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The gloves come off

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The kid-glove jargon, I mean. Usually the pro-choice side is very careful to focus on the whole “my body – my choice” point of view. Abortion is meant to terminate pregnancy, they say. They argue that a woman should not be forced to remain pregnant.

But Obama cuts through that rhetoric, shall we say. And in so doing, he makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. (In a bad way, for all those left wondering.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZF-_EZ8mb0]

One more thought: If a baby is not the correct “punishment” for a mistake, is an abortion?

Legislation versus culture

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Rebecca writes here: “Feasible ways of reducing abortion should not be sneezed at.” And Brigitte writes, same post: “Why is it so difficult to find someone willing to say he or she is against abortion because it is wrong?”

What I desire is courage in politics–something along what Brigitte says–someone willing to say abortion is wrong. Or they could simply acknowledge abortion is not (for the vast, overriding majority of cases) medical treatment.

That’s why the opening line of the Libertarian policy is hard to stomach.

There’s no libertarian candidate in my riding–just the regulars plus one Marxist-Leninist. That’s a statement on the Canadian political scene right there–the only additional candidates I get in my riding are running because the mainstream left-wing, socialist-oriented, big spending parties aren’t left enough.

Rebecca’s point is a good one, too. In this climate–where courage is not evident, many don’t consider abortion wrong, or even understand what it is–an attempt to bridge the gap by defunding is a very important one. Even just saying those words. It’s a step that won’t happen, incidentally–if a small portion of “arts funding” can’t be removed without the better part of Toronto falling into a collective swoon, you can bet your bottom dollar the removal of abortion funding is beyond the pale.

Which leads me to my point all along: Addressing abortion through legislation is not the avenue I choose to fight. Many claim fighting abortion is a lost cause–clearly I don’t believe this is the case. But it’s in fighting for hearts and minds that I know we are winning. Enter the legislative arena, and it’s just one angry pro-abortion supporter after one apathetic politician after one embittered pro-lifer–all in a depressing row.  

I’ll always gravitate toward the politician who exhibits great courage in the face of adversity. I don’t see it in the main candidates, and I don’t hear it from Dennis Young either. That means I vote for the least worst candidate, while holding my nose and hoping to change the culture we live in all the while, in spite of bad political choices.

Palin and pro-life consistency

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I was advised to look up footage of Sarah Palin in the Alaska gubernatorial debates on YouTube, since she apparently performed much better in that context than she did with Katie Couric, and lo and behold, it seems that she did. [youtube:http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=y1-B-OyQ-KI&feature=related] 

I am struck by how much the discussion of abortion dwelt upon abortion for a rape victim.  Why does it seem to baffle so many people that those who believe abortion is wrong also believe that aborting a baby conceived in rape is wrong?  If the issue is an innate right to life, why would the circumstances of conception be a part of the equation?

Any attempt to point out that abortion for rape victims might not be the answer is dicey, because of the need to be sensitive to the pain and horror endured by rape victims for a long time – frequently a lifetime – after the assault itself.  Pregnancy with a much-wanted child can still be a physically and mentally stressful experience; I can’t imagine how much worse this would be if the pregnancy was not only unwanted but a constant reminder of violation.  If the issue, though, is to minimize the suffering of a woman who has already been victimized, why do the reservations pro-lifers have about abortion in general – that it damages women on a physical, moral and emotional level – not still apply?

To put it more bluntly: most pro-lifers believe abortion to be wrong because it ends a human life.   How does it help a rape victim to make her an accessory to this?

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Andrea adds: It’s only in a world where abortion is viewed as compassionate that we would “offer it” as a “solution” to a victim of rape. We’re a long ways away from reversing the “abortion as compassion” sentiment. The line I’ve adopted is that I’ll get into discussing cases of rape and incest when the other 99 per cent of abortions are eradicated. So very few abortions are done for this reason. 

We recently had someone who regrets her abortion write in to PWPL. She had the abortion because she was raped. Just goes to show you, these cases are not clear cut–and the pain of killing another exists even when you were wronged in the first place, grievously so.

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Brigitte is looking for a middle ground: While I would not go so far as to recommend abortion as a “solution” to a victim of rape (nothing can erase that kind of memory) who found herself pregnant due to the rape, I could not bring myself to condemn her for choosing to end that baby’s life. In my book, when you do not consent to sex, you can’t be forced to bear and give birth to the child.

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Andrea adds: To be frank, I’m not in the business of condemning any woman–so many have had abortions, and again, 99 per cent are not because of rape. I’m in the business of nurturing good choices. Abortion isn’t one. Rape is terrible–always. So is abortion. Though I appreciate the connection Brigitte is making between sex and pregnancy–ie that’s where the “reproductive choice” truly lies–the fact that the woman is raped, thereby denying her the “choice” doesn’t make the killing of innocents into a workable thing, or the right thing to do.

Quote of the day

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On a truck containing “carbon dioxide”:

“This vehicle stops at railway crossings. Only in Quebec.”

Because it is common knowledge that only in Quebec do locomotives crashing into tank trucks cause grave accidents possibly endangering lives. Or are Quebec locomotive drivers more likely to accelerate when commercial vehicles cross the tracks?

Really, it’s the whole legalistic shtick that cranks me up. We can blow up neighborhoods everywhere in Canada but only Quebec requires us to stop at railway crossings. And we are law abiding corporate citizens.

It reminds me — somehow — of what passes as dialogue between pro-abortion and pro-life where the pro-lifer goes “abortion ends a human life; the fetus can feel the pain of abortion” and the pro-abortion replies “the Morgentaler and Daigle decisions by the Supreme Court have both clearly stated that fetal rights do not exist in Canada and therefore the fetus is not alive and cannot feel pain.” Yes. And the Emperor is fully clothed. By decree, I know.

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Andrea, warmly: Véronique, you make me laugh. What doesn’t remind you of the pro-life, pro-choice dialogue?

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Tanya adds: I do love how your mind works.

Quote of the day

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The National Art Gallery in Ottawa talking to the Ottawa Citizen about its rule prohibiting the carrying of small children on one’s shoulders:

“Unfortunately, we just can’t allow that kind of liberty”…

Uh, yeah… My point exactly. I have argued many times that talking about “abortion rights” wasn’t the end of the discussion, we also had to understand the basis for that right. We seem to accept the limitation of rights just about everywhere so long as they serve some notion of “greater good.” Like the protection of delicate artifacts. But suggest that abortion might weaken society and erode women’s rights and you’re told to get your nose out of women’s uteri.

Head shake. Eye roll.

Sorry–no can do–above my pay grade

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You can say that? That’s awesome. Now everytime the media/my boss/friends/parents ask me a question that might require thought I have a pat reply in my back pocket.

But his support of abortion, a non-negotiable issue for many conservative Christians, remains a considerable obstacle, and he drew disapproving noises from the 2,800 audience at the Saddleback mega-church in Lake Forest, when he gave an evasive response to the question of when human rights begin following conception.

“Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” said Mr Obama.

Again (broken record alert): One of the ways to support abortion is to put your head in the sand and pretend you just don’t know what’s going on in there–what’s that body part called–a uterus? Goldangit, it’s just so complicated.

This actually works for many, I might add.
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What works for Brigitte: The story adds that:

Mr McCain, who has always been against abortion, in contrast gave a swift response: “At the moment of conception”. He won a loud round of applause.

And since then, my shares in a Republican winner-take-all scenario have increased slightly. I’m gambling on the University of Iowa’s electoral futures market for the first time this year; we’re using real money and while I’m no particular fan of John McCain I think he will win. One of my reasons for believing Mr. McCain will win is Mr. Obama’s extreme position on abortion. Not my main reason, but a significant one. Wouldn’t that be a hoot to make money by gambling on the pro-life side?

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Andrea adds again: Incidentally, on theological versus scientific perspectives: it’s the science that is particularly clear. New genetic material for every person begins with conception. We’re all former embryos, my friends. I just might even buy the t-shirt.

Thoughts on jogging alone

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A woman is sexually assaulted on the NCC bike paths and people discuss why women can’t choose where they go and when. In fact, women are free to wander at dusk on secluded pathways. Only, they might be violently attacked and raped as a consequence for that choice. Some choice. Now I feel liberated.

In August 2003, Ardeth Wood disappeared while biking on the National Capital Commission (NCC) bike path where I did my daily jogging. When she was found forcibly drowned in a creek off the pathway, I stopped jogging on NCC paths. Aside from being devastated by her death, I was also annoyed to be confined to residential streets for my exercise. The NCC’s stretch of land bordering the Ottawa River in Ottawa/Orleans is a gorgeous and inspiring place to run. As a taxpayer, shouldn’t I be entitled to the same enjoyment of crown land as my male counterparts? Maybe, but as long as some freak will think himself entitled to the use of my body for sexual gratification, my entitlement to run alone on a secluded pathway is tainted by some serious “what if’s?”

Earlier this summer, I went jogging along the river with my son in the jogging stroller. The path ran behind a row of houses and I felt relatively safe until the path veered away from the residential area and into the deeper wooded area where Ardeth Wood met her killer. I tried to reassure myself that this was the afternoon, that the paths were well-traveled, that I was aware of my surroundings and able to defend myself but I couldn’t shake a deep feeling of fear for my safety and that of my son. I returned to the inhabited area and later learned of Pamela Kosmack’s murder on a west-Ottawa bike path. I have now reluctantly accepted that in this crazy world, single women should always be within line-of-sight and earshot of someone else. Violence against women makes us all victims.

Interesting how we don’t hear cries to protect sexual assaulters’ reproductive freedoms, or their ability to do what pleases them with their reproductive organs. No calls for women’s groups and crime-fighting organizations to get their noses out of assaulters’ crotches (you think I’m vulgar? I’m just quoting pro-choice writers who link to our website). Quite obviously I might add, since it’s been long accepted that freedoms cannot be exercised violently over other people’s bodies. Or your reproductive freedom stops where my body begins. But this short foray into the nature and limits of freedom illustrates once again to what extent the acceptability of abortion hinges on dehumanizing the fetus. Because if the fetus is even remotely human abortion becomes the violent exercise of one’s freedom over the body of another. At this point, we can clearly see why abortion advocates must oppose any effort to assign any value to any fetus – as in bill C-484 – lest it opens people’s eyes to what abortion really is. As for me, it is obvious that if the fetus wasn’t human, women wouldn’t need to abort it. Really. The reason why women feel the need to dispatch their unborn babies and the reason why others oppose abortion are one and the same: because it is a baby. And I have yet to understand why women’s reproductive freedom extends over the bodies of their infants.

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Andrea hesitates to add this: but men are also attacked–so the question is not of “a woman’s right to use the NCC paths” but one of understanding that this is indeed a dangerous world we live in… She trails off and vows not to run with headphones on again. Sad.

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Véronique begs to differ: Men are also attacked, granted. And I think that if we look at crime stats, we would quickly find out that it is generally riskier to be a guy than a girl. But I don’t think that we can simply compare statistics on violent attacks and say “there, it is more dangerous to be a guy” — we also need to look at the reasons underlying violent attacks. I am no criminologist but I would venture that women are violently attacked because they are women. Ardeth Wood would not have died had she been a guy. The latest victim of sexual assault on NCC property would not have been assaulted had she been a guy. In fact, how many guys probably passed by unfeathered on both occasions before these women were assaulted? The criminals who thought themselves entitled to the use of both women were specifically and anonymously looking for women. Any woman. And that what makes a woman’s right to use public spaces more qualified than a guy’s.

Saturday morning coffee

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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

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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.

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