A little on the dumb side

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.