Archives for July 2008

Listening to CFRA, where Andrea is about to be interviewed again (that’s twice this morning), and Judy Rebick is on saying that the people speaking out against the appointment of Dr. Morgentaler to the Order of Canada are the small minority who want abortion illegal in all cases. Well, just so we all know, there are some people who do NOT wish to make abortion illegal in all cases who STILL object to honouring Dr. Morgentaler. I am one of them, and so is Andrea. Anybody else?

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Tanya adds: Brigitte, I’d have to answer that 70 to 80 per cent of Canadians may feel that way, too.

If Morgentaler cared so deeply about the legality of abortion, should he not have stuck around long enough to see an actual law be enacted in our country? Here we are, the only civilized country in the world to have no law regulation abortion, and he’s being honoured for it. For Pete’s sake, a woman may legally get an abortion later on in pregnancy than he is morally willing to perform one.

70 to 80 per cent of Canadians feel we need some sort of law (in the very least, to prevent very late term abortions). I’ve never seen him lobby for a law…and he’s had 20 years to do it. Unless Canada likes to honour people who do things halfway…

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Patricia adds: I’m trying hard to fight off complete despair for my country as a result of yesterday’s news. But it’s hard work.

The best spin I can put on it is as follows: why the push to honour this man now and why bestow the “honour” in such an underhanded manner?

Now, it may be that our elites are so used to dealing with a complacent and supine population that they figure they can do pretty much anything they want, particularly on a long weekend in July. From human rights tribunals to the Advisory Board of the Order of Canada, Canada’s elites are still counting on the fact that they can tell Canadians what to think and what to say; the fact that 300,000 people voted against conferring such an “honour” on Morgentaler as recently as February, with a laughable 26,000 in favour, matters not a whit to their view. Thanks for your input, Canada, but we’ll decide who was on the side of the angels on this issue and who isn’t, who is a hero and who isn’t.

Think about that: 300,000 people participating in an online poll. I wonder what other online poll on this country has attracted such numbers and such a disproportionate response.

I’m sure that some of the cloak and dagger theatrics of this weekend will be attributed to the security issues posed by all those “radical pro-life terrorist assassins” out there.

But (and here is the meagre shred of hope that I mentioned above), I don’t really think that anyone will buys that ruse. So the questions remain: why now, why the deviation from the usual process and why the secrecy. Did they realize that this was the only way they could pull it off, even in complacent old Canada? Is it just possible that they’re feeling that their moment is over; their movement is as old as “Dr” Morgentaler himself.

And for the record, I am against abortion in all circumstances. The usual “humane” exceptions don’t make sense to me. Abortions for reasons of “serious genetic conditions” (i.e., of the disabled because they’re disabled) horrify me. And if we argue that abortion is an assault on women as well as the unborn, then how do we justify offering it to the victim of rape and incest? Is it supposed to be part of their “recovery”?