ProWomanProLife

  • The Story
  • The Women
  • Notable Columns
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / All Posts / Unhappy days in the EI office

Unhappy days in the EI office

February 1, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

Still don’t believe me when I say elite opinion in Canada is pro-choice? Here, we read about a federal bureaucracy that can’t tell the difference between abortion and miscarriage. Come one, come all–maternity benefits for everyone! This has to be a bad day in the employment insurance office… who allowed this policy to stand?

______________________________

Rebecca adds: I suspect that maternity benefits for women who have late term abortions come from a decision to extend benefits to women who have a stillbirth, which is in itself a fine decision. (Anyone dealing with the physical and mental anguish of losing a baby late in pregnancy should have some help from EI, whether or not it’s provided as maternity leave.) This reflects something that has long puzzled me about modern feminism: the denial of women’s capacity to make educated, responsible choices about their own lives, in other words to be fully enfranchised adults.

The difference of course between losing a baby in the third trimester to stillbirth and aborting a third trimester pregnancy is that one represents a choice made by the mother. Shaping EI policy to ignore this choice is very bizarre. This reminds me of the cries of protest that arise whenever it is suggested that assault that causes a pregnant woman to miscarry be treated as two crimes, the assault against the mother and the homicide of the baby. If such a law is passed, we are told, then women who get abortions will be charged with murder!

Well, no. It is easy to differentiate between the termination of a pregnancy by a medical procedure to which the mother consents (often arguing that without an abortion she will suffer great mental anguish) and the termination of a pregnancy by a criminal assault on a woman, that itself causes her anguish. Why the reluctance to look at the choices made by women, what motivates these choices, and what the consequences are? Isn’t it really infantilizing to strip women of their agency in this way, to pretend that an abortion is for all intents and purposes the same as a stillbirth, that an assault that causes a woman to lose a baby is essentially the same as any other miscarriage?

As for me, I think it’s tragic whenever a pregnancy doesn’t ultimately result in a healthy baby. But not all tragedies are the same. It’s always dreadful when a building burns down, but a chance electrical fire is not the same thing as arson, and it would be madness to make policy as if there were no difference between the two.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: employment insurance, John Williamson, National Post

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

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