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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Abortion and the robot revolt

How heartwarming it was to watch five brave Con backbenchers rise up to defend Langley Con MP Mark Warawa's right to independent Steve-free abortion speech in the House of Commons. After years of having to recite member statements on whatever idiotic repetitive talking points the 30-somethings in the PMO assigned to them every day, this week the robots are revolting.

Con MP Brent Rathgeber : I would submit that if the House does not jealously protect the rights of members to bring forward matters of concern to their constituents and if it does not strictly enforce those rules, the roles of the private member, Parliament and ultimately democracy have all been equally compromised.

Really. You're just noticing this now?
And just like that it's no longer a matter of keeping the abortion debate on a constant low simmer in the House until we all get used to hearing womens' rights questioned there  - no, indeed our very democracy has been compromised if Con MPs aren't allowed to bring it up on a regular basis. 

Andrew Coyne has written two impassioned columns in as many days defending Warawa' right to speak. 
His Backbench revolt isn’t pro-life vs. pro-choice, it’s for the freedom of all MPs repeats some of the arguments he put forth in his 2008 column :
It's time to talk about abortion : This is not about abortion. This is about democracy 
and another one from a year ago :
The idea we can’t debate abortion is unworthy of a democratic country. 

The five Con MPs bravely supporting Mark Warawa in his campaign to save the very soul of democracy are Brent Rathgeber, John Williamson, Stephen Woodworth, Kyle Seeback, and Leon Benoit.  And here, as a gentle reminder, are the answers three of them - Woodworth, Seeback, and Benoit - gave to the Campaign Life Coalition Candidate Evaluation election questionnaire in 2011 and 2008 :

Williamson, Steve's former communications director, and Rathgeber declined to answer the Campaign Life questionnaire but both voted in favor of Woodworth's alternative abortion ploy - Motion 312 - to study when life begins in the womb, along with 86 other Con MPs and one third of cabinet.

While there are principled reasons to support MPs' right to speak freely in the House, it is notable that of all the issues this government has made a point of muzzling of their MPs on, including this one in its various previous anti-choice disguises, suddenly we are being asked to put the right of MPs to speak their minds in the House ahead of women's rights as a point of principle, led by MPs who have already committed themselves to introducing anti-choice laws.

So are we looking at a Backbencher Spring here?             
Here's Warawa free speech supporter Con MP Leon Benoit immediately after the weekly caucus meeting with Steve the following day :

Nope, guess not. Looks like Steve muzzled the groundhogs for yet another spring.
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Monday, April 1 update :  Con MP Brent Rathgeber, after the same caucus meeting :

“I think it was a good meeting. The media have reported, and I think accurately, that many members who were upset for a variety of reasons, seem to be satisfied that the issues have either been resolved or the issues are not worth resolving.”

The 24 hour Con Backbencher Spring is over.

Stop Motion 312

Sign the petition. Better yet - download it and get 25 sigs on it for parliament.
Read up at : Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. Support Radical Handmaids

Do something! It's 2012 and we're defending women's right to choose all over again from anti-choice pez dispensers like Woodworth.

Woodie and the ProgBlogModSquad

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OPPOSE MOTION 312 
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In their own words :

DAMMIT JANET! where it all began

Dave : Checkmate  and Changing formation and Perceptive failure at Progressive Bloggers

Dawg : Progressive Bloggers vs progressive bloggers and Blogroll follies

RossK : Please accept my resignation

Rev. Paperboy : Shooting down another trial balloon

Unrepentant Ole JJ : BALLS

Rusty Idols : Not Open for Debate 

Feminist Christian Socialist : My line in the sand

Orwell's Bastard : Hey, 'Progressive Bloggers': Are you giant wankers or just trying to look like it? and
On reproductive freedom, there is nothing to fucking 'debate'.

Harebell : Why should people have to justify the right to own their own body?

A Creative Revolution : So reasonable and open minded their brains fell out

The Ryan Painter Show : So Long Prog Blog or A Fundamental Stand in Defence of Womens Rights

Sabina Becker@News of the Restless : It's shit like this ...

Queer Thoughts : Many of my Friends are gone

Sister Sage's Musings : I Really Don't Have Much More To Add
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One more time : OPPOSE MOTION 312 because currently there are no limits on "choice".
Let's keep it that way.
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40 - 40 - 20

Choice Joyce at Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has researched which MPs are anti-choice, pro-choice, or unknown using their public statements during campaigns, their position on the awarding of the Order of Canada to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, and how they voted on Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, at Second Reading in 2008.

Con MPs who voted in favour of Bill C-484 but have no other known public position on abortion are possibly still pro-choice, says Joyce, and therefore are not included in the anti-choice stats. Members of the Bloc and NDP are presumed to be pro-choice. Details on individual MPs are listed below the chart.

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40% pro - 39% anti - 21% unknown - the support among federal MPs for the right of women to control what happens to their own bodies.

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According to Joyce's calculations, one quarter of the Libs are anti-choice.

SoCon Liberal MP Paul Szabo, Chair of the Ethics Committee, spoke at Fetus Festivus on the Hill last week :

"We will be back to reconsidering the question in the House . . . We’re taking incremental steps, small steps. It’s just a question of knowing when it’s the right time."

In March, a Liberal motion to include abortion in Harper's G8 maternal health initiative failed 144-138 because 3 Blue Dog Libs voted against it, 2 abstained, and 12 Libs skipped the vote.

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Last fall, Con MP Brad Trost initiated a petition, signed by 30 MPs, demanding an end to the Canadian International Development Agency's $18 million in annual funding for Planned Parenthood. Six months into 2010, Planned Parenthood is still without funding.

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Focus on the fetus as a "protection" racket

From Focus on the Family :
"And at least one of the pro-life MPs who was at the [May 11 March For Life] gathering is not ruling out some initiative, such as introducing a private member’s bill, as a way to try to reignite the debate in Canada over abortion :
“There are always options for members of Parliament to put forward good initiatives on a range of subjects,” said Conservative Maurice Vellacott, the Globe and Mail reported."
shortly before he explained that women need to be protected from abortions because they cause cancer.

Oh look, here's one of those "initiatives" already :

From the Toronto Star :
"Aims to protect unborn from violenceTory could reopen abortion debate.
May 22, 2006. 01:00 AM
Ottawa : A Conservative MP has introduced a private member's bill that would make it a separate criminal offence to harm an unborn child in cases where a pregnant mother is assaulted or murdered.
The bill that pro-choice advocates say has implications for the abortion debate in this country "is not an abortion bill," says Alberta Conservative backbencher Leon Benoit, who describes himself as "pro-life."
But Benoit says this is all about providing more protection for women, especially pregnant women, who statistics suggest are more vulnerable to violence."

Because you can just see some guy pausing before he whacks some woman to consider whether it's worth doing the extra time for the fetus as well.

And just for the record, here's a list of the more than one third of the cabinet who are on record as "pro-fetus" :
Jim Flaherty - Finance Minister
Chuck Strahl - Agriculture Minister
Vic Toews - Justice Minister
Loyola Hearn - Fisheries Minister
Monte Solberg - Citizenship and Immigration Minister
Rob Nicholson - Minister for Democratic Reform
Stockwell Day - Public Safety Minister
Gary Lunn - Natural Resources Minister
Carol Skelton - National Revenue Minister .
plus Jason Kenney as Harper's parliamentary secretary