I missed Joyce Arthur’s piece in The Mark. But today Google Alerts brought me this Lifesite article with Angus Reid’s response.
In short, Joyce Arthur is claiming the polling company is biased for asking Canadians about whether or not there should be restrictions on abortion. Angus Reid replies:
[Angus Reid’s] Canseco further lambasted Arthur for taking to task the wording of the answer when ARCC’s own website defends what the organization calls a “constitutionally-based right to unrestricted, fully-funded abortion, without legal or other barriers or discrimination due to gender, class, ethnicity, race, age, location/region (or area of residence), or any other characteristic, including reasons for choosing an abortion.”
“This is not something we wrote—it is the second affirmation in the ‘Our Vision’ section of the ARCC website,” said Canseco. “Ms. Arthur now writes that this ‘unrestricted right’ does not exist, yet it certainly does in her own organization’s documentation.”
This is one of the most interesting parts of the exchange. Organizations like Joyce Arthur’s actively support a Canada in which women can have an abortion up to the time of birth, no questions asked. Yet to state that this is what we have legislatively, on paper, right now, is apparently controversial.
I always find it interesting, how stating this fact of Canadian law raises pro-choice ire. It doesn’t matter to me if few abortions are late term, or if they are done for “good reasons,” like fetal abnormality. (Pains me to write that, but I digress.) We permit it in law to be so, and that’s a fact. Furthermore, I’ve witnessed a conferee at a pro-abortion conference at University of Toronto Law school in January 2008 ask questions about why ninth month gestation abortions should be denied women, even for social reasons. The hosts were disquieted, but that’s their stakeholder group. The premise for pro-choicers is that female autonomy means women can choose to have an abortion for any reason at any time. I disagree with that, vociferously, in fact. But that is their point of view and it is reflected in Canadian law. They should celebrate it, instead of denying it.
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