What Exactly Is A “Broad Coalition Of Conservatives”?

This morning, on the news one of the headline stories was about the CPC policy convention, where they are going to debate a range of policies, and two of them are outright eliminationist anti-transgender crap. (We’ll come back to that) One of the party talking heads said some inane drivel about the CPC being a “democratic party with a broad coalition of conservatives”. 

Besides being a somewhat silly attempt to define the party as “big tent”, what does the term really mean? It certainly doesn’t mean inclusion - the CPC continues to pander to extreme libertarians whose idea of “economic policy” is basically “let them eat cake”.  So if you’re somewhere in the middle and lower income ranges, they sure as hell aren’t including you - your pockets are the first ones they are going to pick through user fees, means testing programs, etc.  They also continue to be very much in the thrall of social conservative movements that want to exclude people who don’t fit into a particularly narrow idea of the world (usually one based on a bad reading of Old Testament texts).  So yeah, if you’re a woman, a member of the 2SLGBTQ community, or you belong to one of those “other religions”, don’t think for a moment that you’re safe in that party - you aren’t.

I did take a look through the CPC policy proposals, and there are some doozies in there.  Let's go exploring, shall we?

On Abortion Law In Canada

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer, this is just my personal exploration of the legal landscape in Canada and how it differs from that of the US.

The decision in R v Morgentaler (1988) is considerably different from that of Roe v. Wade.  Where Roe v. Wade places considerable importance on the notion of individual privacy, R v Morgentaler places central importance on security of the person (although it does address rights issues in other sections of the Charter as well). 

At the core of the Morgentaler decision is the Oakes Test analysis (described on pages 73-76), which concludes that what was at the time S251 of the Criminal Code could not be saved under S1 of the Charter. Oakes sets out a judicial review procedure for weighing competing interests (and as with all such things, there is considerable debate around it still).  However, at the end of the analysis in Morgentaler, the basic conclusion is that the impact of criminal sanctions on the woman are hugely disproportionate to any state asserted benefit in the restrictions.  It also takes apart any of the procedural / regulatory structures that stem from S251 as also being unreasonable infringements. 

There is a good reason here that you haven’t seen any serious attempts by governing parties in Canada to tackle creating another law that specifically tries to limit abortion:  It’s going to be really hard to create such a law that doesn’t end up failing scrutiny under any kind of review like Oakes. Further, any such law is going to find itself subject to challenge as unreasonably restricting the rights and liberties afforded to women while placing no restrictions on the male sperm donor.  

This is a very thorny problem for any lawmaker to tackle, and potentially one that is intractable without major changes to fundamentals of law such as introducing the idea that a foetus has some legal standing.  

Currently, Canadian law basically says that a foetus is considered part of the mother’s body until such times as it is “delivered alive from the mother’s body”.  In other words, up to the point of live birth, the fetus is treated like any other part of the mother’s body and it is her decisions that are paramount.  In other words, a womb isn’t a condo that some other party is renting out for 9 months. 

There have been numerous attempts to change this by way of private member’s legislation.  However, those bills have typically bubbled around for a few months or years until dying either on vote or when parliament dissolves for an election. 

The reality of those bills, were they to be enacted, is that they would likely also fail scrutiny under Charter review. The problem that would arise with foetal rights legislation would be an entirely different set of challenges, because now you have two “persons” with competing rights.  The anti-abortion crowd would of course argue that the foetus’ rights should trump those of the mother, but such things are not so simple in reality because the structure of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms places rights of individuals in tension with each other, with no one person's rights superseding those of another. 

Were parliament to declare a foetus a "person", one opens an entire can of worms legally, and I suspect that what would emerge would end up right back where we are today.  

Why do I say this?  For several reasons, actually.  First, any law which looks like some of the abortion bans currently tabled in US legislatures will collapse under Oakes. Second rests in our current approach to the law and children / youth. Current law approaches place responsibility entirely on the parents at the birth of the child, and gradually reduces that as the child becomes more able to take on responsibility.  So, for example, if a toddler breaks a neighbour's window, we generally say "oops, that was an accident", and the parents are held responsible for the child's conduct.  When a 13 year old breaks the neighbour's window, we're more likely to hold the 13 year old responsible for their actions, although we might look sideways at the parents for raising a hoodlum. Basically, the idea is fairly straightforward:  as the child becomes more able to assert independent actions, we grant them greater responsibility.  

At birth, a child is able to breathe, and take sustenance independently of the person who birthed them, but is still largely dependent upon the parents to survive. That level of dependency grants the parents absolute control over much of the child's life as long as they protect the child's health and well being.  When the child is 18 or older, we deem that the child is now capable of being fully independent (I'll ignore emerging evidence from developmental psychology in this matter for now).  

I would expect that means from a legal perspective, you would end up back where we are today because the dependency of a foetus (and its antecedent forms of zygote and blastocyst) are entirely dependent on the person carrying them in all respects.  The pregnant person is not only responsible for themselves but the developing being inside them at that stage. The developing being has no ability to assert or exercise rights in any legal sense, nor can they act independently. That returns us to the state where not only is dependency absolute, but the risks associated with pregnancy are borne by the same person. Therefore, one can reasonably assert that absolute dependency, along with shared risks grants absolute control over decision making to the person most able to make those decisions objectively. 

Anti-abortion people will howl about "fetal heartbeats", and "viability" thresholds, but those are much harder to establish than one would first expect.  What is often called a "heartbeat" is actually little more than a bundle of neurones acting autonomically.  There is no "heart" formed at that stage, merely the potential for one to exist. Viability is a similarly difficult thing to establish. We can look and say "well, there's a well-formed foetus present", but whether or not that particular individual is viable at the moment of examination is a matter of probabilities, and available technology / medical methods. 

Then there are the risks associated with pregnancy.  They are many and a blind enforcement of "the law" to regulate pregnancy places women at risk. It has happened before, and it will happen again in the US.  

There can be a myriad of exceptions, and creating arbitrary lines based on a calendar in something as complex as gestation is a bit of a fool's errand.  This is why abortion needs to remain a matter of medical ethics, rather than a matter of law.  Even if we could make a reasonable argument for foetal rights, the fact is that law is far to blunt an instrument to use here. 

The Silence Is A Warning

This week, a draft ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was leaked.  Although what’s in the ruling itself is retrograde (and that’s being kind), that isn’t a surprise. Far too many of the judges appointed during Trump’s tenure, and the GOP’s refusal to allow Obama to get any appointments through set the stage for this.

No, what I want to talk about is the sudden muzzling of Canada’s conservative politicians on the matter, and a sudden flurry of “this will never happen in Canada” coming from various columnists.

While Canada’s legal context is somewhat different than the United States, it is utterly false to claim that a rollback of abortion isn’t a very real threat here, and in fact politicians being silent on the subject is a warning, not a reassurance to Canadian women. 

The issue is very real, and it is in fact partisan. Restricting abortion has long been a bread and butter issue for the political right in Canada, and they get significant support (and I suspect funding) from anti-abortion groups like Campaign Life and other organizations.  

The approach in Canada has been a little different than it has been in the US.  In the US there has been a steady series of lawsuits and legislative attacks that have been instituted to narrow the scope of Roe v. Wade. In Canada, we have seen different tactics - mostly a series of "private members" bills tabled on a regular enough basis, and a side of various provincial governments simply not funding the procedure to choke off availability.

It's really important that we look at the legislative tactics that have been tried.

Fetal Personhood - Bill C-205

    "Unborn Victims of Crime"  -  E.g. Bill C-269, Bill C-484

Sex-selection Abortion Ban - Bill C-233

Coerced Abortion - Bill C-510

Conscience Rights - Bill C-268

... and this is a sampling of what I found looking through Parliament's LegisInfo database which goes back to 1994, and by no means exhaustive.  Every one of these bills is designed one way or another to limit or restrict access to abortion.  This is far from the end of the road for any of these ideas.  The anti-abortion movement continues to push its agenda with conservative legislators. 

Politically, the conservative politicians all know that it's really bad politics to attack abortion directly in Canada. They've been looking for a wedge they can drive into Canadian law to start introducing restrictions and limits.  They keep trying, but so far the legislation has failed to pass.  That doesn't mean the legislation cannot be passed, and a failure on one piece of legislation is not seen as the end of the road.

The silence of Canada's conservative politicians in response to this week's events in the United States should not be mistaken for a change of heart. It echoes back to instructions that Preston Manning gave to his party in the late 90s when they were trying to figure out how to make gains beyond the Prairie provinces:  "Don't tell them what you really believe until after you've been elected" (paraphrase).  They know where they stand, and they just don't want you to know. 

Dear SCotUS: You Blew It

When you ruled that Hobby Lobby could implement its ownership's personal religious beliefs as policy imposed upon the company's employees, you really opened up the door to a world of abuse.

Hobby Lobby is a privately held corporation.  As are the majority of companies in both Canada and the United States.  Hobby Lobby is unusual in being a large operation with several thousand employees, where most corporations are quite small - a handful of employees at most.

However, I don't care what a corporation's owners "believe".  Frankly, I don't give a damn whether they believe that a condom is an abortifacient form of birth control or if the moon is made of green cheese.  They can believe the world if flat for all I care.

They still have no right whatsoever to stick their nose into my life outside of work.  PERIOD. This isn't just a matter of birth control.  It's a matter of privacy.  By permitting Hobby Lobby's ownership to pick and choose what forms of birth control the company health insurance plan will cover, your ruling allows the company ownership to impose its beliefs on the employees without any recognition of, or respect for, the individual lives that may be affected.  Frankly, I see no difference between Hobby Lobby's position on this and a refusal to provide insurance coverage for lung cancer treatment to a smoker on the basis that I believe that the smoker is making an immoral choice.

In ruling that Hobby Lobby can choose to make such limitations in the coverage of its health care, the SCotUS has provided a wedge that the right wing incrementalists will no doubt attempt to leverage.  We already know that their long term strategy is to incrementally erode rights a step at a time.

The religious right has been trying to dismantle Roe v. Wade for decades now.  You just handed them the tools to chip away further at the rights that Roe v. Wade so clearly set out in terms of women's reproductive health.

We have seen the religious classes argue against access to any kinds of contraception on the basis of their particular worldview.  In fact, in the last decade or so, they have expanded their scope from not just attacking abortion, but going after contraception as well.  Your ruling just handed them wording broad enough that we will no doubt see women's reproductive health pushed off the table in a great many workplaces - on the basis of the "beliefs" of the owners of the company.

How this will play out in cases like the Koch brothers where the company is "publicly traded", but controlling interest is held by the Koch brothers remains to be seen.  Could the Koch Brothers ram through a resolution at the annual general meeting to restrict access to birth control and have it stand?  The Hobby Lobby ruling is ambiguous in this respect.  It talks about the "probabilities", but it doesn't specifically rule out the Hobby Lobby ruling applying in such a situation.  I fully expect to see a series of proxy fights starting in various corporations as religious right groups try to flex their muscles on the AGM floor.

America's LGBT people are also justifiably wary of the Hobby Lobby ruling.  Religious objections have long been at the core of resistance to LGBT equality rights, and underly much of the systemic and explicit discrimination that LGBT people face daily - whether that is when ordering a meal in a restaurant, or trying to land a job.  Quite frankly, although the Hobby Lobby ruling appears to try and exclude such activities from the scope of the ruling, I guarantee you that someone is going to try it.  Religious objections have already been cited by a bakery which wanted to deny service to a gay couple, and I see no reason why this aspect of the Hobby Lobby ruling won't be challenged along these lines.

Let me be incredibly clear.  A corporation is not a person.  It cannot, and should never have been granted "rights" in the same sense that individual citizens hold them.  An individual citizen is possessed of a conscience, of beliefs and above all of individual autonomy.  No corporation can be said to have any of those attributes.  A corporation is a legal fiction designed for the express purpose of making money.  (Has anybody seen Hobby Lobby attending a church?  No, of course not.  Its owners can be seen in court, but one cannot say that the company attends a church)

Yes, a corporation does need certain rights legally supported.  However, those rights must be separate from, and subordinate to the rights of the individuals who participate in that corporation either as owners or as employees.  A corporation is a business intended to perform one function:  make money.  The corporation has a right to reasonable freedoms with respect to the execution of that fundamental goal.

However, those rights must be subjugated to the rights of individual citizens.  A corporation's actions absolutely should never be permitted to interfere with the private lives of citizens in any respect.  

Nasty, Just Plain Nasty

It's not like it comes as a big surprise that the Harper Government is nasty.  But the extent of their vileness continues expand.

First, the Harper Government seems to have decided to shut down basic literacy programs across Canada.  The claims of the Harperites on this matter are the usual "we don't believe these programs are useful in their current form".  Basic literacy is always useful, unless you're a Conservative and you like the idea of having an underclass of people who aren't in a position to think about what's happening to them because they're struggling just to get by in near slavery conditions.

But that's not all of it, not by any means.  This week, Harper is hosting a "summit" on Child and Maternal Health, following up on the 2008 G20.  In a fit of almost laughable hypocrisy, he said that people should pay attention to the science on vaccination.  Coming from a Prime Minister who has been systematically dismantling science research in this country for several years, the admonition is laughable.

It gets even better.  When confronted on the fact that the government is restricting the availability of funding under this program to organizations that do not provide abortion services, he replied:

"We're trying to rally a broad public consensus behind what we're doing, and you can't rally a consensus on that issue, as you know well in this country," he said. 

"It's not only controversial here, it's controversial and often illegal in many recipient nations."Harper doesn't agree with the suggestion that he is exporting his beliefs abroad to other countries by not funding abortion services. 

"We're really not taking a position on that. We have taxpayers' money and we have great needs," he said to Thibedeau. 

"And frankly, there's more than enough things that we can finance, including contraception, without getting into an issue that really would be extremely divisive for Canadians and donors."

The government is taking a position.  Once again, we find Harper's often denied but impossible to ignore social conservative agenda.  He keeps talking about "not opening the debate", but then he allows his back-benchers to put forward legislation on the matter (which the front bench mysteriously votes for until it would become a political liability).  On this matter, he is essentially taking the anti-abortion stance that once a woman is pregnant, she has no say in the matter after that.

None of this is surprising, but that doesn't change the fact that this government is continuing to be fundamentally dishonest with Canadians on a variety of fronts. 

A Sensible Approach

Justin Trudeau has received a significant amount of flak over his recent decree that incoming Liberal MPs after the next election will be expected to be explicitly pro-choice on the abortion issue.  This weekend, the Liberal Party released a very clear-headed e-mail:

"I had an extraordinary example in a father who had deeply, deeply held personal views that were informed by the fact that he went to church every Sunday, read the Bible regularly to us, and raised us very religiously, as Catholics," Trudeau wrote. 

"But at the same time my father had no problem legalizing divorce, decriminalizing homosexuality and moving in ways that recognized the basic rights of the people. 

"He too held fast to his beliefs. But he also understood that as leaders, as political figures, and as representatives of a larger community, our utmost responsibility is to stand up for people's rights."

Bingo!  People's rights are not negotiable, nor should they be used as political footballs.  

On "Matters Of Conscience"

So, one of the Roman Catholic Archbishops thinks that Justin Trudeau's recent implementation of party policy needs a rethink.

Collins pointedly mentioned that there are two million Catholics in his diocese. He said he encourages them to get involved in politics as both voters and candidates. 

"It is not right that they be excluded by any party for being faithful to their conscience."

Let's get something absolutely clear here.  Abortion (which is what this is primarily about) is a matter of individual conscience.  That is to say, if you object to abortion on "conscience" grounds, then don't have an abortion.

Access to Abortion is NOT a "conscience issue".  Abortion is a medical procedure.  Plain and simple. The right of women to have safe access to medical procedures is well established in this country.  You cannot take one procedure off the table simply because someone else objects to it "as a matter of conscience".

More pointedly, it's time that we dug a nice big hole and dumped all of the nonsense rhetoric about "conscience rights" around this issue into it, and filled it back in.  The decision to have an abortion or not is a pregnant woman's decision to make.  Her conscience and her conscience alone has something to say on the matter.

Those who raise "conscience" objections as an excuse to deny a woman access to abortion are not exercising any valid right to object.  The Archbishop, for example, may have something to say about whether or not he things abortion is "moral", but he has no right whatsoever to demand that a woman's access to abortion be restricted on that grounds.  Conscience rights do NOT give anybody the right to restrict other people's actions.

The only other party in the discussion who has any right to object is the doctor who might be asked to carry out the procedure.  Even there, that doctor has an ethical duty to provide a referral to another doctor in such a situation.

While the good Archbishop's "conscience" may prevent him from having an abortion (should he ever become pregnant), his "conscience rights" do not allow him to restrict others from safe access to the procedure should they choose to access it.

The last policy convention of the Liberal Party of Canada made it abundantly clear that a woman's right to choose is not open for debate in the party.  This nation's lack of any law on the matter since the last laws were struck down in the late 1980s speaks further to that.  The matter is one between a woman and her physician.  Nobody else has a legitimate say in the matter.

The Hypocrisy of "Pro-Life" Laws

In the Byzantine land of Texas Law, it seems that an arcane piece of legislation passed in the 1980s is being used to usurp the wishes of a woman who died of a pulmonary embolism.

The diagnosis was crushing and irrevocable. At 33, Marlise Munoz was brain dead after collapsing on her kitchen floor in November from what appeared to be a blood clot in her lungs. 

But as her parents and her husband prepared to say their final goodbyes in the intensive care unit at John Peter Smith Hospital here and to honour her wish not to be left on life support, they were stunned when a doctor told them the hospital was not going to comply with their instructions. 

Munoz was 14 weeks pregnant, the doctor said, and Texas is one of more than two dozen states that prohibit, with varying degrees of strictness, medical officials from cutting off life support to a pregnant patient. 

More than a month later, Munoz remains connected to life-support machines on the third floor of the ICU, where a medical team monitors the heartbeat of the fetus, now in its 20th week of development. Her case has become a strange collision of law, medicine, the ethics of end-of-life care and the issues swirling around abortion – when life begins and how it should be valued.

This comes from the same kind of fetus fetishist logic that makes being pregnant some kind of sacred state.  The problem is that these laws end up making the supposition that the fetus is somehow sacrosanct, and further that the woman is not a reasonable, intelligent agent.

Having a loved one die suddenly is traumatic enough.  Having the state keep their body alive as an incubator for a fetus multiplies that trauma for the family even more so.  Ultimately, in situations like this, the decision has to start with the woman's expressed wishes in the first place.  The family's wishes after that.  Sometimes, for the sake of the family, it is best to let things go, and that decision belongs to the family not the state.

When laws force the state to turn a dead person into a mindless incubator, they have become monsters themselves.

Truly, the hypocrisy of these laws is that they fetishize the fetus ... until birth.  After birth, you're on your own.

No, Yaakov Roth, The Supreme Court of Canada Is Not Overstepping Its Boundaries

I see the Harper PMO must have found another muppet to write opinion pieces for them.  In the National Post, we find Yaakov Roth expounding on the "problems" he has with the way the Supreme Court of Canada has been ruling on such matters as safe injection sites and prostitution.

The first thing I want to point out is that Mr. Yaakov Roth is not an expert on Canadian Constitutional Law - he was a Legal Clerk to Antonin Scalia - an American with no particular history in Canadian law.  Further, Antonin Scalia is notoriously conservative in his opinions, and it is in part from him that the entire narrative of "activist judges" started from.

On the D.C. Circuit, Scalia built a conservative record, while winning applause in legal circles for powerful, witty legal writing, which was often critical of the Supreme Court precedents he felt bound as a lower-court judge to follow. Scalia's opinions drew the attention of Reagan administration officials

Mr. Roth's arguments are very much consistent with the false narrative that any time the court rules against a set of laws the judges are being "activist".

I’ve seen my share of eyebrow-raising decisions. But using illegal drugs and publicly soliciting prostitution are, to put it mildly, not activities that come to mind when one thinks of fundamental constitutional rights. How did we get here? How did the SCC go so far off-track? 

The root of the rot, in my view, is not an erroneous legal doctrine or a misconstrued Charter provision (although there are plenty of both), but something far more basic: how the Court finds facts in Charter cases.

First of all, Mr. Roth's position presupposes that he actually understands the rulings he is talking about.  He doesn't.

In Charter cases, however, the relevant considerations often transcend the individual parties and relate more broadly to society as a whole. What are the long-term social effects of allowing prostitutes to solicit business in public? Will safe injection sites encourage increased drug use? The Supreme Court calls these “social facts,” facts about “society at large.” Shockingly, it now treats them identically to ordinary adjudicative facts. Contrary to earlier jurisprudence, Bedford expressly ruled that the trial judge is supposed to review social science, hear from purported “experts,” and make a conclusive determination that is binding on appeal unless “palpably” wrong.

Apparently, Mr. Roth has never actually read Canada's Constitution and come to an appreciation of how that document establishes a guiding framework for all aspects of this nation's government.  In particular, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms establishes a set of rights which is designed to hold in check a government which can otherwise run amok over the interests of its citizens.

Perhaps unique to having "conservative governments", the Supreme Court finds itself being put in the position of arbiter over laws and actions of governments whose overweening desire to control aspects of society that proscription has never effectively controlled.  Under Mulroney, it was the Supreme Court which struck down abortion laws in Canada - for similar reasons to the InSite and Prostitution rulings.  In all of these cases, the laws as written placed citizens into places of increased danger, at the hands of the law itself.

The InSite case was a matter of the Harper Government wanting to shut down the program, in spite of a mountain of clear evidence that it has been effective in reducing the damage done by heroin consumption in Vancouver.  There was no law struck down in that case, rather the government was effectively told that it had to abide by its own rules rather than arbitrarily imposing its political will through policy alone.

The Bedford case on prostitution is more complicated, in large part because the laws surrounding prostitution largely predate the creation of the Constitution in Canada.  Further, the awareness of the impact of those laws on prostitutes (who, I must point out are not criminals under the law), created a peculiar dynamic which ultimately placed the prostitutes in danger.

These are subtle points in law, though.  It is easy, if not silly, to claim that because parliament passed a law that it is valid.  Politicians are creatures of the moment, and prone to creating laws which are to one degree or another reactions to the pressures of the day.  Laws drafted before the 1983 Constitution Acts are very likely going to violate one or more aspects of the Constitution.  This is not a bad thing, it is simply a reality.  A law written when I was born is not guaranteed to be a meaningful law forty years later.  Understandings change, society changes (hopefully for the better), and the impact of that law changes.

In practice, this means that a single, anonymous trial judge is authorized to impose his social worldview on the entire country. In the Insite case, for example, the trial judge found as a “fact” that the social benefits of the safe injection site outweighed its costs. 

Ummm, yes, Mr. Roth.  Perhaps you should go read some of the research that has been published related to InSite.  You know, that objective stuff called evidence?  Does that constitute a "fact", or does the Harper Government's overt hostility to a program based solely on talking points and political spin constitute a stronger "fact"?  Personally, I'll take the one that has actual evidence behind it as opposed to talking points and emotional statements.

Ultimately, these cases — like most Charter cases — are about policy choices. Courts can serve as a useful check on democracy by ensuring that Parliament is using reasonable means to advance its objectives. But turning every social policy issue into a disputed “fact” to be resolved by a single judge after hearing testimony from academics is nothing but a transparent effort to substitute judges’ policy views for those of Parliament  —just what the SCC repeatedly claims not to do.

Here is where Mr. Roth drops the veil of supposedly objective analysis and plays the "activist judge" card.  Unfortunately for Mr. Roth, his entire argument falls apart on this.  There is a fascinating balance in the Canadian Constitution which he fails to understand.  The judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, is in the unique position of acting as a counterweight to the inclination of politicians to be excessive in their legislation and implementation of policy.

The Supreme Court does not deal in the cut-and-dried logic of concrete evidence as one would find in a lower court dealing with a murder case.  They are often called to deal with the law and its impact across the broad swath of society.  Laws are ultimately matters which affect the society which they are written for.  As much as Mr. Roth (and no doubt his mentor, Mr. Scalia) might like to remove "soft facts" such as social impact studies from the picture and only deal in "hard facts", the fact is that the higher courts simply cannot do so and carry out their role effectively.

This is not "judicial activism", as the far right likes to call it.  Rather it is a part of a process which ultimately ends up holding the desires of politicians to exceed their legitimate authority by writing laws which violate fundamental principles set out elsewhere in law.  The Harper Government has done this repeatedly in a swath of laws that it has passed - all of which will have to be challenged in court, or repealed by future governments in order to bring the body of Canada's laws back in line with the principles of our nation's Constitution.

When Logic Does Not Factor Into Policy

Yesterday, Canada's Minister for the Status of Women spoke on the recent decision for Canada to restrict funding related to War Rape and Forced Marriage victims to organizations and programs that exclude abortion.

As a pediatric surgeon, she said she's confident Canada has chosen to target its aid where it will do the most good. 

"We have to pick a targeted area, where we're going to be able to have an impact," Leitch said in a phone interview from New York. 

"As a physician, I'm very confident in saying that we have chosen the right one, that pre- and post-partum care is the place where we'll have the most meaningful impact to save the lives of children and their mothers." 

She noted that childbirth is one of the leading causes of death among young women between the ages of 15 and 19 and blamed that largely on the appalling conditions in which they're frequently forced to give birth.

The logic of this is beyond ridiculous.  As a doctor, she should know damn good and well that maternal health includes contraception and abortion.  Excluding these from the discussion does nothing more than reduce women to the role of baby machines.

The issues of the conditions in which women are often forced to give birth are no different than the issue of the conditions which women are forced to deal with when seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy.  Period.  Anybody who thinks that because abortion isn't being funded/supported/provided that women don't seek out such solutions has wool where their brains should be.

What the Harper Government is really doing is using this issue as a piece of red meat for their squirming base of religious fundamentalists.  Make no mistake about it, the religious far right desperately wants to regulate sexuality in this country, and their beach head is abortion.  They think that they can justify slamming the door shut on abortion in Canada, using many of the same revolting tactics that we have seen used in the United States, where progressively more invasive laws have been pushed through at the state level which have rendered access to abortion virtually impossible in some states.

Ms. Leitch should also be quite aware that forced marriage regularly includes forcing girls into marriage before they are physically mature enough to carry a child safely to term, and war rape in general does not respect age at all.  In both cases, access to abortion is a legitimate need for the women affected by these atrocities.  A girl who has had her first period is capable of becoming pregnant, but that doesn't mean that she is able to carry the fetus to term safely, and the injuries from early sex can be fatal.   That she is a paediatrician and takes a position that excludes a particular treatment option for the victims of these practices is disgusting.  She should be fully aware of the dangers involved in such situations for the young woman.

Turning to the question of "War Rape", and pregnancy which could result from such activities, the position she is taking effectively revokes the notion that woman has autonomy over her body in all circumstances.  Once again, we find the ridiculous "pro-life" trope surfacing that denies women autonomy over their bodies.  Pregnancy is not without consequences for the mother, no matter how much we might idealize it as a "wondrous time" in life.  I can only imagine the psychological trauma that someone who is raped in a war zone, and then obliged to carry the resulting child to term would face.  In effect, we are not only rewarding the rapist with offspring, but for the remainder of that woman's life, she has to face a recurring trauma resulting from knowing the origins of that child.  (worse, in some countries, the rapist is actually granted rights with respect to that child, which would spawn still more recurring trauma for the mother)

Logically speaking, there is no way that you can claim to be helping the health of women in these situations and exclude access to abortion.  Doing so is logically inconsistent, and exposes the victims of these crimes (and both are criminal acts in my opinion, regardless of the local laws in other countries).

Once again, the Harper Government is making policy decisions based on ideology, not on facts and reason.  I shudder to think what Harper is going to do on the home front between now and the next election.

What Was That About "Not Re-Opening the Abortion Debate"?

Since 2006, Harper has repeatedly "refused" to open the abortion debate in Canada ... or at least so he claims.

But then again, there's the old saw about "actions speak louder than words".  Once again, the Harper Government has taken actions which very clearly articulate where they stand.  On Huffington Post, the headline reads "Tories Won't Fund Overseas Projects Allowing Abortion For War Rape, Child Brides"

International Development Minister Christian Paradis says the government will not fund overseas projects that allow war rape victims and child brides to obtain an abortion. 

...

But Paradis says the government's policy would follow the same logic as that behind Canada's $3-billion G8 funding commitment for maternal and child health — no money should go towards abortion services. 

That's a change from the department's previous statement that it does not monitor where each dollar goes when funding is provided to large multilateral aid organizations outside the G8 commitment envelope. 

If this doesn't get you wound up, it should.  Once again, we have the Harper Government talking out of both sides of its mouth.  On one side, they are working very hard not to talk about abortion publicly, but by way of policy fiat, they are moving quite clearly against women's rights - including self-determination, health care and so on.  Worse, they are doing it one the world stage, and to those who are inherently the most vulnerable.

There can be no mistaking Harper's policy here - this government is clearly hostile to women and women's rights.  He knows that were he to move in Canada to restrict abortion access further, the political storm he would face would be enough to sink his already plummeting political fortunes.

But, because this doesn't affect Canadians directly, the political calculation is that it won't be noticed.  Like several "private member's" bills and motions on controversial subjects, Harper has allowed them to move forward because it keeps the far-right base that formed the core of the Reform Party happily believing that he's on their side.

We've had a steady stream of anti-abortion private member's bills and motions before the House.  All of  them have been allowed to gain a certain amount of publicity and attention, and then are quietly defeated by a "free vote".  (In the case of the CPC, I would put money that those "free votes" are stage managed within an inch of their lives)

Further, Harper has been one of the most radical micro-managers we've ever seen occupy the PMO.  There is no chance that a back-bench MP gets to put forward a private member's bill without the approval of the PMO.

Private members' bills differ from government legislation in that they are supposed to be an expression of something the individual MP wants to champion. While it's not unusual for these bills to be amended – and often improved – at committee, it is unusual for MPs from the bill sponsor's own governing party to use their majority on the committee reviewing the legislation to make changes the MP who proposed the bill didn't originally intend, or support. 

Normally, if a government doesn't support a private member's bill, it encourages its MPs to vote it down before it reaches committee. However, it doesn't usually whip — or force — its caucus to vote a certain way on these kinds of bills. 

"The more popular feeling certainly at PMO and the whip's office is that caucus members should essentially be cheerleaders for the government and spread the government's message as opposed to being some sort of legislative check on executive power," Rathgeber said Thursday. "I don't accept their premise."

So ... When's Harper Going To Engineer His Defeat?

There's little to be optimistic about in recent comments from Mr. Harper on the subject of Abortion, Gun Control and the Death Penalty.

On the surface, Harper has said that he doesn't want to get into those subjects, right?

Well, let's look a little further, shall we?

First of all, Harper's "back benchers" like Vellacott, Bruinooge and Epp have been very active putting forward bills that are directly or indirectly about abortion. We know that the base is alive and well in Harper's caucus - and they haven't exactly been silent.

Nobody in Harper's caucus so much as sneezes without permission from the PMO, and usually with specific instructions as to precisely when to sneeze and at what volume. Make no mistake, those bills had Harper's permission to exist in the first place - which, given Mr. Harper, is essentially an endorsement of the bill itself.

Second, I've found plenty of occasions where Harper (or his minions) have been dog-whistling to their "base" on a regular basis.

So, how do Harper's recent statements constitute a "dog whistle"? Simple, they're key hot button issues to his base - even mentioning them publicly is a reminder to his base that those issues haven't been forgotten about even if they haven't been acted on yet.

He describes abortion as an issue he’s spent his political career trying to “stay out of” and insists he wants no debate on abortion law. “What I say to people, if you want to diminish the number of abortions, you’ve got to change hearts and not laws,” he said.

Uh huh - spot the dog whistle phrases in there:

insists he wants no debate on abortion law

That's perfectly true - Harper doesn't want a debate. What he wants is the absolute power to impose his will. There will be no debate about it.

if you want to diminish the number of abortions, you’ve got to change hearts and not laws

Ah - in other words, under Harper, Canada's government will be funding more wingnut welfare programs by handing money out by the ton to so-called "pregnancy crisis centers" (fronts for various anti-choice groups) that lie to women about abortion.

Remember, Harper has done more to subvert and disrupt our democracy than any previous Prime Minister, and he's got his sights set on power - and I don't think he gives a damn what the price for that is as long as he can impose his will on Canada.

You Said It, Cardinal Ouelett, You Wear It

I see Cardinal Ouelett is trying to (sort of) backpedal on his recent statements about abortion in Canada.

On Wednesday, Ouellet told reporters he was "a bit surprised by the magnitude of the reaction" to his comments, which he said had been "twisted" and taken out of context.

"They took one small phrase and created a weapon … to discredit me," Ouellet said.

Ah ... the classic "I was taken out of context" defense. Coming from another one of Pope Benedict's cassock-wearing celibates, it's lacking credibility. Especially when he says this:

He called abortion a "moral disorder," but said the circumstances must be taken into account.

"I am not making a judgment on the woman ... because the woman has to take her decision in light of her personal circumstance," Ouellet said. "Only God knows all the elements of her final judgment of conscience.

Well ... he's got half of it right - the decision is the woman's. What he's got wrong is that he has any say in that decision.

In Belgium, with only rare exceptions, abortions are not performed later than 12 weeks into a pregnancy, Ouellet said.

As a result, he said, in 2007 there were 18,000 abortions in the country with a population of 10 million people, compared with more than 26,000 in Quebec, which has a population of eight million.

Of course, like most anti-abortionists, Ouellet is ignoring the fact that by far the majority of abortions in Canada (and Quebec in particular) are done in the first trimester.

More fundamentally, these clowns need to pay a little attention to the Morgentaler decision which found the last attempt at a law arbitrarily restricting abortion unconstitutional.

Since then, we've heard a lot of bleating about "fetal rights", which is nothing more than an attempt to invent a status for a being that is entirely dependent upon the woman until birth. Anyone with their brain switched on should be able to see just what a legal can of worms creating a legal status for a fetus would open. (Welcome back to the 'you're not a person' era, ladies - because suddenly your body is subject to the rights not just of your good judgment, but also of someone else's judgment on behalf of that fetus)

The Inherent Misogyny of the Anti Abortion Protestors

One of the biggest problems that women have faced over the centuries has been getting beyond being treated as mere objects ... or even outright property.

After reading some of Cardinal Marc Ouellet's comments at the "Fetus Festivus" event recently held on Parliament Hill. (and if that name doesn't creep you out, I don't know what will - the implications of it with respect to women's autonomy over their own bodies are staggering)

Cardinal Ouellet thanked the attendees at the march for defending the unborn and called on all to speak out also “in defense of life until the end.”

“I thank you for standing up in defense of the unborn – those who cannot come to life, those who cannot develop and enrich our country because their right to be born is negated,” he said. “The battle for life, the right for life, is a spiritual battle, so we pray. It is also a cultural battle, and it is a juridical battle, so that’s why we come together and we ask for justice.”

Uh huh ... no - it's a battle to control women's bodies. Let's call it what it is - anything else - whether you use the language of 'fetal rights', or 'right to life' is window dressing.

The fundamental issue underlying the anti-abortion movement is misogyny - and it is the misogyny that has been used against women for centuries - rooted in a masculinized worldview, and a long-held misunderstanding of female fertility and sexuality.

Referring to Dictionary.com, the term Misogyny is defined as follows:

mi·sog·y·ny
   /mɪˈsɒdʒəni, maɪ-/ Show Spelled[mi-soj-uh-nee, mahy-] Show IPA
–noun
hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.

This isn't outright hatred at play here, it's more like mistrust. Fundamentally, the fetus fetishists don't trust women to make sensible, intelligent decisions about their own bodies - and in particular the biological process commonly called pregnancy.

The anti-abortion arguments reduce the pregnant woman to an object - a mere vessel whose role it is to produce a baby at the end of gestation.

Consider Cardinal Ouellet's comments the other day:

Asked by a reporter about the Church’s teaching on abortion in cases of rape, the cardinal said: “the child is not responsible for how he was conceived, it is the aggressor who is responsible. We can see him (the child) as another victim.”

"I understand very well that a woman who's been raped is dealing with trauma and that she needs to be helped,” he added later. “But she needs to do so with respect for the being that is in her womb. It is not responsible for what happened. It's the rapist who is responsible. But there's already a victim. Do we need to have another one?"

There are some key observations that I want to raise here - and it is the assumptions in the Cardinal's statements:

1) Note that the Cardinal is talking about a rape victim as "needing help", but he is unwilling to allow that same rape victim the freedom to decide for themselves whether they should bear the child that some violent asshole has spawned in them.

2) The fetus as supreme over her needs as a human being. The Cardinal talks about "respect for the being that is in her womb", implying that the fetus has a status that overrides the woman's right to control over her own body.

3) The Cardinal's language treats the fetus as distinct from the woman, and in doing so disregards entirely the enormous biological - and emotional - price that pregnancy exacts for the woman.

Not only has the Cardinal repeated the oft-heard lines of the so-called "pro-life" movement, but he has shown us a window into the blatant and utter misogyny of this line of reasoning.

In the Cardinal's world, the woman is reduced to a mere biological vessel the moment she becomes pregnant. The reason she became pregnant doesn't matter, nor does her circumstances or desire to be a parent. In fact, her decision making with respect to the pregnancy ends at that point. In essence, a pregnant woman is seen as unable to make rational decisions about the progress of her pregnancy. In short, the woman is not trustworthy once she's pregnant. This shows a clear, and unmistakable mistrust of women - simply based on whether they are pregnant or not.

The "pro-life" types go a step or two beyond this and argue that even when the woman's life is at risk, that abortion is unacceptable:

The Bishop of Phoenix has announced that a Catholic nun and administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix has automatically excommunicated herself by approving an abortion on a woman who was 11-weeks pregnant, and whose life hospital officials allege they were trying to save.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said the excommunications apply to all involved, and lambasted the hospital’s defense of their decision by comparing the ill woman’s unborn child to a disease that needed to be removed.

The Arizona Republic reports that in late 2009, Sister Margaret McBride, then vice president of mission integration at St. Joseph’s, joined the hospital’s ethics committee in determining that doctors and the hospital would be morally justified in performing a direct abortion in the first trimester, because they felt that the mother’s life was at risk.

The woman, whose identity is anonymous, was reportedly seriously ill with pulmonary hypertension.

Just consider the moral and ethical stance that this represents. The woman's life was endangered by being pregnant, and the Bishop (who has how much medical training?) dares to condemn the decision providing her with an abortion.

To me, this just reinforces the rather offensive idea that women exist solely as vessels to produce babies. Everything else a woman may do or accomplish is secondary - the moment she is known to be pregnant, these people want to take away her right to make her own decisions about her body.

To reduce women to non-sentient vessels for bearing children the moment that they become pregnant is not just misogyny - it is the worst kind of misogyny because it perpetuates myths about women that have been used to hold them down to second class citizen status for centuries.

... and make no mistake about it - the so-called "pro-lifers" in Canada would happily legislate away a woman's right to decide her own destiny.

Ah ... So Intimidation Is The Next Step

More on the HarperCon$ "Maternal Health" non-initiative:

“We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the f--- up on this issue,” Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told a group of international-development advocates who gathered on Parliament Hill on Monday to sound the alarm about Canada’s hard-right stand against abortion in foreign aid.

I see ... so, when the HarperCon$ get challenged for be a bunch of hard-rightwing extremists, the next thing they do is start threatening their critics with "something worse"?

Wow - this bunch keeps on getting worse every time I turn around. The language of policy is replaced with the language of intimidation and threats now. What's next? Criminalizing opposition to Dear Leader's policies?

“If you push it, there will be more backlash,” said Ruth, who fears that outrage will push her boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to take further measures against abortion and family planning – abroad, or maybe even in Canada. “This is now a political football. This is not about women’s health in this country.”

More dogwhistle politics, there. Harper might go after abortion in Canada - I see - not like he isn't already doing that via a series of private members bills that keep getting put forward from his "non-cabinet" social conservative benches.

A Little More Insight Into Harper's "Base"

Rod Bruinooge has tabled bill C-510 to criminalize someone for attempting to "coerce" a woman into having an abortion:

264.2 (1) Every one who coerces a female person to procure or attempt to procure an abortion for herself is guilty of


(a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years; or


(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding eighteen months.

264.2 (1) Quiconque contraint une personne du sexe féminin qui est enceinte à se procurer ou à tenter de se procurer un avortement est coupable :

Contraindre à avorter

a) soit d’un acte criminel passible d’un emprisonnement maximal de cinq ans;


b) soit d’une infraction punissable sur déclaration de culpabilité par procédure sommaire et passible d’un emprisonnement maximal de dix-huit mois.



Attempted coercion


(2) Every one who attempts to coerce a female person to procure an abortion for herself is guilty of


(a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or


(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months.

Then there's the definition of "coercion" that's written into this little bit of legislative stupidity - it's a definition which could easily be twisted by the wingnuts to mean that anyone who counsels abortion as an option to a pregnant woman could be held culpable:

“coercion”, in respect of an abortion, means conduct that, directly or indirectly, causes a female person to consent to an abortion that she would otherwise have refused. A person coerces an abortion if he or she knows of or suspects the pregnancy of a female person and engages, or conspires with another to engage in, conduct that is intentionally and purposely aimed at directing the female person who has not chosen to have an abortion to have an abortion, including but not limited to the following conduct:


(a) committing, attempting to commit, or threatening to commit physical harm to the female person, the child or another person;


(b) committing, attempting to commit or threatening to commit any act prohibited by any provincial or federal law;


(c) denying or removing, or making a threat to deny or remove, financial support or housing from a person who is financially dependent on the person engaging in the conduct; and


(d) attempting to compel by pressure or intimidation including argumentative and rancorous badgering or importunity;


but does not include speech that is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Practically speaking, this is utterly unnecessary legislation. We already have legislation to deal with people making criminal threats, or assaulting others regardless of gender.

This little bit of legislative chicanery is based on the false assumption that women are routinely coerced into having an abortion. This is demeaning to women simply on the presumption that they don't make these decisions themselves. Bruinooge thinks far too highly of himself and his male brethren - it seems to me that the coercion is coming from them - trying to make it as hard as possible for women to access health care related to their fertility.

Sexism At Its Finest

Over at the Ottawa Citizen, we find David Warren spouting off about sex and contraception - and managing to make it all women's fault when they find themselves pregnant:

"A woman must have the right to decide whether she is going to carry a baby." Whom do these people think they are fooling?

A woman, who is not the victim of a rape, has always had that right; and even my Catholic Church recognizes a method of contraception that is quite infallible. Gentle reader may guess what that is. And while it is only a rule of thumb, "no sex without babies, and no babies without sex" does in fact provide adequate guidance for any conceivable life issue.

How delightfully medieval of the man. What really annoys me about this kind of simplistic logic on Mr. Warren's part is not just that he has essentially made the whole issue of contraception and family planning the woman's job. Clearly, in his world, men bear no responsibility for their actions.

If men were good, there would never be abortions. If men were good, women would never have cause to seek them. If men were good, women would be loved.

Therefore, regardless of the state of any law, the immediate answer is for men to be good, and to address their Valentine wishes accordingly.

Why yes, Mr. Warren - the perfect solution is for everybody to follow the same rules. How insightful of you. Of course, Mr. Warren is conveniently ignoring the biblical nonsense about 'wives submitting to their husbands', which all too often is interpreted quite specifically with sex in mind.

Then there are situations like this where women's bodies and integrity are clearly violated - again for purely religious reasons. There are also societies in the world where it is illegal for a woman to deny her husband sex. Think about that a little bit.

Pardon me for being thick about things, but I think it's appropriate to note that there's a certain hypocrisy in Mr. Warren's thinking. On one hand, it's all the fault of those awful women for spreading their legs for their partners, and on the other hand, those same women are obligated by "biblical law" to submit to their partners? Hmmm...sounds to me like the power is being placed firmly in men's hands, while the responsibility is handed elsewhere.

Sorry Mr. Warren, but where a woman's body is involved, it is the woman's perogative to decide what happens with it - up to and including terminating a pregnancy through abortion. This deserves to be true here in Canada as well as elsewhere in the world. Until men like Mr. Warren cease to wave their bibles in our faces, and start respecting women as equal members of society with all the autonomy that comes with it, there will be a fight. This is why Mr. Harper's 'maternal health' initiative is a bad joke on the world stage.

Lastly, Mr. Warren might want to consider sex from the perspective of how couples bond with each other. Although children can be an outcome of sex, it would be folly to assume that something as incredibly intimate as sex doesn't play a dramatic role in cementing the emotional bond between partners. As much as the Catholic Church likes to view sex as purely fulfilling a reproductive role, we know that it has other benefits as well. To restrict it solely to spawning more children is probably more damaging to a relationship, and yet that is exactly what he is proposing.

It's Not Just What You Say ...

You know, the whole "pro-life" movement is showing its dark side in the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder. Today's gem of the week comes to us from Lifesite: Fr. Pavone Emphasizes Biggest Danger From the Killing of George Tiller

Says Father Pavone:

The biggest danger is the enemy within. It is the fear and self-doubt to which we can all too easily fall victim. It is the voice inside that makes us feel guilty for saying “Abortion is murder” or “Abortion is a holocaust” or “The babies who are being killed need to be defended now.”

Why yes, there should be some serious introspection taking place right about now among the fetus fetishist movement. It's not just the words - it's also about how that word is delivered.


The issue is also the blood-soaked rhetoric and imagery that the fetus fetishists employ. These images are designed and intended to shock people. To the more rational among society, these images are propaganda and have little impact.

But, as has been shown repeatedly over the years, there are those in the anti-abortion movement whose contact with reality is sufficiently weak that these images and the blood-soaked rhetoric can drive them to violence - sometimes, it seems, to a killing rage.

The claim has been made that the man who kill Dr. Tiller was "mentally unstable", and a "loner". Perhaps he was all of the above. But he was also a consumer of the propaganda that the fetus fetishists have been producing for so many years.

The monsters who have carried out these assassinations may not be "sanctioned" by the screaming banshees of the anti-choice movement, but that doesn't mean that they are not influenced and driven by the propaganda of this movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, responded to criticisms that the civil rights activists were fomenting violence. No, he said. That’s like saying the person who owns money is fomenting the activity of the robber. To expose the violence that is already occurring, to call it what it is, and to sound the alarm that it has to stop, is not to foment violence.

The pro-life movement is a movement of non-violence.

I won't even touch the slimy attempt to co-opt Martin Luther King's work in the name of the anti-choice movement. It's more important to recognize the lack of understanding of the responsibility that the propagandists carry.

We should also recognize the repeated belligerence of the fetus fetishists - whether it is the juvenile behaviour of the University of Calgary's "Campus Pro Life" group, or the shrieking loons one sees accosting patients, staff and family outside of abortion clinics, this is not a group that conducts itself civilly. This is a movement that has lost its perspective, and needs to take a step back to re-examine its tactics, strategy and goals.

A Twofer: One Gets It ... The Other ...

Not so much.

Over at the "Mere Comments" blog, we find two responses from different authors to the murder of Dr. Tiller on the weekend.

The first one gets it:

Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands.

The second writer, on the other hand is not so successful in achieving understanding:

Too much blood, too many victims. Dr. Tiller's many, many victims. His own life ended in cold blood. Roe opened this door and he went through it.

In this one sentence, he says exactly what has been said elsewhere - and just as wrongly - by the fetus fetishist crowd. His focus on Dr. Tiller's professional work misses the point - Dr. Tiller was murdered by a man because of that man's judgment of Dr. Tiller. In doing so, the author has tacitly approved the murderer's actions.

But, it gets better. He writes:

There will always be bad men (who of us is without sin?) but laws can make us worse, and abandoning the respect for human life in the womb cannot but make a nation worse. The children of Roe are rising up. Lord, have mercy.

So, once again, we have more excuse making going on. It wasn't the shooter's fault at all, it seems - no, it was a "bad law". Well wait a minute here. That line of reasoning is no difference than the "panic" defenses that are routinely dragged out when someone is accused of murdering GLBT people - it essentially blames the victim in a sorry attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

Let's be very clear about two things here. Dr. Tiller was murdered - in cold blood on Sunday. He was murdered, it seems, for carrying out abortions - something which the article's author is willing to excuse by saying that a 'bad law drove the man to it'. Well, no, it didn't. The constant howling from the fetus fetishists calling abortion murder and showing lots of lovely blood-soaked images gave him the sense of horror he needed to justify what he did. Those images come from all over the anti-abortion lobby, not just the "Army of God" types.

The Fetus Fetishists Strike ...

[Update 31/05/09 18:50]
So, I see that Randall Terry is out flapping his gums about how George Tiller was a mass murderer - as if that justifies some nutcase gunman shooting him in church.

I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions.
...
"Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

All that this statement does is give the wingnut who shot Dr. Tiller reason to think he's some kind of hero. He's not - he's a vigilante, a murderer and a criminal ... and a man who deserves to be treated far worse than how he treated Dr. Tiller.

The Fetus Fetishists have lost the moral high ground. It is time to recognize that their judgmentalism is giving the worst society has to offer the license to kill. Directly or indirectly, they are responsible for what happened in Kansas today.
[/Update]
Come and talk to me about the "angry left" sometime ... last I checked the pro-choice lobby doesn't go around murdering doctors in cold blood.

It's things like this that make me downright furious most days, and today more so than average.

When we hear politicians musing about introducing abortion controls, they are pandering to the same wingnut extremism that thinks it's some kind of heroism to gun people that offend them down in the streets.

This isn't the first time that a doctor has been murdered, simply because he provides women with abortion services. It is time for politicians in both Canada and the United States to condemn these acts of violence, and close the door to the anti-abortion crowd.

H/T: Feministe