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

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 almost all 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.