One woman writes the Prime Minister

She preferred to remain anonymous on this blog:

Prime Minister,

I’m appalled by the calls for Minister Ambrose’s resignation as minister for the status of women because of her vote on Motion 312. First, because she has been doing an excellent job as Minister and second because it was the right vote.

This was not a question of “conscience” but one about science, medical practice and public spending. Just as one example, in Canada we spend millions dollars caring for premature infants in neonatal units who are the same gestational age as ones who are aborted. This is an incoherent state of affairs – saving the same life that we legally terminate. We need to have a definition of when life begins to at the very least give guidance to medical practice and more critically to underpin our system of rights. Our laws need to make sense and right now, even from a “pro-choice” perspective they don’t. I can think of no other area, where lives are at stake, that we leave it up to practitioners to apply guideline at their discretion rather than hard law. Everyone agrees that at some point before birth we are dealing with a baby and that is reason enough to seriously address the question.

Minister Ambrose’s vote said – I am for debate, for an answer to these questions and for a settlement of the issue. She did not vote, as you did, to uphold a status quo which most people are unaware of and two third of Canadians would not support. Instead, as a woman leader she took a neutral stance that allows for debate of the issue. What else should be expected?

If you remove Minister Ambrose for voting to study a policy issue you will be taking this country in a bad direction. You will be saying that parliament is no longer the place where we settle debates – leaving us with twitter spats, anti-abortion and pro-abortion marches and media name calling.

I’m a woman, in my early thirties, I’m an engineer – just the kind of person the feminists dreamed of – and I don’t want to live in a country where a woman leader is fired for upholding democracy.

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