Abortion Access Is a Human Right

I'm surprised no one has thought of this before now.

The New Brunswick Human Rights Commission is holding an inquiry into the province's abortion policy.

Randy Dickinson, chairman of the commission, confirmed Tuesday that the human rights organization received a complaint relating to New Brunswick's Medical Services Payment Act, which sets out the conditions under which the province will pay for abortions.

The provincial Department of Health's policy stipulates that it will only pay for an abortion if a woman gets a referral from a family doctor and if the procedure is performed in a hospital.

"That issue has been brought forward as a complaint," Dickinson said.

After an initial investigation into the complaint, he said, the commission has determined "there is sufficient evidence to send it to an official board of inquiry."

Dickinson declined to comment on the specific details of the complaint.

The situation in New Brunswick is scandalous, not to mention in blatant contravention of the Canada Health Act. And so far, only Dr Henry Morgentaler has been fighting back.

Abortion is legal in Canada. Access is a matter for a human rights commission.

And Canada is a strongly pro-choice country. For yet further proof of that, go to this CBC story and order the comments by most agreed. Here's the first one:

New Brunswick has to enter the 21st Century instead of remaining in the 19th.

About freaking time.

Religious zealotry as a mental disorder ... why the hell not?

Via Slap Upside The Head, we learn that Kari Simpson has filed a complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal, alleging that the Ministry of Education (and other parties named) discriminates against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students by depriving them of the support and services that would "cure them of their dysfunctionality".

Not shy about using the legal and court system to draw public attention to her cause, Simpson claims:

"... sexual re-orientation therapies have helped thousands of individuals to recover from such dysfunctional orientations. School counsellors are being denied the tools to be effective advocates for students in need of sexual re-orientation help and they should have access to resources and training that will equip them to properly counsel students."

Should the only reasonable, legal, systemic counterweight to such pernicious and unmitigated bigotry be an initiative to have the following definition included in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), as a sub-category of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Zealot fundamentalist fixation is a mental illness most commonly characterized by intrusive, repetitive thoughts resulting in compulsive behaviors and mental acts that the person feels driven to perform, according to religious dogma and beliefs that must be applied rigidly, aimed at reducing anxiety by preventing some dreaded event or by denying other people's reality. In extreme manifestations of this illness, those who suffer from ZFF may utter verbal abuse and are capable of acts of physical violence toward individuals and organizations that embody the dreaded event that is feared and must be destroyed at all costs. See fetus fetishists.

Of course, that could mean acting against the fundamentalist religious zealots with the same authoritarian force that they resolutely and implacably try to use against us.