Fatally Flawed Survey on C225, "Cassie and Molly's Law"

It's a truism because it's true: You get what you pay for.

Cathay Wagantall, sponsor of the latest sneak attack on abortion rights, C225, glurgily nicknamed "Cassie and Molly's Law," bought six questions on a Nanos omnibus poll.

Here's her media release trumpeting the results.

According to the Nanos poll, a majority of Canadians are in favour of Cassie and Molly’s Law, with nearly 70% of respondents saying that they support a law that would make it a separate crime to harm or cause the death of a preborn child while harming a pregnant woman.

The release contains no links, no details, no methodology.

So I asked on Twitter and Nik Nanos supplied a link to the power point presentation of the survey (PDF).

Here are the excerpted highlights (numbers added).

1. Half of Canadians say causing harm to a pregnant woman should carry a more severe punishment

2. Canadians support charging those who harm unborn children with a separate crime - Seven in ten Canadians either support (47%) or somewhat support (22%) creating a law that would make it a separate crime to cause harm or the death of an unborn child....

3. Canadians more likely to support the legislation if it has no impact on current abortion laws

4. Majority of Canadians feel it is possible to create the new law and keep abortion legal

5. Canadians feel it is important that offenders be charged separately for harming a fetus

6. Half of Canadians support rights to abortion within a time limit

Number 1: More severe punishment. Dumb question. Offenders in Canada already face stiffer sentencing in cases like this through "aggravating factors" which judges are required to consider.

Number 2: Support for a separate criminal charge. Compare here with Ms Wagantall's media release. She is playing a little loose with the numbers. Her "nearly 70%" is actually made up of 47% who support plus 22% who somewhat support.

But that's nuancy, beyond the typical cognitive powers of fetus freaks.

Number 3: More likely to support law if no impact on abortion laws. Another dumb question. There are NO abortion laws in Canada.

Leaving that aside, while Ms Wagantall stomps her feet and shrieks insists that her bill was verrrry carefully written to exclude any impact on abortion rights, others disagree. See links to posts below for many examples, but here's a recent one, from Indiana.

Indiana, home to Governor Mike Pence, now Donald Trump's pick for Vice President of Homophobia and Misogyny, has a "personhood" law that criminalizes any harm to fetuses. So far, it has imprisoned at least one woman, Purvi Patel, for using abortion drugs bought online to end an unwanted pregnancy. Ms Patel was sentenced to 20 years in prison for "feticide." But her conviction was overturned today.

The Indiana Legislature did not intend for the state’s feticide statute to apply to pregnant women or illegal abortions, including the one a northern Indiana woman executed by taking drugs ordered from Hong Kong, the Court of Appeals held Friday.

The legislation was NOT intended to criminalize pregnant women, but it fucking well did, in the hands of overzealous cops and prosecutors.

And this is precisely why Ms Wagantall's bill is incredibly dangerous.

Number 4: Too stupid to comment on. What is the point of asking ordinary people what they "feel" about possible implications of a new law?

Number 5: Importance of such a law. Again, why ask this? If they support it, they support it.

But Number 6 is where the alarm bells really go off. "Half of Canadians support rights to abortion within a time limit."

From the PDF
Question: Which of the following most closely represents your personal view about the legal status of abortion?

This is so glaringly opposed to what all other recent polls report on Canadian attitudes to abortion that the whole survey should be kicked down a long flight of stairs.

In February this year, Global News commissioned an exclusive poll from Ipsos.

Canadian attitudes toward abortion appear to be shifting, according to a new Ipsos poll, as six in ten say abortion should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants.

"Whenever a woman decides she wants."

Whenever. No time limits.

Similarly, the National Post reported in 2012 that 60% of Canadians say that abortion should be legal "always". (Original emphasis.)

On Twitter last night @Demolition Woman, who is an opinion pollster, offered some thoughts on the survey's methodology.

@fernhilldammit I wouldn't publish if I spotted that kind of discrepancy in a commonly-asked question. Tells me the respondent base is off.

— Demolition Woman (@sieenns) July 22, 2016

@fernhilldammit Also this mixed mode where they get old ppl by RDD and the rest online is garbage & they should not report a margin of error

— Demolition Woman (@sieenns) July 22, 2016

@fernhilldammit Only 28% support abortion under any circumstances? That's at least 20ppt below other rcnt polls that ask almost the same Q.

— Demolition Woman (@sieenns) July 22, 2016

So, what did Ms Wagantall, or her enthusiastic fetus freak colleagues like Dominionist Mike Schouten, pay for this piece of dreck?

Nanos charges $1000 per closed question -- these are all closed questions -- on a Canadian omnibus survey, so $6000.

Supporters of C225, or the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing Anti-Abortion Bill, got the results they wanted, at a price they found acceptable.

Too bad the survey itself doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny.


REMINDER: If you haven't already, please sign the e-petition opposing this backdoor attack on abortion rights. The petition needs 500 signatures to be presented to Parliament. It's got just over 350 now.

Previous DJ! posts on the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing bill:
Dead as a Door Nail

Exploiting Grief to Attack Abortion Rights

Vengeance Drives "Unborn Victims" Law

It's Baaaack: Unborn Victims Bill C484 Redux

Nope, This "Pre-born Victims Bill Won't Pass Either

Abortion in Canada: Good and Not Nearly Good Enough News

To its credit, Global News has been running several stories lately about abortion -- especially abortion access -- in Canada.

Yesterday, it had two.

First, a new poll on unrestricted abortion.

Canadian attitudes toward abortion appear to be shifting, according to a new Ipsos poll, as six in ten say abortion should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants.

The Ipsos poll, given exclusively to Global News, found 57 per cent of Canadians endorse a women’s right to choose – up almost 10 points from 2015 and up from 36 per cent from when the question was asked in 1998.

Here's the graphic from the article:

When I tweeted that last night, Mike Schouten of We Need a Law, Any Old Law, Seriously, Give Us an Abortion Law to Fuck Around with as in the US, replied.

@fernhilldammit Likely b/c most Canadians haven't seen what abortion is. #stillworktodo pic.twitter.com/WKsmti6iAR

— Mike Schouten (@mike_schouten) February 24, 2016

Fetus fetishists like him seem NOT to get the message. Back in 2012, as antichoicers were trying to ignite the abortion "debate" yet again, various polls reported that Canadians did not want to reopen the debate, but when actually asked, the majority of us responded to the law of unintended consequences.

The National Post reported: "As debate heats up, Canadian support for unrestricted abortions skyrockets."

So, yes, please, Mike, keep trying to show us what abortion is.

The other story was about the plan by new Health Minister, Jane Philpott, to address abortion access.

Well, it seems, she doesn't have much of a plan beyond "checking" on the provinces.

Also, in the video clip at the link, at least, she can't seem to say the word "abortion."

Bulletin, Madam Minister: the purpose of the Canada Health Act, a federal law, is:

The purpose of this Act is to establish criteria and conditions in respect of insured health services and extended health care services provided under provincial law that must be met before a full cash contribution may be made.

The program criteria is:

In order that a province may qualify for a full cash contribution referred to in section 5 for a fiscal year, the health care insurance plan of the province must, throughout the fiscal year, satisfy the criteria described in sections 8 to 12 respecting the following matters:
(a) public administration;
(b) comprehensiveness;
(c) universality;
(d) portability; and
(e) accessibility.

That's a pretty big stick you've got there, Madame Minister. We'd would like to see the most pro-choice government evah wield it around a bit.

Beware the Mouthy Minority

This poll released today has USian fetus fetishists stoked.

While a majority -- 55% -- still think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, that number is shrinking, down from 60% in 1995.

But what has the zygote zealots really revved is the answer to the time-limit question. As more and more states ban abortion past 20 weeks, the poll asks whether people support such a limit as opposed to the current 24 weeks.

A majority -- 56% -- prefer the lower limit.

OK. That is the Excited States where they are simply insane on the subject.

In Canada 94% of us think abortion should be legal in all or some cases according to a poll the National Post* and we reported on in July last year.

Some 60% of us also support the introduction of a law that places limits on when a woman can have an abortion, with an example: 'such as during the last trimester'.

Our fetus fetishists ignored the tiny minority who want to recriminalize abortion and instead cottoned onto that 60% as proof that a majority of Canadians are 'pro-life'. (Hint to FFs: I'd betcha that 99.99% of us are prolife, just not as you twist define it.)

What a majority of us are NOT is anti-choice. In fact, 49% believe that 'abortion should be permitted whenever a woman decides she wants one', in other words, 'on demand'.

By contrast,the new USian poll shows that only 20% of Merkins think that abortion should be legal 'in all cases'. Also, their nutbar fringe, as represented by the 'illegal in all cases' segment, is much bigger than ours at 15%. Oddly, though, a majority (54%) oppose making it more difficult for abortion clinics to function.

The state of abortion insanity in the US matters to us in Canada for two reasons: when their FFs get stoked, so do ours, and because we've still got a lot of work to do on access.

The NatPo* reported today on a new study on rural access in BC.

Bottom line: women in rural BC have way less access.

The author, Dr. Wendy Norman, said:

“What concerns us is that all surgical abortions in rural B.C. communities are performed in a hospital operating room setting, often under general anesthesia,” says Norman, one of the lead scientists on the Canadian Contraception Access Research Team (@cartgrac). “And half of the abortion providers reported difficulty booking time for abortion procedures due to conflict in operating room scheduling, or nurses or anesthesiologists who refuse to work with abortion cases.”

Bottom line there: Stigma and opposition.

But a hopeful note:

“One encouraging trend we noticed is that almost half of the rural cases are done medically, which is safe and affords women more privacy. This is much higher ratio than previously thought,” says Norman. “But we need to better educate women about this option as it is only available to women within the first seven weeks of pregnancy.”

As we've argued here repeatedly, medical abortion is the way of the future -- private, quick, and cheaper.

And now let's hear from the other coast, where there are significant barriers to women in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Again, there's access in St John's, but not so much elsewhere and the province does not cover all travel expenses.

Robin Whitaker argues that the procedure can and should be carried out in local clinics and doctor's office and medical abortion should be more widely available. But she points out that the preferable drug, RU486, is not approved in Canada.

In this province, RU486 could make early pregnancy termination locally accessible to many more women while saving public money. In addition to family doctors, there is no medical reason that these drugs could not be administered by nurse practitioners, midwives and even via telemedicine, provided that backup medical care was available. (It would also be vital to ensure that government did not download costs onto women by requiring them to pay for the drugs themselves.)

Our fetus fetishists will take anything a pandering CONservative government might offer: defunding, regulations based on spurious claims like sex-selective abortion, continued foot-dragging on the approval process for RU486.

In Ontario, panty-sniffer and amateur statistician, Patricia Maloney, is asking the courts to intervene in her quest for abortion statistics.

Make no mistake. Our fetus fetishists may be small in number, but they're LOUD and relentless. Right now they're sniffing some heady anti-choice emanations from the south.

And by SHRIEEEEKING and fomenting stigma, they have an undemocratically large influence on our private medical business.

Just look at what they're doing in the US with only 15% support.

Canadian women demand expanded, not restricted reproductive options.


*Fuck the National Post. They've just instituted a hit-and-miss paywall. Some stories I can read but can't get back to. Others have an immediate paywall. I'm not linking to them anymore and I apologize to readers of older posts that have links to them.

No Point

In perennially NON-breaking news, Canadians feel much the same about abortion as they have for years.

Which is basically: All's swell. Now can we please all STFU about it?

Only 23% of us know there are no legal restrictions on abortion at any time. That's actually an improvement. In 2010, just 21% of Canadians knew there are no restrictions.

And, still and forever, a tiny number of nutbars want to ban abortion altogether, nationally just 5%. But the regions are interesting. Atlantic Canada comes in as least banny at 1%, followed by Quebec at 2%, BC at 3%, and Saskitoba at 4%. Alberta is most prohibitionist at 10% with Ontario following at 7%.

There's a 'not sure' option to this question and, oddly, Atlantic Canada is least sure at 12%. Nationally, 6% are unsure.

The funding question -- always the best one for fetus fetishists -- remains evenly split with 43% in favour of always funding and 42% for funding only in medical emergencies. Those who want it completely defunded are again in the teensy minority -- 7%, beaten in this case by the 'not sures' at 8%. (Note for the Defund crowd Ontario Chapter: in this province, 9% want it defunded.)

Where Canadians are most united is in the 'Oh Shit Do We Have to Debate This Agaaaaain?' whine category.

Fifty-nine percent of us say there's no point (that was actually the phrase), while 30% are in the 'long overdue' crowd, with 11% not sure.

Again, the regions are interesting. BC is the most sick and tired of it at 67%, while surprisingly Quebec ranks highest in 'long overdue' at 35%.

And that's what DJ! and others have been saying: Fuck the debate. There is no point.