…where the highest percentage of Canadians oppose the awarding of the Order of Canada to Morgentaler, at 68 per cent. Country wide, this poll shows 56 per cent of Canadians are opposed, in a simple yes/no question.
Archives for 2008
Driving me to despair–or China
The only thing more alarming than this poll question is the result (at time of posting, “yes” and “no” are neck in neck):
Drivers in Beijing have been forced to give up their cars every second day in hopes of reducing smog. Should Canadian cities take a similar approach?
I have a different poll question: “Should Canada drop democracy in favour of a “strong hand,” someone who will be able to decree that pollution, crime, even abortion levels, should fall?”
Dictators, getting things done. How ’bout it, Canada?
What if Henry Morgentaler looked like this?
Perhaps the silliest argument in favour of the old abortionist: That if only we weren’t so anti-Semitic and bent on detesting ugly people, there wouldn’t be such an uproar over his induction into the Order of Canada.
Many years ago, Montreal Gazette cartoonist Terry Mosher, aka Aislin, published a cartoon that pictured Henry Morgentaler beside a handsome, waspish doctor with an Anglo-Saxon name and posited the question: Do you think if Henry Morgentaler looked like this, there would be this fuss?
We may never know how the debate on abortion might have unfolded if its leading proponent looked like George Clooney. Aislin, also named to the Order in 2003, made his point brilliantly, tacitly alluding to an unfortunate thread of anti-Semitism that also circulates about Morgentaler and his practice.
I’m sure there are pro-lifers who harbour anti-Semitic feelings. After all, there are imbeciles everywhere – including among journalists and politicians and (why not?) pro-choicers. But really, dude, you’re pushing it. On the other charge, that of finding Henry Morgentaler less visually pleasant to look at than certain famous surfing actors I could name, well, gosh, I plead guilty. I didn’t think that was the reason I opposed abortion, but hey.
I’ll show you radiance
‘Remember, many girls are pretty, but few are radiant,’ Mrs. Hoffmann tells her protégées.
An article here from the Girls Gone Mild scene. Modesty need not be synonymous with a bowl cut and overalls. But let me take this opportunity to talk about how radiant I am. I got the most astonishing sunburn on Saturday, still “radiant” today. I could heat your home just by entering it. Too bad it’s summer and people are generally seeking out air conditioning.
The fathers of abortion
Of our most recent comments, one by reader Christy Knockleby hit on something that I feel needs further addressing. She said:
It seems to me that if we claim the decision is between the woman and her doctor, then it would make sense to let the men off the hook, doesn’t it? Of course they were involved in creating the pregnancy, but if they’re not supposed to be involved in the decision to abort…. why are we supposed to judge them for the woman’s decision? Except of course nothing is clear cut.
Indeed nothing is clear cut. What of the men who suggest, pressure, or encourage an abortion to a woman who decides to carry the baby to term? Chris Rock does a bang up job explaining this reality. (WARNING: This is Chris Rock, people. Be ready for some seriously foul language.) To cut to the chase, jump to the 2 minute mark.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjW4i67YC04]
All humour aside, what guilt does the man harbor, watching this unwanted pregnancy develop into a newborn baby; a doting child? How does that affect the father’s relationship with his child? And with his child’s mother? Statistics suggest that more than half of abortions involve coercion, either by a mate or a parent. Translation: Abortion is not purely a choice between a woman and her doctor.
So should these fathers of potential abortions keep silent? Pro-abortion etiquette would tell us so. One big problem with that: women don’t generally equate a man’s silence with love and support. Quite the opposite.
Comments posted
Hey, it’s Sunday morning, and we’re posting our comments page. Early, for your reading pleasure. Thanks once again for the thoughtful commentary.
Saturday morning coffee
Read this morning over coffee:
This feature from the Globe & Mail. I will go on the record saying that the stigmatization, guilt and shaming of women who have abortions is wrong. It doesn’t make abortion right however. This quote caused me to reflect:
Twenty-four years later, Ms. McDonnell says, little has changed: “When the characters in a hip contemporary comedy like Knocked Up can’t even bring themselves to say the word ‘abortion,’ something’s still very wrong.”
Uh… could that be abortion??
On that topic, it seems that the writers of Knocked Up are not the only ones suffering from that affliction. See Fr. Raymond de Souza’s excellent commentary on Morgentaler’s nomination to the Order of Canada.
And on a lighter note, I never thought I would be linking to this guy — and for his defense, as a former Liberal speechwriter, he will probably be mortified at being linked to by a pro-life blog — but this article made me laugh out loud.
Have a great weekend.
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Andrea adds: Pro-lifers never have to shame or guilt women who have abortions. They do it to themselves. Apparently, because the
abortion involves a web of complex physical and psychological processes that themselves pull us in two directions at once. It involves our bodies, our emotions and our spirits in a way that engages us on many levels simultaneously, and that ensures that our response will be anything but simple.”
And now in severely non-academic language, because you are killing your own offspring, which certainly would engage those emotions on many, many levels, indeed. Yeeesh. I’ll go on the record saying I’m glad for the stigma. It’s not that I have ever, ever, treated anyone who had an abortion with anything other than respect, and to be frank, in the same manner as I treat everyone. It’s that what the “stigma” here is, is our conscience: that guilt that kicks in when you’ve done something terrible, and you know it. No need for me to look down on someone who has had an abortion, I’ve experienced this terrible feeling for other reasons, at other times. And if we “eradicate that stigma”–we would be paving over our consciences. People have been known to do it. But distancing your actions from your conscience so entirely is not generally a good thing.
I blame rampant individualism
A letter writer has recently implied that it’s the right-wing, western-based, redneck crowd that is to blame for all social ills… that pro-life types are nowhere to be found when babies are born and that young girls who get pregnant benefit from abortion–flourishing careers, you know. As a 20-something (now 30-something) who got unexpectedly pregnant after one year in university and who sacrificed her studies (I have a law degree but was never admitted to the bar) to raise a family this question is of more than academic interest.
13 years later, I have completed some of my studies but my career is unmistakably mommy-tracked. I had dreams of traveling the world and I now find myself the least traveled person of my acquaintance. I have carried my pregnancies to term and I do harbor regrets about all the things I might have been able to do, especially when I look at my peers who are paying off their mortgages at 35 while I wonder how the heck I will pay back the $60 000 line of credit I incurred to buy a Master’s degree and with it, the possibility of developing a career.
These struggles are supposed to make me pro-choice. They don’t.
We live in a misogynistic society. This is not our children’s fault so much as our own. When we flaunt abortion as the panacea for our inability to recognize motherhood as an important contribution to society and to acknowledge that mothers may have ambitions in life other than motherhood – ambitions that are not per se incompatible with motherhood but that are made so by a myopic outlook on motherhood and ambition – we effectively reinforce prejudices against mothers, children and families. This is the heart of my position against abortion.
I am not “anti-choice.” I only firmly believe that choice in matters of pregnancy has effectively reduced the range of options available to women in society. And this occurred principally when we made childbearing a personal choice for which women alone are held accountable.
Where pregnancy is a personal choice for women alone to make, everyone else is off the hook. Fathers, families and society. You might blame “anti-choice folks” for being nowhere once a child is born. I can personally assure you, pro-choice liberals aren’t anywhere to be seen either.
For proof, I could rhyme off anecdotes from my personal experience over the last 13 years – which covered both Liberal and Conservative governments by the way – but this post is getting long enough. Let me leave you all with this homework assignment: I submitted my Master’s thesis in late June and have been looking for work since early April with no success. I am well qualified but completely inexperienced. I have spent 12 years raising five children and finished my law degree and got a Master’s degree but I don’t have experience. That’s a problem—incidentally, not pro-lifers’ fault. Had I aborted my babies, I would have plenty of experience by now. Employers demand this experience, why? Because they can. And certainly since pregnancy is a choice, they don’t need to accommodate women who don’t choose experience over life.
About three weeks ago, I found myself a little queasy and peed on a stick. Surprise: I am – very unexpectedly – 2 months pregnant. And still looking for work (see aforementioned “$60,000 line of credit.”) Now, that’s complicated. Who looks for work pregnant? Who hires people for 6 months? Where is my mat leave after 6 months? What guarantees do I have to have my job back after I give birth? Don’t look, there aren’t any, I already checked. The choice of abortion has made unexpected pregnancies an aberration, a thing of the past. Abortion and its correlating ideas about motherhood-only-when-convenient and as an individual choice have created a brick wall with a one-way sign and a prohibited u-turn for women.
P.S. I should add that I have just found work for the next six months with a pro-life, so-con employer who knows about my pregnancy. Liberal pro-choicers—top that.
What does this say about our priorities?
Barbara Kay in the Post is returning to one of her favourite themes: the inequity to men built into the mechanisms that award and enforce child custody. Keep in mind that this is a conservative-ish pundit writing in a conservative-ish newspaper. Lamenting the unfairness confronted by men has come to be the libertarian-right’s answer to mainstream feminism – superficially speaking truth to power, but really just going over the same talking points and not convincing anybody who didn’t already agree with you.
You know what would be really brave? Writing an editorial telling people that if they want what’s best for their kids, they’ll find a way to stay together and make it work. Yes, fathers are often treated poorly by the courts; yes, children need good relationships with both of their parents; yes, there are incentives that reward false accusations of abuse; yes, some women abuse the system. But better and fairer divorce is a pretty pathetic solution to this pervasive mess. Look, I’m all in favour of doctors developing better ways to treat bullet wounds. But a civilized society puts the emphasis on preventing people from getting shot in the first place, not just providing excellent care once they’re already wounded.
Challenging the debate
An interesting opinion in today’s Ottawa Citizen. The author is admittedly pro-choice, believing that abortion must remain a question of individual conscience, but comes swinging against Morgentaler’s Order of Canada nonetheless. I would love to hear more discussions like this one, where the outcome of the debate — should Morgentaler have been nominated? — does not hinge on one’s moral position on abortion. Morgentaler’s nomination is wrong for many more reasons than his morals (or lack thereof).
That being said, I must still register my disagreement with the author’s statement that a fetus’ moral status can be circumscribed by its inability to value its own life. I recently had to take my dog to the veterinarian to be euthanised, a decision I don’t wish on anybody. My oldest daughter was tearfully telling me, a couple of days later, how heart-breaking it was to see the dog go in the car like it was just another car ride, and had he known, etc. Warnings about the uselessness of anthropomorphizing the dog went into deaf ears. The dog didn’t understand where he went — or why — and while to Liesl this was heart-breaking, I found it somewhat comforting. Some years ago I read Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking and I cannot yet wrap my head around the expectancy of death, particularly when it comes at the hands of another. Assuredly, the ability to value one’s own life makes looking forward to one’s own death with more poignancy or fear. Similarly, we could say that people who take their own lives do so at the end of a tragic road of self-devaluation. However, I do not think that we can so easily equate moral status with self-valuation. Because, if you will allow me a moment of very bad taste, I’m not sure my 2-year-old son is yet able to value his own life. In fact, according to the decibel register at my house lately, he would convince anybody that his life is very miserable. Still, if I took his life, I would not only be a criminal in the eyes of the law but a very sick or rotten individual in the eyes of everybody else. In a nutshell, the ability to value one’s own life may be enough to abortion supporters but it doesn’t explain why it no longer matters after the child is born.
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Rebecca adds: To take Véronique’s point further: at the moment, we (as a society) do not believe that the elderly infirm can be killed because they may not be aware of their own existence and consciousness, nor do we believe this about people of any age suffering brain damage that impairs their consciousness. There are alarming signs that this may be changing, though, thanks to the valiant efforts of Peter Singer and his fellow travellers.
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