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Archives for August 2008

Going crazy in the UK

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Wow:

LONDON, August 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Crisis pregnancy centres, as well as doctors, nurses and midwives, may be subject to prosecution and a two-year jail sentence if they convince a woman to forego an abortion. Under a proposed amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, those groups advertising services to pregnant women who provide “false information” or even information that is “factually correct” that convinces a woman to change her mind about abortion, will have committed an offense.

Tabled by one of David Cameron’s Tory MPs, John Bercow, the amendment says, “It shall be an offence to deliberately mislead through advertising in relation to the termination of pregnancy and alternatives thereto.” Bercow has recently gone on record in support of an effort to bring explicit “sex-education” to six-year-old children in mandatory school curriculums.

The amendment continues, “Any person, association or body corporate shall be guilty of an offence” if they provide “material which … contains false information and is untruthful … or in its overall presentation deceives or is in any way likely to deceive the average person…even if the information is factually correct”. 

An offense will have been committed if the information given “causes or is likely to cause the average pregnant woman to take a decision in relation to the termination of her pregnancy she would not have taken otherwise.”

This can’t be true, can it?

Not very secure at all

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If their ideology can’t withstand people thinking about what that ideology actually involves, how secure are they in their position?

Ken Epp, writing about Bill C-484 here. The ideologically strident are aware that the current pro-choice status quo rests on not thinking about “the abortion situation” too much (and constantly putting things like “unborn victims” in quotation marks, as if it were a laughable possibility rather than reality.) 

This is why all the screaming begins for bills that don’t even pertain directly to abortion. How secure is their position? Not very.

Bill C-484, RIP

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Bill C-484 was never my favourite piece of legislation. It wasn’t pro-life, and man oh man, judging by the outcry on the pro-abortion side, it certainly wasn’t their cup of tea either. I suppose I enjoyed the fact that even in wanted pregnancies, the pro-abortion side was guarding against what they perceived to be a slippery slope–that somehow, if in wanted pregnancies killing a baby could amount to a crime, that might spill over into people’s subconscious for the abortion debate. In any event, Bill C-484 is no more. I think Harper did the right thing, telling Minister Nicholson to have that press conference, especially given that Dion was asking for his position on abortion. It’s off the table now–a good tactical move for any politician going into an election. Which I now, thanks to this move, fully believe we are.

Now how he did it, that irks me. Ken Epp’s office was not informed. I understand Epp is not running for office again. I understand therefore, that Harper thinks he doesn’t need to care. Here’s why he should have. Irrespective of how I felt about Bill C-484, there were those who supported Epp passionately, and saw it as a pro-life bill, or at least a small statement that social conservatives could support. Not telling Epp now means at best begrudging support from that crowd. What Harper did was fine. How he did it wasn’t. A tactical shift doesn’t have to be dirty. 

That’s where Harper should be more careful. There are many people out there who couldn’t give a hoot for “politics,” but do look to substance and conduct. And why shouldn’t they? They don’t live in this special silo called Ottawa. Don’t they count for something?

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Brigitte adds: Ken Epp says he won’t withdraw his bill. Good for him. I have zero doubt it will die on its own some day soon, but hey. There’s only so much any individual MP can do, and Mr. Epp is doing all he can.

Quote of the day

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The National Art Gallery in Ottawa talking to the Ottawa Citizen about its rule prohibiting the carrying of small children on one’s shoulders:

“Unfortunately, we just can’t allow that kind of liberty”…

Uh, yeah… My point exactly. I have argued many times that talking about “abortion rights” wasn’t the end of the discussion, we also had to understand the basis for that right. We seem to accept the limitation of rights just about everywhere so long as they serve some notion of “greater good.” Like the protection of delicate artifacts. But suggest that abortion might weaken society and erode women’s rights and you’re told to get your nose out of women’s uteri.

Head shake. Eye roll.

New government bill to replace Bill C-484?

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This was announced about ten minutes ago.

The federal government will introduce new legislation that will punish criminals who commit violence against pregnant women, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said at a news conference in Ottawa on Monday. Nicholson said the bill will “leave no room for the introduction of fetal rights.” The bill is aimed at protecting women from violence, he said.

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Opponents to the bill, called the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, raised concerns that the bill would reopen the debate on abortion in Canada.

“Let me be clear, our government will not reopen the debate on abortion,” Nicholson said Monday.

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Update: The Globe has an article on the same topic here. A small note on style–if “unborn victims” gets quotation marks, then I’d ask also that “abortion rights” be consistently referred to with quotation marks. The “right to abortion” is much more imaginary (and never confirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada) than those “unborn victims”–who we can view via a thing called “the ultrasound.”

And why not?

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This could be the complete opposite to the ad campaign Andrea mentioned earlier today. A somewhat unorthodox Italian priest is running a beauty contest… for nuns:

Father Rungi, a moral theologian with his own blog, said that the nuns would not wear swimsuits or revealing outfits. What he valued most in a woman was “inner beauty”. Asked for his feminine ideal, he replied: “Well, I would say Sophia Loren.”

The contestants must be aged between 18 and 40, and can be either full members of an order or novices. Father Rungi said that he expected many who applied to be young, attractive — and non-Italian. He said: “Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies? Today it’s not like that any more, thanks to an injection of youth and vitality brought to our country by foreign girls.” He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty. The Brazilian girls above all.”

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Update, Wednesday afternoon: The contest has been cancelled.

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Andrea adds, belatedly: I think our idea of beauty has been so hopelessly corrupted that there was little chance of anyone seeing the whole business of a “nun beauty pageant” as sexual… Beauty apparently must be measured by naked anorexics in America’s Next Top Model… I wish this priest had gone ahead with his pageant. It might have reintroduced the world to what beauty can really be.

Defend Tom Wappel

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Aha. Just before the story broke that Morgentaler would be received into the Order of Canada, Rob Anders was forced to take a sign down from his office window. The sign read “Defend Life”–we blogged about it here and here. Amélie Crosson, Communications Advisor, Office of the Honourable Jim Munson, Senator, sent an email to everyone on the Hill (and their dogs, too) about how she felt offended by just how political the sign was, and don’t we deserve more, and our Parliament is not a frat house…bla, bla, bla.

Turns out there’s no policy against signs in windows. Writes Tom Wappel, MP, in the Hill Times:

I contacted the Speaker’s office, the Sergeant-at-Arms Office, Canadian Heritage, the House Accommodation Services Office, and the Conservative Whip’s Office. Guess what? There is no policy!

Since there are signs in numerous other windows which were there before Mr. Anders removed his, and which are still there (e.g. “Veterans for Obama ’08 in the Confederation Building), I wanted to know why Mr. Anders’ sign (“Defend Life”) had been singled out for attention and removal. It turns out it was because someone had complained about it.

Why? Since other signs remain in windows, it is clear that there have been no complaints about other signs. Thus the complaint has to be not about a sign in a window, but about a sign in a window which was assumed to be a pro-life sign in a window.

Well, I am proud to be pro-life. Being so is not a criminal offence (yet). Expressing my pro-life views is not illegal (yet). What can be more fundamental in the very seat of our democracy than our Charter-cherished rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression?

So, I have borrowed Mr. Anders’ innocuous sign and put it in my window in East Block, and there it will stay.

I am also a lawyer and I respect the rule of law. When and if there is a written policy agreed upon, banning all signs from all windows, I shall remove my sign, but only after all other signs have been removed.

Kudos to Tom Wappel for putting the sign in his window.

Changing the comments

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Comments are posted for this week, here. As of today, we are switching to posting comments under the post themselves, ie. no more Comments page. At the launch of ProWomanProLife, too many comments flowed in, and I couldn’t balance with the dayjob–so we pushed it to a weekend format, which allowed me to review once a week. Two things have happened since then: I have gotten used to the daily maintenance of the site, and comments are more manageable, save for the spikes that occur when issues arise–which has been often enough, but anyway.

Thanks for writing in, and please continue to do so. We’ll still moderate the comments, so posting will not be instantaneous or automatic, but on a shorter delay, and under each post.

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