Pah! Palin

There’s not likely to be a “last post” on Sarah Palin until and if McCain/Palin aren’t elected.  Here’s the last bit of one I really like by Dr. Sarah Churchwell of the School of American Studies in the UK:

Sarah Palin is not anti-abortion, because she has said that she would permit abortion if a mother’s life would end because of a pregnancy. (Her life as she knows it and chooses to lead it ending doesn’t not seem to pose a problem to Palin. The mother would have to actually die for her to think the mother gets to choose–which some wouldn’t consider a choice at all.) Palin doesn’t allow that there are any other circumstances under which a woman might be granted the right not to have a baby if she becomes pregnant against her will.

So let’s clarify the terms. It seems that everyone in Palin’s camp are for freedom of choice, but are under the impression that this is different from being pro-choice, because they’ve been convinced that being pro-choice is just a nefarious euphemism for being pro-abortion. No wonder they hate us. I’d hate anyone who ran around with an I “Heart” Abortions button, too. Abortions are not good for anyone. They are painful, and difficult, and traumatic. But at least now they are clean, and safe. And sometimes they are the best option available.

Sarah Palin is not pro-choice, and she is not for freedom of choice, except evidently for her daughter. But as the MSM accepts her characterization of herself as “anti-abortion”, it follows that the rest of us are pro-abortion. And thus once again they are setting the terms of the conversation, through mystification and double-talk.

Sarah Palin is anti-choice, and pro-coercion. She is a Republican who is for government intervention in the private reproductive decisions of citizens, and in no other arena. Although there is one way in which she is consistent: she does think that no matter who screws you, from rapists to HMOs to corrupt corporations, you’re stuck with the consequences.

She is for taking the choice away from everyone else, while celebrating her daughter’s right to make the “right” choice-a choice that would be rather nugatory if her policies were implemented, and that owes everything to the hard-won battles of feminists on the front line of the reproduction wars.

What the anti-choice lobby doesn’t want anyone to remember is that the debate is not about abortions versus no abortions. It is about safe abortions versus unsafe abortions. Because one of the many inconvenient truths that evangelicals like Sarah Palin choose to ignore is a little theological quandary called “free will.” Women who don’t want to be pregnant will not just lay down and turn into unwilling baby machines because the Sarah Palins of the world object to abortion, and want to sanctify the life of the unborn fetus. Unless the mother considers an unwanted fetus more holy than she is, abortions will ensue. That’s as much an unwelcome fact as is pregnancy for women who don’t want to be pregnant.  

Abortion is not some  evil new post-feminist invention. Abortion is as old as pregnancy. It’s as old as creation-and older than creationism. If Sarah Palin is right that men and women walked the earth with the dinosaurs, I guarantee you that women–and men–were attempting to abort unwanted pregnancies with brontosauruses watching them. (Except it turns out they weren’t really brontosauruses, doesn’t it? Which is the same kind of games with words and history that the Republicans are playing–and winning.) And women will have been dying from abortions then, and they’ll be dying again if we forget what choice means.

Read the whole thing here

via wood s lot

Bye Bye 484

Thanks to every single pro-choice agitator in Canada, the Tories have been forced to put the boot to Bill C-484, MP Ken Epps’ Private Member’s Bill that would have made the fetus a legal entity:

The Harper government cut loose a contentious private member’s bill that would have made it a crime to take the life of a fetus just as election speculation hits fever pitch.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced Monday that his government will rework Bill C-484, the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act,” so that it doesn’t open the debate about fetal rights but rather focuses on penalizing criminals who harm pregnant women.

The act, which was introduced last year by Tory MP Ken Epp of Edmonton and passed second reading in the spring, would make it a separate offence for killing an unborn child when a pregnant woman is murdered.

Pro-abortion advocates have denounced it for giving the fetus some human rights. Last week, the Canadian Medical Association voted to oppose the bill, and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion spoke out against it, challenging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to clarify his views on abortion.

I’d say this is more proof that Steve plans on taking us into an election.  Why?  Because this move is yet another sign – he has to get rid of the fetus-fetishistic legislation because he KNOWS he can’t win with it.  Canadians are overwhelmingly pro-choice.

Oh what an outbreak of wailing and whining there’s going to be though.

Coyneage

What Andrew says:

The furor over Henry Morgentaler’s appointment to the Order of Canada, on the other hand, now that is about abortion. There may be some who object out of a disinterested concern for fairness, on the principle that an honour bestowed on behalf of all of the people of Canada should not be given to a man whose life’s work is, still, so profoundly upsetting to so many Canadians. But for most people, it’s about abortion. In honouring him, we are honouring it, normalizing it, stamping it with the seal of approval.

Or rather not abortion, as such, but the legal void that surrounds it, which Morgentaler did so much to bring about: the extraordinary fact that, 20 years after the Supreme Court ruling that bears his name, this country still has no abortion law of any kind. It isn’t that abortion — at any stage of a pregnancy, for any reason, and at public expense — is lawful in Canada. It is merely not unlawful. When it comes to abortion, we are literally a lawless society: the only country in the developed world that does not regulate the practice in any way.  [emphasis mine]

HeyStupid, what’s the difference between an act that is not unlawful and an act that is lawful?  According to the ordinary rules of grammar, absolutely nothing.

Andrew Coyne is fear mongering here, trying to convince Canadians that there’s something wrong with a secular society that has no laws that reflect the narrow-minded, anti-woman views of extreme right-wing religious nutbars people.

There is no legislation in this country that makes the removal of an appendix by a medical doctor lawful.  Is it unlawful?  No, it’s not unlawful.  In other words, lawful.

I can’t believe I just said that.

And as for “honouring” abortion, “normalizing” it, giving it our “seal of approval” – well, it’s not abortion we’re honouring, it’s the man and his supporters who honoured the lives of women.  That must be so hard for Andrew to swallow.  And the normalization and seal of approval – the Supreme Court of Canada did that for us in 1988.  It’s called R. v. Morgentaler, wherein the Court said, in part:

 A pregnant woman’s person cannot be said to be secure if, when her life or health is in danger, she is faced with a rule of criminal law which precludes her from obtaining effective and timely medical treatment.

     Generally speaking, the constitutional right to security of the person must include some protection from state interference when a person’s life or health is in danger. The Charter does not, needless to say, protect men and women from even the most serious misfortunes of nature. Section 7 cannot be invoked simply because a person’s life or health is in danger. The state can obviously not be said to have violated, for example, a pregnant woman’s security of the person simply on the basis that her pregnancy in and of itself represents a danger to her life or health. There must be state intervention for “security of the person” in s. 7 to be violated.

     If a rule of criminal law precludes a person from obtaining appropriate medical treatment when his or her life or health is in danger, then the state has intervened and this intervention constitutes a violation of that man’s or that woman’s security of the person. “Security of the person” must include a right of access to medical treatment for a condition representing a danger to life or health without fear of criminal sanction. If an act of Parliament forces a person whose life or health is in danger to choose between, on the one hand, the commission of a crime to obtain effective and timely medical treatment and, on the other hand, inadequate treatment or no treatment at all, the right to security of the person has been violated.

But Andrew Coyne is writing for a small minority of Canadian Conservative politicians who are trying to pass abortion laws by regulating various aspects of pre-natal occurences and the behaviour, or lack of action, of medical practioners.  Pro-choice Canada has noticed.  Let’s keep our attention on these guys.  And yes, almost to a man, they’re guys.  We could gnash our teeth about the fact that Dr. Morgentaler’s Order of Canada has raised the ugly heads of Canada’s anti-choicers and re-opened some pretty ugly wounds.  Newsflash:  they never closed.

Morgentaler, Morgentaler & Morgentaler

The anti-choicers are planning a July 9th Parliament Hill demonstration to protest Dr. Morgentaler’s Order of Canada.  Just keep it to the streets, guys, and away from the clinics.  Antonia Zerbesias gives voice to mounting fears of violence from the anti-choicers.  And Chantal Hebert remembers the remarkable struggle for abortion rights undertaken by Dr. Morgentaler and his sometimes unsung supporters:

For the many pro-choice Canadians who cheered Morgentaler on, a life of activism is more than reason enough to give him the Order of Canada. For the many others who are more ambivalent about abortion but who prize the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, his contribution to turning it into a living document should warrant the honour.

To this day, it is hard to think of a Charter ruling that is as prominent in the annals of Canadian women’s rights as the Morgentaler decision. He should no more be consigned to the closets of history than the activists who forcefully broke new constitutional ground to champion same-sex, minority language or native rights.

As for the vocal opponents of abortion, they could reflect on the fact that if the Order of Canada committee had really wanted to celebrate our unrestricted abortion regimen, it is the anti-abortion lobby and its all-or-nothing approach to the issue that it should have elected to honour.

See why Hebert attributes some of the congratulations for Canada’s “abortion regime” to the anti-choicers here.

UPDATE:  Rick Salutin on Dr. Morgentaler and the Order of Canada:

Calm down. It’s an award. It’s not the result of a law of physics. Prizes always reflect the composition of the committee. It isn’t the voice of God or even the electorate, which can also be disputed. As for unifying us by reflecting values we all share, what a totalitarian-sounding idea! I thought democracy was when we’re unified even though we don’t agree. What unites us is our past, our mutual respect, our commitment to try to do well by each other.

Obama Always Clarifying

Barack Obama clarifies his position on late term abortions:

Reporter: You said that mental distress shouldn’t be a reason for late-term abortion?

Obama: “My only point is this — historically I have been a strong believer in a women’s right to choose with her doctor, her pastor and her family. And it is ..I have consistently been saying that you have to have a health exception on many significant restrictions or bans on abortions including late-term abortions.

In the past there has been some fear on the part of people who, not only people who are anti-abortion, but people who may be in the middle, that that means that if a woman just doesn’t feel good then that is an exception. That’s never been the case.

I don’t think that is how it has been interpreted. My only point is that in an area like partial-birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously. It can be defined through physical health, It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue. I don’t think that’s how pro-choice folks have interpreted it. I don’t think that’s how the courts have interpreted it and I think that’s important to emphasize and understand.”

via Shakesville

I kinda figured this is what Obama would say he meant. It’s difficult now for us to understand whether he just says what he thinks he needs to say, depending on his audience, or whether he was truly “misinterpreted”.  I’m going to go with a third way.  Since the position given above is more consistent with what he’s said earlier about his position, I think this really is his position.

So when Obama was talking about “no late term abortions for the mentally distressed”, he was just saying that women who are only a little upset about being in the last three months of their pregnancies shouldn’t be able to have them, even if they talk to their doctors, pastors and family first.  That’s so much less insulting.

And, Obama still plays to the anti-choice crowd when he falls into the trap of eliding so called “partial-birth abortion” and late term abortion, a rather grievous error all on its own.

There’s no good way out of this one for Obama.  He was either changing his position and losing the votes of pro-choice women or he was being misogynist and losing the votes of women who care about women.

Obama had better soon figure out how to say what he means or he’ll lose even more voters than he already lost on July 3rd when he made his confusing and insulting comments.  You’d think that a man running for the Presidency of the United States of America would have learned, by now, how to be clear about issues of this importance.  To say nothing of how he means to end the war in Iraq.

Check out Bitch Ph.D. for the facts on those late term abortions.  And Barack Obama, if you’re listenong, you go check ’em out too!

UPDATE:  For more on “the big lie” about partial-birth abortions, see this

UPDATE II:  More commentary on Obama’s “misstatement” and “clarification” by Jan Crawford Greenburg and at Writes Like She Talks and at Shakesville (including the comment thread) again and at Astraea’s Scales.

UPDATE III:  After re-reading Jill Miller Zimon’s post on the Obama clarification, I just have to put this bit here:

This standard has long been understood to require less than “serious clinical mental health disease.”  Women today don’t have to show they are suffering from a “serious clinical mental health disease” or “mental illness” before getting an abortion post-viability, as Obama now says is appropriate.

And for 35 years—since Roe v. Wade—they’ve never had to show that.

So Obama, it seems to me, still is backing away from what the law says—and backing away from a proposed federal law (of which he is a co-sponsor) that envisions a much broader definition of mental health than the one he laid out this week.

More Morgentaler

From the Globe and Mail:

The controversy over Dr. Morgentaler’s appointment … highlights how divisive the abortion-rights debate remains in Canada. Supporters say it’s about time Dr. Morgentaler was honoured, but the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops asked yesterday that the appointment be reconsidered.

“Far from improving our country, Mr. Morgentaler’s actions continue to create controversy and division in our nation,” the bishops’ statement read. “In the name of freedom of choice, he has encouraged the development of a culture of death and has thus attacked the most vulnerable, the unborn.”

Edmonton’s Catholic Archbishop, Richard Smith, has written to Governor-General Michaëlle Jean to ask that the honour not be allowed to stand. In a brief statement, he said that naming Dr. Morgentaler to the Order of Canada “devalues” the honour and “offends all Canadians who recognize and treasure the precious gift of human life in the womb.”

One Order of Canada recipient has already returned his award in protest at Dr. Morgentaler’s appointment. Father Lucien Larre, a Catholic priest in Coquitlam, B.C., who was named to the order 25 years ago after founding a group of homes for troubled youth, said yesterday that he was “trying to make a point that we have to be careful who we give this to,” since it should be “reserved for people who can be models or be inspiring for a majority of Canadians.”

I note that the bishops call Dr. Morgentaler “Mr.”  So I don’t suppose it will be any insult if I say that I’m glad that Mr. Lucien Larre gave back his award.  Rather foolish of him to decide to be in the news in any case.

In 1992, a Saskatchewan jury convicted him on two counts of physically abusing children in his care at Bosco Homes and acquitted him on nine other charges. Larre was sentenced to one day in jail and paid a $2,500 fine for one charge of common assault and one charge that he forced pills down the throat of a teenager to teach her a lesson about drug abuse.

The National Parole Board of Canada pardoned him five years later and erased the charges.

In 1998, Larre registered as a psychologist in B.C.

His work, however, has prompted a number of complaints to the B.C. College of Psychologists in recent years, court documents show. There were no allegations of abuse, but individuals and other psychologists have questioned his methods and the quality of his work. Last November, the college held an extraordinary hearing and suspended his registration pending a disciplinary hearing because it felt he posed “an immediate risk to the public.” The public, however, was never told of that at the time.

I guess the public knows now.  He doesn’t deserve to be in Dr. Morgentaler’s company.

Dr. Morgentaler was a pivotal figure in the struggle to change Canadian laws, a struggle whose day came over twenty years ago when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the section of the Criminal Code that criminalized abortion was unconstitutional.  It was a historic decision that represented the wishes of the majority of Canadians.  In polls conducted at the time, and for years before, this was proven.

More particularly, Dr. Morgentaler has always been honoured by the thousands of women, representing more than half the adult population of Canada, who raised funds, ran clinics, guided women safely through lines of protesting anti-lifers who often made it not just difficult, but also dangerous.  Not only Dr. Morgentaler, but also, those women, deserve to have that historic struggle recognized.  The honour given to him is one step in the direction of that recognition.

As the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the chair of the committee that appoints people to the Order, I’m sure Madam Justice Beverly McLachlin made sure that she was on firm ground with respect to the process of selection.  It might be “rare” to have a decision that isn’t unanimous.  But rare doesn’t mean never.  I can’t think of a better time to make the exception.

As for polarizing Canadians around the issue, we’re not that polarized.  A small but vocal group of religious people disagree with the law and that is their right.  There is no “abortion-rights debate”.  We have a law.  We have abortion rights.  Most Canadians are supportive of the law.  That’s not polarization.  That’s just disagreement.  The right wing Christians will have to live with us, as we have to live with them.

 Biographical article on Dr. Morgentaler at The Globe and Mail.

Celebrating Henry!

I wasn’t celebrating Canada Day until I heard from mattt that Henry Morgentaler will be inducted into the Order of Canada.  It’s been a long time coming.  It’s something to celebrate.  This man fought alongside women and endured legal harassment, arrest and imprisonment and put his personal safety on the line in his struggle to make safe, legal abortions more available to Canadian women.  To say nothing of the bombing of his Toronto clinic by rightwing nutbars.

Congratulations Dr. Morgentaler!  Yea Canadian women!

See LuLu’s post too.

Celebrate, yes, but also remember this.

UPDATE:  From mattt at Comments from Left Field:

Henry Morgentaler, C.M.
Toronto, Ontario
Member of the Order of Canada

For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations.

UPDATE II:  See the post at NetRoots where it’s noted that the website of the Morgentaler Clinic notes the following:

None of this would have been possible without the loyalty and support of women’s groups across the country who lobbied governments, raised funds for legal fees, and created a voice that no longer could be ignored. We applaud these women and their dedication to Dr. Morgentaler, a doctor who could not ignore the cry for help.

I’m so glad to have been one of the women who was out picketing in front of the clinic when I was hours away from giving birth.

You can see a video interview with Dr. Morgentaler at the NetRoot site. 

UPDATE III: 

The Harper government was quick to distance itself from the decision.

[…]

“The Conservative government is not involved in either deliberations or decisions with respect to which individuals are appointed to the Order of Canada,” said Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“Rideau Hall makes these appointments based on the recommendations of the Advisory Council for the Order which is chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Anti-Choice McCain

Choice and John McCain

UPDATE:  See Antonia Zerbesias on the Canadian version of political anti-choice

Assault on the Right to Choose

At truthout, Emily Douglas ponders John McCain’s anti-choice strategy while noting the tools some States are using to prepare for the overturning of Roe v. Wade:

States with anti-choice legislatures have hit upon a novel way to use the law, creating bans on abortion that are not in constitutional conflict with Roe because they go into effect, or are “triggered,” only upon the overturn of Roe. So-called “bans-in-waiting” go beyond states’ proclamation of their intention to outlaw abortion when they can constitutionally do so to outline what specifically would be illegal and what penalties would be incurred for illegal abortion when it constitutionally can be outlawed.

As recently as 2004, no state had a bans-in-waiting on the books. In 2005, in the wake of failure of the state’s immediate abortion ban to survive popular referendum, South Dakota passed the first; in 2006, Louisiana followed, and Kentucky and Missouri considered bans-in-waiting. In 2007, Mississippi and North Dakota added bans-in-waiting to their books and Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah all considered them.

Bans-in-waiting reflect anti-choice activists’ confidence that Roe will be overturned, says Katherine Grainger, vice-president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, and demonstrate that “anti-choice activists are not waiting for Roe to fall to shape the post-Roe world.” For Sondra Goldschein, state strategies attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, bans-in-waiting are “just the same” as immediate bans. “They show legislative intent to ban abortion,” she says, and they “come as no surprise” to the advocates on the ground who are well-acquainted with their state legislature’s hostility to women’s health and well-being.

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of bans-in-waiting is that because the bans are not currently in effect, and because there is therefore no individual who has standing to challenge the law, such bans cannot be challenged in court once they are passed into law. “Courts stop laws from going into effect – there has to be some kind of immediate urgency that the court has to rectify. And the bans-in-waiting don’t have that effective date,” Grainger explains. Goldschein notes that it’s “unprecedented” for a legislature to pass laws with an unspecified future effective date. While in some states, the state’s own constitutional provisions on privacy – often far more expansive than federal constitutional protections – could conflict with the bans, reproductive rights litigators can’t make any arguments in court against the bans until they effectuate.

So, in the twenty-five states without a popular referendum process, the only way bans-in-waiting can be overturned is if the legislature that passed them will repeal them. But legislatures passing bans-in-waiting are “packed with anti-choice legislators that keep getting re-elected year after year,” Grainger notes, so “the possibility of that occurring is slim.”

For anti-choice activists, bans-in-waiting have another advantage over outright bans – because they can’t be attacked in court, unlike unconstitutional bans on abortion, bans-in-waiting cost the state nothing to defend. Grainger says that tovered […] from a natural disaster, legislators responded, ” ‘Oh, that’s going to look really bad, let’s make it a ban-in-waiting,'” says Grainger. “I think that’s largely how these things are thought of. ‘We don’t want to pay; we don’t want to look bad. We want to get re-elected, but we also want to outlaw abortion. How can we do that?'” So, ‘bans-in-waiting’ allow them to do so.”   more

Ken Epp Defends Bill C-484

Tory MP Ken Epp is peeved that his Bill has come up against strong opposition:

Bill C-484 is an attempt to provide such protection in one very narrow circumstance — when the unborn child […] is injured or killed when the mother is the victim of a crime.So why do the opponents of C-484 resort to scare tactics and misrepresentations of the law to make their case? Why are they so afraid of a law that would punish a criminal for intentionally harming or killing an unborn baby who is wanted and loved by its mother?

The answer was revealed when an outspoken opponent of C-484 was quoted recently in the media: “If the fetuses are recognized in this bill, it could bleed into people’s consciousness and make people change their minds about abortion.”

So they are opposing this bill because it recognizes some value in the unborn child (in that it can be the victim of a crime) which might lead to some Canadians changing their minds about abortion (which also deals with the unborn child).

But how is that a justifiable reason to oppose this bill? Is it right in a free and democratic society to try to control how and what people think? If people of their own free will decide to rethink their position on an important issue, why should we try to suppress that, especially if it means sacrificing in the process something which in and of itself is just and good and supported by a vast majority of Canadians?

 

[…]

Pro-choice advocates haven’t had to defend their position in terms of a “conflict of interests” of two entities, each with value, or defend the view that the woman’s interests are paramount. But it is the only intellectually honest way of framing the abortion debate. The argument that the fetus is nothing more than an appendage of the woman or worthless tissue, or a “parasite” according to one activist, is scientifically and medically untenable.And as far as the mother who wants the baby is concerned, it is callous and offensive. And as far as society is concerned, it sends the wrong message about the value of human life, regardless of whether we afford that human life personhood status or not.

The irony is that for years pro-lifers have been accused of trying to impose their views on others. The opponents of C-484 are now attempting to impose on women who want to be pregnant and want to love and protect their babies the view that the child in her womb is unworthy of protection in criminal law, unworthy of any amount of respect at all to the extent that a criminal can brutally attack that mother’s child with a fist or a boot or a gun or a knife or a sword and face no consequences for killing what is so dear to her.

C-484 remedies this current injustice in such a way that maintains the choice of the woman who chooses to end her pregnancy of her own free will. To oppose this bill is to stand in defence of only those pregnant women who choose abortion. Let us not abandon those pregnant women who choose life for their babies.

 

Sigh.  Epp’s full statement is in the Ottawa Citizen