Harper Government Has Angered the CMA

Remember this?

That scene, a physician disrupting a CPC government event or interrupting a Harper Cabinet Minister, occured several times as Bill C-31 with provisions that reduce the quality of healthcare that refugees could receive when in medical crisis, is challenged.

The Canadian Medical Association's annual general council meeting is currently being held in Yellowknife. Yesterday it passed this motion.

[...] delegates called on the federal government to reject attempts by a Conservative backbench MP to amend the Criminal Code [...]

“This constitutes the criminalization of abortion or any form of contraception,” said Dr. Geneviève Desbiens, a urologist from Valleyfield, Que.

“This change could even prevent a pregnant woman from travelling or taking certain drug treatments,” she said.

Dr. Desbiens also warned that doctors who counsel or provide abortion services could become criminals.

Currently, subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code states that a fetus “becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother…”

Stephen Woodworth, a Conservative MP from Kitchener-Centre has tabled a private member’s bill to have the part of the Code changed. Motion M-312 is slated to go to a vote in Parliament this fall.

The CMA, which represents the country’s 76,000 physicians, interns, residents and medical students, has a policy saying that abortion is an ethically acceptable medical practice as long as the fetus is not viable.

Dr. Robin Saunders, a family physician from Sooke, B.C., and chair of the group’s ethics committee said M-312 is a “backdoor path to enacting restrictions on abortion.” The CMA has a long history of supporting free choice.

The CMA has called as well for

a full diagnosis of the health and environmental effects of natural resource development — particularly in Alberta’s oilsands — as a national debate continues to rage over energy issues.

Delegates to the Canadian Medical Association’s annual general council meeting overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution asking for public and timely access to all government and industry data on the potential human health effects of “natural resource extraction projects.”

Physicians also backed a call for better monitoring of the environmental and health impacts of such initiatives.

Whether there is any effect from the oilsands is unclear, but the issue has become “a hugely emotional and highly politicized” one, Yellowknife physician Dr. Ewan Affleck said Wednesday.

“When our patients come to us and say, ‘Everyone in our community is getting cancer and we’re scared,’ we’re not sure what to answer,” Affleck said. “Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. There hasn’t been clarity.

“All we’re asking for — it’s not a blameworthy thing — is our hope to just have data in order to provide effective care to our patients, because it’s unclear whether there is a health effect.”

Members of the Harper government have also been singled for scrutiny on public health issues: Kenney - as mentioned and MP Kellie Leitch for her support of asbestos export.

Are there *good* and *bad* abortions?

First, read this to understand the particular meaning I'm addressing when I use the terms *good* and *bad* with regard to the medical termination of a pregnancy.

I am making a decision.

The only thing that makes my abortion decision different from anyone else’s abortion decision is that some people who are against abortion will think that my abortion is acceptable.

Some. Not all. Maybe not even most. I honestly have no idea. My life is not in danger, after all. I have not been raped. I merely think that I might not want to sit around, feeling the symptoms of pregnancy, for god knows how long, until a heartbeat stops and the ripping pain kicks in and the blood starts flowing on its own.

Let me be clear. I have options. It’s just that they all suck. That’s kind of how bad news related to pregnancy works.

If you are pregnant, and do not want to be, all of your options suck.*

If you cannot seem to get pregnant, and want to be, all of your options suck.**

If you are pregnant, and won’t be soon, all of your options suck.

There is no universal good option. There is no universal bad option. But for each individual there is an option that is the least bad. Here is why I am pro-choice. If someone has to make a decision and the best they can hope for is the least-bad option, I don’t believe I have any business making that choice for them.

This is the decision that CON CPC MP Stephen Woodworth would want to criminalize.

Instead of letting a woman and her attending physician determine why a pregnancy might be terminated, Woodworth wants to debate how the government would legislate to control these decisions.

Such as anti-choice legislators in Georgia are currently doing.

In addition, if a woman were in the same situation as the author describes in her plight, and she chose to let "nature take its course", her miscarriage could be investigated by police to ensure that she had not engaged in any criminal activity that would have caused the embryo or fetus to be expelled from her uterus prematurely.

This is the inevitable outcome when legislators decide what is the "right" gestational period, when "personhood" commences and who owns women's reproductive capacity.

Gawd Says: as interpreted by Focus on the Family

Shorter Candi Cushman of US Focus on the Family: Homophobes? Nonsense, we're here to preach God's love for heterosexuals and only heterosexuals.

Only rightwing intolerant christian zealots *really* know what God says and so The Focus on the (fundamentalist religious nuclear) Family will shrieeek as loudly as it can over the "Day of Silence".

Other families - here, and there - are offensive to the christianists and their Gawd and are thus rejected as 'unnatural'.

Noted catholic bigot Margaret Somerville used academic flourishes to disguise the hideous loathing, and perhaps envy, that seethes from her form of family worship. So shallow is the defense of her opinion that her final resort is a quote from a woman (who owes her existence to reproductive technology) equating these medical interventions with the crime of sexual assault.

Responses to Somerville's peroration can be found here.

The Reign in Spain

... of rightwing fundamentalist catholic clergy has been challenged by the very secular (and socialist) government.

[C]ontroversial reforms to the country's abortion law ... would allow women as young as 16 to undergo the procedure without parental consent.

The proposal was passed at a cabinet meeting despite strong opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, the conservative opposition Popular Party and even many supporters of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party. The measure now will to go to parliament for approval, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told a news conference.

Under the proposed reforms, abortions would be allowed for women of 16 and over on demand up to the 14th week of pregnancy, and up to 22 weeks if there is a risk to the mother's health or if the foetus is deformed. Women can also undergo the procedure after 22 weeks if the foetus has a serious or incurable illness.

"We want to offer minors as much protection as possible and the most respect for their basic rights," said de la Vega.

The existing law introduced in 1985, a decade after the death of right-wing dictator Francisco Franco, only allows abortion in cases of rape, fetal malformation and when a pregnant woman's mental or physical health is deemed to be at risk if the pregnancy goes to term.

It appears the medieval control of the catholic church which has, since the Inquisition prevailed and more recently in complicity with Franco, dictated its doctrine almost as law is slipping. The rule of Vatican Taliban and its own version of sharia law may soon be an odd artifact and relic of Spain's past.

A forty-shrieeeker anniversary.

Our blogging buddy JJ over at unrepentantoldhippie reminds us that today, May 14th, is the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act

... an omnibus bill that introduced major changes to the Criminal Code of Canada. It was introduced as Bill C-150 by then Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau in the second session of the 27th Canadian Parliament on December 21, 1967. ... The bill was a massive 126-page, 120-clause amendment to the criminal law of Canada. It proposed, among other things, to decriminalize homosexuality, allow abortion and contraception, ... The bill was described by John Turner, Trudeau's successor as Minister of Justice, as "the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country". Trudeau famously defended the bill by telling reporters that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation", adding that "what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code".

The usual bunch of no-choice, abortion-criminalizing, meretricious, homophobic, fundamentalist religious zygote zealots will gather on Parliament Hill, their numbers swollen by the busloads of Catholic school students converging on Ottawa to provide better optics. Sure hope that Gawd doesn't rain on their parade.

Bill Killed

News update from Kentucky:

The Kentucky House Health and Welfare Committee shot down a bill Tuesday to limit abortions. The vote on Senate Bill 79 was 8-8, effectively stopping the proposal for this legislative session. Still, advocates of the bill declined to declare it dead, saying they might consider various parliamentary moves to revive the measure.

The bill would require a woman seeking an abortion to have a face-to-face consultation with a physician and be presented with an ultrasound of the fetus.
Rep. Reginald Meeks, D-Louisville, said he was torn by the vote, noting that another lawmaker had threatened to hold one of his bills hostage in another committee if he didn’t support the proposal. Meeks said he was not going to be held hostage and voted against SB 79.

Similar legislation has been advanced in other US states by zygote zealots and abortion criminalizers for the purpose of delaying, obstructing and limiting women's reproductive choices.

One man in Australia welcomes the fire

and brimstone too, no doubt. When facts, reason and compassion reside in the pro-choice camp, religious fundamentalists will resort to threats, opportunism, and literal interpretation of selected scripture from the bible.

Pastor's abortion dream inflames bushfire tragedy - The Catch the Fire Ministries has tried to blame the bushfires disaster on laws decriminalising abortion in Victoria. The Pentecostal church's leader, Pastor Danny Nalliah, claimed he had a dream about raging fires on October 21 last year and that he woke with "a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia ... Asked if he believed in a God who would take vengeance by killing so many people indiscriminately - even those who opposed abortion, Mr Nalliah referred to 2 Chronicles 7:14 to vouch for his assertion that God could withdraw his protection from a nation.

"The Bible is very clear," he said. "If you walk out of God's protection and turn your back on Him, you are an open target for the devil to destroy."

In news reports, officials have declared that some of the fires may have been deliberately set by arsonists. One has to wonder if any of them were disciples of Mr Nalliah?

One former supporter of Mr Nalliah's fundamentalist sect is recoiling from his words.

A furious Peter Costello has rounded on a Christian cult for suggesting the Victorian bushfires were divine retribution for the state's abortion laws, describing it as "beyond the bounds of decency". Just three weeks ago, the former federal treasurer sent a video message to a special Australia Day prayer meeting organised by Catch the Fire Ministries leader Danny Nalliah.

But he reacted angrily to a statement by Mr Nalliah yesterday recalling a dream concerning the consequences of Victorian abortion legislation that became law last year. ... "To link the death and the suffering of bushfire victims to other political events is appalling, heartless and wrong," he said. "Those who have suffered deserve every support and sympathy. It is beyond the bounds of decency to try to make moral or political points out of such a tragedy."

Last month we wrote about the decriminalization of abortion in Australia and a recent study that was done regarding women who faced unintended pregnancies.

Grand merci à lagatta!

More abortion recriminalizers' propaganda, Down Under

Over at unrepentant old hippie, JJ reminds us of the zygote zealots' rightwingnutz mob mentality, complete with an eloquent photograph. Hyperbole + overwrought visuals = fanaticism.

In the southern hemisphere, a study from Australia - a country that recently decriminalized abortion services - presents a complex portrait of the reasons why women choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Prior to the law's introduction into Parliament, the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) carried out an investigation, which presented three options to Parliament. The first was codification of the existing law, which made it a criminal offence to destroy the life of an unborn child "capable of being born alive," which was said to be any time after 28 weeks gestation. The second option was allowing an abortion to be performed at any stage of a pregnancy, if a woman gives her consent and the medical practitioner considers it ethically appropriate. The third option was the two-tier system which was finally accepted, using 24 weeks as the defining point. According to figures from the VLRC investigation, about 94.6% of abortions in Victoria are carried out before 13 weeks of gestation, 4.7% between 13 and 20 weeks, and less than 1% after 20 weeks. Yet, although only a small number of women need late-term abortions, the ones who do are the most vulnerable: teenagers, victims of sexual assault including incest, sufferers of mental illness, women who have experienced a sudden tragic life circumstance or have discovered a fetal abnormality. .... An all-women task force of leaders from central Victoria's Anglican Church diocese submitted their comments during the VLRC investigation: "In our view, public acceptance of the reality of abortion, including acceptance of the practice among women of diverse religious communities, indicates that a change in the law is timely."

The study audited data recorded over a 12 month period of phone calls from women facing unintended pregnancies and who wanted an abortion. The 5400 calls were received by the Royal Women's Hospital's Pregnancy Advisory Service from women seeking advice between October 2006 and September 2007.

Of about 3000 women who gave a primary reason for wanting an abortion, 23 per cent said they did not want children now, 11 per cent said they were too young, and .4 per cent said their partner was violent or they had been raped. But 16 per cent of callers mentioned violence as a contributing factor in their decision to seek advice, a statistic Dr Rowe said was disturbing. "It does suggest that 'exposure to violence' needs to be included in all health services for women, because it is a common occurrence in the community and it's only just been acknowledged," she said.

Predictably, no-choice abortion recriminalizers gave the findings their own spin, proclaiming that the women were using abortion as a form of birth control. In fact, 29 per cent of the callers in the study had used contraception to prevent pregnancy. Just another day in the no-choice fetus fetishists propaganda factory, cranking out more lies and more shrieeekkks!!!

Never Again! unless the Catholic Church has its way ....

The above political cartoon was first borrowed to illustrate a blog about meddling bishops posted at Birth Pangs. It comes from a short opinion piece that was written in 2007 but it remains relevant, given the political activism of the Roman Catholic Church clergy during the 2008 Canadian federal election (no, the RepubliCons' Opus Dei candidate did not win) and especially during the US presidential elections where Cardinals spewed ideological diatribes against the Democrats because of their pro-choice position.

We are sad that Bloc Québecois Raymond Gravel was not a candidate for re-election. He received a letter from Vatican officials that told him to withdraw from politics or he would no longer be allowed to perform sacraments. The Le Devoir article above is much more critical than this mild report from the CBC.

In spite of claims to the contrary, it would seem that the spirit and practice of the Inquisition is still alive and kicking at the Vatican.

Pelvic Theology: The Bleat Goes On and On and On …

Yet another high-falutin’ Catholic cleric has his ecclesiastical pantaloons in a knot.

Fordham University Law School’s plan to give an award to the Supreme Court justice Stephen G. Breyer on Wednesday night has drawn criticism from Cardinal Edward M. Egan … Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision overturning Nebraska’s ban on late-term, or so-called partial-birth, abortion. One of the reasons he cited was that the law was unconstitutional because it made no exception for situations in which the mother’s health was at risk.

He is not the first supporter of abortion rights to receive the Fordham ethics prize, established in 1976 to recognize “individuals whose work exemplifies outstanding standards of professional
conduct, promotes the advancement of justice and brings credit to the profession” of the law. But other members of the court who joined in opinions upholding abortion rights — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who received the prize in 2001, and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was given the award in 1992 — did not draw criticism from Catholic activists and the hierarchy.

Ah, but Bader Ginsberg and Day O’Connor were not awarded this recognition during a presidential election campaign where the issue of abortion has become confrontational and is being framed in terms that escape the control of the fetus fetishists.

In recent months, the Cardinal Newman Society, which brought wide attention to this year’s award, has become increasingly outspoken in its criticism of Catholic university officials perceived as less than faithful to church doctrine.

On Oct. 9, Mr. Reilly labeled it “a serious scandal” when Pamela Trotman Reid, the president of St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn., was quoted in The Hartford Courant as saying she was “concerned about the right of women to make choices about their own health” if John McCain became president. … In an interview, Mr. Reilly said that the society’s criticisms were not intended to favor one party or candidate over another, or to discourage the exercise of free speech on Catholic campuses.

Or to ensure that the Catholic Church maintains control over women’s reproductive health? As was affirmed at Birth Pangs, these robe-wearing misogynists meddle in political and legal issues because of the implicit authority they claim: Pelvic Theology.

First posted at Birth Pangs