C-537: 'Life Begins at Fertilization'

It is usually in the nature of Private Member’s Bills that their authors are not well known to the country in general.

Such is the case with Maurice Vellacott, author and sponsor of Bill C-537, ‘An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of conscience rights in the health care profession)’.

In the comments to an excellent blog-post by 900ftjesus at In the House and Senate, sassy offers a link to the
‘About Maurice Vellacott’ page where it is revealed that he is a founding Board Member of
Real Choices Crisis Pregnancy Centre in Saskatoon.

A quick hop over there informs us that:

We can provide you with referrals to many different resources within our community such as adoption services, housing information and programming options. WE DO NOT REFER FOR ABORTIONS.

*sigh* Big surpriiiise. It is a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centre’, which, as has been proven over and fucking over again lie to and manipulate whoring harlots women unexpectedly pregnant.

So it should come as no surprise that Maurice snuck a little zinger into a bill supposedly about ‘conscience rights’ as JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie points out:

"'human life' means the human organism at any stage of development, beginning at fertilization or creation."

Got that? OK. You know what to do.

(First published at Birth Pangs.)

Jesus Speaks!

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Could Jesus be speaking about … those who dictate and interpret what he said, with a view to advancing and aggrandizing themselves? And could followers of false prophets be among those lobbying the Secretary of State for Arkansas to put up a memorial monument that may or may not feature a statue of Jesus, or of someone who looks like Jesus and who could be Jesus, in the Capitol?

The leader of the group, armed with the preserved remains of a fetus that was miscarried in 1993, met with the Secretary of State. She described the monument that her group wants to install; a man holding a baby while talking to a woman. The robe-clad male figure wears sandals.

Now what would Jesus say about a group of fetus-fetishizing lobbyists who want to exploit his avowed love of children and those who are child-like? How about: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned.”? Or perhaps: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”?

But Jesus could be angry, as he was with the merchants using the temple space for their own profit. He might say: “Listen up. You’ve got to stop putting words in my mouth. When I said: Allow the little children, and don’t forbid them to come to me, I didn’t mean embryos and fetuses. Remember that my Father is called a Creator, not an Impregnator. It takes time to create a human being. If a woman does not choose to give life, the decision is hers to make. My own mother was given that choice. Gestation, like creation, is a process. Only God has the right to judge and condemn. And stop with the glurge already!”

This news item was brilliantly blogged here, by GottaLaff. A big thanks to Red Jenny for bringing this to our attention!
Originally posted at Birth Pangs.

The putrid smell of opportunism

Abortion criminalizers have a stench about them. It is a curious mélange of sulfurous fire-and-brimstone, medieval dry rot, fear-soaked piety, and the acrid fumes of high arrogance. In order to mask this odour, they crouch under the cloak of self-righteousness by associating their cause with respectable human rights concerns.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-choice organizations deliberately co-opted the words genocide and holocaust to lend the gloss of credibility to their propaganda. As you may remember, their exploitation of these terms was challenged by the survivors and descendants of groups who have been historically targeted and subjected to ethno-focused violence or religious persecution. Grudgingly, the abortion criminalizers had to stop mis-using these two words in their publications.

In recent years, they have slithered into the proximity of civil rights activists, hoping that the credibility and legitimacy of organizations that have worked hard to eradicate racism, such as the NAACP, would somehow deodorize their anti-choice rhetorical slime. See Abortion Is Slavery and Poverty .

Observe how smoothly those who would enforce compulsory pregnancy divert criticism away from their goal of controlling women’s reproductive capacity, by proclaiming they are as pure in their thoughts and actions as those white folks who championed civil rights. Fetus fetishizers are draping themselves in the flag of the modern martyr and demanding the same respect as white civil rights workers who were excoriated for the assistance they gave to Martin Luther King and to the descendants of enslaved Black people.Quite the sleight of hand, is it not? Those who supported the civil rights movement did not set off bombs nor assassinate anyone. Given that the murderous strategies used by the extremist fringe within the anti-choice, abortion-criminalizing organizations are the same as those used by the extremist fringe within the anti-civil rights groups, the logical and correct analogy would be that “Fetus-fetishizers are the 21st century’s Jim Crow segregationists”.

If one wanted to draw a parallel between two distinctive social justice movements that are fuelled by similar motives, these are the ones who share a common vision of civil rights.

First posted at Birth Pangs.