoke acts as if it could be a cause of breast cancer in these women. The 2006 U.S. Surgeon General's report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, found that there is "suggestive but not sufficient" evidence of a link at this point. In any case, women should be told that this possible link to breast cancer is yet another reason to avoid being around secondhand smoke. My source for this information? --The American Cancer Society.

Susan Martinuk, writing about the Brinton article in the January 29, 2010 edition of the Calgary Herald, added this comment:

The topic of breast cancer has long been a media darling and, consequently, there's been no shortage of reports on the plethora of new medical discoveries that are constantly shifting the rules for preventing, diagnosing and treating this disease. We're told about coffee, chocolate and wine; and the usefulness (or not) of mammograms and the harms (or not) of hormone replacement therapy. But this urgent need to keep women informed and up-to-date on the latest research suddenly dissipates if it means turning a critical eye to the sacred cow of abortion.

Canada is NOT Pro Choice: Why I Wish it Were

2010-01-27T17:01:00.000-08:00

I would like to invite readers who live in the Fraser Valley of beautiful British Columbia to attend a free public lecture that I am giving on Thursday, February 4 at the Clearbrook Public Library in Abbotsford at 7:15 p.m. It is entitled Canada is NOT Pro Choice: Why I Wish it Were. The library is located at 32320 George Ferguson Way, Abbotsford.

Women's rights--Where does this take us?

2010-01-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'm no philosopher, nor a political scientist, nor a human rights specialist. I can't tell you with certainty what full and equal women's rights should look like here in Canada or anywhere else.

What can I tell you?

First of all, in terms of all the ways in which women endured discrimination in the past, western liberal democracies are more or less in the same place. They claim to abhor such discrimination and have brought in legislation to eliminate it. The same goes for violence against women. Some might claim that more could be done by way of, say, affirmative action programs or gay marriage. These things are debated but there appears to be no consensus among countries, or even within countries in many cases.

What appears to be a major difference between how many Canadian feminists understand equal rights for women as opposed to other countries is with respect to abortion and reproductive rights. Canadian female members of Parliament, various provincial legislatures, and many women's organizations link full women's rights with abortion on demand. In other countries, abortion on demand does not exist, at least on paper.

So we either have to say that these Canadian feminist spokespeople are right, and all of the other countries are wrong, or that Canada is a "one off" in terms of what is construed as full and equal human rights.

There is one more complication. As poll after poll has indicated, the majority of Canadian women would accept restrictions on abortion. A very large percentage would even eliminate public funding for same. Therefore, the majority view of Canadian women appears to be consistent with our European, American and Australian colleagues, rather than with the Canadian feminists on this topic.

As a male, I am not going to tell the Canadian feminists that they are wrong. But it looks like Canadian women are doing so.

Bite 2b - Laws regarding abortion in other countries

2010-01-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

Since many Canadian pro-choice activists link full access to abortion at any stage of the pregnancy with full and equal human rights for women, I thought that it might be instructive to look at laws regulating abortion in other western liberal democracies with a commitment to full women's rights.

1. United Kingdom - In 1967 the Abortion Act legalized abortion under certain circumstances, and amendments were made in 1990. Currently the Act permits termination of pregnancy if two doctors are of the opinion in good faith:
a) that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family; or
b) that the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; or
c) that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated; or
d) that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.

2. United States of America - The 1973 Supreme Court ruling gave American women the right to an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and regulated the procedure during the second trimester "in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health." In the third trimester, a state can choose to prohibit abortion, except when necessary "for the preservation of the life or health of the mother."

This decision arose out of the famous Roe v. Wade case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court chose not to deal at length with the related controversy of the personhood of the fetus. Rather it took the following position:

A central issue in the Roe case (and in the wider abortion debate in general) is whether human life begins at conception, birth, or at some point in between. The Court declined to make an attempt at resolving this issue, noting: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." Instead, it chose to point out that historically, under English and American common law and statutes, "the unborn have never been recognized...as persons in the whole sense" and thus the fetal child are not legally entitled to the protection afforded by the right to life specifically enumerated in the Fourteenth Amendment. So rather than asserting that human life begins at any specific point, the court simply declared that the State has a "compelling interest" in protecting "potential life" at the point of viability (source: Wikipedia).

3. France - Abortion is legal on-request in France in the first trimester. Abortion has been decriminalized since the passage of the Veil Law in 1975. After the first trimester, two physicians must certify that the abortion will be done to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable.

Since 1994, French law has required that multidisciplinary diagnostic centers decide which birth defects are severe enough to make abortion after the 12 week limit permissible.

4. Germany - Abortion in Germany is legal, but only when done before the 3rd month of pregnancy. Abortions are not covered by public health insurance except for women with low income.

5. Sweden - The current legislation is the Abortion Act of 1974. This states that up until the end of the eighteenth week of the pregnancy the choice of an abortion is entirely up to the woman, for any reason whatsoever. After the 18th and until the 22nd week a woman needs a permission from the National Board of Health and Welfare to have an abortion. Permission for these late abortions is usually granted for cases in which the fetus or mother are unhealthy.

6. Switzerland - Abortion in Switzerland is legal during the first trimester, upon condition of counseling, for women who state that they are in distress. It is also legal with medical indications – threat of severe physical or psychological damage to the woman – at any later time.

Persons performing illegal abortions are subject to payment of a monetary penalty or imprisonment of up to five years. A woman who procures an illegal abortion is subject to a payment of a monetary penalty or imprisonment of up until three years.

7. Denmark - Abortion in Denmark was fully legalized on October 1, 1973,[1] allowing the procedure to be done on-demand if a woman's pregnancy has not exceeded its twelfth week. The patient must be over the age of 18 to decide on an abortion alone; parental consent is required if she is a minor.

8. Finland - A 1985 bill allowed abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy for underage women and up to the 24th week if an amniocentesis or ultrasound found serious impairment in the fetus.

Abortions are provided free-of-charge in hospitals. It is illegal to perform abortions in clinics, though doctors are empowered to provide abortions outside of hospitals in dire circumstances. Illegal abortions are very rare because in practice a woman can get an abortion on demand.

9. The Netherlands - Under the act, termination of a pregnancy must be given careful consideration: a woman and her physician must agree that her circumstances are compelling. The doctor must inform her of other possible solutions. To give the woman time for reflection, there must be a lapse of at least five days between the woman's first consultation with her doctor and the actual termination of the pregnancy.

In the Netherlands, abortions are performed until approximately 24 weeks into pregnancy; however, as a result of the ongoing debate among physicians about the viability of the fetus, abortions are only rarely performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy. Abortions after the first trimester must be performed in a hospital.

10. Australia - Abortion in Australia remains a subject of state law rather than national law. The grounds on which abortion is permitted in Australia vary from state to state. In every state, abortion is legal to protect the life and health of the woman, though each state has a different definition.

The only state with a law that is similar to Canada's abortion on demand regimen is the Australian Capital Territory. Abortion law in the Australian Capital Territory was for many years governed by case law and the criminal code of New South Wales. However, in 2002, it became the first jurisdiction in Australia to legalize abortion in full, when the Stanhope ALP government, with the assistance of Green and independent members, passed the Crimes (Abolition of Offense of Abortion) Act 2002, removing abortion from the criminal statute books altogether.

By way of contrast, in Queensland abortions are carried out as "therapeutic miscarriages", performed by specialists, upon request of the patient after an appointment with their local GP. This procedure is only applicable on pregnancies <22 weeks and is partly covered by Medicare or more-so by private health care insurers. In addition to this, abortions can be performed if a fetal defect is considered to be "inconsistent with life" – this has been narrowly interpreted to mean that the newborn would die immediately or shortly after birth.

Bite 2a - Ignorance of the law regarding abortion

2010-01-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

Before going on to the topic of what information is necessary for women to make an informed choice in our pro-choice environment, I want to look at how much Canadians do or do not know about prevailing laws--or lack of same.

In my last post, I explored the Supreme Court ruling that left us where we are today; i.e., with no law governing abortion whatsoever. Canada is unique among western nations in having abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy, including partial birth abortions. Remember, Canadian women do not have a constitutional right to abortion as Americans do. The law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are silent on the subject.

But what do Canadians actually know about this state of affairs? First of all, this rather startling reality--80% of Canadians don't know what the law is--or isn't. Many polls have explored this, but lets look at the latest from the respected polling organization Angus Reid, taken in early January 2010.

All right, if 80% of Canadians don't know what the legal situation is governing abortion, simplistic questions like, "Do you agree with the laws governing abortion?", or, "Do you think that our abortion laws should be changed?" don't mean anything. Respondents can't give a proper answer because their basic premise is likely wrong.

Fortunately, Angus Reid delves much deeper than this superficial level. Here are some major findings:

1. 43% of Canadians believe that a woman can have an abortion, with no restrictions, only during the first trimester of her pregnancy.
2. A further 14% believe that not only is abortion limited to the first three months, but only if there is a danger to her life, if she's been raped, or the fetus has serious defects.

So there are 57% of Canadians who believe that abortion is limited to the first trimester of pregnancy. But there's more.

3. 10% of Canadians believe that a woman can have an abortion anytime during her pregnancy, but only if her life is in danger, she was raped, or if the fetus has serious defects.

So two-thirds of respondents believed that there were significant restrictions placed on the availability of abortions, either to do with the time within which it could legally be obtained, the circumstances under which a doctor could perform the surgery, or both. [As an aside, abortions for danger to life, or for reasons of rape and incest amount to only 5% of all abortions obtained.]

Now, some would say that it is our responsibility to acquaint women more fully with their rights (I guess I'm doing that right now). Should women know what the state of regulations concerning abortion really are (or complete lack of regulations to be more exact) they would swing behind the prevailing ideology; i.e., Canada should remain as the only western country with abortion on demand with no restrictions.

To get a better read on Canadian attitudes, Angus Reid in fact told respondents what the legal framework actually is, and then asked them some more questions. Armed with the proper knowledge concerning our Canadian situation, respondents then supplied the following regarding their attitudes and beliefs:

1. Knowing the real situation changed virtually nothing. I noted above that 67% of women were under the mistaken belief that abortion was restricted either in time, in reasons for abortions, or both. Having been apprised of the actual legal framework, only 30% of respondents said that they supported it--women should be able to have an abortion at any time with no restrictions.

The majority of respondents still felt that having restrictions was desirable. Here is how they answered:

2. 24% would accept abortion on demand with no restrictions for the first trimester, and thereafter only in the case of danger to health, rape, and serious fetal defects.
3. 15% would limit availability to the first three months.
4. 13% would limit availability to the first three months, and then only in the case of the horrid triumvirate--health, rape and fetal defects.

That adds up to over half of Canadians who could, more or less, accept abortion during the first trimester only. It is fair to say, however, that only 5% would abolish abortion entirely.

5. 6% would allow abortion at any time, but only in the case of the three conditions.

Beyond this, respondents felt that the following further conditions ought to prevail:

1. 41% would restrict public funding for abortions only to medical emergencies.
2. 53% would require parental consent for females under 18 who want to abort (right now no such consent is required).
3. 79% would make it mandatory for health workers to provide information regarding alternatives to abortion.

And finally, female respondents were more likely then men to support our prevailing legal framework--but only half of the women indicated this.

These findings appear to me to make the link between unfettered access to abortion, and full human rights for women, somewhat more tenuous. Presumably the 70% of respondents who accepted restrictions limited to time and/or medical factors believe in women's rights. Yet they did not feel that this belief was diminished by accepting some restrictions on access.

interestingly, as I have noted before, heroes such as Madame Justice Wilson and Dr. Henry Morgentaler (Order of Canada), believe likewise.

Bite 2 - Women and the right to abortion

2010-01-10T18:57:00.000-08:00

The decision whether to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision, a matter of conscience. I do not think there is or can be any dispute about that. The question is: whose conscience? Is the conscience of the woman to be paramount or the conscience of the state? I believe, for the reasons I gave in discussing the right to liberty, that in a free and democratic society it must be the conscience of the individual.
Justice Bertha Wilson, Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. Morgentaler, 1988.

No one should debate my rights over my own body.
Tracey Ho, Director, Univ. of Victoria Students' Society, 2008.

There are many incorrect beliefs about the legal status of abortions in Canada. Some people believe that Canadian women, like their American counterparts, have a constitutional right to an abortion, and that this right is absolute. Others believe that a legal abortion is available only up to a certain point in the pregnancy, such as the end of the first trimester.

In fact, abortions in Canada are limited only by the availability of a doctor who will perform the operation, and by the availability of a hospital or clinic where the surgery can take place. There is no law placing limits on whether and when a woman can obtain an abortion. But there is no constitutional guarantee for abortion either. There is no law whatsoever. We have abortion on demand in Canada because there is no law (since 1988) prohibiting it.

Justice Wilson (quoted above), somewhat of a hero is pro-choice circles for her reasoning regarding "a woman's right to choose," actually took a more conservative position on government restrictions on access to abortion than in fact prevails in Canada. Citing relevant American legislation, she wrote as follows:

For our purposes the most interesting development in this area of American law are the decisions of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and its sister case Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973). In Roe v. Wade the Court held that a pregnant woman has the right to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. This conclusion, the majority stated, was mandated by the body of existing law ensuring that the state would not be allowed to interfere with certain fundamental personal decisions such as education, child-rearing, procreation, marriage and contraception. The Court concluded that the right to privacy found in the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of liberty ``. . . is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy" (p. 153).

This right was not, however, to be taken as absolute. At some point the legitimate state interests in the protection of health, proper medical standards, and pre-natal life would justify its qualification. Lawrence H. Tribe, Professor of Law at Harvard University, in his work entitled American Constitutional Law (1978), conveniently summarizes the limits the Court found to be inherent in the woman's right. I quote from pp. 924-25:

Specifically, the Court held that, because the woman's right to decide whether or not to end a pregnancy is fundamental, only a compelling interest can justify state regulation impinging in any way upon that right. During the first trimester of pregnancy, when abortion is less hazardous in terms of the woman's life than carrying the child to term would be, the state may require only that the abortion be performed by a licensed physician; no further regulations peculiar to abortion as such are compellingly justified in that period.

After the first trimester, the compelling state interest in the mother's health permits it to adopt reasonable regulations in order to promote safe abortions -- but requiring abortions to be performed in hospitals, or only after approval of another doctor or committee in addition to the woman's physician, is impermissible, as is requiring that the abortion procedure employ a technique that, however preferable from a medical perspective, is not widely available.

Once the fetus is viable, in the sense that it is capable of survival outside the uterus with artificial aid, the state interest in preserving the fetus becomes compelling, and the state may thus proscribe its premature removal (i.e., its abortion) except to preserve the mother's life or health (emphasis added).

Interestingly enough Canada's abortionist laureate, Henry Morgentaler, agrees with this view. He will not permit abortions in his clinics after 24 weeks.

The Chief Justice of the day, Brian Dickson, admitted that his court had not written the last word on the abortion issue, nor did he rule that abortion on demand was the only way of satisfying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He pointed out that the Court was dealing only with specific Canadian legislation that placed certain restrictions on the availability of abortions and whether this legislation was constitutional. The majority found that it was not. But Dickson went on to say this:

During argument before this Court, counsel for the Crown emphasized repeatedly that it is not the role of the judiciary in Canada to evaluate the wisdom of legislation enacted by our democratically elected representatives, or to second-guess difficult policy choices that confront all governments. In Morgentaler v. The Queen, [1976].....I stressed that the Court had "not been called upon to decide, or even to enter, the loud and continuous public debate on abortion." Eleven years later, the controversy persists, and it remains true that this Court cannot presume to resolve all of the competing claims advanced in vigorous and healthy public debate. Courts and legislators in other democratic societies have reached completely contradictory decisions when asked to weigh the competing values relevant to the abortion question. See, e.g., Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Paton v. United Kingdom (1980), 3 E.H.R.R. (European Court of Human Rights); The Abortion Decision of the Federal Constitutional Court -- First Senate -- of the Federal Republic of Germany, February 25, 1975, translated and reprinted in (1976), 9 John Marshall J. Prac. and Proc. 605; and the Abortion Act, 1967, 1967, c. 87 (U.K.) (emphasis added).

Well, that's a lot of legalese, but it is worth wading through. Canada has no law pertaining to abortion. But the key Supreme Court of Canada decision that struck down the last law regarding abortion ever enacted by a Canadian Parliament did not in fact say that there was no place for laws placing restrictions on access--quite the opposite.

Nevertheless, opposition to the pro-life movement in Canada is founded, in the final analysis, on the conviction that restrictions on abortion are incompatible with a woman's charter rights. No Canadian court has ever ruled as such--but this is the position taken.

In my next post, I'll attempt to deal with the ways in which the pro-choice sorority goes beyond anything the courts or the Charter prescribe in attempt to muzzle the pro-life movement--and in doing so placing restrictions on a woman's right to an informed choice.

Bite 1 - What are equality rights for women and men?

2010-01-06T17:25:00.000-08:00

Women's rights belong to a broader category called "equality rights." These are part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms introduced in the early 1980s by the Trudeau government. For those readers who are unfamiliar with this bit of Canadiana, a brief explanation follows from the (now defunct) Court Challenges Program of Canada:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a statement of our basic human rights and freedoms. Some of these are: the right to free expression and freedom of belief, the right to vote, the right to a fair process and trial if you are accused of a crime, the right to educate your children in your mother tongue, if you are from an official language minority community, and the right to equality. The Charter became part of Canada's Constitution in 1982.

The CPP goes on to explain what equality means:

Equality means giving every person equal respect in society. Sometimes, people are treated differently or unfairly because of things like the colour of their skin, their religion or a physical disability. This is called discrimination. Many groups of people through history have suffered discrimination. Equality means that all people are treated fairly, without discrimination.

Equality rights have been utilized in sorting out many societal and legal anomalies. Two illustrations of laws that were deemed to be in conflict with equality rights follow (again from the CPP):

1. A law which says that an Aboriginal women loses her legal status as an Aboriginal person if she marries someone without this status, but that an Aboriginal man may marry whomever he pleases without affecting his status

This law creates a direct difference in treatment on the basis of sex (gender) by singling out Aboriginal women and taking away their rights.

2. A law which says only married and opposite-sex common law couples can get certain tax breaks

This law creates a direct difference in treatment on the basis of sexual orientation by singling out people in same-sex relationships and denying them tax breaks.

But for our purposes we will focus on women's rights, particularly as they relate to life issues such as abortion.

The single most significant moment in the development of women's rights goes back to the famous Persons Case of 1929, nicely summarized by that invaluable source Wikipedia:

In 1927, five women from Alberta petitioned the Supreme Court [of Canada] to decide whether women were included in the definition of the word "persons" as used in the British North America Act (Canada's de facto constitution at the time). Hinging on this decision was whether women could be appointed to the Senate or not -- the body which approved divorces among other decisions important to women. The Supreme Court, interpreting the Act in light of the times in which it was written, ruled in 1928 that no, women were not "persons" and could not be so appointed.

The five women, led by Emily Murphy, appealed the case to the Judicial Committee of England's Privy Council. In 1929, the five Lords of the Committee ruled unanimously that "the word ‘persons' in Section 24 includes both the male and female sex.…" They called the earlier interpretation "a relic of days more barbarous than ours."

As the Virgina Slims tobacco company put it in their famous 1968 marketing campaign aimed at young professional women, "You've come a long way, baby." Of course, for Virginia Slims, this meant that women now had the equal right with men to inhale carcinogens. But it was based on the growing feeling among women that they were beginning to be all that they were meant to be in a society previously dominated by the male of the species.

Much has been accomplished in this area of equality of the sexes since 1929. Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, for instance, makes this claim:

Canada is a world leader in the promotion and protection of women's rights and gender equality. These issues are central to Canada's foreign and domestic policies. Canada is committed to the view that gender equality is not only a human rights issue, but is also an essential component of sustainable development, social justice, peace, and security. These goals will only be achieved if women are able to participate as equal partners, decision makers, and beneficiaries of the sustainable development of their societies.

Judging from the list of women's rights organizations in Canada, however, many clearly feel that further progress is necessary. You can view this list at http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/diana/organizations.htm.

Women's rights have been expanded in many ways besides voting (or smoking). With respect to abortion, we must look at the key Supreme Court of Canada decision of 1988, again from Wikipedia:

In the R. v. Morgentaler case in 1988, Canada's abortion law was struck down by the Supreme Court using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bertha Wilson, the first woman on the Supreme Court, had been appointed in 1982. Section 287 of the Criminal Code states that abortion is a crime. However, section 7 of the Charter says "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice." Henry Morgentaler, who was trying to establish abortion clinics, forced the courts to rule on this issue, and in 1988 the Supreme Court ruled that section 287 of the Criminal Code was of no force or effect.

This is where we will pick up in my next bite--er, post. What is the link between abortion and women's rights as the Supreme Court saw it?

Women's rights, Part 2--one bite at a time

2009-12-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have been doing a good deal of thinking since my last post of Dec. 9/09 regarding the topic of women's rights (or better, equality rights) and how it relates to life issues, particularly reproductive rights and abortion. The lead up to Christmas has been an understandable distraction and time-consumer, so I have not been able to do anything like the research that is necessary for such a complicated subject.

But I have decided that I will have to break up the analysis into several individual studies. Otherwise I would have a post whose length would surround the block. So we'll eat this 800 pound gorilla one bite at a time.

My focus will be on women's rights in Canada for the obvious reason that I am a Canadian. But I will from time to time compare and contrast the Canadian situation with that of other countries, including the U.S. and Europe. I expect to learn a great deal from this study, and hope that you will as well.

But for now, I wish you all a blessed Christmas, a restful family time, a giving and receiving of love however expressed, and a sense of hope and purpose in the New Year.

Women's rights, part 1.

2009-12-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

17th to 20th century North American society, historical revisionists to the contrary notwithstanding, developed to the largest extent on the basis of European values founded on the Judeo-Christian worldview. Canada's aboriginal population was seen as deficient in that it lacked this basis for living. Consequently many, many aboriginals were forced into the residential school system to wring this deficiency out of them and to churn out individuals like unto ourselves. Immigration policy also reflected this bias. Present-day multiculturalism is a very recent departure from this preference for sameness based on our European heritage.

That is not the same thing as saying that Canada was a Christian country. Had it been, would we have ever treated other human beings the way we dealt with the First Nations, Inuit and Metis, not to mention women, immigrant Chinese labourers and their descendents, Japanese residents during WW2, and others who were oppressed in a variety of ways and denied full citizenship in such matters as voting and holding public office, entering into contracts, even being recognized legally as persons?

Slowly these societal sins (or 'transgressions', to quote that famous wife-abuser Tiger Woods) are being addressed and their odious results set aright. Even Canada's prisoners vote now. The United Nations has published universal declarations on any number of rights issues, including those of women, children, and aboriginal groups. Canadians, by and large, applaud these efforts.

In other words, as we recognize that all people are equal and deserving of equal rights, we are becoming much more a Christian nation from the point of view of what we value.

A major sticking point, however, is in the area of women's rights. I'm thinking of two problems here. One is the feminist claim that the Judeo-Christian position is that women are subordinate, even inferior, and therefore not eligible for full and equal rights. This has led feminists, for the most part, to dismiss moral evaluations of women's rights issues based on the Christian heritage, even though this has been the dominant moral philosophy for most of our history.

The other is that equal rights means that any inherent differences between the male and the female (e.g., that women bear children and men don't) are to be ignored in defining what equal means. Equality brings with it the idea of uniformity.

I am not a philosopher nor a legal expert. I'm not even a theologian, although I am a seminary grad with a masters degree in biblical studies. Therefore, I can't bring to this dilemma a highly sophisticated analysis of the sort it deserves. But I would like to throw out a few ideas resulting from 62 years of broad exposure, an academic career, and the role-modeling of some pretty savvy women.

I'll take a crack at the Judeo-Christian view of women in this post, and then a stab at equal rights in the next. Prayer would be appreciated.

OK, back to the (for me mythical but for some literal) Garden of Eden. I treat this part of the Old Testament as I do Jesus' parables; i.e., as a vehicle for much rich theology. Genesis chapter one has man and woman created in one fell swoop:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness". . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gn. 1:26-27). Here 'man' simply means mankind (or better, humankind), further defined as male and female. No suggestion of subordination can be found. Their origins, nature and task are identical.

In Genesis chapter two, however, the creation story is repeated with considerable detail added regarding the order of events (on Day 1 this, on Day 2 that, and so on). The notion that somehow woman is inherently subordinate to man in God's perfect world derives, for some, from this account. In fact, it turns on one word: helper.

Man (in this case meaning the male, Adam) gave names to all livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper (or in the older English versions, helpmate) was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman with the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman' (in Hebrew, ISHAH), for she was taken out of man" (in Hebrew, ISH) (Gn. 2: 20-23).

Two problems arise. One has to do with a complete misunderstanding of the word 'helper' or 'helpmate,' which many have viewed as putting Eve in a subordinate category to Adam, and by extension women to men. But what does helper mean?

1. Helpmate is a very poor construction as it puts together two words, help and meet, and greatly distorts the meaning. 'Meet' means suitable, complementary, making up for some lack, a companion. Help meet for Adam means giving something to Adam that complements his combination of skills and attributes with others that are necessary to make humankind not only perfect, but complete. Each of the partners was perfect, but there were some differences between them that required their full cooperation for completeness to be achieved. I'm sure that this notion is behind St. Paul's reference to the act of marriage making a man and a woman 'one flesh'.

2. The term is used only four times in the Old Testament, and twice it refers to God. In another instance it describes a powerful military ally. It carries no sense of subservience (quite the contrary!).

It is not possible to derive any idea of superior/subordinate, or even first among equals from this biblical passage. The rub, to quote Shakespeare, comes in Genesis chapter 3, in the section describing God's curse upon his creation as a result of disobedience:

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Gn. 3:16).

Instead of giving birth to more perfect and complementary male and female babies, Eve was now saddled (and her female descendents along with her) with the pain of contributing to the pool of fallen human beings, physical pain being a strong reminder (and powerful metaphor) for this unhappy fact.

But even worse, the physically more powerful Adam (and his male descendents after him) will now take advantage of weakness of any sort for personal gratification. We see this immediately in Genesis chapter 4 in the murder of Abel by brother Cain. It is also seen in the systemic subordination of women by men throughout the biblical record. Note that God is not prescribing this state of affairs, but describing what is the inevitable result of sin and its distortion of human relationships.

Therefore, by Jesus' time woman were not much more than chattel. But Jesus was constantly bewildering his disciples and his male opponents by treating women as if they mattered and even including them among his associates (e.g., the Samaritan woman, Martha's sister Mary, and the woman who washed his feet with her hair).

St. Paul, probably the most intelligent and best educated of Jesus' earlier interpreters, got it better than the original twelve apostles. Paul was a man with no sense of privilege. He was prepared to make any number of accommodations to culture as long as in doing so he could find ways to spread the Good News without losing a hearing from the get go. For instance, he was a Roman citizen but never presumed upon this privilege when being hassled by Roman authorities. He encouraged his followers--male and female--to emulate his approach.

But there were times when he clearly drew the line. Space does not permit a suitable explanation, but those familiar with the biblical record will recognize Paul's stand for equality in his contrasting the situations of the Gentile Christian Titus versus the Jewish Christian Timothy in the matter of circumcision, his remonstrations with St. Peter regarding the latter's avoidance of Gentiles, and his insistence that his Christian Gentile friend Philemon treat his runaway slave Onesimus, who was converted under Paul's teaching, as if he were Paul himself.

With respect to women, Paul insisted that the followers of Christ would now take society back to the state of perfect unity between men and women found in the Eden-story: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).

Consequently, Paul told men and women to submit to each other. He numbered certain women as "fellow labourers who contended at my side" (Philippians 4:2-3). He refers to a woman named Junia in Romans 16 (the feminine form of the name, Junia, is found in the older manuscripts, with the masculine form, Junius, coming much later) as outstanding among the apostles. Women are identified in the New Testament as prophets, teachers, and deacons.

My bottom line is this: Whatever faults feminists find with the Church and modern understandings of the biblical teaching on women, the Bible is clear that women and men are equal in every respect--not identical, but equal. Judeo-Christian morality is not based on any presupposition that women deserve in some way to be disadvantaged vis-a-vis men. It just isn't there.

Next I will attempt to take this biblical view of equality and apply it to the current scene with respect to women's rights. But first, I had better get a couple of good nights' rest and perhaps a fortifying goblet or two of Australian red.

TIGER, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night...

2009-12-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

...not to mention the fire hydrants.

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods has joined a distinguished group of well-known, well-paid, well-coddled athletes who treat marriage vows, and the women that go with them, with the same elan as they do their competitors; i.e., an eagerness to brush them aside--to score, as it were, at will. Step aside Wilt (the Stilt, no pun intended) Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Mike Tyson, and all the rest of you serious adulterers and fornicators; Tiger has now joined the club (again, no pun intended). Mr. Privacy is now just another Mr. Privates.

What does any of the above have to do with the life issues to which this blog is dedicated? Simply this--right to life does not mean simply the right to breath. The right to a beating heart. And certainly not the right to be used or abused as another sees fit.

Let me give you some theological background to explain myself further. God created for a purpose. Creationism has nothing to do with six days versus eons of time. God can create as He pleases. The difference is sovereignty, direction, and purpose versus randomness, accident, and blind chance. God created everything in the cosmos as an expression of his wisdom, power, justice and love. And he put humankind at the head of it as His stewards (which is what the term 'dominion' in Genesis means).

The great tragedy of humankind's 'Fall' from grace in Genesis chapter 3 is not that henceforth some humans were destined for Hell and that the soft life in Lotus Land was over. No, it is the introduction of relationships characterized by superiority/subordination, injustice, and exploitation, plus an abandonment of God's values of love, justice, dignity, fidelity, and community.

Now the weak would exploit the strong; labour turned from a happy and creative activity to one of drugery and monotony; plenty became scarcity; and childbearing's travails were greatly intensified. Love, justice, fidelity, and community now fought for space with self-love and lust, injustice, adultery and hyper-individualism. Human dignity became another attribute to be withheld or destroyed.

Back to the right to life. If all this term means is that no one has the right to take the life of another, then one could accept just about any context for that life as long as no murder took place. Pro-lifers could ensure that abortion and euthanasia were made illegal, dust off their hands, and say, "Our work is done." If that is all right to life means, I'm out.

The right to life is the right to a life of love, of justice, of dignity, of faithful relationships, of creativity, of supportive community. Tiger Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, has been robbed of most or all of these things by her husband's lifestyle choices. He was very right to label his adulterous relationships as 'transgressions', not just 'mistakes' as do so many sinners when caught with their pants down do.

Most women who decide to abort do so for someone else's reasons, not their own. I have learned this from so-called pro-choicers just as much as pro-lifers. What are those reasons?--boyfriends and husbands who don't want to support a child; families who don't want to be embarrassed; employers who don't want to extend maternity leave and benefits; builders who don't want to provide affordable housing; drug pushers who don't want to lose customers; governments who don't want to fund daycare. One could go on and on. The grim reality is that (mostly young and single) women are left to cope on their own with a crisis pregnancy. A sign on a stick brings little direction, and even less comfort and hope, at a time like this.

What is our task as members of the right to life world? To rid ourselves of permissive abortion laws? Or to address full on the conditions that rob women and and their unborn children of their chance for hope, health, dignity, love and justice--the abundant life as Jesus called it?

There are a lot of Tigers out there. I'm not satisfied to provide them with a series of exploitable women to use as they want. There is no room for Tigers in a life of abundance.

That's the life concerning which I am decidedly pro.

Enamel all over my shirt

2009-11-27T13:55:00.000-08:00

I've been grinding my teeth in frustration these last couple of days. I recently received the Nov. 30, 2009 issue of Maclean's Magazine, with cover story entitled, "The New Canadian Morality," the findings taken from a survey by Angus Reid. As a former professional marketing researcher and long-time market research consultant, I turned directly to the section of the article that gives one the ability to properly assess the findings--the methodology and the survey instrument itself.

I'm still turning.

Turning.

Turning.

Well what do you know--there is no such section. So for someone with an interest in some of the issues surveyed, I can't really assess the results. Nor can I find this missing information on the internet, either via the Maclean's or Angus Reid websites.

So consider the reference to the use of stem cells taken from human embryos. I don't know if there were any questions about the use of stem cells from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, or the many other sources of stem cells that are proving to have much more potential for actually healing someone than are the ones from the aborted babies**.

What is the use of knowing Canadians' opinion on the older, less successful approach while ignoring the highly promising, cutting edge work being done with stem cells from far less controversial sources?

Or abortion. Maclean's reports that abortion is considered morally wrong by 22% of Canadians. What does that mean?
1. Morally wrong in any and every circumstance?
2. Morally wrong except in cases of rape and incest?
3. Morally wrong except if the mother's life is endangered?
4. Morally wrong after the first trimester?
5. Morally wrong after the second trimester (Morgentaler's personal opinion)?

I have seen opinion polls that put the number of Canadians who consider abortion morally wrong beyond positions 1, 2 and 3 at about 33%. And these represents only 5% of all abortions.

And for the five options taken together, I've seen survey results that indicate ~67% of Canadians have moral issues when these restrictions are exceeded. I have never seen a survey result that put the acceptable morality of our present situation in Canada (no prohibitions against abortion at any stage) higher than one-third of respondents.

So with the greatest respect to Maclean's, the article as it stands is virtually useless in that it lacks all of the information necessary to have an informed view.

Of course, that is my opinion of our pro choice society in general--all of information necessary to make an informed choice is denied to us.

**For more on the use of stem cells as a healing agent, see the article entitled "Stem cells hold hope for preemies lung strain" in the National Post, November 27, 2009, p. A10. The stem cells in question are taken from bone marrow.

The Christian Wrong

2009-11-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

We don't have anything in Canada that corresponds to the Christian Right in the U.S. Canadian Christians are all over the map politically, even when they are largely in agreement on Christian principles and values. I think it is because Christians are less likely to look to government to solve highly charged moral issues.

But I sense that in the U.S. that conservative Christians such as Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals, and some Catholics, are not only quite politicized but also tend to identify with the Republican party, or at least its most conservative segment. This is a mystery to me.

Firstly, this so-called Christian Right (C.R.) seems to espouse not just capitalism (I consider myself to be a capitalist too, except where it violates biblical principles), but libertarianism. In its broadest sense, libertarianism is an ideological belief in freedom of thought and speech.

Its political expression typically takes this form: all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, provided they allow others the same liberty. With respect to the role of government, libertarians hold to a political ideology that embraces individual liberty over state (governmental) authority, both in the realm of economic activity and personal or social activity. Their hero is famous U. of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Ron Paul, a 2008 Republican presidential candidate, once ran for President as a Libertarian.

Consequently, the C.R. prefers minimum government intrusion in the lives of individuals, is strongly opposed to gun control and tax increases, and is suspicious of anything smacking of socialism (e.g., public health insurance), which many libertarians would not greatly differentiate from Communism. Many justify all of this with what they consider to be biblical or Christian arguments for individual freedom. Sarah Palin fits into this political segment like a hand into a glove.

Now, why did I call the association of the C.R. with the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican party a mystery? Well, it's because of the following.

Firstly, consider the C.R.'s tendency to want, in fact demand and vote for, government intrusion into individual rights where the rights in view are those to which the C.R. is opposed, particularly abortion rights and same-sex marriages. The C.R. was desperate to get their favoured candidates on the U.S. Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe v. Wade. The C.R. mobilizes routinely behind politicians who pursue their moral and economic preferences while calling for the downfall of those who don't. See, for instance, Dr. James Dobson's rejection of John McCain as the Republican candidate because he was perceived as too soft on certain moral issues.

I am not arguing the merits of abortion rights or same-sex marriages here. I am simply pointing out that the C.R. is eager for government intrusion when it suits them. I don't object to this; I simply point out that it is not the libertarian thing to do. Either you want government intrusion or you don't. You can't be a little bit pregnant.

Second, the C.R. claims to base their beliefs on biblical teaching. I'm tempted to ask, which Bible? There is nothing in the teaching of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures that warrants the Christian Right's commitment to hyper-individualism, laissez-faire economics, or militarism. Regrettably this is not an argument that can be made within the limitations of a blog, but believe me as a conservative Christian business professor and dean with no axe to grind with capitalism that the C.R. arguments are simply not there.

To the extent that there are political and economic principles played out consistently over the whole of Scripture, the Bible teaches other-centeredness, not self-centered individualism, places restrictions on individual use or abuse of property as the owner sees fit, and maintains a strong commitment to peace. These biblical principles, if anything, would fit better with moderate Republicans and Democrats than with the right wing of the Republican party.

Third, the C.R. claims to be opposed to abortion. Yet at the same time it rejects any increase in taxes, including those that might make it easier for individuals to choose life over abortion. This is the biggest mystery of all. To misapply Winston Churchill, "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."

Women decide to abort for all kinds of reasons, both social and economic. Very often it is because they are poor and do not have a social and economic safety net that would see them through a crisis pregnancy. Canada is relatively generous in its government and organizational maternity benefits. But consider this quote from a lovely little website called "babycenter" (http://www.babycenter.com/0_maternity-leave-the-basics_449.bc):

Maternity leave, now often called parental or family leave, is the time a mother (or father) takes off from work for the birth or adoption of a child. Actual paid "maternity leave" — while the norm in every other developed country — is unusual in the United States, although some enlightened companies do offer new parents paid time off, up to six weeks in some cases. Most likely, you'll use a combination of short-term disability (STD), sick leave, vacation, personal days, and unpaid family leave during your time away from work.

Or this from another site called "FitPregnancy"(http://www.fitpregnancy.com/yournewlife/work_money/us-maternity-benefits-lag-40724547.html):

If you're getting paid while on maternity leave, consider yourself lucky: Out of 173 countries worldwide, the United States is one of only five that don't guarantee paid leave to give birth and care for a newborn, according to a recent study by researchers at Harvard and McGill universities.

"It's dramatically striking that the U.S. is so far behind the rest of the world," says lead researcher Jody Heymann, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill in Montreal, Quebec. "Every industrialized country offers paid leave. So can the United States."

While a small minority of enlightened U.S. companies offer paid maternal leave, most don't, even though research shows the practice increases employee retention, reducing hiring and retraining expenses. "It's often too hard for companies to offer it if competitors don't," Heymann says. And while several states are considering paid family leave, California is the only one that currently offers it. "The only way to ensure that all Americans are protected is to pass federal legislation," she adds.

If, as we are seeing now, the conservative Republicans are so dead set against improving health care in the U.S. (something considered a human right in Canada), is it likely they would be supportive of improved maternity benefits? Why do I doubt it? And yet it could be an important resource for lowering the abortion rate.

I know that I have taken on a subject that needs a better medium than a blog to address properly. I have had to be brief in my remarks, when I could have gone on at considerable length in, say, an academic paper. But at least you have a taste of my thinking. I urge you in the Christian Right to consider that on some topics your positions might just be wrong based on biblical religion, not American civil religion.

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity (Romans 12:2, Phillip's translation).

More on ideology

2009-11-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

. . . not to be confused with moron ideology. But more on this below.

An ideology can be defined as "a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things." This is more or less identical to the concept of a worldview.

Another definition: "the body of doctrines, philosophical bases, symbols, etc., associated with a particular social or political movement, large group, or individual."

And finally, "an ideology is the creation of some identifiable group (political, cultural, economic) for the purpose of spreading or maintaining its perspective on reality among themselves and others."

There is nothing in the above set of definitions (culled from various websites) that is inherently bad or scary. In fact, everyone has, at least, a worldview, which is very similar to an ideology. Perhaps the difference between the two notions is that ideology is often linked to a political or cultural movement that has not only views but ends and means.

I can think of some political and cultural movements that one could label as ideologies of which I wholeheartedly approve, despite regrettable excesses in some cases: Wilberforce's anti-slavery campaign; the Alberta Five and their push for full personhood for women; the corresponding campaign for aboriginal rights; the peace movement; Ralph Nader's leadership of the consumerism movement; much of the modern feminist movement; even the societal push for a greater concern for environmental causes.

All of these required the conviction that only a strong commitment to principles and values can create; great courage; effective leadership; strong communication skills; and, more often than not, the use of political processes. I still shiver and tear up whenever I listen to Martin Luther King's incredible speech, Free At Last--ideology at its best!

How important is ideology? Obviously it is very important when it defines a movement, or even a society. A clear current example is that of health care in the U.S. versus Canada and most European countries. We Canadians see universal health care as a human right. It is the largest budget item of every provincial government. And who did we pick as the greatest Canadian in the CBC contest of a few years back?--Tommy Douglas, the father of Medicare.

In the U.S., health care is seen very differently. Many Americans are content to live in a country without genuine universal access. And we see the results before our eyes in the U.S. at this moment as President Obama (who would not be voted as the greatest American) tries to achieve a pale approximation of Canadian health care in his country.

What happens when ideology goes bad? Racism, sexism, ageism, in fact most "isms", are based on some notion that there are inherently superior and inferior people or groups, and that the superior ones have the right to suppress the lesser ones (e.g., the U.S. Supreme Court defining an African-American slave as two-thirds of a person for purposes of the Constitution, or the Canadian government withholding the right to vote from aboriginal and Chinese Canadians).

Groupthink occurs when a closed group defines any contrary views as heretical, with those holding those views written off as unworthy of membership in the group (the most famous being JFK's advisers' decision-making process leading up to the Bay of Pigs fiasco).

A corrupted ideology is one whose adherents willfully ignore any evidence that their views held do not bear up to scientific or historical scrutiny (e.g., Holocaust deniers). Or that would use immoral means to achieve its goals (e.g., the KKK).

The worst-case scenario is one where an ideology has all of the above characteristics, and yet still meets with broad public approval. I see this to some extent with those who genuflect before the Kyoto altar. People who find any alleged fault with any aspect of the ideology of addressing climate change are deemed as inferior (intellectually, morally, or both), are bullied into accepting the received wisdom or being pushed aside without a hearing (and labeled climate change deniers--an obvious parallel to Holocaust deniers), and are invidiously contrasted with heroes like Al Gore, despite the many mistakes in his Oscar-winning movie. Consequently, a legitimate scientific evaluation of an important world phenomenon is crippled by a dubious ideology.

Well, my blog is devoted to certain life issues, among them such topics as abortion, euthanasia, and alternatives to same. I have said in a previous post that I could accept a pro-choice ideology for Canada if we truly had one. But the pro-choice ideology shows much of the superiority, close-mindedness, and corruption that I have discussed above. The result is that the ability to make an informed choice is severely compromised.

Back to the U.S. and Obama's attempts to have a health care bill (greatly watered down already from his original rhetoric) passed into law. The House of Representatives (corresponding to the House of Commons in Canada and the U.K.), has passed a law that has now gone to the Senate. And here is where an intolerant ideology could rear its ugly head. Remember that the Democratic Party controls both houses.

The House of Representatives comprises 435 members, of which 234 are Democrats, leaving 201 Republicans. Unlike the Canadian Parliamentary system where departing from party lines is unusual (and often fatal to the political prospects of the maverick voter), American lawmakers are more open to breaking ranks. Consequently some conservative Democrats have shown reluctance to supporting their leader's vision in whole, while a few moderate Republicans have been supportive.

Consequently, the health care bill passed by a vote of 220-215. Aside from the enormous cost ($1 trillion), some Democrats probably voted against the bill because of a last-minute amendment that prohibits coverage of abortion services under the new government-run public portion of the plan with the exception of incest, rape, or the death of the mother (about 5% of all abortions currently). But some Democrats supported the amendment as well, or it would not have passed.

Now this bill is before the Senate, and some conservative Democratic senators are insisting that this amendment be included in the Senate version of the bill. The bill is huge both in cost and scope. The health of a multitude of uninsured and under-insured Americans rests on its passage. Aside from costs, what other sticking point could there be? Well, it's abortion. It would appear that some American politicians would vote against an all-encompassing and desperately needed health care bill on the amendment alone. And pro-lifers get called one-issue people!

How much would this amendment limit access to abortion in the U.S.? No more than now exists. 85% of private American health insurance plans cover abortion services. That won't change. Some Americans would feel that this isn't enough, and that the government should be expanding access. That is their right. And there are means at their disposal to work to that end. But to hold up a bill that provides the kind of care that Canadians not only take for granted but consider to be a fundamental human right, because this particular bill does not advance a certain ideological agenda, is just wrong. It's corrupt. It's intolerant.

Who are the uninsured and under-insured in the U.S.? Racial minorities. One-parent families. The working poor. Immigrants (legal or otherwise). They would be denied decent health care (or any care at all!) because of one amendment that, while it may not improve access to abortion, does not further limit it? Are these people to become sacrifices on the altar of the pro-abortion agenda?

Moron ideology.

Rights becoming wrongs

2009-10-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

I first encountered Hungarian-Canadian author George Jonas in the late 1980s when I read his book on famous Canadian defense lawyer Eddie Greenspan, Greenspan: The Case for the Defence. Jonas, who is also Jewish, was a refugee from the Communist regime as a result of the 1956 Hungarian revolution.

I now read his columns in the National Post, and typically enjoy (while not always agreeing with) his forthright analysis and acerbic wit. Today's column (National Post, Oct. 21, 2009, p. A14) on the egregious Roman Polanski contained the following remarks which sent my mind a-skittering:

The Pill, along with the "make love, not war" generation of the Vietnam years, propelled Western societies from their quiet quasi-Victorian 1950s lagoons to a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah within a decade. The solemn pillars of misdeeds buttressing society's moral edifice either crumbled or metamorphosed into "choices" one by one:
- Divorce "progressed" from a scandal that cost Nelson Rockefeller his political career in 1964 to a statistical commonplace (about 50% for first marriages in the U. S.);
- Pre-marital sex changed from a taboo to standard practice for teenagers (including Polanski's 13-year-old victim);
- Adultery was reduced from a grave marital misconduct to an irrelevancy in no-fault divorce;
- Fornication grew from biblical prohibition to fashionable spouse-swapping venues at Plato's Retreat and, eventually, the Internet;
- Abortion turned from a crime into a civil distinction (a medal for Dr. Morgentaler); and
- Homosexuality from a love that dared not speak its name into one that couldn't shut up about it.

None of this mitigated what Polanski did, but by the time he was detained in Switzerland, his misdeeds were virtually the only sexual offences left. The rest became human rights. Polanski's pillar was holding up society's edifice of sexual mores. When Hollywood tried to knock even this one down with Whoopi Goldberg's "rape but not rape-rape" plea, something snapped. The next thing on the screen was a lynch mob --and dumb me, with nuances about ages of consent.

Although I lived through this whole period (I can even vaguely remember the Hungarian Revolution), I was nevertheless struck with how quickly society can change its collective mind on any number of controversial issues, transforming the status quo from bad to good (as in Jonas' examples), or from good to bad (such as the racism and sexism I also remember well from the 1950s and 1960s).

But if the changes Jonas mentions came over a period of decades, we are now watching the latest installment of what constitutes women's rights morphing within months.

First the status quo, circa 2007: Women's inalienable human rights are full and equal with those of men. Therefore women are entitled to reproductive rights, full access to abortion services, and the unhindered right to choose.

But much to my astonishment, the ardent feminists who argued most for the status quo have now begun to place restrictions on the right to choose (although they would deny my assertion, and its rationale, if challenged of course). Here's how:

Restriction no. 1 - An Alberta MP has introduced a private member's bill that would allow charges to be laid in the death of an unborn child if the mother is a victim of a crime. Known as the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, the bill is in response to repeated calls from the families of murdered pregnant women to recognize that their unborn children were victims too, Conservative MP Ken Epp said in a news release Wednesday (Canwest News Service November 22, 2007).

Mr. Epp modeled this bill (which his political party initially supported but eventually abandoned) after U.S. legislation. Remember that in the U.S. access to abortion is a constitutional right.

What was at stake was whether a mother who had made her choice (i.e. to carry the baby to term) would now have protection from those who might otherwise be tempted to treat her violently, simultaneously harming or even killing the unborn baby. This has happened several times in Canada in recent years, and Epp's bill received much support from these victims and their families, including those who maintained a pro-choice position themselves.

I anticipated that the bill would be well received because it honoured choice and even gave it added protection. But to my surprise, the supporters of choice came out with guns blazing, attempting to paint the bill as either a hidden attack on choice or a slippery slope towards restricting women's rights. Here, for instance, is the response in Parliament by keepers of the flame:

Ms. Meili Faille (Vaudreuil-Soulanges, BQ):
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-484. I will start by saying that, as a woman, I would have never believed that I would still be here fighting for the rights of women. It has been a fierce battle, waged by so many women before me.
The Conservatives, with this bill, are implicitly trying to achieve an objective, that is, restrict the right to abortion. . . It is up to women to decide. They have their own reasons for their choices. This is a pro-life bill that is trying to hide behind the concept of the unborn child. This bill opens the door to limiting women's power to be free and to make the choices they have the right to make. . . I urge the House not to support this bill, which opens the door to the criminalization of abortion. There is a hidden objective in this bill to prevent a woman from choosing whether or not to have a child.

Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP):
Let me say the evidence is very clear that the bill not only could become a thin edge of the wedge in the direction of re-criminalizing abortion . . .There are many more things I could say, but I think that in the final analysis the point is that women need to be protected far more effectively and aggressively against violence, and that is the best way to protect vulnerable fetuses. If that were the objective, then we would be very much wanting to support such a bill. . .I, for one, am very uncomfortable with where the bill is intended to go and what its real purpose is.

Mr. Raymond Gravel (Repentigny, BQ) (n.b. Gravel is also a Roman Catholic priest):
As a Catholic priest, I find it somewhat difficult to relate to this bill quite simply because the member who tabled it belongs to a pro-life group, the Campaign Life Coalition, which, in my humble opinion, is a fairly extremist and fanatical group. I am pro-life, but I do not belong to that group.
In my opinion, this bill will open the door to re-criminalizing women who have an abortion, and that is not a good thing. I am against abortion, but I do not believe that is how we will deal with the problem of abortion. I have always stated that we need education, support and assistance for women dealing with unwanted pregnancy. In my opinion, the problem of abortion will be solved with these types of measures and not by re-criminalizing abortion. I absolutely do not want that.
When a pregnant woman is assaulted or killed and her fetus is killed at the same time, I agree completely that it is an abominable crime. It is revolting, but at the same time I believe that when the fetus is in its mother's womb, they are one being. Only when it leaves her womb does it become a child. I believe that is the Supreme Court definition of 1969.
I know that killing a pregnant woman, like any murder, is a serious matter. However, I believe it is dangerous to establish a new law that would treat the murder of the fetus and of the mother as a double murder. I believe that it is dangerous and that is not how we will put an end to abortion. Not in this way.

These quotes are representative of the many made in opposition to the bill. What was at stake, in the view of the opponents, was that the bill might open the door to recognizing a fetus as a person. Thus, the added protection it gave to a choice made was sacrificed for the sake of the issue of personhood (or not) and the fetus.

Restriction no. 2 - I won't go to the same length with my next two examples. The first has to do with the practice of some South Asian women (and others) who sought an abortion if the fetus was determined to be female. I found this phenomenon to be reprehensible on several levels, but it never occurred to me that it would be opposed by the pro-choice movement. Look at the quotes above. Women should be free to choose and not to be judged for it--until now!

No less a spokesperson than former British Columbia Premier, and federal Liberal Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh led the charge. What follows is an excerpt from CBC News, April 2, 2008:

Among those who believe that sex-selective abortion is also a problem in Canada is federal opposition health critic Ujjal Dosanjh. A prominent member of British Columbia's South Asian community, Dosanjh says Canada needs to be concerned about imbalances in the ratio of boys to girls in Vancouver, Greater Toronto and elsewhere.

The former federal health minister and B.C. premier says newly available DNA tests that determine the sex of a fetus at six weeks or less could easily lead to more abortions among couples seeking to have sons, a practice he describes as "absolutely irresponsible".

Speaking to CBC 's The Current, Dosanjh said the tests need to be regulated and a debate launched about whether it's acceptable to have an abortion because of the gender of a fetus.

"The women's' right to choose, for me that's paramount," he said, "[but] I believe we need to make sure that [if] people are aborting simply for gender selection, that is absolutely not supported.

"This is about gender equality. If there is a medical need for these tests, I have no difficulty … to deal with disease," Dosanjh said. "Being a female absolutely is not a disease."

Dosanjh's logic in this case was so convoluted that pro-life advocate John Hof welcomed the former premier to the pro-life movement. While Dosanjh testily rejected Hof's teasing, there is no question that he was advocating a restriction on choice, in the case in the interests of gender equality.

Restriction no. 3 - This example takes us back just to August of this year. The Quebec provincial government was attempting to impose uniform standards of safety on all out-patient medical clinics. The huge irony was that the abortion clinics opposed the bill--just for themselves. Here is some commentary from the excellent blog ProWomanProLife:

Bill 34 in Quebec was an attempt to legislate the same standards for all out-patient medical clinics. The bill, it's worth noting, never mentioned abortion, but that didn't stop abortion activists from shifting into high-gear apoplexy. Those who purportedly stand for women's rights jumped to demand lower standards for their exclusively female patients. And on Aug. 17, they won. Quebec's beleaguered Health Minister Yves Bolduc retreated, and will now wait for the Quebec College of Physicians to create new guidelines.

Now Bolduc made it clear he's not pro-life. Bill 34 wasn't an end-run attempt to curtail access to abortions. That's a laughable idea in Quebec of all places, the province with the country's highest abortion rate. This was an attempt to apply uniform standards to all medical clinics.

No doubt, it would have been a sweet irony for pro-lifers that a law from a pro-choice politician which failed to mention abortion even once could potentially have caused the closure of three abortion clinics.

Yet the more telling irony is that those who run abortion clinics have rushed not to criticize the proposed legislation in general, but only to demand that they be exempt. The rules for out-patient eye surgery clinics, oral surgery offices and dermatologists meet with their approval. In short, the new standards are just fine for other facilities, but they mustn't be applied to clinics that perform surgery on women's reproductive organs.

The restriction on choice in this case is that women are not necessarily entitled to safe access. If the choice is between full access or safe access, full access trumps. [I'm tempted to ask, What's next? Back to coat hangers? But I won't.]

So we see between November 2007 and August 2009 that the pro-choice movement modified, and was even prepared to restrict, unhindered choice in these three ways:
1. No to protected choice.
2. No to choice for any reason (all reasons are OK except for gender selection).
3. No to guaranteed medically safe choice.

Do I sense a hidden agenda at work here? Stay tuned.

On pulling plugs and other difficult decisions

2009-10-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

It was a year ago yesterday that my eighty-seven year old father, having just voted in the 2008 federal election, suffered a stroke from which he died four days later. It is a testimony to my father's lifelong love affair with politics generally, and with the Conservative Party in particular, that one of the last things he ever said before lapsing into a coma was, "Did our local member win?" She did.

On the day before he died, Dad's doctor gave us the grave news that my father would not recover. Or if he did, he would live in an unendurable state (at least from the doctor's point of view). He suggested that the medical people cease to give him the medications necessary to keep him breathing--in other words, to metaphorically pull the plug.

This led to quite a discussion among my siblings at the hospital, my son, and even a nephew and niece who were present. Two other siblings were phoned as well. Apparently my father had told some of his children that if he were very ill and certainly dying, he did not want any extraordinary measures taken to keep him going. This is not uncommon, even among strongly committed pro-life and anti-euthanasia folks.

Some, out of nothing but love and compassion, wanted to let him die. Others felt that the doctor had not outlined anything extraordinary to keeping him alive, and had not made a convincing case for discontinuing medical intervention. My son's succinct "I'd treat him" carried the day. Nevertheless, Dad died the next morning.

Less than three months later, I was at another bedside, that of a woman in her mid-twenties, gasping for life as her lungs, a gift from another person who had died about ten years earlier, lost their ability to function. This dear young friend had cystic fibrosis. Another transplant was impossible. Keeping her hooked up to numerous machines was the only way for her lungs to function at all. She was in an induced coma or she would have torn out all of the tubes coming out of various places in her wasted body, leading to certain death. The decision was made, literally this time, to pull the plug. No one disputed the decision.

As the time neared for the young woman to die, a large group of her friends and those of her mother and step-father gathered in the waiting room of the ICU. The room was as quiet, if I may use the expression, as the grave. Some began to cry. One clutched a rosary. Another asked me if I would pray just before 6:00 p.m., the appointed time for letting the young woman go. Feeling incredible emotion, and an overwhelming sense of responsibility, I recited the 23rd Psalm (The Lord is my shepherd, I shall want for nothing...I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever) and prayed for her and the family. I'll never forget it.

Within three months, I twice faced the decision of whether to euthanize a loved one. Nothing in life prepares you for this. And that's the trouble. The Canadian government, for the seventh time in eighteen years, is confronted with a private member's bill seeking to legalize some form of euthanasia. The Member of Parliament in question has cancer herself. Apparently the vast majority of Canadians believe that she has the right idea. But our political masters have always backed away from allowing these bills to see the light of day. Thus, necessary research of the experience of other countries with such legislation, an exploration of the ethical and legal facets of the issue, and a good debate have not happened.

Our nation needs a thorough examination of this topic. Really, most Canadians know little or nothing about the matter. People throw around terms like "death with dignity" without understanding what ramifications could come from choosing one form of euthanasia over another, or banning it entirely.

Euthanasia can't just grow surreptitiously until its acceptance become inevitable without any real debate. Just as abortion gets little genuine discussion in our society, neither does euthanasia. The feds run for cover when either topic is raised. And we're left with Robert Latimer and Sue Rodriguez as our exemplars.

Where will a useful forum for discussion of these critical life matters come from? With the greatest respect to my late father's political passion, not Ottawa apparently.

15 and counting

2009-10-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

Like many of you, I have just become aware of a book about to be released entitled Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict. It involves a New York woman of Puerto Rican heritage named Irene Vilar who had fifteen abortions in fifteen years before finally getting help for her addiction, as well as ridding herself of a husband who didn't want children, and giving birth to two live children
(See http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2060984).

I don't want to go into the details of the book. They are complicated and very, very sad. A few salient points are these:
1. She seemed like a prime candidate to be addicted to something. Her mother, who was depressed, was addicted to Valium. While still a young woman with small children, she jumped out of a moving car and died. Her father was an alcoholic and addicted to gambling. Two of her brothers are heroin addicts.
2. She married a 50 year old man who didn't want children. She did want them, however, and found herself between the proverbial rock (maternal instinct) and a hard place (potential loss of her husband). It led her to allowing herself to becoming pregnant again and again and then aborting. She said that getting pregnant, despite the inevitable result, was an attempt to retain some control in her relationship.
3. All but one of her abortions were performed in New York state, sometimes by the same doctors.
4. She remains ardently pro-choice.

I suppose that in pro-life circles this woman will be labeled as a monster, or else some pathetic soul duped by the abortion industry into murdering fifteen real persons. Some pro-choicers will turn her into a kind of hero for recognizing that her aberrant behaviour does not take away from her strong belief in the rightness of their position. I'll leave them to slug it out.

What strikes me about this horror story is this:

1. Whatever obsessions and compulsions Ms Vilar had, her first husband did not. He was a professor. Presumably he loved her. He didn't know about all the abortions, but he was aware of some of them. What is it about our culture that made him comfortable with these serial abortions, at least for a while? Was he just another psycho, or did he view abortion as that trivial an activity?
2. Who were these doctors performing multiple abortions? I believe even the most committed pro-abortionists admit that the likelihood of physical and emotional damage from abortions increases with each such surgery. Are abortions not tracked? Is the mother's health of such little consequence? I know that there is big money in the abortion business (just look at Planned Parenthood U.S.'s financial statements), but doctors also take the Hippocratic Oath. Are medical ethics that corrupted in some circles?
3. The article reviewing the book quoted studies of woman who have multiple abortions as considerably more likely to have experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, or coercion. We also know that most abortions (and I got this from pro-choice literature) are done for someone else--an unwilling partner, embarrassed family, inflexible school authorities, hardhearted boss, etc. Does an abortion really solve such problems? Did they for Ms Vilar?

What do I take from this book? First of all, woman are still being taken advantage of in ways that I can hardly imagine as an educated white male. Secondly, women pay a big price, and take huge personal risks, in availing themselves of the most recommended option--to abort. Finally, how often does an abortion solve the problems that led women to securing one in the first place? I suggest seldom if ever.

There must be a better way. Not that our present provincial and federal governments are interested.

The big life challenges as I see them

2009-09-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

My blogging will concentrate on four general areas that I view to be fundamental to the pro-life/pro-choice/pro-abortion debate. The skinny follows.

1. What does pro-choice mean? I'll admit my biases up front. I am pro-life in the classic sense that I believe that unborn babies are just that--unborn real persons. And I wish that no pregnant woman felt the impetus to abort. Nevertheless, I could live with a pro-choice agenda in Canada if we really had it. At this point, many women do seek abortions to address whatever personal problem they have that they hope abortion will solve. But does she have the full information necessary to make an informed choice? I think not, which explains why so many women complain after the fact that they were misled, even lied to, and that had they been told everything that was necessary to make their best choice, they would have chosen differently. Real and informed choice requires full information, and our society does not encourage this in the case of abortion.

2. The moral argument. Everyone debating the life/choice issue believes that she or he occupies the moral high ground. People of faith who argue for the dignity of life from conception do so on what they feel has been revealed as true by a Higher Power. Even those pro-life people who do not look to their faith/scripture/God for direction will still argue it morally on a philosophical basis. The choice argument is made on the basis of fundamental human rights. Consequently, moral arguments become judgmental salvos hurled at "the other side" as a means of condemning immoral behaviour.

3. The definition of full rights for women. People who argue for full and equal rights for women and men often posit the following premises.
a. For a woman to have full human rights, equal to a man's, there cannot be any restriction on the exercise of those rights that would not be placed on a male.
b. That means that women must have reproductive rights. That is, just as men are not hindered in the exercise of their rights by pregnancy/motherhood, so too must women have the choice of rejecting any restrictions placed upon them by an unwanted fetus. Therefore abortion must be legal, affordable and accessible.
c. For abortion to be legal, the unborn baby must be eligible for termination. This is possible only if it is denied personhood.

Those who argue for pro-life often restrict themselves to moral arguments (personhood of fetuses, abortion is murder, etc.). Therefore they see the rights argument as a red herring. But the pro-life side has been remiss in not tackling the issue of full and equal rights for women and what that means in a pro-life context.

4. Legislative action taken by governments. The governments of North America and western Europe have, by and large, bought the women's rights argument and have allowed abortion up to a certain stage of pregnancy or have placed no restrictions upon the procurement of an abortion at all. Such legislation ignores the reasons why most women seek abortions; i.e., lack of information, pressures of various sorts from others (often illegal and violent), and so on. As is often the case with ticklish moral questions, governments have addressed the symptoms while ignoring the underlying causes.

I am going to attempt to address these four complex areas in my posts. Wish me luck!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.....

2009-09-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

...or at least I hope so. I last blogged almost a year ago, offering my Canadian and American federal election predictions. I wasn't far off, was I? By the way, I was correct with my municipal election forecast as well--I was re-elected to the Abbotsford BC Board of Education. Thank you, thank you very much, thank you.

A poignant story for you. Two weeks after I wrote my last post, which was election day in Canada, my father had a stroke. He was a political junkie who had served many times as a city councilor and school trustee, and once ran federally for the former Progressive Conservative Party. He suffered the stroke just a couple of hours after voting at his assisted living home in Pembroke ON. That night in the hospital he awoke from his coma. His first question was, "Was our local member re-elected?" We were happy to be able to tell him that she had been. Three and a half days later he died, aged 87.

This past spring I made the big decision to retire from full-time professional work. That is not to say that I would not look at short-term or part-time opportunities that may present themselves from time to time. And I would welcome speaking opportunities. But I am through chasing contracts. The school board will keep me busy (as will my wife, she assures me), and I will be re-creating my life at the robust age of 62.

One thing that I have been asked to do by a number of people is to return to blogging. I was pleased that even a few individuals had thought enough of my ramblings to ask me to continue.

So here I am.

I intend to pursue my interests in dignity of life issues, particularly the pro-life/pro-choice debate and women's rights. I know, I know--what does a man really know about women's rights? Fair question and I'll continue to need help as I always have with this issue. So I'll be talking to a number of women, older and younger, as I deal with topics of interest.

I can't say how often I will be blogging, but I hope to get something out weekly. I know that a good number of bloggers are posting much more often, but my posts are really essays and take more time and research than more frequent blogging would allow.

So bear with me as I get back into harness. I look forward once again to mixing it up with others interested in the same topics.

John is alive and well....

2008-09-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

....and working in Vancouver. I thought that I was done with blogging for the time being. I've started this great new job with Pacific Theatre. I'm commuting 70 clicks one way to Vancouver every day. I'm enjoying life with my wonderful spouse, Sharon. Who has time to blog?

But I miss it. I really liked cranking up the Dashboard every once in a while and hammering out a few thoughts. I'm out of the loop regarding pro-life issues right now. But I thought I would try my hand at a few political prognostications.

First, Steven Harper will be returned as prime minister with an increased minority. He will take votes away from the Liberals and the Bloc, but not in sufficient numbers to make it to majority territory. Too many numb skulls in his party have made too many mistakes; e.g., pooping Puffins, running down dead soldiers' dads, using black humour regarding tainted meat, plagiarized speeches, etc. If the political I.Q. of these people were any lower, they would have to be watered once a week.

The NDP will also take away seats from the Liberals. Stephane Dion will put on a brave front for a while and then resign. That will leave the Liberals with the choice as leader of the worst premier in recent history in Ontario, or an academic who spent 30 years outside the country and in an article referred to Americans as 'we'. Good luck to them.

Despite having a clear hatred for the private sector, and a very unsure handle on economics, Jack Layton will get a good number of protest votes and substantially increase his seats. That one trick pony called the Green Party will sink without a trace. Elizabeth May is a very nice lady and would make a great backbench MP or chair of a parent advisory council. The Bloc will retain about half of the Quebec seats, perhaps a little less than that. Duceppe will pack it in and retire.

In the U.S. the less flawed candidate (Mr. Obama) will prevail because Mr. McCain appears to have no obvious strategy for winning. While neither vice-presidential candidate should give Americans any cause for comfort, Ms. Palin is a political accident looking for somewhere to happen.

And finally, John Sutherland will be re-elected to the Abbotsford BC Board of Education.

You read it here first.

Gone

2008-07-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

The last post. Sounds kind of mournful, doesn't it. This being the final week of my contract with Abbotsford Right to Life, I'm making my last comments on johnonlife. My next contract, which starts in September, is with that wonderful theatre company in Vancouver, Pacific Theatre, where I will be the general manager.

This post is a bit of a ripoff in a way. I wrote a response to a post in that great blog ProWomanProLife, and have decided to use it as my last comment in my own blog (my apologies to Andrea Mrozek).

So here goes. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more....

People do all kinds of irrational things, even when they are well aware of the potential consequences of their decisions. Why do people smoke? Drink and drive? Drop out of school? Neglect exercise and a good diet? Refuse to see a doctor when they experience odd and fearful symptoms? Have abortions? We all know someone who has paid the price for such decisions.

Seldom is the answer to these questions a rational, carefully thought through, intelligent answer. That’s because there aren’t such answers to these questions. Education regarding the likely consequences of these behaviours is routine in school and workplace settings. Fortunately, these education efforts are slowly having an effect, and society is the healthier for it.

The exception is abortion. Here education is almost completely lacking. Most women are kept in the dark about the harmful consequences of abortion for many women. Any attempt to address the matter is emotionally and vociferously resisted by women’s groups, parliamentarians, post-secondary students’ councils, etc. Consequently, women are duped into thinking that abortion is an nice, hassle free, in-by-nine-out-by-ten-and-back-to-work procedure.

Adding to the difficulty is that we have allowed the “pro-choice” people to narrow the field of argumentation, making stereotyping that much easier. Pro-choice doesn’t mean choosing among long-term solutions to crisis pregnancies in the best interests of the woman and anyone else affected by the decision. It simply means the choice of whether or not to have an abortion, as if there were no other good solutions.

But “pro-life” has also come to mean the choice of whether or not to have an abortion. Neither side concentrates on the long-term solutions. Both sides concentrate only on the fetus--whether it lives or dies. Neither choice is rational in and of itself, in that each is short-term and ignores the context within which the choice is being made and the long-term consequences of making it.

Pro-choice ideology is narrow, short-term, unimaginative, and potentially harmful to the long-run best interests of the decision-maker. I am suggesting that pro-life ideology, as it is understood in society today, is no different. If we want to do women and girls a favour, we will have to become a lot more creative, more daring, harder working, and more intelligent in our advocacy than we are now.

Now I understand that in taking a pro-life position, most of us are doing so on a moral, even theological basis–-the sanctity of life. I believe in this as well. But God didn’t create us just to exist–-to breathe, eat and wet our diapers. He created us to live in a certain positive and fulfilling way and for a certain purpose. People and structures that threaten this way of life and that purpose are to be opposed and destroyed. What is the pro-life movement doing to sanctify life beyond merely getting life started? That is the huge question. Its answer should be the real reason for our existence.

__________________________________________

Now for a few closing remarks and thank yous. Abbotsford Right to Life has been very supportive of my writing endeavours, and has politely overlooked my mistakes while lauding my occasional successes. Thank you to Dorothy Blaak and Arlene Penner for being wonderful colleagues for this past year.

Suzanne Fortin's Big Blue Wave is a treasure trove of information and opinion (although I would advise her to drop some of her bloggers in the interest of greater credibility). I have appreciated her support for what I am trying to do, and I wish her the very best in raising that new baby.

Feminists for Life and ProWomanProLife are doing wonderful work in providing a creative pro-life perspective in a pluralistic society.

Approximately 3100 readers from around the world have logged into my site. While some of you ended up there quite accidentally, I hope that many of you were helped in some way to think through issues. I noticed that the IP addresses appearing in my blog counter included regular readers in the federal and British Columbia governments, as well as with Fraser Health. Thanks for your interest.

Thank you to Terry O'Neill for drawing my blog to the attention of a wider audience in its earlier days. The same to John Hof.

Thanks to everyone who sent in comments to various posts. While I sometimes disagreed with them, I was always challenged to think more thoroughly about the issue in question.

Thanks to my son Steve, who helped me to set up the blog in the first place, who provided guidance with any technical issues, and who did some good research for me on the Internet from time to time. He, along with his sister Julie and their mother Sharon, were my best critics (as usual).

And finally, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

Bloody amateurs

2008-07-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

When I feel like laughing and crying simultaneously, I read the Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias. I laugh because she is such a poor reasoner. But I cry because apparently she has a following that takes her seriously.

In her Broadside dated July 22 she discusses (not very well) what life was like for women who had to resort to illegal abortions. At one point, she pokes fun at Jews and Christians with this silly reference to the Old Testament:

Nothing like ''perforation of womb and bladder'' which caused ''death from infection or hemorrhage'' to make a woman think twice about having sex or being independent. It's all so biblical.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Biblical know-nothings should simply not cite scriptural passages. They almost always mean something different from what the one quoting them thinks they do.

This reference is to Genesis chapter 3 where God pronounces upon Adam and Eve's decision to disobey him despite the good things that he has lavished on them. For centuries commentators (almost exclusively male) have taken the text to mean that it was God's intention that women would now find childbearing, and especially delivery, to be a painful experience. Similarly, it was posited that her "desire for her husband" was meant as a permanent subordination of wives to husbands and an end to a woman's independence (this despite the almost completely opposite depiction of a married woman in Proverbs 31).

Biblical feminists have led the way in bringing about a much more reasonable understanding of this passage. God was not pronouncing a curse on his creatures when he said that the world would now be characterized by scarcity and competition, that human labour would be monotonous and difficult, and that women would be subordinated to, and exploited by, men. Rather he was explaining to them the inevitable consequences of their choices.

Choices have consequences--good and bad--because of the way in which they cement or rupture relationships. If there is mutual respect between two individuals, it makes no difference that one is in a position to exploit the other. It would never happen. But throw in some hatred, some avarice, some selfishness, and Bob's your uncle.

Women have suffered from men's hands not because of God's approval, his preference, or his curse--quite the opposite. One of my goals as a pro-sanctified lifer is that the proper relationship of mutual respect, love, admiration, and support be restored as we see it in the Garden of Eden and in the principles, values and goals of God for humankind. Abortions would plummet, of that there is no doubt. Most of the reasons for obtaining an abortion would be eliminated.

But then Antonia would have to find another line of work. That would also be a good thing.

[In the interests of full disclosure, I understand the first eleven chapters of Genesis to be an extended parable intended, like any parable, to teach theological truth in accessible language. This does not change the force of my arguments above.]

That's a lot of fundamentalists!!

2008-07-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

July 22, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A random telephone poll of Canadian households with 13,324 respondents conducted between July 17-21, 2008 has revealed that 55.8% of Canadians oppose the awarding of the Order of Canada to abortionist Henry Morgentaler.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08072202.html.

Using Dr. Morgentaler's own words to describe those who oppose his nomination to the Order of Canada, 55.8% of Canadians are either Roman Catholics, fundamentalists, or women who don't believe in women's rights. They represent a majority of respondents in every province except Quebec (47%).

Since I've never seen a poll where more than about 30% of Canadians were in favour of making abortion illegal, I have to conclude that there are a lot of pro-choice advocates who still disapprove of ol' Henry at least with respect to the receipt of Canada's highest civilian honour. Sorry, my good doctor, but you are going to have to redefine "the usual suspects".

Curiously, to the best of my knowledge, Morgentaler has never been chosen for inclusion in Canadian Who's Who, unless he has been added since 2005. This standard reference work is published by the University of Toronto, hardly a bastion of the usual suspects. While still a great honour, there are far more people in that publication (approximately 13,000) than are chosen for the Order of Canada (approximately 5,500). Yet the editors seem to sense that his inclusion was not appropriate.

The criteria for being included in Canadian Who's Who are: notable living Canadians.....carefully selected because of the positions they hold in Canadian society, or because of the contribution they have made to life in Canada. Included are outstanding Canadians from all walks of life: business, academia, politics, sports, architecture and the arts-in fact, from every area of human activity.

Means to ends

2008-07-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

One of the more enduring stereotypes in organizational life is "We've always done it this way." Change is the single hardest thing to introduce in an organization. There is big-time investment in the status quo.

What is ironic about this reality is that it seldom has anything to do with ultimate objectives. It almost always has to do with the means to ends about which everyone is agreed. People who have no disagreement about what they work together to accomplish will fight tooth and nail over the best way to get there. The best way is, in most minds, the way we are committed to right now.

But sometimes the means get confused with the ends. People begin to see the way to do something as just as important (maybe even more important) than the objectives themselves. The means become some kind of litmus test of commitment to the goals. We tend to associate this mentality with rule-bound bureaucrats, but the phenomenon is much more widespread than that.

In a previous life, when I was teaching a certain amount of biblical studies (I'm a seminary grad with a degree in Old Testament), I used to illustrate this confusion of means and ends in the unseemly and unnecessary arguments associated with creation vs. evolution. A good many Christians can be found on each side of that argument, not to mention across society generally.

What I used to point out to those who called themselves Christians was that none of us disagree (by definition, or we wouldn't call ourselves Christians) about God's sovereignty over the cosmos as its Creator. Whatever one's view of the process by which God created, he did so with a purpose in mind. All orthodox Christians (and people of many other faiths as well) believe that Creation has purpose and direction. In other words, Creation (and therefore life) is neither random nor essentially meaningless.

Therefore to argue that a method (whether six literal days of creation or some kind of young earth theory vs. traditional evolutionary teaching) was critical rather than the purpose (direction vs. randomness; sovereignty vs. chance) was putting the cart before the horse. Yet for many, it's the means that provide the true test of orthodoxy. Therefore, as a believer in some kind of evolutionary process myself, I have had my faith questioned by "true believers."

[Now I understand that the so-called "creationists" feel that belief in a literal six-day creation is necessary if one is to take the Bible at its word. This argument is hardly decisive, as it reflects an arbitrary notion of valid biblical interpretation that forces one to commit to what are really, in my view, non-biblical positions. This holds true for a lot of issues, including the status and role of women.]

In more recent times, this same confusion of means and ends has arisen with respect to women's full and equal rights. While the nature of rights (whether to do with race, gender, creed, and so on) is largely settled, at least in theory if not always in practice, the means of achieving those rights is still very much open to debate.

So with race, for instance, some people have argued that affirmative action programmes are the way to right the wrongs and achieve full and equal status for visible minorities. Others have viewed this as shortsighted and, in the long run, harmful to the cause. But before long, those who believed passionately in a process (affirmative action) began to see that means itself as the only thing that really matters. Therefore, if you were opposed to affirmative action, you must be a racist.

This same phenomenon is true of women's rights. Compare these three quotes:

1. Concordia University social ethicist Christine Jamieson: Abortion is not something someone seeks because it's a good in itself. It's always the answer to another question.

2. Henry Morgentaler describing his opponents to receiving the Order of Canada: [T]he usual suspects: the Catholic Church, fundamentalists, women opposed to women's rights.

3. Heather Mallick, Canadian journalist, on what is wrong with crisis pregnancy centres: There are thousands of these centres across North America. They're known in the business as CPCs, as they usually have names resembling Crisis Pregnancy Centre. They have cute websites designed to appeal to teenage girls, lots of advice about boys — giggle — and sites on MySpace. They take great care to look like kindly counselling centres. In fact, they exist solely to prevent abortion.

Jamieson has it right. Abortion is a means to some end. One doesn't get an abortion just to put it on her resume. The surgery is done to achieve some goal. But Morgentaler has confused means and ends--if you are opposed to abortion you are opposed to women's rights. Mallick views organizations that are trying to help women in crisis to find solutions as bad, by definition, because they are opposed to her choice of means--abortion.

I've been reading through the positions taken on abortion by the two presidential candidates in the U.S. Very little of the talk has to do with the ultimate goal of women's full and equal rights, as no one really disagrees with this objective. Virtually all of the talk centres on one of the means to achieving this goal--abortion. For the pro-choice side especially, if one doesn't believe in a certain way to achieve women's rights, one must not believe in women's rights at all.

How has one method hijacked this important issue of women's rights? Surely achieving those rights is far too complex to concentrate on, much less rely on, one process for getting there. The cause for full and equal rights would be taken forward much faster and more effectively if all of those who believe in this goal would sit down together and discuss it in all of its facets.

I'll give John McCain a certain amount of credit for trying to take the discussion beyond the one way of achieving full rights for women. Here are a couple of quotes:

Q: Should Republicans encourage pro-choice voters to support their candidates?
A: We must begin a dialogue and a discussion on the issue of abortion. Both pro-life & pro-choice people believe very strongly that we need to eliminate abortion. I and my wife, Cindy, are proud adoptive parents. We need to encourage adoption in America. We need to improve foster care dramatically. We can work together. We can have respectful disagreements on specific issues, and we can work together on this one.

"I have stated time after time after time that Roe v Wade was a bad decision, that I support a woman — the rights of the unborn — that I have fought for human rights and human dignity throughout my entire political career," McCain said. "To me, it's an issue of human rights and human dignity."

I am not quoting McCain to indicate I endorse him politically. I'm a Canadian at any rate. But at least he is trying to get to the broad and complex issue of full rights, and to the notion of working together to achieve same. I certainly endorse that.

Diogenes redux

2008-07-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

Diogenes is the Greek philosopher who searched the streets of Athens with an oil lamp looking for an honest man. He was famous in his time for his great disdain for what he perceived as the folly, vanity, pretense, self-deception, social climbing, and artificiality of much human conduct. His worldview can be summarized in this pithy comment: for the conduct of life we need right reason or a halter.

I would like to bring him here to Canada in the 21st century A.D. (one that he would no doubt deplore as much as he did 4th century B.C. Athens). But rather than task him with looking for honesty (not that the real Diogenes would give a hoot what I wanted him to do), I would send him out with a searchlight into the world of the columnists and bloggers on life issues, looking for a person who could reason and research with integrity and thoroughness.

The more I read the writings of those most active in the pro-life/pro-choice debate, and listen to their clones in Parliament, the more discouraged I get. I just spent a few minutes looking at a recent article by Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias called Low Blows. My goodness, she's pathetic. Does the Star actually pay her to write the drivel she serves up? She's entitled to her basic assumptions, of course, however unfounded or unexamined. But the way that she presents her arguments that come out of these assumptions and beliefs is so lacking in historical research or logical inference that she would fail any first-year university writing assignment.

I could say much the same thing for writers such as Joyce Arthur and Heather Mallick. Arthur seems to be driven by a profound emotional reaction to her upbringing in a Christian denomination that I don't particularly like myself. If they're for it, she's agin' it. I, too, had a fundamentalist and closed-minded religious upbringing, but I don't let it be the main driver in forming my worldview. As for Mallick, she appears to be incapable of an original thought, simply delivering whatever the politically correct chattering classes believe at the moment.

Regrettably, much of the pro-life writing is similarly sloppy, vitriolic and poorly researched. Spend a half hour looking at the Shotgun Blog section of the Western Standard on-line magazine. While some of the articles and opinions are at least consistently reasoned, the many regular participants in the Response section must represent 90% of Canada's grade 8 dropouts.

Feminists for Life and ProWomanProLife are actually quite good. Suzanne Fortin certainly attempts to be consistent with her presuppositions when she argues her points, although they are heavily informed by Roman Catholic teaching, making them fairly predictable. She reads widely and has an interest in what various sides are saying. But many of the bloggers she tracks in her Big Blue Wave site are embarrassing. I'm not sure why she quotes them as they take away from what she is trying to do; i.e., to feature articles and commentary of interest to social conservatives. Social conservatives have nothing to learn from some of these benighted commentators.

Where are the well-researched, rational, persuasive debaters? Dr. Somerville certainly wants to be, but nobody seems to want to really address her in the same thorough academic manner that she so wonderfully employs. Rather she is either ignored (including by the Order of Canada people who find her "too controversial") or dissed from afar with the usual tired arguments.

[Note: I say this while also admitting that I don't always agree with the good professor. I don't accept all her conclusions but I appreciate and respect her approach.]

As my year of employment in the right to life world winds down (sixteen days to go), I hope that I will still discover those who are doing what our society very much needs--taking reason and research seriously in presenting arguments. Enough of the drivel. Life is way too important to waste with badly argued opinions.

The book I would love to edit

2008-07-10T11:03:00.000-07:00

As YMFR know, I am a more or less retired professor. My academic publishing career is becoming a distant memory (although I do have a chapter in an academic book comingout next year). I have written one book and edited a second, but this was in the 1990's. Nevertheless, I still have the itch to do one more book. And I think I know what it is.

This year working for Abbotsford (BC) Right to Life has exposed me to the complexities of the pro-life/pro-choice debate. Despite the rantings and histrionics of some activists, there is much that would lend itself to useful discussion if only a few of the saner folks on all sides could get together in one place and compare notes. I would love to provide that place.

Here are the sections and chapters that I would include in such a book.

INTRODUCTION

The introduction would set the tone for what follows, of course, as any good introduction should. I would probably write it as editor, and would begin by noting that while the subjects of sanctity of life, women's full and equal rights, reproductive choice, abortion and limits on same, and so on are most often addressed in emotional and black and white ways, that such topics are quite complex and that people of good faith take different positions.

[That's a pretty long sentence I just wrote. My editors in the past have always gotten after me for this. They would carve up my wordsmithing into what they viewed as short, punchy sentences that always seemed to be aimed at a grade five reading level. But I digress.]

Next the purpose of the book would be explained. I have a high view of human intelligence and reasoning ability provided that it is done within a non-threatening, non-partisan context. Therefore, the book's aim would be to lay out the spectrum of reasoning that goes into the various positions that are taken on the topics mentioned above, and how these influence public perception and public policy.

Various real life case studies and questions for discussion would be included throughout the book. Readers would be encouraged to use the book for group study purposes. The challenge would be for readers to come to their own principled conclusions.

WHERE WE ARE AND HOW WE GOT HERE

I am hopelessly addicted to history. [Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905.] I seldom write or speak on any topic without giving some kind of historical context. This helps to explain why we are where we are, what historical forces led to the present situation here as opposed to somewhere else.

So we would need a couple of chapters on the present legal scene with respect to the relevant issues (e.g., our abortion laws, or lack thereof, compared to say, the U.S., the U.K. or France), and a couple more on how we arrived at this place and not another.

It would be eye-opening to most readers, for instance, to know that the "back alley butcher" argument that pro-choice activists always raise as the alternative to abortion on demand is largely a myth. Prior to Roe v. Wade, 90% of illegal abortions were done by doctors, and the death rate from illegal abortions was not much different than the death rate from today's legal ones.

I think that it would be useful to compare abortion law in Canada with the very different situation in the U.S. In America abortion is a constitutional right (Roe v. Wade). Such is not the case in Canada. Here abortion is simply not illegal (R. v. Morgentaler). Thus, framing public policy would take a very different course here from there.

THE MEDICAL VIEW AND THE ISSUE OF PERSONHOOD

Remarkably little is known about fetal development, leading to the widespread public belief that the fetus is just a blob of cells for a prolonged period. But medical doctors know that each brand new fetus is a living being with its own unique set of DNA and its gender already decided. Even Dr. Morgentaler won't do abortions after 24 weeks, claiming that he aborts fetuses, not babies.

In this section a discussion of living being versus human being could be included, as well as the issue of personhood.

FEMINISM AND THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE

I'm fascinated that the early feminist movement contained both those who were ardently anti-abortion (such as our Alberta Five and Susan B. Anthony in the U.S.), while others were just the opposite (such as Margaret Sanger, the godmother of Planned Parenthood). But now:

It is taken today as a truism that in order to be a feminist you must be ‘pro-choice’. The right to abortion is often deemed to be the most fundamental right of women, without which all others are said to be meaningless. Gloria Steinem, the self-appointed matriarch, holds that ‘pro-life’ feminism is “a contradiction in terms”. At ‘pro-choice’ rallies, banners have been held up stating that “a woman’s right to abortion is equivalent to her right to be” (Pro-Life Feminism by Liz Hoskings).

Consequently the standard response to pro-life criticism from the pro-choice activists is that a for a woman to have full and equal rights, she must have the freedom to choose vis-a-vis reproductive rights. Dr. Morgentaler, for instance, characterized pro-life women who criticized his appointment to the Order of Canada as women who are opposed to women's rights.

This characterization of abortion opponents as anti-woman is used to great effect in Parliament and the public media to put the pro-life movement in its "proper place." This calls for an analysis of feminism both from the common perspective of 21st century spokespeople, and from feminists who feel that women's rights and fetal rights are compatible (positions taken, for example, by Feminists for Life and ProWomanProLife).

THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT

The church is divided on the right to life/right to choose issue. The Roman Catholic Church, it hardly need be said, is ardently pro-life, whereas the Presbyterian Church of Canada is officially pro-choice. Are the biblical data so obscure that equally well-meaning Christians can arrive at opposite conclusions?

Therefore we need to look at the various biblical passages and principles that are used to frame arguments, and how different church groups have arrived at the conclusion they have.

The religious views of other faiths could be touched on in this section as well.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL/ETHICAL ARGUMENT

Canada is a pluralistic society that often gives short shrift to religious arguments. Consequently we need to look at the abortion question philosophically and ethically as well. There are those who would argue ethically for no abortion. Others, such as Prof. Somerville at McGill, would prefer significant restrictions on the timing of abortions. [While often labeled as pro-life, Dr. Somerville does argue that abortions could be done up to 12 weeks.] Then there are those that see abortion on demand as the only ethical alternative.

STRATEGIC ISSUES

Pro-choice groups appear to have been much more effective than their pro-life counterparts in shaping public perception and public policy. Pro-life groups appear to be much more isolated, marginalized and old-fashioned than the pro-choice lobby. Yet various public opinion polls suggest that the pro-life view is far more widely held than is characterized in the media and the remarks of pro-choice activists. What accounts for this public perception?

This might be the most important section of the book. As a pro-life advocate myself, I would like to see the sanctity of life argument realize their proper place in public discourse. How can this be brought about? This section would make or break the book.

Well that's the idea in embryonic form. I would appreciate your feedback on this idea. Any perspective contributors--and publishers for that matter--can apply for involvement.

Ideas that some day might grow up to be posts - vol. 1, no. 2

2008-07-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

1. Private free standing medical clinics

Here in Canada, the protectors of the Medicare status quo are quick to rail at any suggestion of private medicine (typically referred to as the American system). Why then is much the same group silent about the private free standing abortion clinics such as those run by our newest symbol of everything that is good about Canada, one Henry Morgentaler? Are clinics that exist to end life that much more important, nay sacred, than those that would like to improve life? Is the desire to live a fuller life by having an unborn baby aborted more important than the desire to live a fuller life by having a heart that beats reliably? Or hips that permit mobility? Or backs that allow for sleep?

2. Going back to back alleys and coat hangers.

It's pretty standard argumentation for the pro-abortion activists to say that the alternative to legal abortion on demand is a return to women dying in their tens or hundreds of thousands at the hand of back alley butchers. Having grown up in the pre-Morgenaler and pre-Roe v. Wade era, and never being aware of this epidemic, I did some research recently on whether such wholesale slaughter did in fact occur. The results, which you can easily find for yourself, include the following:

a. Most illegal abortions were performed by doctors. "Back alley" referred to sneaking in the doctor's back door, not to having the abortion in a scene of squalor and filth. See, for instance, this report by the medical director of Planned Parenthood U.S.A. in 1960 (Source: Wikipedia):

Mary Calderone, former medical director of Planned Parenthood, said, in a 1960 printing of the American Journal of Public Health:

"Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure. This applies not just to therapeutic abortions as performed in hospitals but also to so-called illegal abortions as done by physician. In 1957 there were only 260 deaths in the whole country attributed to abortions of any kind, second, and even more important, the conference [on abortion sponsored by Planned Parenthood] estimated that 90 percent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians. Whatever trouble arises usually arises from self-induced abortions, which comprise approximately 8 percent, or with the very small percentage that go to some kind of non-medical abortionist. Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians."

b. In 1972 "the Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died from illegal or self-induced abortions" (Source: Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman).

c. Women die today as a result of a perfectly legal abortion done by a doctor. While the numbers are not large, they are similar to the number of women who died of illegal abortions during those alleged bad old days:

The Centers for Disease Control counted 386 safe and legal abortion deaths during the period 1972 - 2003 (Source: Real Choice.)

In other words, the case for legal abortions can't seriously be made on the basis saving women from back alley butchers. A (regrettable) few died from illegal abortions, and a (regrettable) few die from legal ones. It's a non-issue.

I want to like Obama, but.....

2008-07-07T15:39:00.000-07:00

I don't normally weigh in on partisan political issues for obvious reasons. Once one identifies with any particular political party (and I don't, by the way), then one assumes all of that party's baggage. When it comes to certain life issues, and women's issues, all of the major Canadian federal parties are much of a muchness at any rate.

But in the U.S., where politicians are not as reticent about voicing their religious views (compare Barack Obama to Jean Chretien, for instance), one can assess to what degree a person's faith informs their worldview. The most remarkably frank speech by a high profile politician on how his faith impacts his politics that I have ever read is Barack Obama's address to the Call to Renewal Christian advocacy group in 2006. It was exciting to read it (http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal).

Nevertheless, I still find myself disappointed with his remarks on abortion. He claimed that his views on a woman's right to choose, as found on his website in earlier days, were mere Democratic boilerplate language, and that having reflected more carefully as a person of faith, he was led to re-phrase them.

To check out the sincerity of that claim, I looked at remarks he made a year prior to his Call to Renewal speech (see 1. below), then his admission that he needed to rephrase them (see 2.). Finally I looked at some recent material that indicated where he now stands on the issues (see 3.).

I have to admit that I don't see any particular difference from 2005 to 2008. I note as well that Planned Parenthood in the U.S., that makes hundreds of millions of dollars doing abortions in its multitudinous clinics, endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton (see 4.).

I would have hoped that Obama, who shows a certain amount of creativity in other areas, would take a more progressive line on women's issues. But he resorts to the same tired expedient of abortion as an antidote for the profound difficulties American women face in connection with realizing full and equal women's rights while dealing with unborn babies.

At any rate, look at the four excerpts below and decide for yourself. What faith do you see informing Obama's view of abortion and how women's issues are best dealt with?

1. Remarks of Senator Barack Obama at the National Women's Law Center
Thursday, November 10, 2005

Now, the ability for a woman to make decisions about how many children to have and when - without interference from the government - is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have. We all know, becoming a parent is one of the most - if not the most - important jobs there is. No one should make that decision for a woman and her family but them. And we must keep defending their right to make this choice in the years to come.

But even as we defend this right, it's important for us to acknowledge the moral dimension to the choice that's made. Too often in our advocacy, we forget that. And yet we know that many women who make the choice may never forget the difficulty that accompanies it. I noticed that when Hillary Clinton acknowledged this in a speech earlier this year, some criticized her. But she was merely recognizing an important moral reality for many.

I also think that whenever possible, we need frame choice within the broader context of equality and opportunity for women. Because when we argue big, we win. But when the entire struggle for opportunity is narrowed, it plays into the hands of those who thrive on the politics of division; who win by fueling culture wars.

2. 'Call to Renewal' Keynote Address
Wednesday, June 28, 2006

So let me end with just one other interaction I had during my campaign. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School that said the following:

"Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you."

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be "totalizing." His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of the Republican agenda.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website, which suggested that I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor went on to write:

"I sense that you have a strong sense of justice...and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason...Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded....You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others...I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

Fair-minded words.

So I looked at my website and found the offending words. In fairness to them, my staff had written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

So I wrote back to the doctor, and I thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position.

3. Women for Barack Obama is a grassroots effort to connect women with information about Barack Obama and his position on issues important to us (copyright 2008).

Supports a Woman’s Right to Choose:

Barack Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in that case.

Preventing Unwanted Pregnancy:

Barack Obama is an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims.

4. July 07, 2008
Planned Parenthood For Obama

The Planned Parenthood Action Fund is proud to endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States,” said Action Fund president Cecile Richards. “He is a passionate advocate for women’s rights, and has a long and consistent record of standing up for women's health care. As president, he will improve access to quality health care for women, support and protect a woman's right to choose, support comprehensive sex education to keep our young people healthy and safe, and invest in prevention programs, including family planning services and breast cancer screenings.

Charles Lamb, A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig

2008-07-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

Regarding yesterday's post which started with a story I couldn't remember, I was surely right--my memory was feeble indeed. Unless there is a similar story somewhere else, the one to which I was alluding is called A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig by Charles Lamb (1775-1834), an English essayist.

In the story, it is the pig owner's house (not a nearby forest) that burns down, killing and roasting a new litter of piglets. This was the origins of not only roast pork, but of any cooked meat. Cooking meat, rather than eating it raw, caused a great scandal but eventually became the norm. Regrettably, it was assumed for a long time that the only way to accomplish the objective of roasting a pig was to burn down one's house with the porker in it.

So the details of my metaphor were wrong, although the essence is the same. So I won't re-write the post, although I will use the story in a more correct form in the future.

To read the essay, please see http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/pig.htm. And thanks to Steve for sending the link.

Forest fires and roast pig

2008-07-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Many moons ago I was told a story that I can no longer remember. I've tried to find it on the Internet, to no avail. But the essence of it, as I recall with my enfeebled memory, is this:

A forest fire raged outside a city. When the fire finally died, one of the inhabitants found the remains of a wild boar, which roasted to death in the flames. It smelled delicious and he tried a bite. This led in time to a wide demand for roasted pig.

But people were as inclined in those ancient days as they are now to artificially constrain their imaginations and subsequent decision-making. So it was assumed that the only way to acquire roast pig was to set afire forests in which they were known to live. This led to various unintended consequences with respect to the loss of enormous tracts of woodland. It also led to a host of decisions regarding who was entitled to have roasts of pork, licenses for setting forests on fire, etc. There were even pig wars.

Finally some radical (I like to think he was a wise and thoughtful sixty-one year old) suggested that there was another way to realize the sought for objective that did not result in all of this collateral damage. I think that you can guess what it was. He faced tremendous opposition at first, but good sense finally won the day.

This glimmer of memory awoke from its sleep as I read the various articles regarding Henry Morgentaler's receipt of the Order of Canada (along with other great Canadians like Kim Campbell--Kim who?). No one will dispute that women deserve full and equal rights. No one disagrees that society must insist that governments and courts honour such rights. But like setting forest fires to get delicious food, have we sought to achieve this desirable objective in a very wrong way?

A desirable objective can be legitimately sought for, but achieved through undesirable means. It was thought that the only way to achieve a delicious feast of roast pork was to burn down the pig's habitat. This realized the main objective, but at the expense of many other laudable objectives (e.g., having lumber to build one's home, halting erosion, etc., etc., etc.). Much harm was done to acquire that perfect food, and a thicket of laws, assumptions, stereotypes, and even deaths (other animals and people in the forests) developed--all because of wrongheadedness in achieving the main objective.

To my way of thinking, Morgentaler is a classic arsonist--a forest fire starter par excellence. What do I mean?

Consider this comment regarding Morgentaler's receipt of the Order of Canada from one of his admirer's, Maria Corsillo of the Scott Abortion Clinic in Toronto (Vancouver Province, July 2, 2008, p. A9):

It's not that Dr. Morgentaler needs that honour--we need to recognize
his achievements. This is a person who has single-handedly changed our country so that we are one of the few countries that absolutely recognizes women as full and equal human beings. I think that anyone, however they feel about abortion, has to recognize that Dr. Morgentaler has given every single person in this country the right to have his or her own feelings about that.

First, there is the main objective: to recognize that women are full and equal human beings. Hands up, anyone who disagree with that? Good.

Then there are the explicit or implicit assumptions:
1. Most countries don't recognize women in this way.
2. These are countries that do not allow abortion on demand. Remember, there were legal abortions done in Canadian hospitals before Morgentaler arrived on the scene, but access to them was limited, required the consent of a medical committee, etc.
3. Unborn babies can be a hindrance to the achievement of full and equal rights.
4. Therefore, achieving abortion on demand is an important way of realizing that great objective.

Morgentaler himself made other revealing comments in a story in today's Vancouver Sun (July 3, 2008):

He said he is surprised the negative reaction to his honour from religious groups "is not more violent than it already is ... The negative opinions all come from the usual suspects: the Catholic Church, fundamentalists, women opposed to women's rights."

Here we have the same main objective: full rights for women. And we have the typical assumptions; i.e., if you are opposed to abortion on demand, then you are not just anti-abortion; you are also anti-women's rights.

So to get to the main objective, we must burn down the trees:
1. Switch the attitude toward motherhood from a inestimable privilege to a burden which one bears at one's option.
2. Decide that the abuses of women's rights that most often lead to crisis pregnancies (you know the list--fear of rejection, loss of work, falling behind, physical threats, etc.) are best solved through aborting the baby. Nothing is necessarily done about the abuses, so they are still there waiting for the woman when she leaves Morgentaler's clinic.
3. Defy medical science by denigrating the developing fetus into a blob of cells.
4. Stereotype anyone opposed to this particular means of achieving equal rights for women as anti-woman.
5. Define "unwantedness" as a sufficient reason for terminating a pregnancy (while continuing to define it as an abuse in other contexts such as employment).
6. Borrow from our sordid history of legally defining Jews, blacks, women and aboriginals as non-persons by defining the fetus as such. Astonishingly this approach is supported by Jews (Morgentaler, a holocaust survivor), blacks (Barack Obama), women (Hilary Clinton), and aboriginals (Jessica Yee, Chair, Aboriginal Realities, Aboriginal Choices, and Toronto Action Committee, Canadians for Choice) who ought to know better.
7. Pretend that abortion is a routine and safe procedure despite all of the collateral physical and emotional damage that many women and girls subsequently endure.
8. Ignore indications that there may be a significant link between abortion and breast cancer.
9. Harass politicians into seeing abortion on demand as the sure indication that they are truly pro-woman.

And what are we left with? Enormous numbers of dead fetuses. And enormous numbers of abused women. We haven't addressed the nature and extent of the abuses. We've just burned down forests.

Polls only count when they support what one believes

2008-06-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

The following poll results were recorded on the Angus Reid Global Monitor site on June 21/08:

Half of adults in Canada believe pregnancy termination on demand should continue to be allowed in the country, according to a poll by Angus Reid Strategies. 49 per cent of respondents think abortion should be legal under any circumstances.

Conversely, 42 per cent of respondents would allow the procedure only under certain circumstances, while five per cent would make abortion illegal in all circumstances.

Then only three days later, we get these results regarding M.P. Ken Epp's private member's bill, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act. The source again is that respected Canadian polling firm, Angus Reid:

Bill C-484, an act to amend the Criminal Code also known as the Unborn Victims of Crime Act was introduced by Ken Epp (Conservative, Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.) in November 2007. The bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code to make it an offence to injure, cause the death of, or attempt to cause the death of a child before or during its birth while committing, or attempting to commit, an offence against the mother. The bill does not apply to consensual abortion or any act or omission by the mother of the child.

Two-thirds of respondents (68%) would like their Member of Parliament to vote in favour of this bill, while 13 per cent are opposed and 18 per cent are not sure. Atlantic Canada (80%) and Alberta (77%) hold the highest levels of support for the bill, while Quebecers (54%) are less enthusiastic.

One obvious conclusion that can be drawn from this is that most of the support for Mr. Epp's bill comes from pro-choice women and men, with a majority in every province answering in the affirmative. They apparently do not see it as a back door way of re-criminalizing abortion, nor do they see it as compromising women's rights.

But while the usual pro-choice spokespeople quoted by the media will make much of the first poll above, they will all ignore the second one. Despite all of their efforts to do so, they have not convinced their sisters that their views of reproductive freedom are fully true. Yet they will ignore the polls and go on insisting that they are acting in the interests of all women, including the majority who disagree with them.

Which is it--arrogance, cynicism, or obliviousness?

going, going...........

2008-06-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

....and nearly gone. As YMFR know, I'm a consultant and have been doing work for Abbotsford Right to Life for the past year. As Director of Education I have been involved in putting on public lectures, organizing youth events, and otherwise meeting our mandate as a government-registered, non-profit educational society. In addition, I began blogging on life issues as a means of educating myself on the perspectives of the various world views that underlie the pro-life/pro-choice/pro-abortion debate.

But my contract with Abbotsford Right to Life is just about over. I'll be moving on at the end of July. New contracts will mean different focuses (foci?), leaving no time for blogging.

My academic style, consisting of longer thought pieces and essays, certainly isn't the norm among bloggers in this area of human interest. That may have to do with my objective in blogging in the first place, versus the goals of others. My primary aim is to explore, discuss, float trial balloons, find spokespeople from atypical backgrounds to state their case--all of the things that we do in the classroom and in our research. No one has the corner on insight and discernment.

Two things I have learned in particular:
1. I am completely at odds morally with the pro-choice spokespeople, and their clones in Parliament, when it comes to the issue of the personhood of the fetus. God help us that we have made the state the final arbiter on who is human or when life begins. That women, 1st Nations people, and African-Canadians would countenance this for a moment only shows that if we don't learn from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them.
2. I am largely at odds strategically with the pro-life spokespeople whose focus on fetal rights has created more problems than it has solved.

Regular readers know that I have blogged extensively on both of these points in the past. In my few remaining weeks I will return to them again before the big sign off at the end of July.

Society for informed life choices

2008-05-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have always been impressed with the way in which the Salvation Army separates its moral preaching as a church from its work among the downtrodden in society. For instance, the Sally Ann church takes historically orthodox views on sexual morality, including related issues such as homosexuality, yet it funds and staffs ministries for AIDS victims. It lays out an ideal while dealing practically with the present reality.

The same is true with an organization like, say, the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. The leadership there is, to the best of my knowledge, pretty straitlaced evangelical. Yet they had (and may still have) an outreach to sex trade workers in which my daughter was once involved. Volunteers go to the various street corners in the area taking the prostitutes something to drink and showing them friendship. The idea is that should one of these women (a large number of whom are transgendered) want help of any kind, they would know to whom they could turn (and some do). Marvelous.

I would like to float a trial balloon among YMFR (you my faithful reader). The pro-life movement, to a great degree, is like the church. It takes a strong moral position (abortion is murder), and argues for what it sees as the ideal moral solution (make abortions illegal). Often these groups tie themselves very directly to a church, most often the Roman Catholic denomination.

Public demonstrations are usually directed at a legislature, are highly moral in character, and usually pretty obviously Christian. I participated in just such a demonstration in Victoria earlier this month when I m.c.'d the March for Women's Lives. Virtually all of the speakers were Roman Catholic, two being priests in full battle dress (dog collar, etc). One of the marchers carried a huge picture of the Virgin with child. The march was preceded by a mass (with no Protestant or interfaith equivalent available). The speeches were all pretty good, with two or three of them being very creative, passionate and compelling. A common complaint later was that none of the politicians inside the Legislature dared to show her/his face.

The pro-life movement defines itself as the opposite of the pro-choice movement, which it often labels the pro-abortion movement. Of course, the pro-choice people in turn call pro-lifers "anti-choice" and "anti-woman."

Outside of the pro-life movement, the pro-life profile is seen as follows:
1. Opposed to any choice other than life.
2. Desirous of legislating abortion away.
3. Highly religious in character, particularly evangelical and Roman Catholic.
4. Morally absolutist and intolerant.
5. Pro-fetus but anti-women's rights.

That some of the above is unfair stereotype is true but nevertheless the present reality. It doesn't help that the Roman Catholic Church is carrying additional baggage these days with the many scandals involving priests and little children, or the residential schools.

I won't argue that the moral side must not be taught. In fact, the Protestant churches by and large pay life issues scant heed, or actually take an official pro-choice position; e.g., the Presbyterian Church of Canada. So somebody has to do it.

But what if we were to follow the Salvation Army model? There would be those who, taking the place of timorous preachers, would continue to urge a moral examination of the abortion and euthanasia questions. These folks could continue to call themselves pro-life.

But there would be another group who would deal with the present reality and choose their agenda accordingly. I am using "Society for Informed Life Choices" as a working title. Such groups would deal with the issue in an educational fashion, looking at the array of choices that are available to women, and at the crises that cause women to make one choice or another.

The educational efforts (including research as well as teaching/counseling) would take three forms. One would deal with the actual physical issues; e.g., i. Are abortions safe?; ii. Is there a link with breast cancer?; iii. Fetal development; iv. The various positions on mercy killing and the strengths and challenges of each, etc.

Parties in pitched camps often have a hard time being objective about these matters. For instance, a local college newspaper published a front-page article called The Abortion-Breast Cancer Link is a Myth . When Abbotsford Right to Life held a public meeting on the issue, with a stem cell specialist as speaker, representatives from that college were invited but declined to attend. So much for the inquiring mind.

A second form that this education would take would be philosophical and moral in a more general sense. For instance, one of the big problems that pro-choice activists have with the pro-life movement is that women's rights, as they define them, are incompatible with any restrictions on abortion. Is this valid? Are there other alternatives? What is needed is more than just "because the Bible says so" (or the Pope, etc.). Some people, like Prof. Somerville, are doing this kind of argumentation right now, but much more is needed.

Thirdly, we need analysis of the many factors that make a pregnancy a crisis, and discuss these from the point of view of what makes for good public policy that genuinely supports the sanctity of life. The same thing is needed with respect to euthanasia.

What is my purpose in this? We live in a pluralistic and secular society. The church is one of many competing voices, with no more authority or credibility than any other. In fact, the representatives of the marketplace have far more credibility with right-wing governments than other voices, while organized labour has the socialists' ear.

So I am proposing a kind of "think tank" approach that avoids affiliations and positions that carry so much baggage as to paint them into a corner by definition. This would allow for a broader public reception, I should think, than is presently the case.

Is this an idea with any merit? Please fill out the little survey in the sidebar to give me your ideas. Or email a comment for me to publish.

Thanks.

Talking past each other

2008-05-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

Observing the to and fro between the Ken Epp supporters and the Ken Epp denouncers simply serves to illustrate again that the ardent pro-life people and the ardent pro-abortion people simply talk past each other.

Like it or not, the nature of our secular society is such that a woman's rights are tied up with a notion of independence that makes it impossible to see a fetus as of equal personhood. Because genuine Christianity, and a number of other major religions, are communally-focused rather than individually-focused, the pro-choice notion of independence makes no sense to people of faith.

Now this secular view of women's rights is, to some degree, an attempt to address wrongs of the past (and the present) that have victimized women far more then men. This is understandable and laudable. But it has come at a cost.

Over the centuries societies have created various fictions to justify other things that are more important to them. The best examples are the legal fictions that black slaves, women and native North Americans were not persons. All of these inventions were for a purpose deemed to be rational or self-evident within the circles that created them (e.g., a strong economy was more important than the personhood of slaves; or, men are inherently superior to women and must protect them from things that they can't handle or understand--like voting). I suspect that the Sudanese political leaders have just such a fantasy to justify what is happening in Darfur. The widespread popularity of eugenics certainly required such illusionary thinking.

In Canada we have two such fictions. First is the medical one, that a fetus is part of the woman and not distinct from her in any way that matters. That this is nonsensical medically hardly needs to be said, but it is nevertheless widely held. Thus we have pro-abortion advocates parading around with signs saying, "Keep your hands (laws, religion, etc.) off my body." It's the unborn baby's body that is at issue, but to the pro-abortion crowd there is no difference.

The second is the hoary chestnut that the state can decide in its wisdom what human beings are viewed as persons. We have decried this over the centuries, but continue to perpetrate it now in the exact same fashion as did those societies of the past.

To maintain this fiction, a number of very illogical positions have to be taken. They are stated routinely in the Canadian Parliament's Question Period if you could stomach watching it for several days. Often misrepresentations and outright lies are resorted to, particularly when fighting with "enemies", that would be rejected as nonsense should they be used in arguing any other cause. But the ends justify the means apparently, so utter drivel is not only proclaimed but acclaimed.

What we have is the clashing of two world views. Because many pro-life Christians have not grasped the importance of "taking the crisis out of a crisis pregnancy", but have focused almost exclusively on fetal rights, their view will inevitably be rejected outright by their secular "foes". It is unlikely that the secular view will change in the foreseeable future. It's up to the people of faith to begin to exercise the creativity necessary to bring society around. The clergy and other Christians did it in the 19th century with the slaves. Let's do it again.

Let's make it possible to have women's rights and fetal rights. That will take a lot more work than organizing a march, however large. In fact, the focus will have to swing from debating the pro-abortionists (as I said, the two worldviews are watertight and admit to no alterations), to redeeming society in such a way that women will not feel the pressure to resort to abortion.

Isn't redemption what we're all about?

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

2008-05-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

I normally write new things in this blog. I'm still sorting out some of my own thoughts on life issues, and I find the writing process as the best way to think things through.

But today I am reproducing an article I found, you may be surprised to know, at the Pagans for Life website, one that I had not visited before. The article is old (first published in 1992). I borrowed it, and to some degree it made me blue to read it, despite its strong pro-life worldview. We live in a tremendously polarized society with respect to life issues, and rational thought appears to be the victim--a depressing thought to an academic.

At the time this article was written, Bill Clinton was president, having succeeded Republicans George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan. Jesse Jackson was still seen as a credible force in political life (he's a bit of a caricature now).

The author, Nat Hentoff, is a distinguished American in many ways, and has retained both his left-wing views and his support for pro-life to this day. You might want to read his bio. I found my old friend Wikipedia to be quite helpful in this regard.

Please read it through to the end. It's a first-rate piece.

Pro Choice Bigots
by Nat Hentoff

This article first appeared in The New Republic (Nov. 30, 1992)

Not too long ago, he was a pro-lifer. He wrote and spoke about the right to life and attacked advocates of abortion rights. "There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life," he would say. "That was the premise to slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation, because that was private and therefore outside of your right to be concerned." He told the story of how he himself had almost been aborted. A physician had advised his mother to let him go, but she wouldn't. Don't let the pro-choicers convince you that a fetus isn't a human being, he warned: "That's how the whites dehumanized us, by calling us niggers. The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify that which they wanted to do-and not even feel like they'd done anything wrong."

But as Jesse Jackson decided to run for president in 1984, his fiery pro-life rhetoric suddenly subsided. If being black was a political obstacle, being black and pro-life would raise the odds much too high. Jackson understood that it is hard to be a pro-lifer if you want the support of the left-or just have friends on the left. The lockstep liberal orthodoxy on abortion is pro-choice, as Bill Clinton's election showed and his presidency will reinforce. Dissenters are not tolerated.

Nearly ten years ago I declared myself a pro-lifer. A Jewish, atheist, civil libertarian, left-wing pro-lifer. Immediately, three women editors at The Village Voice, my New York base, stopped speaking to me. Not long after, I was invited to speak on this startling heresy at Nazareth College in Rochester (long since a secular institution). Two weeks before the lecture, it was canceled. The women on the lecture committee, I was told by the embarrassed professor who had asked me to come, had decided that there was a limit to the kind of speech the students could safely hear, and I was outside that limit. I was told, however, that I could come the next year to give a different talk. Even the women would very much like me to speak about one of my specialties, censorship in America. I went and was delighted to talk about censorship at Nazareth.

At the Voice, some of my colleagues in the editorial department wondered, I was told, when I had converted to Catholicism-the only explanation they could think of for my apostasy. (Once I received a note from someone deep in the ranks of the classified department. She too was pro-life, but would I please keep her secret? Life would be unbearable if anyone knew.)

To others, I was a novelty. Interviews were arranged on National Public Radio and various television programs, and I spoke at one of Fred Friendly's constitutional confrontations on PBS. Afterward, men, women, and teenagers wrote from all over the country that they had thought themselves to be solitary pro-lifers in the office, at school, even at home. They were surprised to find that there was someone else who was against capital punishment, against Reagan and Bush, and dismayed at the annual killing of 1.6 million developing human beings. They felt, they told me, that it was absurd to talk blithely of disposing of potential life. These were lives-lives with potential to someday do New York Times crossword puzzles and dig Charlie Parker. That is, if they weren't thrown out with the garbage.

I felt less alone myself. In time, I found other heretics. For instance, the bold, witty, crisply intelligent members of Feminists for Life of America. There are some in every state, and chapters in thirty-five. Many of them came out of the civil rights and anti-war movements, and now they also focus on blocking attempts to enact death penalty laws. They have succeeded in Minnesota. You won't see much about Feminists for Life in the press. When reporters look for pro-lifers to interview, they tend to go after pinched elderly men who look like Jesse Helms and women who wear crucifixes.

On the other hand, not all stereotypes are without actual models. As an exotic pro-lifer, I was invited to address an annual Right to Life convention in Columbus, Ohio. The event was held in a large field. A rickety platform faced the predominantly Christian crowd.

I told them that as pro-lifers, they ought to oppose capital punishment and the life-diminishing poverty associated with the policies of their Republican president. Ronald Reagan, I emphasized, had just cut the budget for the WIC program (federally funded Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children). He and those who support him, I said, give credence to Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank's line: "Those who oppose abortion are pro-life only up to the moment of birth."

From the back of the crowd, and then moving forward, there were growls, shouts, and table-thumping. Suddenly, a number of people began rushing toward the platform. I said to the man sitting next to me, a leader of the flock, that I had not quite decided that this cause was worth dying for.

As it happened, the souls on fire only wanted to say that I was in grievous error about these Christian presidents because I had not yet found God. Indeed, I often get letters from religious pro-lifers telling me that it is impossible for me to be simultaneously an atheist and a pro-lifer. Some of the pro-abortion-rights leaders whom I have debated are certain of the same correlation. No serious atheist, no Jewish atheist, no left-wing atheist could want to-as my fiercely pro-choice wife puts it-enslave women.

Yet being without theology isn't the slightest hindrance to being pro-life. As any obstetrics manual-Williams Obstetrics, for example-points out, there are two patients involved, and the one not yet born "should be given the same meticulous care by the physician that we long have given the pregnant woman." Nor, biologically, does it make any sense to draw life-or-death lines at viability. Once implantation takes place, this being has all the genetic information within that makes each human being unique. And he or she embodies continually developing human life from that point on. It misses a crucial point to say that the extermination can take place because the brain has not yet functioned or because that thing is not yet a "person." Whether the life is cut off in the fourth week or the fourteenth, the victim is one of our species, and has been from the start.

Yet rational arguments like these are met with undiluted hostility by otherwise clear-thinking liberals. Mary Meehan, a veteran of the anti-war movement, tried to pierce this pall of left orthodoxy in a 1980 article in The Progressive:

Some of us who went through the anti-war struggles of the 1960s and 1970s are now active in the right-to-life movement. We do not enjoy opposing our old friends on the abortion issue, but we feel that we have no choice. We are moved by what pro-life feminists call the "consistency thing"-the belief that respect for human life demands opposition to abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and war... It is out of character for the left to neglect the weak and helpless. The traditional mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the poor... The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient.

Meehan's article provoked an extraordinary amount of mail. A few writers praised The Progressive for having enough respect for its readers to expose them to a perspective opposite to the magazine's. But the great percentage of letter writers were furious, indignant that a "left" magazine should print such vicious right-wing propaganda.

Because defending the killing of the fetus is inconsistent with the liberal/left world view in other matters, the abortion rights orthodoxy has relied on extraordinary hypothetical arguments to justify its position in the twenty years since the Roe decision. Take two examples. In 1971, when abortion was legalized in New York state, an editorial on WCBS radio in New York attempted to define abortion as an act of compassion: "It is one sensible method of dealing with such problems as overpopulation, illegitimacy, and possible birth defects," the announcer said. "It is one way of fighting the rising welfare rolls and the increasing number of child abuse cases."

In 1992 the defense has changed. No longer a means of compassion, abortion is now viewed as a form of preemptive law enforcement. As Nicholas von Hoffman writes in the New York Observer:

"Free, cheap abortion is a policy of social defense. To save ourselves from being murdered in our beds and raped on the streets, we should do everything possible to encourage pregnant women who don't want the baby and will not take care of it to get rid of the thing before it turns into a monster....

"At their demonstrations, the anti-abortionists parade around with pictures of dead and dismembered fetuses. The pro-abortionists should meet these displays with some of their own: pictures of the victims of the unaborted-murder victims, rape victims, mutilation victims-pictures to remind us that the fight for abortion is but part of the larger struggle for safe homes and safe streets."

As a sometime admirer of von Hoffman, I take this to be-maybe-his assuming the role of Jonathan Swift in these hard times, but it doesn't matter particularly whether he's serious or not. Those who see abortion as a cost-effective, even humane, way to thin the ranks of the lower orders are not few in number.

Pro-choicers clearly are only interested in their version of the choice in this matter. But why are the liberals among them so immovably illiberal only when it comes to abortion? The male pro-choicers, by and large, consider this to be entirely an issue for women to decide. And the only women they know are pro-choice. If a man has any doubts or subversive ambivalences, he keeps them to himself because should he speak of them, he will be banished from the company of all the progressive women he knows-and any whom he might hope to know.

Pro-choice women are so unyielding because they profoundly believe that without the power to abort at will, they will be enslaved. Once an abortion is wanted, the fetus, as one woman told me, is-to some women-"the enemy within." In the fight not to be enslaved, liberalism is an abstraction.

Accordingly, I am no longer surprised to find myself considered an external enemy. For years, American Civil Liberties Union affiliates around the country invited me to speak at their fund-raising Bill of Rights dinners. But once I declared myself a pro-lifer, all such invitations stopped. They know I agree with them on most ACLU policies, but that no longer matters. I am now no better than Jesse Helms. Free speech, after all, has its limits.

This disdain on the left for anything or anyone pro-life has clearly taken a toll on the political process. Liberal/left politicians who remain true to their philosophy and oppose abortion are virtually impossible to find. Like Jackson, most simply cave in to abortion rights pressure, fearing that no matter how left-leaning they are on other issues, if they come out against abortion they will be branded as right-wing fanatics. Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, a liberal pro-life Democrat, was forbidden from speaking at this year's Democratic convention. And when The Village Voice later offered him a forum in New York to talk and answer questions about whether it is possible to be both liberal and pro-life, he (and I, the putative moderator) was shouted down by pro-choicers. Meanwhile, the president-elect, who has been on both sides of the abortion question during his career, has already pledged to satisfy his pro-choice backers by requiring that any nominee to the Supreme Court be an explicit and public supporter of abortion rights.

I saw Jesse Jackson recently on a train, and we talked for quite a while about George Bush's awful nomination of Ed Carnes to the federal bench. An assistant attorney general in Alabama, Carnes built his reputation on sending people to "Yellow Mama," the state's electric chair. He would replace Frank Johnson, whom Martin Luther King once described as "the man who gave true meaning to the word justice." (A few weeks later Jackson joined the campaign to defeat the nomination. To no avail. Carnes was eventually confirmed.) I then asked Jackson about another form of execution. I told him that in speeches I often quote what he wrote as a pro-lifer. He looked uncomfortable. I asked him if he still believed what he said then. "I'll get back to you on that," he said. He hasn't yet.

ProWomanProLife and other good places to look

2008-04-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Regular readers (all three of you) will have noticed an added feature to this blog. You can now click on to the thoughtful blog ProWomanProLife directly from here. I don't know anyone connected with that particular life site. I don't necessarily always agree with what they say. But I think that they are raising important issues in a far more balanced way than do many other commentators on life issues. So I commend the blog to your attention.

I would have also added the Feminists for Life blog had they provided the necessary feed. Regrettably they don't, so you'll have to look them up for yourselves at http://www.feministsforlife.org/. I urge you to do so.

The site I check every day is Big Blue Wave. It is a self-styled so-con (social conservative) site, and carries all kinds of things, some of which I enjoy and some that I personally have no interest in. But its woman of affairs, Suzanne Fortin, somehow manages to track down the most amazing number of news items from around the world, providing a smörgåsbord of issues to consider. You can pick and choose for yourself which ones are of use to you. There is always something.

Certainly one of the most inspirational life bloggers is Mark Pickup, who lives just south of Edmonton, Alberta. His blog is called Human Life Matters. The title is particularly significant in Mark's case because he suffers from M.S. Here is an excerpt from his blog profile:

I am disabled (triplegic) with advanced multiple sclerosis. As my disability increases I have become interested in discovering Christian meaning in suffering. My priorities are faith, family and sanctity of human life. I will dedicate whatever energies I have left to these things. I am now convinced that if a society does not embrace the sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life (and North American society does not) then any barbarity is possible. A truly civilized society includes in its tender embrace every human life.

To say that he is a good read is to grossly understate the case. Find Mark at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/.

Alex Schadenberg is doing some excellent work in the rather gloomy field of euthanasia. He runs an organization out of London, ON called the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and blogs at http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/ Give him a look, if for no other reason than the poor bloke just turned 40 and needs a lift :).

Pro-Life Blogs (http://www.prolifeblogs.com/) is an independent news site that "disseminates unique news and commentary on life oriented issues and events that are ignored or under reported by traditional news sources." It originates in the U.S. but Canadian issues are not ignored. It appears to favour conservative political views.

LifeSiteNews (http://www.lifesitenews.com/) is a Canadian-based news site. It is described as the "portal of news stories about pro-life issues in Canada, the United States and the UK." This site also pulls together a large number of articles and commentary. Its choice of subjects does reflect the Catholicity of its leadership, and it indulges in what I consider a good deal of gay bashing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out for items of interest, however.

For those who want to venture far outside your comfort zone (certainly far outside LifeSiteNews' comfort zone), you might want to look at http://www.plagal.org/, the site of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, and its sister site called Christian Gays (http://www.christiangays.com/). I know virtually nothing about either site other than what I picked up lately in a cursory glance at each. But if one wants a different look at familiar issues, there's no better place to start than here.

I also bring to your attention two sites devoted to the trauma that women (and often men as well) experience as a result of abortion. These are Canada Silent No More (http://www.canadasilentnomore.com/ and Silent No More Awareness (http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/).

Finally, I appreciate the integrated worldview of the Consistent Life Ethic people. They take the sanctity of life to what they consider to be its logical conclusion, resulting in the following mission statement:

We are committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today's world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia. We believe that these issues are linked under a 'consistent ethic of life'. We challenge those working on all or some of these issues to maintain a cooperative spirit of peace, reconciliation, and respect in protecting the unprotected (http://www.consistent-life.org/).

For those of you for whom this movement is new, I provide the following information from that invaluable source, Wikipedia:

An important early proponent of the Consistent Life Ethic was Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, though he did not coin the term. Bernardin and other advocates of this ethic sought to form a consistent policy that would link abortion, capital punishment, economic injustice, euthanasia, and unjust war. Bernardin sought to unify conservative Catholics (e.g., who opposed abortion) and liberal Catholics (e.g., who opposed capital punishment) in the United States. By relying on fundamental principles, Bernardin also sought to coordinate work on several different spheres of Catholic moral theology. In addition, Bernardin argued that since the 1950s the church moved against its own historical, casuistic exceptions to the protection of life. "To summarize the shift succinctly, the presumption against taking human life has been strengthened and the exceptions made ever more restrictive."

In the United States, several organizations have promoted the "consistent ethic of life" approach, including both Catholic groups (e.g., the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), and broader coalitions, such as Consistent Life, founded in 1987 as the Seamless Garment Network. The ethic and its organizational expressions are difficult to define in terms of the conventional U.S. political spectrum, since those who subscribe to the ethic are often at odds with both the right wing over capital punishment, war, and economic issues, as well as the left wing over abortion, embryo-destructive research, and euthanasia.

Women's rights vs. women's rights

2008-04-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

It is with genuine fascination that I have been observing this issue of unborn babies being aborted for the simple reason that they are female fetuses. Its practice was condemned yesterday by the Prime Minister of India, who labeled it a "national shame" and called for stricter enforcement of laws designed to prevent doctors from helping parents to get rid of unwanted unborn daughters (National Post, April 29/08, p. A12).

Now I want to say straight up that I don't personally think that this is any more repugnant morally than unborn babies being aborted because they are inconvenient, or disabled in some way, or too expensive, or just plain unwanted. While I have sympathy for some women who feel pressured into aborting, I have none for the act, and utter disgust for the doctors who provide the service.

But what is different about this gender selection issue is that it pits one facet of women's rights against another.

Logically it does not. If we accept the usual rhetoric, unborn babies of either gender are non-persons and therefore of no more moral worth than any other non-human, such as unborn salamanders (with apologies to PETA and Paul Watson).

A pregnant women can drink too much alcohol, or sniff glue, or do anything else that might (and probably will) endanger the fetus' health or life and the law is helpless to intervene--we know this because it's happened. A homicidal maniac can kill the fetus deliberately while also attempting to murder the mother, and be charged with one homicide only, or none at all if the mother survives. And if it were up to the alleged women's rights activists in our Canadian Parliament and their clones in the post-abortion movement, it would stay that way.

But now we have females killing females because they're female. Wow! What a conundrum for those champions of women's rights. Former BC premier and one-time federal Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh has condemned the practice as absolutely inappropriate and contemptible.

The CBC has nicely framed the debate (April 2/08):

Speaking to CBC 's The Current, Dosanjh said the tests need to be regulated and a debate launched about whether it's acceptable to have an abortion because of the gender of a fetus.

"The women's' right to choose, for me that's paramount," he said, "[but] I believe we need to make sure that [if] people are aborting simply for gender selection, that is absolutely not supported.

"This is about gender equality. If there is a medical need for these tests, I have no difficulty … to deal with disease," Dosanjh said. "Being a female absolutely is not a disease."

That's also the position of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada which recently said that using abortion to determine the gender of a family's offspring "cannot ethically be condoned in this country."

Medical ethicists say the issue is complicated because Canada's abortion law recognizes a woman's right to choose as paramount. Tim Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, told The Current that more research needs to be done into potential links between fetal sex selection and abortion in Canada.

"Anytime you pass a law, you're regulating individual choice," Caulfield said, "and how do you regulate … reproductive autonomy? That's a sensitive issue."

But how can one distinguish between motivations? If a woman's right to choose is paramount, then her motivation should be irrelevant--right? It goes even further. If a woman has chosen to keep the unborn baby, and someone kills that fetus against her choice, the dead fetus should not be viewed as the victim of a homicide. In this sense, we've gone even further than the woman's motivation--or even the woman's personal choice. CHOICE must prevail. Not the woman's personal choice (never mind her motivation), but some societal commitment to CHOICE in the abstract, that not even murder can shake.

So I ask again--on what basis does one fulminate against gender selection? Because it's morally repugnant? I wouldn't disagree with that, but what about all those signs carried by female protesters telling me to keep my laws and my moral values and my religion off her body? Will they now come with an asterisk?

Once we have ventured into the area of judging motivations, or finding some aspect of abortion to be immoral, than the pro-choice movement as we know it has ended. Now everyone will be in some sense anti-choice and anti-abortion--except for those purists who will still argue the old paradigm. I can't wait to see the fight.

Over to you, Joyce.

Escaping the fundamentalists

2008-04-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have spent much of my life running from one group of fundamentalists or another.

In my young days, it was my church upbringing. I do not disparage my little gospel hall's emphasis on gospel preaching and devotion to scripture. And I feel that I experienced some kind of emergence (call it conversion if you like) from one state of being to another during those years. Prior to this foundational change my points of reference were my parents, my school, and while I was not particularly aware of it, my culture. After that change, the Lord's opinion became part of the mix, and the Bible and prayer started to have some real meaning--as much meaning as they can have to a naive and sheltered eleven year old.

But any kind of growth in mature spirituality was stunted by other factors--a very narrow view of the teachings of the Bible, an even narrower understanding of the implications of the faith for one's culture, and a constant focus on personal lifestyle choices as being a prime indicator of spiritual growth. A legalistic understanding of Christianity stood one in far better stead than a questioning, experimenting, and learning approach.

Having completed the MBA and launched off into the business world, I found myself swimming in another fundamentalist pool, that of Canadian capitalism. There was an unspoken (and occasionally spoken) assumption that one would do what made one a good employee at work (no matter how repugnant this might be personally), and to save one's personal morality for private life.

A move to Chicago to attend school gave me another experience with The One Best Way. My American colleagues (who seemed to be hampered by an almost complete ignorance of the rest of the world) could not imagine why I would not prefer to up stakes and move there permanently.

[Quite frankly, I think that I could move permanently to the Oregon Coast, but I digress.]

But I've found this same closed universe mentality in nearly every field of endeavour into which I've ventured. Academics with whom I have spent a good deal of my life seem virtually oblivious to the world outside the ivory tower, where there be Philistines. They have some glimmering of it, depending on their area of specialty, but don't seem to see that something could be learned from it that might change the academic worldview.

Then there are those guardians of our secular souls (if one can use the term soul at all in this context), the politically correct. My heavens (oops, there I go again)--my word, there is fundamentalism!

What has been characteristic of all of these little prisons that I have inhabited in my life are:
1. A dominating and unquestioned worldview.
2. A strong emphasis on rules of behaviour, although these vary completely from context to context.
3. A suspicious and denigrating view of outsiders.
4. An inability to accept criticism.
5. A complete inability or unwillingness to take an arm's length look at their little world with a view to possibly improving it, or even abandoning it.

All that I have ever wanted to do is to think through how things are done, and why things are viewed the way they are, and what might be the best use of resources, and what ought to be the goals of any activity, from a biblical worldview perspective.

For me the Christian faith comprises a set of eternal principles based on the character and will of God, that can be applied very creatively and flexibly to one's place and time; e.g., the family unit, one's view of the place of material life, how one is to steward God's creation, and above all, what are the implications of the sanctity of life.

Now here I am in the pro-life movement, and I find once again that there are fundamentals that are not open to question, at least according to the guardians of the truth. One appears to be that Catholicism rules. Now I share about 90% of my theological beliefs with Catholicism. But that "aberrant" 10% does put me on the outside. For instance, when I attend pro-life conferences, for whatever reason the issue of contraception always seems to come up as a necessary part of the discussion. There is always a mass arranged for us to attend, but I am denied communion at it, despite the fact that I am a Christian and pro-life, because I am a Protestant.

Consider this revealing statement from my friend Suzanne Fortin:

I can see why non-Christians would not want to attend my local Campaign Life meeting. It's Christian-dominated from top to bottom-- from the location (a church) to the opening prayer, to the rhetoric used, to what assumptions people hold about who attends, etc. I can see how that can be very alienating.

On the other hand, if you open it up to people of various backgrounds, you open it up to the advocacy of things you may find objectionable. I know of a non-Christian pro-life activist who is a strong advocate of contraception. As a Catholic, I would not feel comfortable opening the floor to the woman on this issue. And I could see how such a person might feel alienated from a Christian-run meeting.

This sounds exactly like the fundamentalist Protestant criticisms of evangelist Billy Graham. The Bob Jones and John R. Rices and all of the other red neck southern evangelicals would scorn the man because he might have a priest on the platform with him, or someone from a liberal church. They would forbid their students or parishioners from attending the Graham crusades because they might hear something "wrong."

No movement is ever better served by arbitrarily cutting itself off from other points of view. No human being, no human activity, no human understanding is every fully mature, ever completely on track.

[I recognize that for Catholics their belief in the infallibility of the Pope gives them a certain confidence in their opinions on some subjects. It has brought with it, I fear, a complacency and closed mindedness that does them no good.]

My plea to the pro-life movement (at least as Ms Fortin and others define it) to not be so cocksure of your opinions. I find it harder and harder to work with you as you push your agenda on me and on others who are not identical to you. I am all for unity--but not uniformity.

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

2008-04-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Those of you in the over 50 crowd that Suzanne Fortin sees as a very different group from her own will recognize that my title is taken from an old Leonard Cohen song that still gets played a lot on the golden oldie stations.

At any rate, Suzanne Fortin (the eminence grise behind Big Blue Wave) has been providing interesting and useful critique of certain thoughts that I have been posting lately. I have quibbles with some of her ideas, and downright opposition to others. But we are definitely in the same hymnbook if not on the same page.

I would like to make the briefest of comments concerning a few of her thoughts posted today. As I'm rushing out in about half an hour, and because I usually take 2 to 3 hours to compose a post, this will lack my usual incisive commentary!!

I think this is the attitude of the over-50 crowd, of amateur pro-lifers. I feel that the younger generation is better prepared and more optimistic.

While not intending to be tactless I'm sure, Suzanne has fallen into a bit of habit of stereotyping some of us outside her crowd as too old and too remote. I've been following this whole issue since long before Morgentaler was making headlines. I was picketing an abortion clinic when Suzanne was still learning arithmetic. I may be 60 now Suzanne, but believe it or not, I can still read, I can still reason, and I am still open to learning. I'm also still waiting with bated breath to see where the young professionals have made a big difference.

In the meantime, I will have to be content with my memories of focusing on the Viet Nam War, environmentalism, sexism/sexual harassment, and consumer rights. Sigh.

We don’t have to convince the pro-abortion activists. Most people are not so dogmatic about abortion that, left to themselves, they will not look at the other side of the coin. We cannot let the pro-aborts define the terms of the debate. We’ve been doing that for too long. I have found that the most effective way for arguing for fetal rights is to simply invoke commonly accepted values and use plain English, logic and good biological science. That’s not right or left. That’s not secular or religious. That’s just smart. People who are not already ideologically committed to the abortion-free-for-all ideology will give your position some consideration if you do this, and some even change their minds.

There is something to what Suzanne says here about the common person vs. the convinced ideologue. But as long as the mass media and the politicians are held captive by the pro-abortionists, Joe and Joan Sixpack will continue to be fed a steady diet of highly distorted material. Here at Abbotsford (BC) Right to Life we have been sponsoring a series of free public lectures on various life issues, the most recent being last night on Robert Latimer and mercy killing. Unfortunately, getting hands on enough money to do the kind of on-the-ground educating that is necessary is extremely difficult.

One must also make a distinction between fetal rights and creating a “culture of life” or a “civilization of love” as Pope John Paul II said. Most fetal rights activists want it. But many do not. They’re not interested in fighting against contraception, pre-marital sex, gay marriage, divorce and other social ills. The pro-life movement has a particular worldview.

Apparently the pro-life agenda, according to Ms Fortin, comprises fetal rights, contraception, pre-marital sex, gay marriage and divorce. I heard one of Suzanne's pro-life professionals speak about the twin evils of abortion and contraception. I would have thought that this was primarily a Catholic perspective. Most Protestant pro-lifers that I know would never put those two together in the same breath.

In addition, I would have thought that a consistent life ethic would include not only fetal rights but, as a minimum, euthanasia, capital punishment, perhaps even peace-making. I would also include poverty, racism, ageism and sexism.

Or is Suzanne reserving the right to define what pro-life means. In my day, it meant a lot more. But oh yeah, I'm over 50 so my views are amateur and no longer relevant (sorry, as a crotchety oldster my sarcasm came leaking out there--terrible habit).

Pro-lifers want not only to promote fetal rights (which is first and foremost) but a whole culture of life. And many pro-life feminists, gays, atheists and socialists do not. It’s an entirely different culture....We need all these people in the struggle for fetal rights, but we need many streams of activity. I don’t think the Christian and non-Christians streams of the fetal rights movement can really gel.

I may be reading more into this than Suzanne meant, but she seems to be distinguishing between Christians and gays, feminists and socialists. If that is so, that is a much bigger stereotype than her view of those over 50. I know a number of lesbians who are feminist, socialist and pro-life, and gays who are similarly pro-life.

Now I know from reading other things that Suzanne has posted that she tends to see feminism in a pretty harsh light. But no one group has the corner on what constitutes feminism. And I would guess that she can't reconcile a person as genuinely having Christian faith and being gay. Sorry Suzanne, you are just wrong if that is what you believe. And is she going to argue that capitalism is Christian? As a business professor I say, Good luck.

Suzanne, you and your young professional friends are doing very good work in the pro-life field. You are the future of the movement, and a good part of the present. But don't disparage the past. Don't allow your mind to be narrowed by your denominational priorities and your stereotypes.

And don't alienate your friends.

Pro-choice vs pro-abortion

2008-04-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

Slowly I am coming to the conviction that the so-called pro-choice camp can be divided into two rough groupings: pro-choice, and a harder edged, ideologically driven pro-abortion. Here's why.

Firstly, polls indicate that approximately two-thirds of Canadians call themselves pro-choice in the sense that they believe that restrictions on abortion should either be limited to some point in the fetal development process (most would favour no abortions after the first trimester) or that there should be no restrictions at all. It is interesting to note that more men fall into this camp than women.

Many of these two-thirds would be personally pro-life in that they would never consent to an abortion for themselves. But they would allow others to make a limited or unlimited choice to go the abortion route.

The other third of Canadians would be classic pro-lifers; i.e., human life and personhood begin at conception, ruling out abortion as an option. A small number within this camp might accept incidents of rape, incest, and endangerment to the mother's life as legitimate bases for terminating the pregnancy, citing the principle of self-defense. About 5% of all abortions are done for these reasons.

[I have explored the various polls in Canada and and the U.S. fairly thoroughly in others posts and won't repeat the details here. You could look at My name is John--and I'm a stats addict, Nov. 8, 2007.]

So to summarize the statistics, about one-third would completely restrict abortion, about one-third would restrict it to no abortion after the first trimester or second trimester, and a third would advocate no restrictions at all.

Or to put it even more broadly, while two-thirds of Canadian women call themselves pro-choice, at least half of these would see no incompatibility between some restrictions on access to abortion on one hand, and women's rights on the other.

This analysis is further buttressed by the results of the Environics and Angus Reid polls done regarding Canadian M.P. Ken Epp's Bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Crime Act. If all of the classic pro-lifers, and all of the pro-choicers who would accept some restrictions on access to abortion were added together, it would still fall short of the number of respondents who say that they favour Epp's bill. In fact, only about 20% of respondents were opposed. Clearly, even some of the one-third of Canadians who oppose all restrictions on abortion must have claimed support for the bill.

It is probably safe to say, then, that a rather small percentage of Canadians (and more men than women) see limits on abortion of any sort, or perceived restrictions in the case of Epp's bill, as incompatible with women's rights.

Yet the pro-choice people most often quoted by our Canadian media constantly refer to any restrictions on access to abortion, or anything that they perceive to be a back door way of putting restrictions on access to abortion, as in opposition to women's rights. Consider these representative quotes:

M.P. Meili Faille (Vaudreuil-Soulanges, BQ):
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-484. I will start by saying that, as a woman, I would have never believed that I would still be here fighting for the rights of women. It has been a fierce battle, waged by so many women before me.

Joyce Arthur, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada:
A private member's bill called The "Unborn Victims of Crime Act" (C-484), passed Second Reading in Parliament on March 5. This bill would amend the Criminal Code to allow separate homicide charges to be laid in the death of a fetus when a pregnant woman is attacked. If passed, this bill would be an unconstitutional infringement on women’s rights

M.P. Irene Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP):
While I will not argue that murdering a pregnant woman is particularly abhorrent, this bill will in the end do more harm than good for women's rights in Canada.

M.P. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.):
As I mentioned at the outset, the Supreme Court has already ruled that the fetus and mother are one and the same. Any attempt to separate the two through a redefinition of a human being in the Criminal Code would only cloud the issue of a woman's rights over her own person. I cannot say whether this confusion and clouding of a woman's rights over her own body is the intended consequence of this bill or not but it is, nevertheless, alarming.

From the National Post:
CBC.ca writer Heather Mallick likewise expressed approval of student associations that cut off funding to pro-life groups-- because the rights of Canadian women "are not up for debate." She also theorized that pro-life stirrings in the mainstream media were mostly the result of over-the-hill male editors seeking to control through repression the lithesome bodies that, in their decrepitude, they could no longer enjoy in the bedroom. And Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett put up a slide entitled "Role of an elected official," which declared that politicians have "no right" to oppose abortion -- because "That is the responsibility of women."

A perusal of publications on abortion-related issues would seem to indicate that such quotes as these are representative of women's opinions generally. But empirical evidence appears to say otherwise.

Within the pro-choice camp, the minority who appear to be ideologically pro-abortion rather than pro-choice put themselves forward as the spokespeople for women's rights, even though most women don't appear to agree with them.

As so often happens, then, spokespeople actually representing a relatively narrow segment of society are allowed to speak for all. Those who try to bring balance to this disproportionate state of affairs do not seem to have the same regular access to the media.

An exception to this rule is Dr. Margaret Somerville, the Samuel Gale Professor of Law, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and the Founding Director of the Faculty of Law's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University.

She routinely takes the pro-abortionists to task for misunderstanding, or deliberately misrepresenting, the key Canadian Supreme Court ruling that found abortion restrictions of the day as contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights:

I would like to clarify the statement that "on Jan. 28, 1988, the Supreme Court struck down Section 251 of the Criminal Code that made abortion illegal, ruling that a woman and her fetus are considered a single physical person."

The court did rule that a fetus is not a person for the purposes of attributing Charter rights to it, but that was not the primary basis of its decision that the law governing abortion was unconstitutional. Rather, it held the abortion law was unconstitutional because a woman who needed an abortion to protect her life or health might not have access to a legal abortion if she had no access to a "therapeutic abortion committee."

That potential inaccessibility contravened women's rights to life and to personal security and was therefore struck down.

All Supreme Court judges, however, including Madame Justice Bertha Wilson, the strongly pro-choice, women's rights advocate, ruled that society has a legitimate interest in the fetus and that Parliament has the power to pass laws regulating abortion, provided that it complies with the Charter.

The statement that "a woman and her fetus are considered a single physical person" is used heavily by pro-choice advocates regarding Bill C-484. But it relies on a position that is scientifically incorrect; the fetus is not the same physical entity as the woman.

Rather than bolstering their case, it seems to me that this "selective articulation" or misrepresentation of the law to support their position shows that their case is not a strong one, including ethically.

Margaret Somerville , Montreal Gazette,April 20/08.

Most women have no difficulty with Dr. Somerville's views, it would appear. But an arrogant and unrepresentative minority do. I wish the media was more sophisticated and knowledgeable, and would bring more balance to their reporting on these issues.

Going about our business, part 2

2008-04-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

In a post on April 16/08, I posited that the pro-life movement in Canada needs to think seriously about the ways in which it goes about its business. I took particular aim at three areas:

1. Making theological and moral statements in either overt or barely disguised Judeo-Christian language. I'm a devout Christian and seminary graduate, but I have had to learn to speak to a pluralistic society, particularly in my many years in municipal politics and in my blogging. Fellow pro-lifer Suzanne Fortin suggested that among the more professional pro-life advocates there is improvement in this area:

I think this is true among grassroots, non-involved, "amateur" pro-lifers.
But less so among people who are involved in the movement on a day-to-day business. If anything, I see a lot less biblical references. Especially among the younger set.

I hope she is right. But even if she is, it does not appear to have caused the pro-choice and pro-abortion activists to see pro-life arguments as secular. Typically they associate such remarks with a religious right. Of course, this alleged political grouping is an American phenomenon with no genuine Canadian equivalent, but the media seem to like it, so it gets repeated.

2. Relying on political parties and political processes to achieve our objectives. It's my opinion, as humble as that is, that the institutions that most shape public opinion today are public education, the courts, and the media (both news and entertainment). Government is more likely to be influenced by these forces than to influence them in turn.

David Suzuki has had his environmental pulpit parked in the television studio since the mid-seventies. Al Gore had eight years to make statements as American vice-president, but it was via his Oscar-winning movie that he became a celebrity. The gay community has used the courts and public education to bring its message to younger society. Ralph Nader was vastly more influential in his consumer rights campaign in the 1960s and 1970s (remember Nader's Raiders?) writing books and making television appearances than he has been as a presidential candidate.

3. Living at the margins of the media and sniping, rather than becoming mainstream media participants, Margaret Somerville and a few others being wonderful exceptions. Educating the media is a huge task that the pro-life movement, by and large, is not doing successfully. And by educating, I don't mean sending out press releases.

There are one or two additional areas that I would like to mention, although I realize that I will doubtless draw a good deal of gratuitous criticism for doing so.

The first is, the pro-life movement has to unhook itself from the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical Protestantism (full disclosure--I attend a Baptist Church, graduated from an evangelical seminary, and was raised Plymouth Brethren), and to a lesser degree the Conservative Party of Canada (further disclosure--I don't belong to any federal party, although I am a member of the BC Liberals). I look at a good number of pro-life and all-purpose blogs, and find that I am getting a steady diet of denominational exposure, and political bashing of everybody except the Conservatives.

Consider these three examples.

1. Pro Life BC and Comox Valley Pro Life are hosting the 2008 pro-life annual conference. These are wonderful groups and I count their members as colleagues and friends. But the line up of speakers comprises three R.C. priests, three R.C. laypeople and one lonely Reformed Protestant.

2. The annual Focus on Life Dinner in Vancouver is a project of Pro Life BC and the R.C. Archdiocese of Vancouver, as well as the Christian Advocacy Society. [I have done some consulting for Focus on Life. I admire what they do very much. But that is not my point.]

3. On May 8/08 BC Pro Life is sponsoring the first annual Marching for Women's Lives at the BC legislature in Victoria. Co-sponsors are Campaign Life Coalition BC (led by devout Catholic and all around good guy Joh Hof), Redeemer Pacific College (a Roman Catholic liberal arts college on the campus of Trinity Western Univ.), and the Knights of Columbus. The only non-RC speaker is my good self.

What's wrong with this? In and of itself, nothing. The problem is that it reinforces the impression that the pro-life movement is all about pushing RC and evangelical morality. Like it or not, the court of public opinion has associated a good deal of baggage with those two groups that creates significant distractions from the pro-life message. Where are the Muslims-for-Life? The atheists-, gays-, Jews-, Hindus-, socialists-, and feminists-for-life? Why this narrow focus? The pro-life arguments stand on their own merits, regardless of the denominational or political affiliations (or not) of the speakers.

My second observation is that the pro-life movement displays a "remnant" mentality. What do I mean by this? Remnant is often associated with something left over, like cloth. But it also refers to a small surviving group of people. The Bible, for instance, distinguishes between Israel as a nation of people or an ethnic group, and the spiritual (or remnant) Israel made up of true believers.

Remnants are a minority who are not necessarily appreciated by the majority. They have to fight for recognition, feel misunderstood and unappreciated, and can develop either a pessimistic and defeatist attitude, or a smug, "We're the only ones who know", mentality. Seldom do they seem to know how to fight it out in the big leagues, as it were.

Yet as I see it, the view that all life is sacred is a winning proposition. Despite the lunatic ravings of the pro-abortionists, the Quebec National Assembly, Joyce Arthur, the Bloc Quebecois, etc., the idea that society is better off when the most vulnerable lives are the most deserving of protection seems to be gaining ground.

Look at the great work that M.P. Ken Epp has done in soliciting pro-choice advocates to speak for his Unborn Victims of Crime Act. Consider the ways in which public opinion is going more and more in the direction of greater concern for the sanctity of life (and thank you to Life Canada for commissioning such polls). Much progress has been made. There is a big task ahead, but there are those who are equal to the task.

My advice is twofold. First, lighten up. The cause is right. And it is becoming more and more persuasive. Live and write and speak and argue as if that were true. I get tired of the pessimism, the remnant rhetoric, the lack of gratitude for the advances that have been made.

Secondly, smarten up. We need to be cultivating more Dr. Somervilles. What is our strategy for taking our rightful place in the universities, the media, the curriculum departments of educational bodies, government, school boards, medical bodies, and so on?

Put these matters on the agenda of your next provincial or national conference. And invite a few atheists, gays, and feminists, please.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire

2008-04-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Suzanne Fortin, a pro-life activist who blogs at Big Blue Wave, was good enough to provide a critique of my most recent post. I value the interaction very much.

Suzanne, as one would expect, agrees with some of my ideas and disagrees with others. This provides useful fodder for further discussion. Of the areas where we are in disagreement I want to deal with just one. I'll quote Suzanne and then give my response.

She takes issue with the following remarks that I made in my last post:

In fact, the pro-life movement as a general rule has defined 'sanctity' pretty narrowly. We're all for saving the fetuses from extinction, but not nearly as concerned for dealing with the circumstances into which too many of them are born. There are wonderful exceptions to this, of course, but not nearly enough.

Her critique is this:

What if we lived during the Holocaust? Would we worry: gee, we want to save those victims, but are we really thinking of their interest if we don't worry about what happens to them after we save them?

If I were in the concentration camp I'd say: who cares! Just save me! Stop dithering over the details and get me out of here!

It's the same thing with the unborn: if we start worrying about whether our social programs are generous enough, we're losing focus on the main struggle.

Here are my thoughts on Suzanne's position:

1. Why were the Jews (plus the gypsies, mentally challenged, homosexuals, etc.) in the concentration camps in the first place? Because they were hated and/or feared. Long before they were imprisoned and killed they were discriminated against, ostracized, and otherwise denied virtually all that was necessary to live in safety and hope. In fact, as they became more and more marginalized, they also became increasingly vulnerable. Had they been allowed to occupy a meaningful place in society, how likely is it that they would have been imprisoned and butchered as they were? [This is not just an academic matter with me, by the way. I have a brother-in-law who is a European Jew and who lost all of his uncles in the Nazi camps.]

2. Suppose that we had arrived at Auschwitz and said to these people, "OK we've overcome the guards and you're free to go. Regrettably, everything else is the same. The Nazis are still in charge. Everyone still hates you, you will still face every kind of discrimination, and you will live in hopelessness, want, and fear for the rest of your lives. I hope that someday that will change but it is not our focus." Would anyone say to us, "Good job. You've done what is necessary. Now you can stand down."? I doubt it.

3. Why do women and girls abort? Lots of reasons that are well known to YMFR (you my faithful reader). Fear of economic deprivation. Fear of abandonment. Violence and threats. Lack of (or ignorance of) necessary supports. Now, we say to these women, "OK, we've passed legislation that makes it a crime to abort your babies. Regrettably, you still face economic deprivation. The education system still will not provide for you. Your boyfriend still threatens to leave you or hurt you. And as a bonus, along with the lack of supports necessary to keep your baby with any hope for the future, we have made it a crime to consider abortion. We're glad that you are more moral now, however." Does that sound like a winning plank for a political party in the next general election?

There is seldom such a thing as a single societal problem. Any particular issue is linked to many others, and all of these related problems have to be addressed simultaneously for there to be any hope of a good solution. Abortion is no different. It can't be isolated from the web of other challenges in which it is enmeshed.

It's easy enough to take the (perceived) moral high ground and say, "The issue is not stopping abortion. The issue is fetal rights", as if this changed the challenge. Women's rights were not fully addressed simply by passing a law making them legal persons. Slaves' rights to freedom was not fully actualized when Lincoln outlawed slavery. Women and blacks still fight for the full realization of their rights. And we in the pro-life movement have to fight for the full realization of fetal rights as well. That does not end with giving the personhood to unborn babies. It's a bare beginning.

Going about our business

2008-04-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

An issue that has been plaguing me for some time now is, What should the strategy of the pro-life movement be to achieve its objectives? The answer to that question will doubtless vary depending upon which segment of the overall movement one sees oneself as occupying. But as I look at the various publications, blogs, videos, and pronouncements, I think that more sophisticated strategic planning is in order.

The phenomenon that stands out the most clearly to me is that the vast majority of participants in the pro-life movement seem to believe that moral and theological statements must buttress most of what we do and say. Now this is understandable to some extent because churches by and large, with Roman Catholic churches being the major exception, do little or no preaching/teaching along these lines.

I live in what passes for the Bible belt in British Columbia (which says very little for the rest of the province), and I find no particular urgency on the part of the local churches to do anything hard-hitting as far as the sanctity of life is concerned. There are certain token efforts (e.g., some parishioners holding a sign on a street corner for an hour a year), but nothing substantial. Three pastors have told me that pro-life issues are not on the church agenda. One called the movement just another special interest group like Love Abbotsford, a nice group of people who go around the town from time to time washing people's cars and tending seniors' gardens.

I'm a business ethicist, and I've pretty much given up on expecting preachers to have anything useful to say about economic life. Apparently it's not on the church agenda either, despite the fact that the vast majority of us participate in it, that the business world is the country's greatest creator of wealth and jobs, that business leaders have a significant impact on government legislation, and that many of the great environmental and ethical dilemmas arise from its ranks. If the churches can ignore this, then paying mere lip service to the sanctity of life should not be surprising.

What it leaves us with, however, is a generation of illiterates on life issues. St. Peter felt that we needed to be prepared to give a reasoned account for our convictions when asked: But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. I wish that we would heed his words on more public issues than we do today.

Conclusion number one is, therefore, that we have to make up for deficiencies in churches' preaching/teaching agenda by trumpeting the theology ourselves. I wouldn't argue against this being an important and useful exercise provided that it occupies an appropriate place in the broader mandate of the movement.

What we haven't grasped nearly enough, however, is that theological and even religiously-based moral arguments don't go down very well in our pluralistic and post-modern societies. Despite their vacuous arguments, many pro-abortion activists have won a following by skillfully employing concepts and ideologies that people across belief systems will accept; e.g., women's rights, choice, reproductive freedom. Look at the nonsense spouted in the Canadian Parliament these days about Bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Crime Act. The paucity of intelligence in these pronouncements may boggle the mind, but they tend to carry the day in many circles because they appeal to today's platitudes and verities. What is our strategy for speaking to a pluralistic public?

Another observation is that many participants see political answers as the route to go, particularly in the U.S. Pro-life people often align themselves with political parties, and urge support for so-called pro-life politicians who are simultaneously libertarian, pro-capital punishment, pro-gun, and inclined to militaristic action as the best way to do foreign policy. Face it folks, George W. has not turned out to be the best thing short of the Second Coming. Whatever regard he claims to have for unborn babies (or at least American unborn babies--I'm not sure what his opinion is of the Iraqi ones), he has not distinguished himself in other aspects of the dignity of life.

In fact, the pro-life movement as a general rule has defined 'sanctity' pretty narrowly. We're all for saving the fetuses from extinction, but not nearly as concerned for dealing with the circumstances into which too many of them are born. There are wonderful exceptions to this, of course, but not nearly enough.

Conclusion number two, then, is that political processes are seen as an important avenue for securing pro-life objectives. Again, I wouldn't discourage the idea of a political element to what we do (I speak as a 21 year veteran of municipal politics), but as the Bible warns, Don't put your trust in princes, each a son of man in whom there is no help.

I'm particularly concerned that the perceived best political answer is simply to make abortions illegal. In the short- and intermediate-run, that's not going to happen (I won't speculate on the long-run). I'm equally convinced that it would do as much damage as good. We must become vastly more sophisticated in dealing with government, and in understanding the limits on what politicians can accomplish.

[Believe it or not, some pro-life people are criticizing M.P. Ken Epp for the outstanding work he is doing in Ottawa on sanctity of life issues. We have to answer the challenge posed to me by a pro-life British Columbia cabinet minster: "Sometimes my biggest problem with pro-life issues is the pro-lifers."]

A third observation is that the media and the courts are seen as principalities of darkness and evil who await another opportunity to denounce and defame the pro-lifers (or anti-choicers as they seem to prefer). There is plenty of ammunition to support this observation.

But I try to put myself in the shoes of the typical reporter. She or he has little or no time to do proper research on most things that they cover. They live under the tyranny of deadlines and their editors. They also have to write at about a grade five level and to keep things precise. Therefore they fall back on stereotypes and politically correct ways of analysis as a shortcut. It saves time and gets them in far less trouble. Their jobs and their careers are dependent not on the tender sensibilities of what their publishers tell them are marginal groups, but on whether they keep the boss happy.

Our media strategy, which is by and large to snipe from the sidelines, is wanting. We don't know how to understand and use the media the way the Joyce Arthurs of the world do.

[As an aside, while I don't like a good deal of what the National Post publishes in their editorials, they have transformed the newspaper world, as far as I am concerned, in the way they explore issues in their various series. I have to assume on the basis of their format that papers like the Toronto Star have a much lower view of the intelligence of their readerships.]

Much more could be said. But I would like to see a lot more work done in these three areas: effective communication; how to best achieve objectives; and how to relate to the media.

The related issue that must be addressed simultaneously is measuring progress. The best indication of the effectiveness of a strategy is that it works! If our strategy is simply to make abortion illegal, then measurement is easy. But given the fact that this objective is not going to be achieved any time soon, how would we measure progress?

Stay tuned.

What rebellion?

2008-04-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

I have developed, in one sense, a certain sympathy for Joyce Arthur, one of Canada's better-known pro-abortion activists. This comes from having recently received a copy of her bio (admittedly about 10 years old) that used to appear on her website.

To ensure accuracy, I'll quote what I hope are representative excerpts from this bio, and follow with comments of my own.

Parents: Uneducated Dutch immigrants who got off the boat in 1950. During the war, my father's parents hid Jews in their home. My paternal grandfather was a minister of the Dutch Reformed church. Mum and Dad were religious, but didn't really learn how to seriously indoctrinate their kids until it was too late for me. (All my younger siblings got sucked in, permanently.)

I have spent a good deal of my professional life with members of the various Reformed Churches (Dutch origins). There are certainly groups within that broad umbrella which have a legalistic, fundamentalist-type of mentality towards the content and practice of their religion. Joyce Arthur refers to her upbringing as having elements of indoctrination. She is not the only person from those circles who has described their upbringing thus, although it would be a small percentage in my experience.

I, too, was raised in a small, fundamentalist Protestant faith group. There is no question that both their understanding of biblical teaching, and their preferences regarding personal morality and behaviour, were rigid and constantly reinforced. These would have differed from Ms Arthur's group, but the same pressure to conform would have been brought to bear on us both.

Religion: Canadian Reformed, a small, strict offshoot of the Christian Reformed church. We believed everyone except us was hell-bound. The Bible was literally and divinely true, every word. Went to church religiously, twice every Sunday. Attended catechism classes weekly from age 6 onward. Always hated going to both. My father was an elder in the church.

It may be that Joyce's view of her denomination was really just her local church, or even her own family--I'm in no position to say. But she certainly grew up with the idea that true religion was a closed-system with no regard for those "outside the fold." My upbringing was not a whole lot different.

School: Brooke Elementary School, Alvinston, Ontario. Grade 1 to 8 (no kindergarten in those days). Memories of grade school somewhat negative and painful. I guess I was a nerd or something. Had friends, but we all shared the experience of getting picked on and persecuted by the snobby, more popular students.

Joyce's experiences were a bit like mine. Having been brought up a certain way, I was taught that certain of my schoolmates' activities were sinful; e.g., going to movies. It became more acute in high school where I couldn't participate in dances either. Rock music was also discouraged. Therefore, growing up feeling alienated by my religion and required behaviour are additional points I have in common with Arthur.

Adolescent angst: I was the proverbial bad apple. Broke the 5th commandment over and over again. Parents gave me up as a hopeless case. Rebelled, rebelled, rebelled. Then I rebelled some more. From age 10 on, annoyed the church pastor with my arguments over evolution, the Bible, women's rights,etc. Discovered boys at age 15 and lost no time losing my virginity. Discovered drugs and alcohol about the same time. My last school year at home was spent permanently grounded, until I "repented." I bought a backpack, kept it in my school locker, and brought something from home everyday, until I was all packed and ready to go. Then one day, I went. I never went back home again, except for occasional visits after some of the wounds had healed.

This would be the point where my reactions and Arthur's begin to differ. While many in my fundamentalist circle did rebel in various self-indulgent and potentially self-destructive ways (this was in the 1960s when drugs and promiscuity were the big attractions), I went in a completely different direction (for the Lord alone knows what reasons).

I had always felt that genuine rebellion was not the mere aping of the broader culture. This was just personal insecurity and a need for conformity in the guise of rebellion. It takes no brains or creativity. H.L. Mencken could have had the 1960's youth culture in mind when he wrote: "No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

My own inclination was to keep what was good from one's past, reexamine the rest, and rebel against close-mindedness, arrogant belief, and dismissiveness of others' ideas. It is true that Joyce did argue theological points with her pastor to no avail (been there as well). I have no idea whether her objective to was look for a better theology or to simply dismiss theology out of hand (I'm guessing the latter, given her desire for a hedonistic lifestyle and her subsequent membership in the Freedom from Religion Foundation).

But in the final analysis, where has her so-called rebellion taken her? In one sense, a long way. She is a professed atheist (I like to write on religion-related topics, and would one day like to write a novel about the origins of Christianity without an historical Jesus.) She writes off religious beliefs about life as irrelevant.

But in another, very important way, she is no different than the parents against whom she rebelled so angrily in her teens. Consider this statement:

Kids: none—by choice. Kids are great if they're well-behaved AND intelligent; otherwise, the novelty wears off very quickly.
This is exactly how her parents felt about her apparently.

But more significantly, Ms Arthur has adopted the same approach to life issues and life generally as did her parents toward religious issues and life generally. There is a body of thought that is self-evidently correct (Calvinistic thought as properly understood; women's rights as properly understood); is constantly reinforced in the right circles (a pro-Reformed faith group; a pro-choice faith group); and brooks no criticism (look at virtually anything on Arthur's blog). Arthur is the same arrogant, dismissive kind of person that she accused her parents of being, holding to positions that make sense in her watertight world, however illogical they appear on the outside.

What rebellion?

Ms Arthur is obviously an intelligent and hard-working person who commands respect in some circles. It is a pity that the combination of hard bitten rebellion toward her upbringing, combined with the same rigidity and close-mindedness that she claims was role modeled by her parents, has made her what she is today.

I would wish the same experience for her as was the case with a Jewish friend of mine at seminary (I have a seminary degree in Old Testament studies). For reasons I no longer remember he became dissatisfied with his life. At the same time he was introduced to a much different kind of Christianity than was Joyce's experience. At the point that he would describe as his conversion, he said that it was as if "my mind opened and a great wind blew through." He considered this to be the presence of the Holy Spirit, of course.

While she won't thank me for it, I will pray for Joyce Arthur that her mind will also open. It is always a shame to see a good mind wasted.

lifesite news--you're outta here

2008-04-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

I watched a bit of the Toronto Blue Jays game yesterday. The Big Hurt, Frank Thomas, got tossed for disputing a third-strike call. Frank has been in baseball a long time and should have known better than to show up an ump in that fashion. In addition, Thomas is normally a soft-spoken and thoughtful person. But he lost it this time, and he paid.

Athletes are thrown out of games for many reasons. In last night's Canucks-Oilers game (which, speaking as an ardent Canucks fan, was heartbreaking), Oiler Mathieu Roy received a game misconduct for a vicious boarding infraction. Violent and ugly incidents are the more common reason for ejections than arguing a called strike.

Donning my referee's uniform for a moment, I am afraid that I have reached the end of my patience with lifesitenews.com. I have been letting it run on my blog for some time now. It does carry a lot of news about life issues that one wouldn't come across in mainstream media. But it has a negative side to it that I find quite troubling at times. I received this comment from a regular reader of this blog earlier this year:

This isn't so much a comment on this particular post as on the fact that your side banner seems to endorse lifesitenews.com - a site whose agenda seems strangely mixed and rather biased. Your blog is so thoughtful and non-judgmental that I wonder about your flagging up of that one, much more judgmental, site in particular? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Lots of gay people, for example, are on the "life" side of the "life" issue, and yet the lifesite website ostracizes those people in a way that seems unthoughtful (of course, isn't ostracising always unthoughtful?). I would like to know why you endorse that website in particular? Thank you.

Lifesite News is not the only pro-life site around that strikes a rather belligerent stance. It seems almost endemic with bloggers that stridency, sweeping generalizations, name-calling, and other aggressive tactics are not only acceptable but necessary. I for one have always thought that consistent, principled reasoning was the best form of persuasion, not mudslinging and stereotyping. [I realize that such behaviour is routine in the Canadian Parliament, but that sorry reality hardly justifies such approaches.]

There are spokespeople such as Prof. Margaret Somerville who are regularly quoted in the mainstream media because of their thoughtful and incisive analysis of life issues. The publishers of Pro Woman Pro Life, to the limited extent that I have perused the site, seem to be attempting to take a balanced approach. There are a handful of others. But the blogosphere generally is pretty negative, without much thoughtful reasoning.

What particularly offends me about Lifesite News is their gay bashing. I'm a married man with two children, so I'm not defending my own orientation. I just know too many gay men and women who are far removed from the picture that Lifesite News paints, and certainly don't deserve the stereotyping that is ladled out on that site.

As a practicing Christian, I have always been struck by the phrase "They'll know we are Christians by our love." I'm far from perfect in living up to this challenge, but the attempt must be made. Jesus said that we are to "love our enemies." I'm not picking up much love in Lifesite News.

So with the greatest respect for what you are attempting to do, you're outta here.

Switching sides again? Apparently not!

2008-04-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

Our illustrious former BC premier, the Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh, is famous, and rightly so, for being the first South Asian-born leader of this or any other province. Prince Edward Island had a premier of Lebanese heritage in Joe Ghiz, but he was born in Canada as was his son, Robert Ghiz, the current PEI premier.

But Dosanjh is also well-known for his big switcheroo from the provincial New Democratic Party to the federal Liberals with whom he served as a cabinet minister. More recently another former provincial NDP premier, Bob Rae of Ontario, has also become a federal Liberal MP.

For one brief shining moment it appeared that the Hon. Ujjal had done another switch--from pro-choice to pro-life. Dosanjh had publicly decried the practice, not altogether uncommon in the Indo-Canadian community, of women aborting female fetuses. The former premier and Canadian Minister of Health called the motivation for such abortions “absolutely inappropriate” and “contemptible”.

John Hof, president of the BC chapter of Campaign Life Coalition, a pro-life political lobby group, made what appears to me to be a semi-jesting remark regarding Dosanjh's views on gender-specific abortions:

“On behalf of the pro-life movement,” Hof is quoted as saying, “I would like to welcome you half way home. Now that we have you opposed to eliminating girl babies before birth, perhaps we can start talking about the other 50% of abortions. Those done on little boy babies.” [This and subsequent quotes are taken from straight.com.]

Pro-choice activists, who apparently had a humour bypass at some point in their lives, jumped all over this as an indication of perfidy on Hoff's part, trying to trick the public into thinking that Mr. Dosanjh had once again switched sides. Dosanjh himself complained that Hof was "playing fast and loose with my words. I never intended to convey support for his movement.”

Don't give up your day job, John. Stay out of comedy. Nobody gets your jokes.

But what Hof was really doing, I suspect, was exposing an important inconsistency among pro-abortionists; that is, that they are not always so pro. In virtually the same breath we have Dosanjh saying:

He said he does not support gender selection, which he called, “absolutely inappropriate” and “contemptible”. Yet, he also thinks women seeking abortions in Canada should not have to say why they want one.

“That’s between her and her medical advisers,” he said.

If abortion-seeking women should not have to say why they want an abortion, surely it is not the place of anyone else to judge their motivation either. If women are not to be judged for seeking one, then shouldn't they also be free of judgment for wanting one? The latter would seem to follow from the former. But not so for Mr. Dosanjh.

I'm really trying to grapple with this but I can't make it work. Roughly the same number of baby boys and girls are conceived and born each year (males have a slight edge). It stands to reason, then, that just about as many female babies are aborted as males. No pro-abortion activist questions or criticizes this. From their point of view there is nothing inherently wrong with aborting a female any more than a male. Both are fair game, as it were.

Let's go further. Approximately 5% of abortions are solicited because the child was conceived through rape or incest, or posed a threat to the life of the mother. That leaves 95% of abortions that are obtained for a host of other reasons:
a. I'm too young to start a family.
b. I don't want to be a single mother.
c. I have too many children already.
d. My boyfriend will leave me.
e. I'll lose my job.
f. I'll have to quit school.
g. My parents will reject me.
h. The fetus has Down's Syndrome.
etc., etc., etc.

While the pro-choicers may regret that these crises exist, and decry the poverty, pressure and so on that causes them, they would never judge the girl/woman who aborts as a result.

But if they abort because they prefer not to have a female child, their choice is inappropriate and contemptible. Why?

There is more than one culture that values boys over girls. In China, where a one-child policy is the law, many Chinese couples abort female fetuses because if they can only have one child they want it to be a boy. Some in the Indo-Canadian community similarly value males over females. [For further information, see "Some Asian Americans screening out girl babies--is abortion used?", Chicago Sun-Times, March 31, 2008.]

In the politically correct culture of our times we are not to judge cultural differences. In fact, we move heaven and earth (if one can still use the word 'heaven' in public discourse) to accommodate the differences. But now I find pro-abortion activists drawing lines.

So we have the contradictory state of affairs best summarized as follows: You can have an abortion for absolutely any reason--whether the fetus is male or female--unless you are aborting for the simple fact that the baby is female.

Now pro-life people also draw lines. It so happens that they feel that all life is sacred; therefore, abortion is "absolutely inappropriate" and "contemptible", to use Dosanjh's words.

The pro-abortion line is much fuzzier and more arbitrary. It seems to go something like this: "No (fetal) life is sacred, male or female, except sometimes." The "sometimes" has to do with certain cultural values and certain motivations. But I don't know how the pro-abortionists can claim what they otherwise do and yet make such distinctions.

Sorry, Ujjal et al, it just doesn't work.

Grading Joyce

2008-04-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

As YMFR (you, my faithful reader) know, I'm a lifelong academic. I've taught at Cambrian College, Trinity Western University, the Univ. of British Columbia, King's University College and Regent College, as well as the odd course at other august learning institutions such as Simon Fraser University and Niagara College. I was nominated for recognition for teaching excellence at UBC. My first book won several writing awards. I think I know my business.

Once in a while I take articles written by alleged spokespeople and grade them the way I would an undergrad's paper were it submitted to me as an assignment. Regrettably, I often find these articles wanting even at a second-year (what you Americans would call sophomore) level.

It's rather dismaying to think that those to whom many people look for guidance on important issues provide such low-level leadership. Even worse, these badly-written thoughts show up in places like the Canadian Parliament where they are considered sufficiently persuasive to shape important legislation.

Today I am going to give pro-abortion advocate Joyce Arthur the old Sutherland scrutiny. I won't use a red pen (I'm told that red is seen as judgmental and punitive rather than caring and rehabilitating). I certainly won't employ dismissive language, however tempted. But for Ms Arthur's sake, I will try to provide her with the kind of critique that apparently was missing when she was scribbling away at wherever she went to school (she gives no personal information along those lines on her blog).

The article in question was published in today's edition of the National Post. It appears under the following headline:

Joyce Arthur: Bill C-484 isn't about protecting pregnant women, it's about recriminalizing abortion
Posted: March 31, 2008, 9:24 PM.

I'll highlight Ms Arthur's comments in italics, and then provide my professorial responses.

1. 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.

Now I may be picky here (I'm often accused of such), but Arthur does not identify Suzanne Fortin. If she is important enough to rate a response, she must have some bona fides to which a quick referral would be helpful for the less informed reader.

2. When pregnant women miscarry due to a violent attack, they’ve suffered a loss and had their rights violated. That hardly needs stating, but Ms. Fortin bizarrely thinks the pro-choice movement denies it. Everyone, including pro-choice advocates, wants to protect pregnant women from violence. We simply disagree on the best way to do it.

Of course, I read Ms Fortin's article to which Ms Arthur refers. I'm not sure that Arthur has quoted Fortin accurately. Arthur seems to be saying that Fortin accuses pro-choice advocates such as herself of not wanting to protect pregnant women against violence. But what Fortin in fact wrote was:

If I were the subject of an attack in which my unborn child was hurt or killed, I would be devastated and would want the perpetrator to be brought to justice for both the injury to me and to my unborn child. When women grieve for a miscarried child, they are not grieving for a mere body part. Whether they treat the fetus as a potential life or as a full-fledged member of the family, they are not grieving the loss of themselves, but of something other than themselves. And when they are violently deprived of him, it can only be said to be a violation of their rights, separate from the actual injury that they incur.

But the abortion lobby doesn't see it that way. The most vocal opponent of Bill C-484, Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), has yet to acknowledge that losing a fetus is in itself an injustice.

Now it could be that Ms Arthur disagrees with what I have quoted from Ms Fortin's article, but she doesn't reproduce it accurately nor answer to it directly. This seems to be a case of misdirection.

3. Our justice system already allows for harsher penalties for aggravated crimes. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada supports such remedies, and we’ve also called for better measures to reduce violence against pregnant women, who are at increased risk of domestic violence. Further, we’ve advocated the use of Canada’s hate crime legislation (which has a gender clause) and even suggested passing a specific law to mandate increased penalties for attackers of pregnant women.

No serious argument with the logic here, except for the reference to hate crime legislation having a gender clause. It seems to me that murder is pretty hateful of both genders. But let that pass. I wish that she had given an example of what she means by "harsher penalties for aggravated crimes" and demonstrate that it has been used by the courts in dealing with the murder of a pregnant woman and her fetus. After all, we are dealing with a specific type of murder here. She should establish that the harsher penalties that exist on the books are seen to contemplate such murders.

4. Giving separate legal status to a fetus is an unnecessary approach that could endanger not only abortion rights, but the rights of all pregnant women. Fetal homicide laws are prevalent in the U.S., but have done nothing to reduce violence against pregnant women. Instead, they have been used to arrest and prosecute pregnant women for their behaviour, and to justify restrictions on abortion — even when such laws exclude abortion and pregnant women from criminal liability. Our fear that this bill will be used in a similar way in Canada is not unjustified.

This brief paragraph is packed with allegations without a whiff of substantiation. Consider the following:

a. Fetal homicide laws are prevalent in the U.S. - What does prevalent mean in this case? Are they worded in the same away as Ken Epp's bill? As each other?

b. ...but have done nothing to reduce violence against pregnant women - These kind of statements cannot be made without some kind of legitimate study done by competent researchers. Are there such studies (Arthur certainly did not refer to one)? Were they done in a jurisdiction with a law the same or similar to Bill C-484? If the studies in fact exist, did they show that there was no statistically significant difference as a result of the legislation?

c. They have been used to arrest and prosecute pregnant women - Examples please? Are we supposed to read what we want into these statements?

d. ...for their behaviour - What possible behaviour could be indicated here? This paragraph represents Joyce Arthur's key rebuttal of the Epp bill, and she gives us nothing of substance--in fact, nothing at all--to help us come to any conclusion.

5. Ms. Fortin repeats the word “fetus” numerous times and claims that Bill C-484 “does not in any way confer personhood or rights upon the fetus.” That is false. The bill never even uses the word fetus! Instead, “child” and “unborn child” are used to refer to even very early pregnancies, as soon as the woman suspects she might be pregnant. This is an unprecedented extension of such language in the Criminal Code and clearly, it confers personhood on the fetus. The bill makes the penalty for killing a fetus the same as for homicide, and includes it as an offence “Against the Person and Reputation” (even though that part of the code already defines fetuses as non-persons). Just by making it a separate crime to kill or injure an “unborn child,” the bill creates at least some degree of fetal personhood.

Ms Arthur is quite right that the term "child" rather than "fetus" is employed in the bill. It would easy enough to change the term to fetus, although I doubt that this would change Ms Arthur's opinion of the need for the legislation. I do note, however, this line in the bill:

It is not a defence to a charge under this section that the child is not a human being.

This line recognizes that an unborn child does not have legal personhood as a human being, but that this legal reality is something that could be used to plead innocent in the case of the willful murder of that fetus.

6. The bill’s proponents, including Ms. Fortin, are fond of citing a survey from last October that found 72% of Canadians support a bill like C-484. What they never say is that the poll was commissioned by anti-abortion group LifeCanada to measure “Canadians’ attitudes towards abortion issues.” The poll’s question on a fetal homicide law was grouped with other questions on abortion restrictions, with biased wording to elicit a positive answer.

Arthur is leading with her chin on this one. She refers to the poll done by the respected Canadian research firm Environics as employing biased wording, without actually giving us a single example. She also tries to discredit the poll not by exposing the methodology, or even the interpretation of the findings, as faulty, but by noting that she disapproves of the organization that paid for the survey. This is unfair to Environics unless she can substantiate her claims of bias.

But even worse, Arthur completely ignores a second poll, done independently by an equally respected research organization, Angus Reid, that came to the identical conclusions. Such an omission can only be deliberate and completely undermines her slagging of the first poll.

7. Ms. Fortin pulled a couple of phrases from an unrelated essay I once wrote about women and fetuses, but she ignored the context. Other quotes from the same essay contradict Ms. Fortin’s thesis that I discount the importance of a fetus to a pregnant woman: “She has full authority and rights to consider her own personal fetus to be the most important and valuable thing in the world.” “A pregnant woman wants a good outcome for her baby far more than anybody else, so all we have to do is give her the means to make it happen.” That essay argued that it’s up to the pregnant woman to decide how she views her fetus, and that it’s society’s job to support her decision — whether that means providing access to legal and safe abortion, or helping ensure a healthy pregnancy and baby.

I have no comment on these accusations. They may be true or not, but do nothing to advance Ms Arthur's argument.

8. It’s not the place of the law to decide the legal status or worth of the fetus, because that interferes with women’s privacy and freedom of conscience — and ultimately their right to life and bodily security. We need to protect pregnant women first — because when a pregnant woman is safe, so is her fetus.

This statement is simply silly. It was a legal decision, made by male legislators, that gave previously disenfranchised women the legal rights to vote, hold public office, enter into legal transactions on their own merit, and to enjoy privacy and freedom of conscience. Women were once in virtually the same legal situation as fetuses are today. To say that the same kind of legal decision-making that once liberated women could not be used to confer some kind of different status on fetuses is a strange kind of reasoning.

Sorry Joyce. I have no option but to give you a D on this assignment. That you have done a small amount of research keeps me from simply assigning an F. But I expect to see a much better job next time. I wish that were true of all your readers.

In a perfect world

2008-03-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

I want to react to those who are saying that one must not ignore the moral aspect of the killing of a fetus by concentrating instead on the mother. I found the following article, for instance, in a blog entitled Vote Life, Canada:

The last few years have witnessed a stunning development in the pro-life movement, one worth considering. The problem: More and more pro-lifers refuse to discuss abortion. A new wave of pro-life leaders insist that victory will not be gained if the debate centers principally on the morality of killing the unborn....

This approach completely sabotages the pro-life position. Crisis pregnancy centers do not exist to handle pregnancy (hospitals and clinics do that). They handle crisis pregnancies, those that will likely end in abortion. They don’t exist for the woman, strictly speaking, but for the child whose life is in danger. Women should not have abortions precisely because abortion is a moral tragedy. If not, then why oppose it?

By contrast, this new tactic implicitly promotes the vice of selfishness instead of the virtue of sacrificial motherhood. Ideas have consequences, and this one may have, as Frank Beckwith observes, “the unfortunate consequence of increasing the number of people who think that unless their needs are pacified they are perfectly justified in performing homicide on the most vulnerable of our population” (Gregory Koukl).

Now with the greatest respect to Mr. Koukl, he is being highly selective in his view of what is moral and what isn't. There is no denying that abortion is a moral issue to people of the pro-life persuasion and that in a perfect world it wouldn't exist. But the factors that cause a pregnancy to be a crisis are equally moral issues: poverty, abusive husbands and boyfriends, hard-hearted employers, lack of an adequate social safety net, judgmental churches, to name but a few.

To suggest that by concentrating on moral issues that even most pro-choice advocates would support being addressed undermines the pro-life movement, or panders to selfishness, is myopic to say the least, if not obsessive.

What people like Koukl have to learn is that moral movements, like evangelistic efforts, need to start from common ground. To tell women that they are by definition immoral if they would consider, even for a moment, that abortion is a way out of their crisis will not win a large hearing. To tell them that immoral circumstances (like the abusive boyfriend or employer who won't keep on a pregnant employee) are standing in the way of keeping their babies without gratuitous suffering, and that we want to address these because abortion will never solve them, will be persuasive to many.

Now to the purists who say "We have to stick to our moral guns come Hell or high water," I say to you, don your asbestos underwear and life jackets. Decide what you want to accomplish in the long run--moral purity as you define it, or a drastic reduction in abortions.

Don't like the message? Shoot the messenger!

2008-03-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

My first teaching gig was at Cambrian College in Sudbury ON. I was a marketing professor and taught an upper-level marketing research course. Marketing research was what I did for a living before I went into academic life, and I used the course to give my students as close to a real-world experience as one can in an academic setting.

In the mid-1970s Sudbury's downtown core was in a deep funk. People were taking their retail business into the area of town called New Sudbury, preferring to shop in the New Sudbury Shopping Centre. The Sudbury & District Chamber of Commerce was anxious to solve this problem for the sake of their downtown members. I was approached by Chamber officials to survey Sudbury shoppers to see what the Chamber could do to bring business back to the central business district.

My students did a first rate job. We had a representative sample of each area of the community (we used the voters lists from the various political wards of the city), and an excellent survey instrument. The results indicated a very big challenge for the city, but at least provided the information necessary to develop a road map for recovery.

I presented the findings to the Chamber membership along with some preliminary recommendations. They were warmly received. In fact, some months later the same officials approached me about doing a follow-up survey the next year to measure any progress as a result of their efforts to improve the shopping experience.

But one member seemed to be completely dissatisfied with the results. I don't know what he was upset about. [I do know that when I did similar work in the mid-1980s for the Langley BC Downtown Business Association, we found that merchants had a very different view of reality than did the shoppers.] But he was bound and determined to undermine the results any way he could.

Eventually he phoned the Dean of the College to complain about my survey, attacking both its methodology and its findings, while taking potshots at me as well. Given that I had done marketing research professionally for a large steel company and had been valued as an important player in their marketing efforts, it was pretty easy to shrug off his attack. I knew my business. But I was irritated on behalf of my students who had worked so hard to do a good job. I'm happy to say that the Dean found me to be the more credible and no further action was taken.

This gentleman was simply following a long-standing practice, wonderfully described in Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 2, where Lord Northumberland is seeking news of his brother and his son, Percy:

How doth my son and brother?
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand....

Yet, for all this, say not that Percy's dead.
I see a strange confession in thine eye:
Thou shakest thy head and hold'st it fear or sin
To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so;
The tongue offends not that reports his death:
And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,
Not he which says the dead is not alive.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember'd tolling a departing friend (Act 1, scene 1).

Now in Northumberland's case, he was willing to accept the bad news, while acknowledging that messengers are often fearful of delivering it to people who probably don't want to hear it. Wikipedia notes that "During the early Warring States period of China (5th to 3rd centuries BC), the concept of chivalry and virtue prevented the executions of messengers sent by opposing sides." In other times and places, messengers were not as fortunate.

Being a messenger is no fun, unless the news is good.

It's an old trick of the political trade that when one receives bad news, one tries to distract from its impact by questioning the methodology of the survey, or the personal credibility of the individual using the results. The hope is that people's eyes will glaze over at arguments about how data was acquired and interpreted, or that they will be convinced by accusations about the source, even if said accusations are irrelevant to the issue.

Joyce Arthur, the apparent guru of Canadian pro-abortion activists, and her ilk are hard at it trying to shoot (or at least seriously disable) a couple of messengers. Two of Canada's leading research firms, Environics and Angus Reid, have both demonstrated that most Canadian women support legislation that would find a person who attacks a pregnant woman and her unborn baby to be guilty of two crimes, not one, if injury or death results for either entity (I can't say either person, because in law an unborn baby is denied personhood).

As many of you, my faithful reader, know, Life Canada has for a number of years commissioned a survey regarding life issues by the Environics Research Group. Respondents were asked whether they would support a bill making it a separate crime to injure or kill a fetus during an attack on the mother. 72% of Canadians and 75% of Canadian women answered in the affirmative (see Life Canada news release Oct. 19, 2007). MP Ken Epp referred to these findings often when arguing the merits of his private member's bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Crime Act.

Now look first at the response of Joyce Arthur surrogate in the House of Commons, MP Alexa McDonough (Hansard, December 13, 2007):

Let me say that I also heard many comments about how this is something that women very much want and need, and he even referred to some polling. I have to say I would need to be convinced based on a great deal more information than he shared, but if he wanted to share the basis for a claim that there is a very high percentage of women who are really looking for this, I would give it my consideration.

However, I would find it extremely surprising, because I have to say that in my almost 40 years of involvement in the women's movement, and my 28 years in public life, where it has been well known that I very much see the responsibility of myself and every other woman in public life to be responsive to women's concerns, I have never had a single woman, a single advocate, a single representative of a single organization, or an individual family member come to me and say that this is a law they would like to see implemented.

That does not mean it is not worthy of introduction and consideration, I want to say that, but to cite it as something that large numbers of women want and need, I find surprising. Maybe I am a little bit suspicious about that, when I would think that if this was something widely felt and wanted by women there might be some indication in the House and there would be a good number of women here for this debate and wanting to put forward their views.

Never does she actually mention the results of the Environics survey, contrary as they are to her preferred view of the world. Instead she discredits them indirectly by saying that they are insufficient, and that no woman has ever told her that such legislation was needed. She says that any indication that women took a different view from her on the issues would be "surprising." Clearly she wants us to disregard the results of a highly professional and credible survey.

Then she and others try to go further by focusing attention on Mr. Epp. He bases his views on credible survey data? Then let's undermine his personal credibility and hope that people will then ignore the inconvenient survey results:

Ms McDonough: At the outset, I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park....Maybe I am a little unfair in saying this, but in regard to coming from the caucus with by far the least number of women in the House, then one wonders whether it is really an authoritative basis for the member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park to talk about how much women want and need this....[I]t further made me uncomfortable to hear several references, both from the Conservative sponsor of the bill and from the Liberal who spoke in support of it, to a number of American states, mostly southern U.S. states, and in particular, South Carolina, as one of the states that has had considerable experience with this bill.

Ms Faille: I was recently reading some surveys and responses to surveys. We learned that the Conservative member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park, who describes himself as pro-life, had said in response to a survey conducted by the Campaign Life Coalition for the 2006 federal election that he considered that human life began at conception. In 1997, he responded that if he was elected, he would work to remove abortion from the services covered by the Canada Health Act. He is not the first Conservative member to have said that. There are also rumours going around about a committee being formed here in the House with both Conservative and Liberal members.

The previous bill the Conservatives introduced was similar, but was deemed unconstitutional. A few changes have been made to it, but the objective is the same. The Conservatives' determination is an indirect threat to women's rights, and that threat is evident in the member's remarks.

M. Gravel: As a Catholic priest, I find it somewhat difficult to relate to this bill quite simply because the member who tabled it belongs to a pro-life group, the Campaign Life Coalition, which, in my humble opinion, is a fairly extremist and fanatical group. I am pro-life, but I do not belong to that group....I also mentioned that pro-life group, Campaign Life Coalition. I know that the president of the Quebec group is Luc Gagnon. That group's journal is always full of condemnations and rejections, and there is never any love or compassion in their journal. In my view, what is needed is compassion when a woman is dealing with a pregnancy caused by rape or any unwanted pregnancy. I do not feel there is any compassion within that group. I therefore oppose that pro-life group, just I oppose the pro-choice group, whose views are, in my opinion, too exaggerated, too unrealistic.

Ms Mathyssen: I am profoundly concerned that Bill C-484 is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to make abortions illegal in Canada. I am extremely disappointed that the member would use tragic murders of young women to push an anti-abortion agenda.

Ms Jennings: I can only conclude that the sponsor of this bill and his colleagues in the Conservative Party are hoping to divide Canadian women on the emotional issue of violence against pregnant women. By couching his proposal in the language of choice, the rights of the unborn and recognizing the grief for a lost child, the member is once again playing the classic Conservative game of playing on emotions and playing to its socially conservative base while trying to make this issue appear to be one that all women should support by playing on the grief and heinous nature of the crimes involved.

Ms Freeman: The sponsor of Bill C-484 cannot be neutral either, since the hon. member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park is a self-described pro-life advocate. In 1997, he even said that if he were elected, he would work to exclude abortion from the services covered under the Canada Health Act. In 2003, he supported Motion M-83, a motion by the Canadian Alliance that attacked women's freedom of choice. The legacy of everything women have fought for is at stake here.

Notice that the critics have stayed away from any hard evidence in making their critique. MPs of all political stripes are forever telling us what Canadians want and don't want. But if the research suggests that there is hard evidence for what Canadians want, and it runs counter to one's ideology, than one has no option but to ignore it, undermine it, deny it, or distract from it. [There is another option, of course--accept the validity of the data and change one's views, but that would require an integrity that is often found lacking among our government representatives.]

Regrettably for the critics of Bill C 484, another messenger has arrived with the same message: Canadians, and especially Canadian women, like and support the bill.

A new poll finds 70 percent of Canadians support an unborn victims bill pending the nation's parliament. They strongly support the concept the bill puts forward that criminals should be held accountable for killing and injuring both mother and child when they violently attack a pregnant woman.

The Vancouver-based Angus Reid Strategies conducted the poll and found just 19 percent of the people in Canada oppose the measure.

The survey found 44 percent of Canadians strongly support the bill while 26 percent moderately support it. Another 11 percent are undecided....

Although pro-abortion groups have attacked the bill saying it would only serve to stop abortions, just 24 percent buy their argument that it is a veiled attempt to prohibit abortions. The rest understand it's a measure to protect women and children.

Not surprisingly, 74 percent of women and 66 percent of men support the bill (LifeNews, March 13, 2008).

As a former marketing research professional I find it significant that while the Environics poll was done in advance of Mr. Epp's bill becoming a focal point, the Angus Reid survey came afterwards and dealt with C-484 specifically. Yet the results are, for all intents and purposes, identical.

Choice Joyce is already heading down the well-worn path:

That (i.e., the results) upsets Joyce Arthur of the Pro-Choice Action Network who claims the poll was "oversimplified" and says the bill will lead to stopping abortions. (LifeNews March 20, 2008).

The Angus Reid people responded to her criticism the same way I did to the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce guy: We know our business.

Angus Reid Strategies director of global studies, Mario Canseco, talked with the Vancouver newspaper and said the poll was unbiased and not financed by any outside party with an interest in the results of the voting on the bill.

Canseco said Arthur's reaction to the poll is "normal" from people who are disappointed the results don't support their position.

"This is one of the ways people react to surveys that show that not everyone agrees with them," he said (LifeNews March 20, 2008).

Next Ms Arthur will start attacking Ken Epp and his party again. I wonder, however, how the average Canadian woman feels about Ms Arthur's assessment of her intelligence:

"Feminists who are politically aware hear about this bill and immediately know what the problem is," Arthur told the Vancouver Straight newspaper.

The pro-abortion activist appeared to indicate she didn't think Canadians were able to understand the legislation enough to answer questions about it in a poll.

Now that's patronizing.

They can't count either

2008-03-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

The pro-choice activists who are continuously assaulting poor MP Ken Epp for wanting to respect women's choices raise the same arguments again and again. [They are mostly just quoting Joyce Arthur.] I dealt with this in my last post. But I'm particularly aggravated with arguments that are simply factually wrong.

Some of these spokespeople include the following criticism in their critiques:

Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star: It should not be lost on anybody that the party with the fewest number of women MPs in the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of Bill C-484 on Wednesday.

Alexa McDonough, NDP MP: Maybe I am a little unfair in saying this, but in regard to coming from the caucus with by far the least number of women in the House, then one wonders whether it is really an authoritative basis for the member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park to talk about how much women want and need this.

Well correct me if I'm wrong, but I count the number of female MPs in the various parties as follows:

Liberal - 20
Bloc - 17
Conservative - 14
NDP - 12
Independent - 1

Someone please tell Ms McDonough that her own party has fewer female MPs than do the Conservatives.

I note as well that of the fourteen women in the Tory caucus, 50% of them are in the cabinet, as is Marjory LeBreton, leader of the government in the Senate. There are 112 male Conservative MPs, of which 25 are cabinet ministers. That's 22%. While women represent ~11% of the Tory caucus, they constitute 25% of the cabinet.

I note in passing that the U.S. Supreme Court that considered Roe vs. Wade was 100% male. The Canadian Supreme Court that considered the Morgentaler case had one female justice, Madame Justice Bertha Wilson. Yet no pro-choice activist is suggesting that the opinions of these male justices should be rejected on the basis of gender bias.

A little on the dumb side

2008-03-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

I ran across the following quote today, written just after Ken Epp's private member's bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Crime Act passed second reading. It's addressed to the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Stephane Dion.

Sir, while you were absent from the House of Commons today, a vote was held. The vote in question allowed Bill C-484 to pass into committee. Because you saw fit not to whip your party’s vote, because it did not interest you sufficiently to attend, your leadership will now come under harsh scrutiny. This Bill is an insult to the intelligence of Canadians and a blatant attempt to undermine the ability of women to maintain the right to bodily self determination and personal autonomy. This Bill is a bald faced attempt to enshrine in law a definition of life that precedes birth and creates criminal precedent for ending that newly defined life. Mr. Dion, while I sincerely hope this Bill is killed in committee, your inaction and abandonment of Canadian women’s rights has defeated any faith I might have had for your growth as a leader. You are clearly unfit for the job.

Now M. Dion has not distinguished himself as an Opposition leader, of that there is little doubt. The guy sitting to his immediate left in the Commons, Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, has clearly outshone his seatmate thus far. But to be so chastised as M. Dion is in the quote above does suggest a certain pre-occupation on the part of its writer. For him or her (I'm guessing her) politicians rise or fall on one issue--the non-status of the unborn child.

But putting all of that aside for now, let's parse her critique and see if we can find a hint of logic in it.

1. Because you saw fit not to whip your party’s vote. To whip a vote means that the leader requires that all of his/her members vote the same way. It's standard practice on motions where the party has either a specific policy or specific objective. I suspect that the NDP and the Bloc did whip the vote. There are a small number of observant Catholics among those members who doubtless were wondering what their priests might say to them if they voted against the bill. But I'll leaving them squirming in their seats.

M. Dion knows full well that he has a sizable minority of morally conservative members who would see this bill as one that they must support. Had he whipped the vote, I suspect that there are some who would have broken ranks and supported it anyway. So for purely political reasons, if nothing else, Dion probably decided to leave well enough alone. The offended writer, however, displays the same intolerant and heavy-handed approach as do those pro-choice activists who want to stamp out all dissent on university campuses through disallowing pro-life clubs, canceling debates and so on.

2. This Bill is an insult to the intelligence of Canadians. Then we must have a lot of very dumb Canadians. Polls indicate that 62% of Canadians, 64% of Canadian women, 66% of people between 18 and 29 and 65% of people between 30 and 44 believe that there should be restrictions on abortion either from conception (30% overall, 34% of women), after the first trimester (21%) or after the second trimester (11% overall, 12% of women).

As to legislation such as Mr. Epp's bill represents, 72% of Canadians, 75% of Canadian women, and 79% of youth (age 18-29) say that they would support it.

Our complainant seems to be making the case for old Canadian men!

3. This Bill is.....a blatant attempt to undermine the ability of women to maintain the right to bodily self determination and personal autonomy. This Bill is a bald faced attempt to enshrine in law a definition of life that precedes birth and creates criminal precedent for ending that newly defined life. This argument is perhaps the most difficult to follow. Only 34% of female respondents to the Environics poll that I have been quoting would be classified as pro-life in the traditional sense (no abortion after conception). 30% of female respondents would be classified as pro-choice as the activists portray it (unrestricted access to abortion). Yet a full 75% of women said that they would support legislation like Mr. Epp's.

In other words, if even all of the classic pro-life women (34%), and all of the female 'tweeners (33%) who would accept some restrictions on abortion had voted for legislation like Epp's, we would still need some of the pure pro-choicers to support it as well to get up to the 75%. The reality is that the majority of women who said that they would support legislation like the Unborn Victims of Crime Act would not be classified as pro-life.

What logical conclusion can I draw from the complaint above. On the surface she seems to be saying this:

a) A woman is pregnant and chooses to keep the baby.
b) A man, probably the father, decides that he does not want the baby.
c) The woman's choice is not taken into consideration at all by the man.
d) The man murders the woman because she won't give up the baby through abortion. In doing so, he also murders the baby. If the woman lives and the fetus dies, as sometimes happens, the man is not charged with murder at all. The would-be mother spends the rest of her life mourning the death of an unborn baby she wanted to keep but the man didn't.
e) There should be no law to prevent this. The woman's choice be damned. Any change to this state of affairs undermines the ability of women to maintain the right to bodily self determination and personal autonomy.

This is neither a woman's argument nor a pro-choice argument. This is the fanatical reasoning of someone who is pro-abortion, plain and simple.

I'm too old, too jaded, too pragmatic and too experienced to care

2008-03-04T13:54:00.000-08:00

No, I have not died since my last post almost a month ago. February just happened to be a very hectic month for me and my colleagues, and I have had no time for the kind of reflection that I like to do before posting to my blog.

But I have been spending a good deal of time following Canadian MP Ken Epp's private member's bill C-484 Unborn Victims of Crime Act as it has made its way through "second reading"--successfully, I am happy to add--and on to tomorrow's vote. This has entailed actually meeting Ken and having him give a public lecture here in beauty's home (Abbotsford, in case you didn't think of it immediately), reading relevant speeches in Hansard, and otherwise following the various critiques recorded in the media.

Simultaneously I have been observing the on-going suppression of free speech on post-secondary campuses regarding student pro-life clubs and activities. I say this as a lifelong academic who was once nominated for a teaching award at one of Canada's largest universities and who has published an award-winning book: I don't recognize the universities of today. They no longer stand for the old values of academic freedom, freedom of speech and expression, tolerance of various points of view and so on. They have become vicious protectors of the new shibboleths, the latest mantras, the popular war cries, the current rallying points, with no regard to other points of view. A plague on them, that they might die out and genuine institutions of higher learning return.

I have come to two conclusions from this four weeks of cogitation:

1. People who have claimed to argue against Ken Epp's bill on the strength of what they call pro-woman/pro-choice principles are beyond philosophical reach. Either they believe the claptrap they spout, in which case they are incapable of rational thought, or they use it as cover for their concern for the 'personhood of the fetus' issue, in which case they are manipulative cynics who are preoccupied, if not obsessed, with abortion. This includes (so called) pro-choice activists like Joyce Arthur, and her counterparts in Parliament such as Alexa McDonough, Irene Mathyssen, Marlene Jennings, Carole Freeman and Raymond Gravel. We should be praying for their constituents.

2. The foregoing notwithstanding, student pro-life clubs have been poorly advised and bring much of their trouble on themselves.

Abandoning completely my normal balanced approach (see the title of this post above), Father Raymond Gravel, dissident Catholic priest and Bloc Quebecois MP, is an idiot. The dislocation between what he sometimes says and how he votes is astonishing. Parliament has suffered its share of incompetents over the years, but even they might have trouble with Fr. Gravel. He rates his own Hall of Fame, believe me.

But even buffoons can sometimes say something useful (Can you say Forrest Gump?). And Gravel did just that yesterday, even though his conclusions did not follow from what he said (maybe he wasn't listening). I would like the members of student pro-life clubs, and those that advise them, to read what he said in debate on Ken Epp's bill. However, I also urge you to take the remarks seriously, which Fr. Gravel did not in voting against a bill that in no way contradicted a word he said.

Mr. Raymond Gravel (Repentigny, BQ):

Mr. Speaker, I think that my remarks were misrepresented after I spoke to this bill in the House in December. That is why I would like to set the record straight today. I think this is in order because my bishop and the apostolic nunciature in Ottawa have received a number of e-mails. I want to clarify and qualify a few things.

First, I am against abortion. I regard human life as sacred and abortion as always being a tragedy in our society. We must do everything in our power, while showing respect for those involved, to limit the number of abortions and promote life.

Second, I sincerely believe that human life starts at conception, and even before. From the moment that a couple decides to have a child, the process has already begun. I have never said that I agreed with the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada whereby a child becomes a human being when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, and that until then, it is not distinct from its mother. I simply quoted the definition given by the Supreme Court of Canada. I understand it, even though I disagree with it.

Third, the high number of abortions is distressing. We must identify the causes to be able to find solutions: lack of sexual knowledge, poverty, violence, emotional deprivation and lack of values, just to name a few.

Fourth, the recriminalization of abortion will not solve the problems I mentioned, since before abortion was legalized, many women risked their lives with self-induced abortion or turned to charlatans.

Fifth, by educating, teaching values, fighting poverty, ensuring respect and dignity for people, achieving equality between the sexes, fighting for justice and supporting pregnant women, we can hopefully decrease the number of abortions or even eliminate them entirely. A doctor told me the following: “With all the resources we have available to us now, there should be no more abortions. But we need to promote these resources, which a number of religious institutions refuse to do to this day.”

I have felt for some time that pro-life clubs are too moralistic, judgmental, defensive and negative to really accomplish much. That is not to say that other clubs are any different. Universities used to encourage all kinds of eccentric pronouncements and still should. But the pro-life clubs need to start from common ground and earn a hearing. They don't seem to know how to do that.

My advice as a veteran of twenty-one years of municipal politics, and even more years of wrestling with thorny moral questions, is to accept the reality of our pro-choice situation in Canada. Accept as well that the public is grossly undereducated on life issues. And find common ground in being concerned for the well-being of women, who have been exploited throughout history and are now fighting back in ways that make sense--most of the time.

For making abortion illegal, substitute making it unnecessary. Abortion is a quick fix answer with a poor track record. It is promoted by lazy and unimaginative activists who don't have the creativity to see a better way. It cheapens life. But recriminalizing abortion would no more solve most of the things that make a pregnancy a crisis than abortion does.

I suppose that I should apologize for my harsh language in some of what I have said above. But sometimes you just have to grab a whip and head for the Temple. And I'm too far along in life to care what you think of me. I would just like to see creative, positive, long-term results instead of the hurling of ideologies across the barricades.