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Defending Vellacott, part II

November 26, 2009 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

I continue to defend Maurice Vellacott in the face of Liberal histrionics. Yikes. Is there valium available in the House of Commons?

Neville said the comments were “vile” and “completely degrading to women” and demanded the Harper Conservatives reject them. “His comments show an odious attitude toward women,” she said, comparing him to a “Reform party extremist.”

At the same time, I will say this: he had to know his comments would be received this way. We live in an abortion-friendly culture. People by and large think abortion is sad but necessary in some circumstances. Coming out guns ablazin’ with the idea that it constitutes a battery (true) and that the mere presence of the choice does women wrong (true) is all well and good but there were probably a couple of steps that could have come first in nurturing old-school feminists like Anita along. She is living in the 60s, and we need to get her to the 70s, even the 80s, before hitting her with the new millenium.

That said, I’m glad when abortion comes up.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: anita Neville, Maurice Vellacott

A chivalrous defence–that’s me defending him

November 25, 2009 by Andrea Mrozek 12 Comments

A kerfuffle brewing because an MP, Maurice Vellacott, expresses the view that abortion is an injustice for women.

This may come as news to many–but it’s not to me. There is a valiant history of women defending the pro-life position. In fact there was a time when feminists actively campaigned for the criminalization of abortion in support of women’s rights.

One pro-life feminist, Rachel MacNair, calls abortion a “battery”–“Surgery done on a healthy body is mutilation, and such surgery done without adequately informed consent is a battery.”

This is not currently the mainstream consensus, but it once was. Discussing and debating this from every angle will be very important. I for one support getting full information about abortion and what it does out there.

Furthermore, I also acknowledge that where there is the presence of this choice, it holds a magnetic pull for short-term “resolution” of “the problem.” I would not have been immune to it–but supporting women means doing so within the context of our reproductive capacities, not outside it, demanding invasive surgery to eradicate a natural outcome of having sex.

Here ends my rant for today.

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Brigitte adds: Allow me to join you in his defence. He’s not the first to make that point, and he won’t be the last one, either. Forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will (say, after a rape) isn’t fair, even if in many cases having an abortion wouldn’t really “solve” that woman’s problems. But neither is pressuring her to have an abortion against her will. And those who think women in Canada today are almost never pressured into having unwanted abortions are deluded.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Maurice Vellacott

Health care workers and the right to choose

April 22, 2008 by Véronique Bergeron Leave a Comment

Sakatchewan-Wanuskewin MP Maurice Vellacott has reintroduced a bill that would protect the conscience rights of healthcare workers. Read about it here.

I like the fact that he framed his bill in freedom of choice although I strongly feel that the irony will be lost on self-proclaimed “choice” advocates – as the weeping and gnashing of teeth over bill C-484 reminds us daily. If choice is, as we are told by Ujjal Dosanjh, “paramount,” it depends for whom and in what circumstances. As with everything abortion, the supremacy of choice is so relative it becomes absolute.

Re-introducing his bill in the Commons, Vellacott declared:

Mr. Speaker, the bill would prohibit coercion in medical procedures that offend a person’s religion or belief that human life is inviolable. The bill seeks to ensure that health care providers will never be forced to participate against their will in procedures such as abortions or acts of euthanasia.

This is a good thing. I have argued before that the right to have a conscience was but an empty shell without the right to act on it. And unlike what abortion advocates would have you believe, the abortion debate is everything but settled. In the absence of consensus on the morality and health benefits of abortion, it stands to reason that individual health care professionals should be the arbitrators of what they are about to perform.

I have not yet read Vellacott’s proposed bill but here are some hurdles I expect it to face. To begin, Vellacott’s bill will face the same accusations of back-doorism as bill C-484. But where Vellacott’s proposed bill notoriously parts from C-484 is that it might de facto prevent some women from getting abortions. Maybe not in large urban centers; but faced with a conscientious objector in a rural area, women might not have another choice but to pursue the pregnancy. Don’t shoot me for pointing The Other Side to their choice argument; they are well aware of it already.

So what does it all mean for any law that would protect conscience rights at the risk of limiting access? It will be the object of a Charter challenge pitting women’s rights and freedoms against those of health care practitioners. “But”, you tell me, “abortion is not a right in Canada.” Nope, but you can bet the farm that a bill such as Vellacott’s will push abortion advocates into the debate they don’t want to have. The only way to tear down Vellacott’s kind of bill will be to argue that it limits women’s rights and freedoms in a way that is neither reasonable nor justifiable in a free and democratic society.

Hopefully, we will be ready for that challenge when it knocks at our door. Because if abortion is enshrined as a constitutional right, there is no telling where that train will take us.

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Rebecca asks: Maybe someone can clear this up for me. It should be pretty straightforward for most doctors to avoid ever performing an abortion once they’re finished their schooling. I’ve heard that it can be a lot harder to get through medical school without carrying one out, and some people have argued to me that since a D&C (the procedure by which most abortions in Canada are carried out) is often necessary for things other than aborting a pregnancy (primarily removing tissue after a miscarriage) it’s legitimate for medical schools to require that graduates know how to do a D&C.

I’ve always wondered, though – precisely since many D&Cs are done for reasons other than abortion, why couldn’t pro-life medical students train by doing those (non-elective, non-aborting) procedures? There is a big difference between the ability to perform a procedure (which is identical whether it’s removing a viable living fetus from the uterus or removing dead tissue) and the circumstances under which it’s done. In practice, how hard is it to be pro-life in medical schools these days?

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Véronique says: Your reasoning is right in theory. My experience talking with pro-life med students is that this is more about power than about D&Cs.

I should maybe share the experience of a brilliant young man I met some years ago. He was invited for a med school interview following the selection of a written essay. The essay topic was “An Event that Changed Your Life.” Innocent, he wrote about attending World Youth Day in Toronto. During his interview he was grilled on his position on abortion. The interviewers asked about nothing else. When he was turned down for med school, his interview report said that the committee believed that his religious convictions would prevent him from offering optimal medical care to women. He appealed this decision to the University’s human rights board for religious discrimination and the University upheld the committee’s decision. He applied to another University, kept quiet about his religion and was admitted.

But I think you ask a great question: how hard is it to be pro-life in medical schools these days? I would love to hear our readers’ input.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: abortion, conscience, Euthanasia, freedom of choice, health care professionals, Maurice Vellacott, objections

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