ProWomanProLife

  • The Story
  • The Women
  • Notable Columns
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Archives for Ujjal Dosanjh

These times, they are a changing…

April 21, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Pro-lifers are frequently chastized by pro-choicers as being “behind the times.” I’d suggest we are really quite far ahead. In any event, get ready for that closed-issue, divisive abortion debate to be in the public square a whole lot more often. Richard Bastien says in the Ottawa Citizen today that in questioning sex selection abortion, Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal MP for Vancouver South, is challenging our elite political culture (he may not know it, but he is), which says that abortion is private and we can never, ever question it. Except that he is, if only in cases where the baby is a girl.

Canada’s Supreme Court has even gone so far as to declare that a baby is entitled to legal protection only once he is completely out of his mother’s birth canal, which means that as long as so much as one of his toes is still linked to his mother, the doctor may, with her consent, chop off the infant’s head with total impunity. This is the Canadian way. What is being questioned, in short, is a basic tenet of our contemporary political culture.

__________________________

Tanya corrects Bastien: Well, Section 238 of the CCC prohibits partial birth abortion. So, no, more than the toes need to be inside the mother, or else it is homicide.

__________________________

Andrea read the Criminal Code and Section 238 says this:

Every one who causes the death, in the act of birth, of any child that has not become a human being, in such a manner that, if the child were a human being, he would be guilty of murder, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life.

“…any child that has not become a human being… if the child were a human being…” Gosh. Must take a high falutin’ law degree or somethin’ to do those mental calisthenics. 

__________________________

Véronique concurs: Yes, indeed, I pride myself in having reached this higher degree of academic education that allows me to see human beings not yet human beings as if they were human beings. This is why we have entrance selection in law school, 100% end terms and bar exams. It protects the profession from the kind of shallow thinking that would see any child not yet a human being as being human… but smaller.

 __________________________

Brigitte worries about herself: I somehow managed to get a law degree and I still don’t get what S. 238 means. What kind of bizarre person does that make me?

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Richard Bastien, sex selection abortion, Ujjal Dosanjh

Abortion is still abhorrent

April 17, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

On sex selection abortion–this letter to the editor in the Ottawa Citizen today. I do agree with the writer, and when we are able to convince this culture that abortion is not compassionate, we will also see sex selection abortion diminish.

Now that said, I also believe we ought to reject out of hand the cultural proclivity that says girls are not worth as much as boys. We should not attempt to understand it, or accomodate it. That, however, becomes more difficult to do when we are AOK with disposing of human life for financial reasons. Or because the time is not right. Which for a woman from a different culture may sound every bit as fatuous as any other reason for abortion, including gender.

Way back when I wrote Canada’s Lost Daughters I uncovered a Women’s Hospital (Vancouver, BC) memo–which showed that staff were working to better understand sex selection abortion. And such is the desperation of a pro-abortion culture–that some pro-choicers can’t come out and say quite simply gender is a bad reason for an abortion.

“I personally believe it is wrong, but I can’t tell a woman what to do” dies hard.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: female feticide, sex selection, Ujjal Dosanjh

Half-way there?

April 11, 2008 by Brigitte Pellerin Leave a Comment

We’ve mentioned a few times already (see here and here) that it was somewhat odd for someone like Ujjal Dosanjh to be in favour of the abortion status quo yet against sex-selection abortion. Here he is again explaining his position, in today’s Ottawa Citizen.

While we firmly support a woman’s right to choose as paramount, there is a clear distinction to be drawn between supporting access to safe abortions, which we vigorously defend, and the abortion of fetuses solely to prevent the births of female babies due to biased socio-cultural norms, which we abhor.

I don’t see the “clear distinction”, and I sure don’t think it’s OK to see choice as “paramount”. I believe it’s wrong to discard “inconvenient” babies, regardless of the reasons why such babies are considered inconvenient. But hey. Better oppose some abortions than none at all.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: sex selection abortion, Ujjal Dosanjh

For crying out loud

April 3, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Because what could possibly be worse than an association with that pro-life movement…

____________________________

Brigitte adds:

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: sex selection abortion, Ujjal Dosanjh

“We commit feticide”

January 28, 2008 by Patricia Egan Leave a Comment

Those aren’t my words but those of Liberal MP and former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh in Saturday’s National Post. He was asked to comment on the questions raised by the death of a toddler in Delta, B.C., allegedly at the hands of her father. The Post article concerns the speculation that the two-year old was murdered for the crime of being a girl and her parent’s third daughter. The tradegy raises the ugly issue of gender selection and it was in this context that Mr. Dosanjh made these comments: “What does it say about us as human beings? You have a situation in India and here, where we commit feticide and we kill girls when they’re of tender age. Then we kill them and abuse them after marriage. And it has to stop.” 

It seems that Mr. Dosanjh is otherwise pretty firmly pro-choice …  except when parents are choosing not to have a daughter. At one level, that kind of makes sense. It’s pretty obvious that gender selection abortions devalue the sex selected for elimination. And Mr. Dosanjh, and many others otherwise committed to “choice”, recognize that effect and are repelled by it. 

But doesn’t this mean that a woman’s freedom to choose isn’t unlimited after all?

If we don’t want to send a negative message about the value of girls in our society by allowing them to be aborted, what are we content to say about the disabled, the “less than perfect” fetus, which seems to be such an acceptable target for abortion? What are we saying about children in general with an unrestricted abortion license?

I guess my question for Mr Dosanjh is, why aren’t these things feticide also?   

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: sex-selection abortions, Ujjal Dosanjh

Follow Us

Facebooktwitterrssby feather

Notable Columns

  • A pro-woman budget wouldn't tell me how to live my life
  • Bad medicine
  • Birth control pills have side effects
  • Canada Summer Jobs debacle–Can Trudeau call abortion a right?
  • Celebrate these Jubilee jailbirds
  • China has laws against sex selection. But not Canada. Why?
  • Family love is not a contract
  • Freedom to discuss the “choice”
  • Gender quotas don't help business or women
  • Ghomeshi case a wake-up call
  • Hidden cost of choice
  • Life at the heart of the matter
  • Life issues and the media
  • Need for rational abortion debate
  • New face of the abortion debate
  • People vs. kidneys
  • PET-P press release
  • Pro-life work is making me sick
  • Prolife doesn't mean anti-woman
  • Settle down or "lean in"
  • Sex education is all about values
  • Thank you, Camille Paglia
  • The new face of feminism
  • Today’s law worth discussing
  • When debate is shut down in Canada’s highest places
  • Whither feminism?

Categories

  • All Posts
  • Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia
  • Charitable
  • Ethics
  • Featured Media
  • Featured Posts
  • Feminism
  • Free Expression
  • International
  • Motherhood
  • Other
  • Political
  • Pregnancy Care Centres
  • Reproductive Technologies

All Posts

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in