Tough on Crime. Oh. Wait. Not "That" Crime

The Conservative Party of Canada, aka The Party That Never Met a Victim of Crime It Wouldn't Bust a Gut to Stand Beside for a Photo-Op, must be gnashing its teeth.

It has brought forward a Victims' Bill of Rights raising the role of victims to USian levels of consideration in the justice system, but is missing out on a HUGE opportunity.

Sadly, pregnant women are often targets of violence.

Does it happen in pregnancy?
Tragically, yes. Domestic violence during pregnancy sometimes puts both the mom-to-be and her baby’s life at risk. Here's some of the evidence:
• Statistics Canada reports that 40 per cent of the Canadian women who were abused during pregnancy reported that the abuse began during pregnancy.
• Women abused during pregnancy were four times as likely as other abused women to report having experienced very serious violence, including being beaten up, choked,
• Of the women who were abused during pregnancy, approximately 18% reported that they had suffered a miscarriage or other internal injuries as a result of the abuse.

And there's been a recent, particularly horrible case that resulted in the deaths of both woman and fetus.

Friends and family of Cassandra Kaake are outraged that the accused will not face a separate charge of murder for the death of the fetus. They are clamouring for the return of "unborn victims" legislation, complete with petition, website, and heart-tugging moniker, "Molly Matters."

While the good people behind this effort seem not to understand the hornet's nest such legislation would kick open, opportunists from Big Fetus® like the Dominionist astroturf gang, We Need a Law Like a Hole in the Head, certainly do, and are exploiting the hell out of the family's grief.

All sad.

Except. . .

The Boys in Short Pants who must be tearing their hair that they are under an interdict from Herr Harper NOT to reopen the abortion debate.

Which any governmental backing of "unborn victims" legislation would certainly accomplish.

So, there's that.

Stringing the Fetus Fetishists Along. . . Still

Oy. Here we go again.

Winnipeg South MP Rod Bruinooge introduced a new bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday, aimed at protecting pregnant women against abortion intimidation.

Yes. That Rod Bruinooge (isn't Open Parliament nifty?), chair of the secretive pro-lie parliamentary caucus and staunch defender of kidneys fetuses.

"The bottom line is that people like myself are not going to stop until, at the very least, unborn children have more value than a Canadian kidney."

Also, don't forget, brother of the MASSIVE Morgentaler poll fraudster.

As Joyce Arthur says at the Winnipeg Free Press link above,

"They're trying to intimidate and scare abortion providers," she said. "Providers could find themselves facing prosecution for coercing abortion."

Arthur maintains the bill steps on the toes of a successful system that's already in place and undermines the good work pregnancy support groups do. Counsellors at clinics are on the front-lines educating people on the rights of the woman, outlining the choices they have and how the decision to see the pregnancy to term is theirs and theirs alone.

"It's a solution looking for a problem that doesn't really exist," Arthur said. "Typically, women who are coerced into having an abortion are already caught at the counselling stage."

The geniuses at Freak Dominion are sneering at it as 'incrementalism', which is exactly what it is of course, and are predicting that it will go nowhere.

Especially since the ever-truthful Stevie Peevie is on record saying that his government would not support any private member's bill to do with abortion.

In other news of that non-debate we're having about abortion, remember the ReformaTories demanded new legislation at their grassrootsy convention to replace C-484, aka Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill?

How's that coming along?

Not so well.

More than 18 months after he pledged to crack down on those who assault pregnant women, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has yet to keep his promise and won’t say when he will.

Speaking to reporters, Nicholson dismissed suggestions he has shelved his plans. However, he refused repeatedly to say when he will table a bill or even whether he will act within the coming year.

(snip)

Opposition critics Dominic Leblanc and Joe Comartin say it is a “cynical” ploy to satisfy Conservative supporters by promising legislation while at the same time avoiding a potentially explosive debate over a bill some say could restrict abortions.

Cynical? Say it ain't so!

But, hey, it seems to be working. The moronic fetus fetishists keep voting for them. And the rest of us will keep them in minority -- or, hopefully, miniscule opposition -- forever. Because we know Stephen Harper cannot be trusted.

Will Zygote Zealots Rule at the Con Con?

Back in July, Le Devoir disclosed that members of the Québec CPC were unanimously opposed to a resolution that was presented in the slate of policy resolutions for discussion and ratification at the November convention.

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

From here.

In the interval between then and now, Stevie and his Harpocrites threw Ken Epp and his Bill C-484 under the bus in a miscalculated bid to placate Québec voters and remove any obstacle to their desired majority rule. Now it has been revealed that a modified version of C-484 is among the hundreds of resolutions up for approval next week at the Con Con.

Is anyone actually surprised? I hope that there are fireworks and MASSIVE confrontations between the fundamentalist religious Cons and the pro-choice Cons.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

The advantages of abortion: the Cons and C-484

On August 25th - shortly before calling this election - Stephen Harper shoved his low-profile Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson into the media spotlight:

to introduce a government-sanitized version of that bill to protect “pregnant
women” and not dwell on references to “unborn children”.

It was

Stevie and the Harpocrites’ way of removing the albatross that Ken Epp inadvertently hung around his party’s neck. No way the Cons were heading into a fall election, with freshly declared opposition to C-484 still breaking in the news.

One could call this tactic a political abortion; though C-484 had cleared its first and second reading, it was never allowed a complete gestation period. Yes folks, Stephen Harper aborted Bill C-484 in its symbolic ‘third trimester’ because it was politically expedient to do so.

Call them culture-killers, crime-fighters or mediabashers and they would happily cop a guilty plea, but being tagged as anti-abortion is the last label the Conservatives want plastered on their re-election resume. … While he described the need for the bill as “urgent”, Mr. Nicholson ducked repeated questions to produce statistics on the number of fetal assaults in Canada.

And if there was any doubt this move was election driven and not a legislative priority, he could not produce a text of the proposed bill, background documentation to explain the legislation or provide a date when, if ever, it would be introduced in the Commons. “We’re bringing forward a bill that makes a very clear statement on where this government stands,” was all he would say. Translation:
Nowhere near abortion.

MASSIVE public demonstrations against C-484 continue (5000 in Montréal); the aborted Bill has become a symbol for the secretive, prevaricating, manipulative and optics-controlling maneuvers of the Conservatives. Read more.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Stick a Fork in It

We're flying here at Birth Pangs, but we had to do this:

The Canadian Medical Association tells Ken Epp and his band of lying liar fetus fetishists to f*ck right off.

Canada's largest doctors' group has strongly condemned a private member's bill it fears could limit women's access to abortion and criminalize doctors who assist them.

By a wide margin, the Canadian Medical Association voted yesterday to oppose Bill C-484, "and any legislation that would result in compromising access for women to the medical services required to terminate a pregnancy."

Seems the FFs can't get a single professional health care association to back their ploy.

We know. It's not over yet. But it's getting harder and harder to argue that the people opposed to the Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill 'misunderstand' it.

UPPITY-DATE: Radio Canada has the numbers on the 'wide margin':

"Réunis en séance plénière, mercredi, 88 % des quelque 300 médecins participant aux assises annuelles de l'AMC ont voté pour la résolution."


(First published at Birth Pangs.)

What the F****** F*** …

are the furious fundamentalists, fetus fetishists and/or far-right fanatics doing nowadays in the Excited States of America?

The latest tactic in Operation Rescue’s never-ending and ever-escalating campaign of legalistic and illegal harassment is to target individual people staffing Dr Tiller’s clinic for violence prayer by publishing their photos and personal information. From ChristianNewsWire:

Operation Rescue has released the most up-to-date list of abortion clinic workers employed by George R. Tiller at his late-term abortion mill, Women’s Health Care Services, in Wichita, Kansas. The list includes twenty-two people, including three out-of-state abortionists who travel to Kansas to do abortions, including late-term procedures that are illegal in their home states. “We are releasing this list of abortion workers in order to expose them to the community, and to elicit prayers for their repentance,” said Operation Rescue Senior Policy Advisor Cheryl Sullenger.

“As Christians, we are concerned about them as people, and understand that sometimes it takes ‘tough love’ to help someone see the destructive path they are taking, so that they can make the
changes necessary to have a better life,” Sullenger said. “Most people who quit the abortion industry tell us that they are relieved to be out of that business, and say that leaving improved their lives.” …

Today’s abortion worker list is in the form of a photo gallery with captions telling the public a little
about each worker.

It appears Operation Rescue is expanding its murderous stranglehold urging its followers to reach out and touch pray for the staff of Dr Tiller’s clinic. Birth Pangs has blogged about Dr Tiller here, here, here and here.

Here’s one well-informed perspective on his medical practice. Read more.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

No-choice Vulture Culture: let women die or go to prison

The vituperative backlash of no-choicers, following the announcement that Dr Henry Morgentaler would be awarded the Order of Canada, was informative. Like maggots suddenly exposed to the light, the no-choicers scurried about, firing off letters to the editor, freeping online opinion polls, shoving the usual suspects - Margaret Somerville et al - into public view to spout the fetus fetishizing party line. CanWest obliged them, in great numbers.

It was thus no surprise that middle-of-the road Canadians, that ’silent majority’ that abortion criminalizers claim as supporters, recoiled from the hateful propaganda and deliberate lies and declared themselves to favour the decision to honour Morgentaler.

There is history behind all of this brouhaha, and a Montreal Gazette reporter writes about it:

When Sharon Hager finally got a abortion in 1964, she feared it would kill her. “It was hell, terrible. I thought I was going to die,” recalled Hager, then 20 and living in Vancouver.“It was illegal to have an abortion and it almost impossible to find someone to do it. A man who called himself a doctor - and you didn’t know for sure he was - came to my home and on the kitchen table put gauze in my womb and broke my water. … That’s what it was like before Dr. Morgentaler,” said Hager, later a member of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. “People forget how terrible it was for women.”

Many of us remember. The Royal Victoria Hospital, mentioned in the Gazette article, is where my friend O trained.
There is also a compelling background to the booklet that was produced by a group of students at McGill University in the 1960’s. In her 2006 essay, Christabelle Sethna traces the evolution and the context of the Birth Control Handbook. This list (quoted in The Gazette article) from the 1971 BCH - as it was known - details the fatal dangers of illegal abortion techniques, self-induced or assisted.

… These methods involve extreme pain and can lead to permanent disability, infection or death.

Oral means: Nothing that is swallowed can cause abortion without also causing death or severe disability to the mother.
• Ergot compounds- overdose is poison.
• Quinine sulphate - can cause deformities in fetus or death to mother.

Solids inserted into uterus: Common danger of perforation of womb and
bladder - death from infection or hemorrhage.
• Knitting needles
• Coat hangers
• Slippery Elm bark
• Ballpoint pen
• Pastes
• Catheters
• Gauze (packing)
• Curtain rods
• Telephone wire

Fluids inserted into the uterus: Severe burning of tissues, hemorrhage,
shock and possible death.
• Soap suds
• Alcohol
• Potassium permanganate
• Lye
• Lysol
• Pine oil

Air pumped into uterus: gas emboli in the blood stream. Immediately
fatal.

Injections into uterine wall: Overdose is toxic.
• Ergot
• Pytocin
• Sodium pentothal

Vacuum cleaner: Connected to uterus - not to be confused with vacuum
aspiration - is fatal almost immediately. Rips uterus from pelvic area.

Even though they claim to be ‘the culture of life’, no-choicers have declared their intent to criminalize abortion and, in effect, to return to the days of illegal abortions. As Antonia Zerbasias notes and quotes in this article, no-choicers propose that women who attempt to terminate an abortion be charged and prosecuted.

Mary Ellen Douglas, National Organizer, Campaign Life Coalition: Our society has denied justice for unborn children who are killed daily in their mothers’ wombs at the request of the mother. We need
to correct this and return that protection to the unborn. It then follows that jail time for those who commit the crime of abortion is not only just, but absolutely necessary.

This is the future that women dealing with unintended pregnancies will face, if the no-choice Vulture Culture re-criminalizes abortion.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

No-choice/No-brainer divide at Con Convention

It may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the history of Québec, but within the ranks of the Conservative Party of Canada, there is steadfast support for choice from that province’s party members. And it may lead to a confrontation in November at the CPC convention, if the delegates representing the old Reform party constituency, aka Western fundamentalist interests, present a motion in favour of changing the legal status of a fetus.
Sovereignty en Anglais wrote about this:

Some party members from the West have inserted a proposition to integrate Bill C-484 into the Conservative platform. C-484 is a law that would recognise the fetus in a case where a pregnant mother is murdered. In such a case, the murderer would be charged with two murders instead of one. This is, in fact and despite what the bill itself says, a backdoor way to outlaw abortion because it
recognises the fetus as a legal person. It isn’t a far step to go from that to claiming the termination of the fetus in an abortion to be murder as well. And this isn’t just an over-reaction, similar laws in the United States have led to the outlawing of abortion in certain jurisdictions.

This is the first national CPC convention since March 2005. Over 3000 party members are expected to attend. A meeting of Québec Conservative party members - MPs, senators and riding presidents - was held in Sherbrooke in June. According to Le Devoir’s source, the 300 participants voted against any resolution that would change the legal status of a fetus, as it currently stands in Canada. Some even bluntly stated that Bill C-484 was “insensé”, which in other words, means it goes against common sense.

Remember, 3 Québec Conservative MPs voted against C-484: Josée Verner, Lawrence Cannon (both ministers) and Sylvie Boucher. Also, there are a great number of professional, political, educational, labour and women’s organizations in Québec that are opposed to C-484.

Antonia Zerbisias at Broadsides also comments on Le Devoir’s news item, and takes the opportunity to mention that two polls (one in The Toronto Star and the other in The National Post) demonstrate that most Canadians approve of Morgentaler being awarded the Order of Canada.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Any difference between abortion criminalizer and vulture?

What’s the difference between vultures and C-484 supporters?

None.

Vultures are carrion scavengers. C-484 supporters, and this one in particular, have become obsessively concerned with dead pregnant women.

Members of the Vulture Culture display photographs of them. They feed off the tragedy of their deaths. They fabricate lies and spin propaganda around the violent and brutal murder of these women. They revel in all the gory details and plot retribution because that discourse is familiar to them.

Feminist organizations have, over decades, opened shelters for women and children escaping domestic violence. They have advocated for the rights of women and children for safety, and for protection from those who batter them. They have worked with elected officials to change laws and with municipal police to improve their staff training and their services.

But according to the screed from a Blob Blogging Wingnut, feminists do not care about Amanda Power or her pregnancy or her death. Note the absence of any substantive documentation for the spurious statements SHE makes. Abortion criminalizers, under the camouflage of their suddenly awakened and overweening concern for violence against women, are supporting C-484. In a bid to create media-savvy optics, they have recruited grieving family members as props in their campaign to deny that this bill will provide them with an opportunity to limit women’s reproductive choices.

That’s the thing about vultures. They stink so much, they can’t distinguish their own stench from the rot that surrounds them.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Shhhhhh

OK, we admit it. Sometimes we at Birth Pangs make shit up. But we didn't make this up.

Back in March we started calling Bill C-484 The Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill after a prominent fetus fetishist called it that on his blog.

So, despite the fact that an anonymous commenter there helpfully pointed out that the post had just made a liar out of Ken Epp, today the same blogger posted Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill - The Sequel. (The Freak Dominionists are also discussing it.)

He links to a LifeShite story about Courtney Love refusing to have a abortion despite her heroin use. This is of course celebrated (though we doubt very much else about Ms Love's life would be celebrated by the fetus fetishists). Then the article maunders on about proposed legislation in the US somewhere about banning 'coerced' abortions. This is par for the course for fetus fetishists. They believe that most abortions -- except those for Culture of Death Feminazis -- are coerced, mainly by the menfolk in these women's lives, and of course by Culture of Death Feminazis. They figger if they can outlaw 'coerced' abortions -- presto change-o! -- abortion would just about disappear -- except for those of the Culture of Death Feminazis of course. He wants such legislation here.

Here, we'll let him tell you:

With C-484 and then this as a follow-up? Holy smokes, Batman, talk about having the devil on the run.

Can you imagine how much this kind of legislation is going to cut down on abortion in Canada when we truck it up here? It will show just how fraudulent the whole “choice” of abortion really is.

But, please, nobody go over there and tell him he's just made a liar out of Ken Epp and his minions. Again.

(First published at Birth Pangs.)

C-484: The Bill That Is Totally NOT about Abortion

Except that a lot of people -- Conservative Party people -- think it is.

Remember when the 8,000-member strong Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ) came out in opposition to Bill C-484, aka The Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill?

Well, according to the Canadian Press, the president, Dr. Barrette, is taking some heat for it. Apparently he is getting hate mail from English Canada hoping he'll «brûler en enfer».

But there's also this:

Cependant, il ajoute avoir aussi reçu confirmation de gens du Parti conservateur dans l'ouest canadien que l'objectif du projet de loi C-484 était bien d'établir une reconnaissance des droits du foetus dans le but d'interdire l'avortement.

Translation:

However, he [Dr Barrette, President of the FMSQ] adds that he received confirmation from people from the Conservative Party from Western Canada that the objective of Bill C-484 was clearly to recognize rights of the fetus with the goal to ban abortion.

OK, we glad that's cleared up.

Check out our newly updated Activist Page to see who else may be getting hate mail. The Canadian Bar Association? The Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians? The YWCA?

h/t choice joyce at Bread and Roses

(First published at Birth Pangs.)

C-484: Incrementalism Starts Here

Ken Epp on The Current on Monday misspoke or was confused. He said the vote on the Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill (C-484) is this Friday. IT IS TODAY. Or at least scheduled for more debate and vote today.

Lest any of you have lingering doubts whether the Krazy Konservative Kriminalizers are wetting their pants in joy, hop over to Unrepentant Old Hippie and bastard logic for some enlightening screen-shots.

We at Birth Pangs couldn't put it any plainer than the 'Support C-484' group at Facebook:

If passed this bill . . . would be a key step in recriminalizing abortion.

What this is about, fans of freedom, is incrementalism.

We'll leave you with an editorial on the Kicking Abortion's Ass Bill from last year at the Catlick organ, The Interim:

In the United States, incrementalist legislation – informed consent, waiting periods, defunding, clinic hygiene laws, etc. – have successfully reduced the number of abortions. . . . Every restriction decreases the number of babies killed in the womb.

In Canada, there is NO law on abortion. If we let them win on this, it will be just the beginning of a series of incremental steps towards recriminalizing abortion.

Please, if you haven't yet taken action, go to our Activist Page to get started.

(First published at Birth Pangs.)