Kill C14: Trust Patients and Doctors on Assisted Dying

DAMMIT JANET! has a not-so-radical proposal. Treat medical assistance in dying (MAID) like abortion.

In other words, adopt no new law on it and let patients and medical professionals figure it out.

In both Carter and Morgentaler, the Supreme Court called on Parliament to craft new laws.

In declining to create a Charter exemption, SCC said in the "remedy" section of Carter:

Complex regulatory regimes are better created by Parliament than by the courts.

And that is exactly where we disagree.

Parliament is NOT the place to create complex regulatory regimes. Parliament is a contentious, partisan arena, subject to lobbying by all the usual suspects, with all the usual agendas.

Look at its track record on abortion.

The government tried twice.

The Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Mulroney made two attempts to pass a new abortion law. The first proposal, in the spring of 1988, did not pass the House of Commons. The second attempt, introduced by the Minister of Justice as Bill C-43 in late 1989, would be defeated on a tie vote by the time it came to third reading in Senate on January 31, 1991, leaving Canada without criminal legislation governing abortion.

And then there were the private member's bills. Plus the current one, C225, Exploiting Grief to Attack Abortion Rights.

Good scientific information and research along with conscientious practice have been emphatically demonstrated by Canada's post-Morgentaler abortion experience to be the avenue towards compassionate, reasonable, and respectful medical care.

Nobody is happy with C14 as presently proposed.

Not the doctors.

Not the gawd-botherers.

And not Canada's number uno medical writer, André Picard, who captures the essence of C14 perfectly.

The draft law is not respectful of the wishes of the majority of Canadians, nor is it patient-friendly; it’s patronizing and risk-averse. In trying to offend no one, the Liberal government has failed everyone.

What we have here is not a right to die, but a guarantee that too many Canadians will continue to suffer unnecessarily at the end of their lives.

And unlike in 1988 when there wasn't a clear consensus on what Canadians wanted to do about abortion, now there definitely is consensus. Eight out of ten of us want assistance in dying when we bloody well decide to go.

Canadians learned with abortion. We know how to do this. Trust doctors and patients to work out how to go about the details of this non-issue.

We want to be able to die on our own terms. Let us work out those terms with our own doctors.

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.

Support from the post-dead

It all makes sense, in some religious fundamentalist parallel universe where no-choicers can lay claim to represent the interests of the pre-born and the post-dead. First, some folks claimed to channel the will of deceased holders of the Order of Canada by returning the snowflake medal in their name.

Now, JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie blogs about the petition that Lifeshite has set up to gather comments and signatures from the world at large. And just look at the famous supporter they have attracted:

“As the man who created Decree 770 in Romania, I would like to add my name to your wonderful petition. We can learn from my country’s history how beneficial it is to completely control women’s fertility and reproduction. I hope your country is preparing uterine forensic examiners for all miscarriages, as well as fertility police to force women to have a urinalysis each month to monitor for blessed pregnancy.” - Nicolae Ceaucescu

Now there’s the spirit! Who knew that Hell facilitated and upheld all Internet traditions?

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.

Celebrating 20 Years of Lawlessness

Twenty years ago today, Canada became the only country on the planet without a law on abortion.

Here, you can see an annual review of abortion law around the world.

Here is the page for Canada, which we reproduce in its entirety:

CANADA.

Canada has no abortion law.

Is this a good thing?

Let's let
Dr Jehu-Appiah of Ghana have the last word:

Despite Ghana having a more progressive law than many African countries, he believes there should be no law on abortion at all, following in the footsteps of countries like Canada where the maternal mortality rate is very low, "if we did not have a law restricting abortions we would be able to reduce this figure to zero." He added "a woman of 15-25 years old does not deserve to die just because she is pregnant."

(First published at Birth Pangs.)