Archives for May 2008

I heard about this latest bit of pro-abortion news yesterday afternoon. Normally, I would have been seized by the urge to blog. But I have been flying solo this week, taking the full brunt of running the household while my husband is out of town. Not to mention finishing my [expletive deleted] LL.M. thesis and looking for gainful employment. I am tired. And suddenly, I was overcome by a feeling that the battle had been lost, that everything had been written, every argument laid out, and still, people didn’t care.

But when I heard that the said award had been granted for “outstanding service to humanity and for his contribution to the cause of equality for women” the feeling of hopelessness was quickly replaced by an overwhelming urge to yell at someone. I tried writing, I did. But I couldn’t write anything that wasn’t seasoned with a generous dose of profanities. Out of respect for our beloved readers, I chose to run 5 km during my daughters’ gym class before heading home at 9 pm to make lunches, clean the kitchen, run a load of laundry, sign permissions, take out the trash, read bedtime stories, and watch three consecutive episodes of Jon & Kate +8 while checking my emails. In the end, I went to bed way too late to be angry and am therefore in a much better disposition to write a well-balanced thoughtful post. Well, we’ll see.

Equality for women. The cause of equality for women. And what would be abortion’s contribution to equality for women? We hear it so much we no longer pause to wonder “oh yeah? and why is that?” This is not a rhetorical question. We need to reflect on the underlying assumptions of making abortion an “equality” issue. Because if equality between men and women really hinges on access to abortion, we are a lot farther behind achieving meaningful equality than we flatter ourselves to be. Women need abortion to be equal in order not to be weighted down by children.

This premise contains, at first glance, two important inequalities. The first one being that men are not (or shouldn’t be) weighted down by children. The second one being that children are social dead weight. I believe that thoughtful abortion advocates would see clearly through the inequality of equality through abortion but would counter-argue that in the present circumstances, it is unfair to make women bear the brunt of our social inertia. But what pro-woman pro-life advocates see is that equality has been achieved at the cost of fairness and that access to abortion has only promoted the inferiority of women as bearers of children. The vicious circle has to stop an we need to make women equal as they are — with a uterus and all — not as society wishes them to be.

Equally problematic is the notion that equality in society is somehow “granted.” Think about it: we have “achieved” equality with access to abortion. Shouldn’t we just “be” equal? Doesn’t the very idea of having to achieve equality fundamentally unequal and unfair? It would be equivalent to saying that immigrants achieve equality once they become white, anglo-saxon and Protestant. What kind of equality is that?

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Tanya adds:

Let’s not wonder why there’s misunderstanding over the fabric of the abortion issue in this country.

To correct the above phrasing, the court’s ruling in 1988 declared the law that regulated access to abortion to be unconstitutional. Over 20 years later, and no new law regulating access to abortion has been passed, contrary to the wishes of the Supreme Court. “thus confirming” nothing…nothing at all. On se permet des choses, en tout cas!