The March of the Catholic Schoolchildren

May 4 - 9  2014 is Catholic Education Week in Canada - the details of which you could read about here if you were allowed to, which apparently you aren't. 

The program agenda entails several pages of Ontario Catholic schools and their projects for the week under the theme "Serving in the Love of Christ". 

Yesterday, Thursday, was "Serve with Justice" Day which evidently entailed bussing hundreds of their students to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to attend Campaign Life Coalition's March For Life anti-abortion rally ... in what JJ in comments over at Dammit Janet! calls "The March of the Catholic Schoolchildren". 
Ha! An Unrepentant Old Hippie sighting!

Catholic school boards paid for students to attend anti-abortion rally

For critics, public funds being used to transport students to a rally against abortion — a right guaranteed by the Supreme Court of Canada — is controversial.
The annual March For Life rally, organized by national pro-life group Campaign Life Coalition, is now in its 17th year. The group aims to defund abortion services in Canada and ultimately eliminate the practice. They also take issue with gay marriage, gay-straight alliances in schools, transgender identities, comprehensive sex education and stem-cell research.

A variety of reactions from the faithful on the podium greets two streaking prochoice protesters :

The unperturbed speaker at the mike, according to this guy who rattled off the names of dozens of attending cardinals and bishops, is Cardinal Gerald Cyprien Lacroix, archbishop of Quebec, delivering a special message from the Pope :

"His Holiness Pope Francis is pleased to greet everyone taking part in the 17th National March For Life in Ottawa and he assures them of his spiritual closeness as they give witness to the God-given dignity, beauty and value of human life. He prays that this event foster greater respect for the inviable right to life of each person from conception to natural death and supports the efforts of all who labour to ensure that this fundamental right receives adequate legal protection."

His Holiness is evidently not a fan of "My body, my rules" as an integral part of the "dignity, beauty and value of human life" that requires "adequate legal protection".

Chronic abortion bill pez dispenser and Con MP Stephen Woodworth was saddened to hear that all NDP MPs are pro-choice and Justin Trudeau will not be allowing any more anti-choice candidates into the Liberal Party :

"I feel very sad for my colleagues in the Liberal Party that democratic procedures and diversity of opinion is giving way to kind of this top-down ideological approach," Woodworth told CBC News 

and on twitter :  "When did LPC become merely a tool for the leader's personal ideology?"

Irony sighs and wonders if it's too late to get a job doing vaudeville instead.

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RU-4Choice? : Ethical Abortion

In November last year, MP Libby Davies asked Deputy Health Minister George Da Pont why Canada has not joined 57 other countries in making RU-486, the medical abortion pill for use within the first two months of pregnancy, available in Canada despite a strong recent endorsement editorial from the Canadian Medical Association Journal. 

Indeed. It's been legal elsewhere for decades.



As the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada recommended in March 2003 - ten freakin' years ago :

"The use of such medication for terminating early pregnancy constitutes a significant medical and public health gain and has achieved medical acceptability in Europe and the USA.
The SOGC urges Health Canada to work with professional organizations and industry to make this product available to Canadian women."

An article at the US National Institute of Health (NIH) looks into why mifepristone (RU-486) remains unapproved in Canada and concludes the reasons are both financial and political.
First, the drug approval process can only be initiated by an application from a pharmaceutical company.

"In Canada, it is predicted that revenues will be moderate because of cost controls and will not offset high regulatory approval costs ... due to abortifacient medicines' relatively infrequent use."

"Health Canada also has procedures for priority review and approval of critical new drugs and breakthrough therapies. To obtain priority status, however, the drug must be intended for life-threatening or other serious conditions."

"Life-threatening", as it happens, is the criteria the more *moderate* among the anti-choicers insist upon as a necessary condition for a woman to be permitted an abortion at all.

The NIH article also cites a history of reluctance on the part of Health Canada to approve any reproductive health medicines :

"11 of 12 contraceptive products approved for use in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia in the preceding decade were unavailable in Canada 'either because of Health Canada's stricter requirements or because they are held up in the Canadian regulatory process.' "

So in the parlance of the Cons, we can either stand with those countries which recognize a woman's right to the "gold standard" in reproductive healthcare, or we can stand with Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Korea, Myanmar, and most of Africa and South America.

Ethical Abortion, baby.

h/t  Fern Hill and deBeauxOs at Dammit Janet
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Emma the Embryo and the RoboCon

Emma the Embryo channels Fern Hill and DeBeauxOs at DAMMIT JANET! :

"Emma is the potential everyhuman being.

She is prochoice because gestation is a procreative process.
She's a pragmatist because pregnancy is not *motherhood*.
She believes that every child should be wanted and welcomed, and every mother willing and supported."

Choice Joyce on Motion 312 , coming up for HoC debate in April :

"Attention supporters! We need to help out Stephen Woodworth because the poor guy lacks imagination. He couldn't even think of a title for his motion! Let's help him out by naming his motion for him. Please email your clever, funny, or subversive titles to info@arcc-cdac.ca. We'll pick the best one and go public with it!"

Joyce Arthur

Executive Director, 

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) 

joycearthur@shaw.ca    www.arcc-cdac.ca

Hmmm ... Woodie's Zygote and Pony Show ? 

Or Emma's fave : The 'If a Fetus is a Person Then a Woman Isn't' Motion

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Emma the Embryo on teen pregnancy

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A new study published by Reproductive Health found that US states with higher religiousity also have higher teen birth rates. The study hypothesizes that this correlation may be because "teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception."

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According to Ms Mag today - and Dammit Janet a week ago - the study author ... speculated that a potential explanation of this relationship is that "religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

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But then you knew that.

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40 days of Harrassment begins today, that special time of year when the god botherers focus their bothering on women who want birth control or sex education because their sky monster needs more teen moms.

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Emma celebrates International Women's Day

Status of Women Canada has a new slogan for International Women's Day this year :

"Strong Leadership. Strong Women. Strong World: Equality"

Wtf does that even mean?

It's as if, having removed the word "equality" from the SWC mandate some time ago, Steve's gang is now sprinkling it here and there across the SWC website where it can do the least harm.

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Dr. Dawg and Antonia Z explain what's up with pay equity.

Have a nice day!

Update : April Reign : "Give her a pill" says Vic Toews in the H0C to a female MP objecting to Con flimflammery on pay equity. Bah.

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Emma the Embryo and Vatican water sports

Vatican newspaper blames pill for pollution, infertility

"The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said yesterday.
The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine.

The article was promptly dismissed by several scientific organizations.

Yeah but - women, hormones, pee, nature, the pill, sexual freedom - why the combination alone is just begging for some Vatican sciencey oh noes, isn't it?

*Pissed off* and setting the record straight :

Antonia Z, DAMMIT JANET!, and Birth Pangs

Emma the Embryo vs Andrew Coyne

Yo, Andrew. It's not necessary, and certainly not advisable, to give every agitated minority a shot at rolling civilization back a couple of generations by giving them airtime, and by extension legitimacy, in the guise of being reasonable and fair-minded.

Anyone whose invisible sky monster has told them not to have an abortion is perfectly within their rights not to have one.

h/t Dr. Dawg for the link to Coyne.

Edward Greenspan : "I don't know if I have ever witnessed a more absurd protest than the current nonsense regarding the awarding of the Order of Canada to Dr. Henry Morgentaler.

Elizabeth Bagshaw was one of the early female doctors in Canada. She was the head of Canada's first and illegal birth control clinic. She received the Order of Canada in 1972. Isn't it amazing that Doherty, Finn, Gocki and others could share their Order with Bagshaw all these years?"

h/t Fern at Bread 'n Roses

Emma the Embryo : If a fetus is a person...

If a fetus is a person, then a woman isn't.
Or, if you prefer, any separate legal rights granted to a fetus as a person with the right not to be killed or injured must necessarily come at the expense of the person carrying the fetus.
In Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the word "child" appears 14 times and the phrase "unborn child" five times. Clause 5 states :
"It is not a defence to a charge under this section that the child is not a human being."

Read that again : "It is not a defence to a charge under this section that the child is not a human being."

In Bill C-484 Endangers Abortion Rights and Women’s Rights by Establishing Fetal Personhood, an excellent rebuttal to the supposed innocuousnous of the bill, Joyce Arthur of Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada writes : "Regardless of Ken Epp’s stated intent for the bill – to protect pregnant women and wanted fetuses from violence – he should realize that once enacted, his bill can be used in ways he did not intend......By recognizing the "rights of the unborn," it creates the risk that pregnant women’s behaviour could be regulated or punished, and abortion rights restricted."

Plus, although Epp cannot be held directly responsible for the, uh, enthusiasm of his followers, referring to his bill as Kicking Abortion's Ass isn't really helping his case much.

Tuesday update : Terrific post from PSA at Canadian Cynic :
Ken Epp's Big Con

Emma the Embryo