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So this is helping?

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After my post yesterday about Carolyn Bennett’s comments at the Status of Women committee, a reader sent me this link with Bennett’s views on the Morgentaler decision, back in January: 

I remember my first abortion, as a med student in Barbados. She had red hair and braces, she was in grade nine, age 14 — the daughter of the local prostitute, who had been renting her out. I realized it was so important to get her back to grade nine. So many people had their educations interrupted.

So Bennett does the abortion on a 14-year old, who, in her own words has been “rented out” by her own mother–so she can get her right back to grade nine.

I’m sure Bennett dropped everything to remove the little girl from the abusive home, to ensure she would not be “rented out” again by her own mother. I’m sure also that Bennett ensured the mother was given enough money to stop being a prostitute, to care for her little girl adequately. 

Remind me again how abortion helped this little girl? At least had she been pregnant the abuse would have been evident–Bennett, in a position of power, authority and responsibility, took a big problem and multiplied it one hundred fold. Congrats. 

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Brigitte wonders: Why do we so often forget that abortions also “erase” evidence of abuse? And yet, and yet. There are cases where this is undoubtedly true. Obviously I don’t know the particulars of that one, but from the sound of it, I wonder whether keeping the baby would have helped that girl. I’m guessing not really. I’m also not sure the baby would have fared well – what if it was a girl? She might have ended up in the same situation as her mother. I know pro-lifers are meant to prefer life over abortion in all cases, and because we can never tell for sure what will happen I’m of the view that allowing that baby to live would have given him or her more of a chance than abortion ever did, but I do sometimes find it hard.

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Tanya is reminded of: This story.  

 

The writer’s concluding thoughts:

Abortion defenders need to realize that while abortion may keep one of the results of incest and sexual abuse from seeing the light of day, it does absolutely nothing to protect a young girl from continued abuse, and in fact aids the abuser in his crime. Furthermore, birth control counseling and abortion often indirectly contribute to the victim’s sense of shame, guilt, and blame for what is happening, since she is told to “take control” and “be responsible” for her “sexual activity,” implying that this situation is, indeed, within her power to control. On the other hand, pro-lifers need to realize that incest, rape, and child abuse do happen, and often with devastating results. In the assembly-line process of abortion on demand, incest-related abortions are seriously underreported.

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Andrea adds: Brigitte, I agree with you in some ways–certainly a pregnant 14-year-old who keeps the baby is no grand success, especially if she is left in the same horrific situation. My main point is that neither is aborting. We can’t pretend we are heroes in either situation.

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Rebecca adds: So this was in Barbados – I’ve no idea what the laws are there. If a Canadian doctor failed to report to the authorities that a 14-year-old was being “rented out” by her mother, she would herself be committing a crime. But surely one’s conscience would dictate that one not passively let such abuse continue, regardless of the local laws, right? Someone needs to ask the honourable member what she did to ensure that the girl would be “rented out” no longer.

Carolyn Bennett and the hidden agenda of pro-abortion folks

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The Status of Women Standing Committee attempts to discuss Bill C-484 here. I say attempts because the proceedings are largely taken up with a discussion of how this bill is not their jurisdiction.
Yet, the transcript gives me opportunity to say something about Bill C-484 I have been thinking for a while. All along, those opposed to Bill C-484 have claimed Ken Epp has a hidden agenda–that the unborn child would receive rights through this law. The bill is too limited, and as Brigitte said here, may or may not do much at all. I will grant that many who are pro-life are hopeful that the unborn child would be recognized in even one, small, limited area. 
But we never discuss the hidden agenda of the pro-abortion forces opposed to Bill C-484. And Carolyn Bennett makes those clear. They do not care about violence against women, but are fighting the bill strictly because even in a small and limited manner, a child may be recognized as such. Here is her quote now at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, June 5, 2008:
I think the issue for me has been that the substance of the bill doesn’t matter one bit, meaning if this was seatbelt legislation…this is a ploy used by the anti-choice, pro-life movement across the world to try to get the rights of the unborn child, encadré, put into any piece of legislation they can think up. 
What this committee needs to look at is how, state by state by state, the pro-life movement has been using bills such as this to actually put their anti-choice, pro-life agenda into legislation. That’s what’s dangerous about this bill. I couldn’t give a whatever about the actual violence…. It’s the rights of the unborn child getting into any piece of legislation. There is a tracking that this committee could do of how this has been done in other jurisdictions. That is the danger of this bill.
Hidden agendas everywhere! (Just because I am paranoid, does not mean they are not out to get me.)  

The elite versus the rest of us

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On Bill C-484, the unborn victims of crime act, a new poll commissioned by Ken Epp and done by Angus Reid shows 53 per cent of Quebec women support the bill.

Who would have guessed?

Still, if journalists and doctors and lawyers keep up the pressure, I’m sure they can change those stats around–turn that frown upside down! Normal, non-activist people are so resilient, answering simple questions reasonably. But what they need is a good dose of Where this Bill Might Go, how it would be Very Scary and Doors That Are Closed Could be Opened…

La Presse–you have your work cut out for you.   

We don’t know much about marriage

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The marriage debate. Frustrating. If marriage was strictly about love and equality–then of course there was never any reason to deny it to anyone. This article reminds me about the level of emotion associated with the marriage debate. The “equality soundbite” prevailed. I always thought the “children’s right to a mother and a father soundbite” was quite compelling too. But all it ever resulted in was the comment, “ya, but not everyone has children.” And we were back to square one. 

To argue against gay marriage on the grounds that children need a mother and a father required proving without doubt that children don’t do well with two or three parents of the same sex. Proving that, meanwhile, was impossible, because no long term studies without significant design shortcomings exist. Back to square one. Frustrating.

The author of the Globe piece doesn’t seem to find the “unintended consequences” of gay marriage very compelling. I on the other hand, do, and this piece by Jennifer Roback Morse, which landed in my inbox today too, highlights some.

Bottom line: Had there been more freedom of speech associated with the whole debate I’m not sure we would have legalized same sex marriage. Marriage as an institution is complex–and we just don’t learn about it anymore, beyond the Hollywood love angle. And the Hollywood understanding of marriage is not, quite frankly, an institution worth keeping.

Women and politics

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I’d hate to call this piece in today’s Globe paternalistic and simple, but what the heck. That’s what I think it is.

The situation highlights what pollsters see as an escalating political trend line: the Conservatives as the party for men, the Liberals as the party for women. … The Harper government was doing better with women earlier in its mandate, explained Mr. Nanos, with emphasis on such policies as health care. But as the focus switched to things such as defence spending and cutting taxes and a crackdown on crime, the support drifted away. … But now, as women progress on so many fronts, it is hard to find them or their causes in this governing party.

Really? And if we’ve progressed soooooo much, one would hope we’d have moved away from the idea of the One Unanimous Female Voice. (And the idea that women don’t worry their pretty little heads about things like defence and taxes.)

On brush cuts and life as I don’t know it

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One of my very first writing assignments while still a student was to cover a Take Back the Night rally. I went (no journalistic training) and was surprised to find I was close to the only female in attendance over five feet, not sporting a brush cut and army pants. I had a hard time taking the event seriously. The resulting article was promptly published in the opinion section of the student paper, with a clever accompanying cartoon that read “I thought this was Take Back the Right!”

But why this walk down memory lane? Because of this article, which is worth a read (and should you not be able to follow my non-sequiturs, mentions Take Back the Night rallies). 

The article prompted more than nostalgia for my university days, but also the question: What would a woman’s life look like today without the second and third waves of feminism? This sort of analysis would interest me. I’m aware of my schooling being infused with these waves of what I think is shallow and faulty thinking. I’m aware in small moments of these second and third waves when I meet women who refuse to acknowledge that any work associated with hearth and home could have any value (the legacy of Ms. Betty Friedan, I’d wager; for those who have not been so lucky as to read her, she called mothering a “waste of human self.”)

It would present an interesting study. But sadly, I think, impossible. Firstly because we can’t really entertain “what if” questions (as in what if Churchill had been more aggressive at Yalta? What if the Allies had bombed the rail lines leading to concentration camps?) and secondly because the only type of academic likely to entertain this particular question is a feminist, whose conclusions I would mistrust.   

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