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Legally Véronique

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I like to watch mindless movies when I work out. Something about not straining my brain when I’m under physical duress — yes, duress. I work out on a treadmill so it’s either keep running or get thrown against the back wall. And when I say mindless, I mean “High School Musical 2” mindless. “When Harry Met Sally” mindless. “You’ve got Mail” mindless, OK?

At the risk of forever ruining my reputation as a smart young woman, mother to smart young children, I have to confess a special spot in my work-out movie list for “Legally Blonde.” Reese Witherspoon reminds me of my 9-year-old daughter: they look alike in an impish kind of way and have the same inclination towards sparkle, fashion and small yappy dogs. But I found out something else to like about “Legally Blonde”: it pokes fun at humourless feminists and law students, two populations that cause me headaches from hitting my forehead on my desk. I almost laughed myself off the running machine when I heard this one, told by the feminist law student referring to Harvard Law School:

The English language is all about subliminal domination.
Take the word “semester”.
It’s a perfect example of this school’s discriminatory preference of semen to ovaries.
That’s why I ‘ m petitioning to have next term be referred to as Winter Ovester.”

I promise to try to use it at a party sometime.

Quality of life assumptions

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This is a lovely column by Leonard Stern from yesterday’s Citizen:

Studies show that able-bodied folk consistently judge the quality of life of disabled people to be much lower than do disabled people themselves. We project our own fears onto the disabled. Even medical professionals commit this error and underestimate the quality of life of disabled patients.

I recall once going to hear a disabled woman speak, about ten years ago. She touched on this topic, and I was left with the very distinct and uncomfortable impression that I had been doing just that–judging others’ quality of life to be low simply because I couldn’t fathom living in a particular way. 

Obama and pro-lifers

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In case you haven’t been following the story, here’s a pretty decent summary of the Notre Dame scandal. I don’t understand why a Catholic institution would go out of its way to honour the least pro-life president in recent memory. Apparently, I am not alone.

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Andrea adds: There’s this in today’s Post, too, about Obama and the honorary degree, and his position on abortion: 

If there is any abortion–anywhere, at any time, for any reason– that President Obama does not think should be legal and funded by the government if need be, he has not indicated it thus far. 

Very conciliatory, that Obama.

A poignant point

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I thought this was a good point–in an article actually about the Tamil demonstrations: 

But if anyone needs proof that trafficking is the answer to the question of very effective protesting, they need only have watched a huge but quiet protest against Canada’s 40-year-old abortion laws held on Parliament Hill on Thursday, which included a non-disruptive march around Ottawa streets.  Number of questions raised in the Commons or headlines posted in the media about their pro-life campaign to save the unborn from what they perceive as an illegal slaughter: Zero.

Old stereotypes die hard

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Meant to mention this. After the march on Thursday I went to the Rose Dinner, a Campaign Life Coalition event.

At my table: A policy writing woman, a nurse (female), a woman in politics, a female student of political science. Another woman working in policy, and some women over at the other end I never got a chance to talk to. Two men at our table of ten.

To think, pro-choice types had me convinced I’d meet a man doing this pro-life work. And everywhere I go–women, only women–as far as the eye can see. I’m just saying.

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Rebecca adds: Based on my very circumscribed experience (my acquaintances skew academic, liberal and secular) pro-lifers tend to be women. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of men, including some young men, at the marvellous conference in Halifax last weekend. Most of the women I know are pro-choice but feel strongly that they would never have an abortion themselves; most of the men I know think it’s a very good thing indeed that abortion lets them off the hook if they accidentally get someone knocked up. This makes a sort of sense to me; abortion is something that’s done to women’s bodies, to a baby within a woman’s body, and I can see why women dislike it on a visceral or intuitive level more than men do.

Of course, because I spend most of my time around academic, liberal and secular types, I have come across some men who are pro-life, but have had the metaphorical stuffing beaten out of them whenever they voice this, and so have learned to keep quiet.

Randy Hillier on freedom of conscience

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Ontario PC leadership candidate Randy Hillier writes about freedom of conscience:

Last year, Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons came close to implementing a policy that would have made it “unethical” for doctors to decline, as a matter of conscience, to perform controversial medical procedures on otherwise healthy patients. If adopted, the policy would have compelled doctors who consider abortion the taking of innocent life to provide such a “service” themselves or risk losing their license to practice medicine in Ontario.

Fortunately, after an outcry from the public prompted some sober second thought, the College stepped back from the policy, allowing doctors to continue exercising their conscience in the performance of their duties. In doing so, however, it also warned doctors that they could still be subject to prosecution by other quasi-judicial bodies such as Ontario’s human rights tribunals. [Read more…]

When life imitates the Onion

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I believe the Wall Street Journal used to–perhaps they still do–have a section called “When Life Imitates the Onion.”

This piece qualifies.

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Rebecca adds: “We accept as a basic truth the idea that everyone has the right to marry somebody.”

Excuse me? Since when? Children don’t have the right to marry somebody. People in jail, in most jurisdictions, don’t have the right to marry somebody. The certifiably insane don’t have the right to marry somebody, nor does Canadian law accept proxy marriages, or plural marriage, or marriage between first degree blood relatives.

Marriage is a stamp that society puts on a relationship. Not all societies have the same rules about marriage, but they all have rules, formal and informal, and they have by and large been served well by them. If your society declines to put its stamp on your relationship, you’re not married. In Israel, which has no civil marriage, you can only be married by clergy, and almost all clergy there insist on marrying within the faith, so Jews have a great deal of difficulty marrying non-Jews, Muslims non-Muslims, and Christians non-Christians.  This could be a good thing or a bad thing but it’s consistent and coherent.

“Jennifer Finney Boylan is a professor of English at Colby College.” Of course. Some things are so preposterous only an academic could believe them, to mutilate, er, sorry, re-assign a phrase.

I’d say the legal status of his/her marriage is about the least of Professor Boylan’s problems.

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