Beggars Can't Be Choosers

In poetry, the word 'thousand' has represented not only an actual mathematical number of distinct properties, but also a metaphor for infinity or without end; for example, 'never in a thousand years', 'one picture is worth a thousand words' and so on.

As I write this tonight, the fundraising effort to keep the Morgentaler clinic for women's health services in New Brunswick up and running has taken an optimistic turn.  With 17 days to go on the deadline for fundraising, the requested funds of $100,000CAN has sprouted to over 63% of the way.  It wasn't looking so hopeful last night when it was still below $19,000CAN, which at least, was higher than it looked last Friday.

$100,000 dollars.  An enormous, near infinite amount of money to most of us not living the life of the 1percenters.  When I was thinking about that, Friday night, I couldn't help but consider that progressive, fellow-feeling Canadians are in the position of literally begging for random donations to support legal medical services for cis-women and transgender men, because their provincial government had successfully fettered mandated services with administrative blockades that served no purpose beyond sectarian interpretations of morality.

Canadians in 2014. Begging. For. Funding of *legal* medical procedures. Potentially affecting 50percent+ of the national population. Begging. BEGGING IN THE STREETS for enough money to keep medical treatment safe.  BEGGING for the ability to help Canadians who practically have nowhere else to go, unless the State authorities deem them worthy of State mercy.

These State-imposed blockades deliberately and aggressively infantilize adult, taxpaying Canadians of sound mettle. Needful patients in the Canadian medical system must submit to the authoritarian, foot-dragging and subjective decisions of what is essentially a legally rejected 'in parens patriae' judgemental gauntlet of strangers that may or may not grant permission for access to safe, professional, *timely* and economically unfettered medical care.

That always works out well.

Canadians shouldn't have to beg on bended, humble knee to get necessary medical attention. The organizations opposing the ability of cis-women and transgender men to have timely and *dignified* access to pregnancy terminations and/or contraception are pleased to make a mockery of Canada's long standing Supreme Court human rights decision.

They're counting on lying, public shaming, and economic challenges as their weapons to force *other peoples'* unwanted pregnancies to term, no matter the human cost to the already living.  They're *happy* about such tactics.  They *want* begging.  They want social control in their hands, not the hands of individuals wanting lives of choice and personal respect.  They're well funded.

They shouldn't be the only ones so funded.

$100,000CAN.  Let's work for the New Brunswick clinic and its deadline but let's also look beyond its survival.  There are underserved urban and rural areas all across the country.  Maybe this is naive, or even repetitive, but let's run with that poetic number.  Why can't we take that $100,000 figure and break it down?

What about 1,000? 1,000 Canadians who believe access to legal, evidence-based abortion and contraception services are important.  1,000 pledges to provide $100.00CAN to a yearly project? We have 10 provinces and 3 territories. In their bounds, are there not 1,000 people willing to put up less than $9CAN per month equivalent?

1,000 pledges that could either seed money support for areas of Canada lacking in Abortion/contraceptive services or match extra funds raised.  1,000 pledges to say there aren't sluts or saints, only Canadians in need. 1,000 pledges that show political circles we're not going back to the way medical access was in this country before abortion and contraception services were legal.

Canadians shouldn't have to beg for their lives.

Not in a thousand years.