From a Socon or Bust reader who submitted this letter to Maclean’s:
RE: The conservative stance on abortion you didn’t know about,
Maclean’s, May 14, 2012, p. 4-5
It would seem that all of the arguments being put forward against MP Stephen Woodworth’s motion proposing a re-examination of the definition of what constitutes a human being, are political in nature. I have yet to hear a reasoned argument against the motion itself, i.e. providing solid evidence that an unborn child is not indeed a human being.
What if it turns out that we are right now denying the most basic of human rights to certain members of our society? We’ve been wrong in the past regarding similar assumptions that in the mainstream were taken as a given; women, for instance, were not considered persons under Canadian law until 1929.
Only by putting aside the rhetoric and the slogans, and holding a full and honest debate, can we get to the bottom of important societal issues. Shame on our Parliament, and on Canada, should we lack the courage to do so.
We’ve all heard many politicians use cowardly cop-outs while conceding ground to the Culture of Death. One of the classic lines is “I’m personally opposed to [insert depravity here], but I can’t impose my beliefs on others.”
Well, the shoe was on the other foot last week for the March for Life. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson proclaimed May 10th as “Respect for Life Day” in Ottawa, as he did last year. This triggered some angry reactions from a few pro-choicers, who attacked the mayor on Facebook and Twitter. The mayor’s response was a new twist on a familiar theme: Read the rest of this entry »
By coincidence, the same day O’Connor spoke those stirring words in the House of Commons, the government announced it would appeal an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that had struck down key anti-prostitution laws. This was expected. The Conservatives have vociferously opposed any suggestion that the prostitution laws — which do not forbid prostitution per se but effectively make it impossible to do it without committing a crime — should be curtailed in any way.
So how does that square with the government’s declarations on abortion? Try replacing the word “abortion” in any part of Gordon O’Connor’s statement with “prostitution.”
“Whether one accepts it or not, prostitution is and always will be part of society. There will always be dire situations in which some women may have to choose the option of prostitution. No matter how many laws some people may want government to institute against prostitution, prostitution cannot be eliminated. It is part of the human condition.”
Fits rather nicely, doesn’t it?
…
Then there’s marijuana and the other illicit drugs the government is making war on. Try plugging them into O’Connor’s statement.
“I cannot understand why those who are adamantly opposed to drug use want to impose their beliefs on others by way of the Criminal Code. There is no law that says a person must use drugs. No one is forcing those who oppose drugs to use them.”
Again, the fit is close to perfect.
…
So what’s left? Why does the government think its ringing words apply to abortion but not to other moral choices? Simple. In O’Connor’s statement, he objects to “new laws” that curtail personal freedom but says that the exercise of that freedom must respect “current law.”
Today, there is no law banning abortion. But there are laws banning prostitution and drugs.
Thus, what looks like a highly principled statement about the relationship between morality and liberty in a pluralistic society is actually something less grand: It is a lazy and weak defence of the status quo.
Boy, Dan Gardner really does slam the Conservative Government’s rationale for opposing any laws on abortion while concurrently proposing laws to keep prostitution and needle exchanges at bay.
It really does show how ridiculously shallow Harper and his cronies are on this question. They are hardly consistent in the arguments they employ in refusing to consider any law regulating abortion while blissfully dismissing those same arguments when it’s an easier “sell”. It shows them to be the lowest of the low of the political class, pandering to what they think will keep them in power. In fact, the brutal enforcement of the will without any consideration for justice, reason, science or the most basic decency is exactly what abortion is, and that’s the script that today’s Conservative government reads from too.
So, Prime Minister Stephen Harper “there’s-not-going-to-be-a-debate-no-way-no-how” plan hasn’t really worked out that way. The debate is here, Steve, so you need to deal with it…now and in the future. I’m sure there’ll be at least 2 other Bills coming round your way before your 4 year term is up.
Anyhow, Gordon O’Connor, one of his Ministers, has stepped up for the pro-abort side to offer the same lame arguments that have not changed since the ’60s – except this time he did it in Parliament.
You have to wonder just how long these arguments can withstand some basic logic and basic science, but I’m not complaining because he’s been useful in creating “the debate”, if only to make Harper look completely unreasonable and flakey on the most pressing moral issue of the day. It’s bizarre.
Anyhow, I digress. Back to Gord. Let’s take a look at some of Gord’s recycled arguments and see if they hold any water….
Speaking in the House of Commons’ first hour of debate on Motion 312, Tory MP Stephen Woodworth said: “Canadians expect parliamentarians to embody that courage, that strength, that principled quest for the truth. Will we be seen as bold for the sake of truth, or as fearful? We can trust Canadians to embrace the truth with us.”
MP Stephen Woodworth speaking at the National March for Life on Parliament Hill in 2011.
The Kitchener MP has called on Parliament to establish a special committee to re-examine section 223 of the Criminal Code, a 400-year-old provision inherited from British common law that states a child only becomes a “human being” once he or she has fully proceeded from the womb.
“How many Canadians believe that birth is a moment of magical transformation that changes a child from a non-human to a human being?” he asked in the House Thursday. “Perhaps that ancient definition made sense when leeches and bloodletting were standard medical practices, but does it make medical sense in the 21st century?”…
“If basic rights can be denied to even one vulnerable person, they can be denied to anyone,” he said. “If we accept a law that decrees some human beings are not human, the question that must be asked is: Who is next?”… (Source)
To answer his question above: ”anyone who is a burden or in the way” – the handicapped, the elderly, undesirable infants. Anyone who doesn’t fit the lifestyle or eugenic mold. That’s what “abortion” has blessed our society with.
If you listen to the pro-life arguments, you will see that they are balanced, sober, humane, and backed up by hard science. The pro-abort side’s arguments are still stuck in the sixties. They’re also lame with no real substance. The pro-aborts are showing themselves to be knuckle-dragging, anti-science bigots.
Every year that advances is a “baby step” closer to abortion being overturned. It’s inevitable. The only question is the timing. How soon can pro-lifers (and God) make it happen? That’s the only question.
If you look at great leaders in history, they are not considered great because of their economic tricks which they championed. On the contrary, they are considered heroes or despots because of their view of the human person. Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery. People remember him for that, not the rest of his politics. Hitler hated the Jews, even though he was a cracker-jack at pulling Germany out of the economic dumps. Nobody gives him much credit for the latter. Likewise with Reagan and Thatcher. They might have been great leaders on the economy, but they will be remembered for their fight against the Communists not on growing the economy or putting the boots to the Unions. Read the rest of this entry »
…But on the campaign trail last week, Alberta Premier Alison Redford said she no longer believes abortion is a matter of personal conscience.
True, for years, she was the justice minister of Alberta where that was the rule. But Redford is losing the Alberta election badly — a new poll put her 17 points behind the upstart Wildrose party, with just two weeks to the election —so she hit the panic button.
So, off the cuff, she told reporters that doctors should now be compelled to provide abortions on demand, even if they don’t believe in it. She styled it as an attack on the Wildrose party, whose platform supports freedom of conscience— like Redford herself did, until about fifteen minutes ago.
“I was very frightened to hear the discussion today,” said Redford, who bravely managed to overcome that fear during her four years in a government where that was the law. “I certainly respect people’s personal beliefs,” she said. Unless, of course, she happens to disagree with them.
“All of the unique families in this province have the opportunity to know that when they’re accessing services, they can trust those services can be provided. And when they take on professional responsibilities, I expect them to be able to meet those professional responsibilities.”
That’s buzz words and clichés and newspeak. What is a “unique family”? What is an “opportunity to know”? How does a unique family take on a professional responsibility?…(Source)
Pro-abortionists were never truly pro-choice. That was always subterfuge. In their hearts, they’re all thugs as this desperate attempt at winning a rather small pool of fellow-thug-votes shows.
Just how the hell can this drama queen “respect people’s beliefs” when she holds the proverbial gun to their heads and tells them to crush that baby’s skull or else find another profession. Yeah, like that’s a really great way of harnessing the professional abilities of doctors who are in short supply, eh? Kick a large majority of them out of the profession!
Lady, are you mental or what?
Is this the kind of Amazonian flake Alberta wants to have lead them? The pro-aborts can’t win the debate, and since the pool of abortion doctors is drying up, they resort to using the power of the new phenomenon of the “Thug-State” to compel people to violate their conscience to murder.
It’s all about being “true, north, strong, and free“, doncha ya’ know. Freedom for me but not for thee.
- The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s national broadcaster, will see its government funding slashed by $115 million — about 10 per cent. (Source)
Under the Constitution, Catholics have a right to educate our children with our own tax dollars.
It’s time for the Bishops of this province, beginning with Archbishop Prendergast right here in Ottawa, to draw a line in the sand and tell McGuilty that:
#1 – He should stop calling himself Catholic for his obstinate support of abortion and gay “rights”.
#2 – Make it very clear to everyone that HE (the Archbishop) is the final arbiter of Catholic moral teaching and HE will determine what gets into Catholic schools and what does not.
And if the School Board, its lesbian teachers and homosexual principals don’t like it, they can lump it.
It didn’t take Michael Ignatieff long to land on his feet after leading the Liberal Party to its worst showing ever. He cleaned out his desk and acquired a new one at Massey College in Toronto within days of his catastrophic defeat. For the 10th anniversary of 9/11, he offered one of those essays he spent a lifetime abroad writing: the great thinker explaining “What It All Means.” For this declaration, he could have been back at Harvard, writing about America in the post-9/11 decade, though this time he did not use the first person. The piece casts 9/11 as the first in a series of “sovereign failures,” wherein the state failed spectacularly—9/11, Katrina, the financial crisis, and now the sovereign debt insolvencies. All these state failures have meant that “people have lost faith in government.” The lesson should be the opposite, Professor Ignatieff argues. The repeated failures of the State ought to remind us how important the State is and how rebuilding its “legitimacy” is our most urgent political task. It’s counter-intuitive to be sure, but that’s why the professor was too clever for elected politics. In defence of state power, he writes: “A sovereign is a state with a monopoly on the means of force. It is the object of ultimate allegiance and the source of law. It is there to protect, to defend and to secure.” A hand goes up at the back of the class: Is the State really the object of ultimate allegiance? Is it really the only source of law? Canadians chose wisely in keeping such ideas far from political power.
No. I could be wrong, but I can’t see it happening, James. There’s not one of them that will go it alone and do the right thing. They would have to do it in convoy and that’s why it will never happen.
It took them three years to get D&P to change direction (and that’s not even guaranteed) on something that was internal and beyond question. It’s something that should have taken 10 minutes…tops, and it dragged, and dragged, and dragged. All the cows have not come home on that one, either. Do we really believe that they would have implemented even the modest controls they have, if the light wasn’t shining on them 24/7 for the past three years? I very much doubt it. Church politicians only move when they have something to lose. $13.6 million dollars says that the bishops are not serious (I mean really serious) about being pro-life. If they were, they wouldn’t be stashing all this cash away for that rainy day. For what…precisely…may I ask? For all the blather about social justice, D&P and the CCCB are swimming in cash and make the banksters look poor in comparison. (Where are the Occupiers when you need them? Have I got a prime location for them here in Ottawa.) Just like typical leftists, they’re all for wealth distribution, provided it’s not their wealth and they’re not the subject of the distribution.
But for calling a Catholic politician on the carpet for abortion? Not bloody likely. They won’t even take the faintest step to save our “Catholic” schools from the Rainbow brigade. How do we expect them to take on a much more volatile question, by reminding Catholic politicians that they’re supposed to be Catholic first and politicians second? I’m not talking about sending some useless letter addressed to a Catholic politician, either – as if that’s going to change anything. I’m talking about an invitation to our obstinate “Catholic” pro-abort politicians 1) to learn what the Catholic Faith teaches about human life 2) to study and reflect on it and 3) to be honest and formally leave the Church or to embrace the Catholic Church’s teaching publicly. And if the said “Catholic” politician won’t do the first part of #3, the bishop has a solemn duty to do it for him. It’s the only honest thing to do. The bishop would only be acknowledging what the rest of us already know.
That takes a lot of guts and guts is in short supply these days among the Episcopacy. The only thing we have going for us is that a lot of these bishops’ number is up in a few years, as they retire. There’s no incentive for them to do anything with McGuilty’s open “pro-choice” views, for instance, unlike the D&P abortion scandal where their very credibility was on the line as Catholic bishops, and everybody knew it.
Just like the generation they “shepherded”, these bishops have about the same moral fibre.
One day soon, it will just be a bad dream….like the Masses that pass off as circuses…or vice versa.
The only thing we can do today is just pray for their repentance and conversion…and for the years to pass quickly so we can return to some sanity in the Church.
The Canadian bishops’ resolve and seriousness in fighting the Culture of death is like that old Wendy’s commercial in the mid-80s where we, the laity, as represented by the old woman, take off the hamburger bun and ask sardonically, where’s the beef?
We believe that the suppression of any debate in a democratic society is unacceptable,” said Jakki Jeffs, the campaign’s director. “We demand that the current censorship of the debate around abortion be ended, and that an open and informed discussion be held in public.”
“The stifling of the debate over the past decades has prevented all Canadians from having access to the facts, and has left the issue completely ignored,” she continued. “In the coming months we will be addressing this lack of balance, and on the 7th of February 2012 we hope those who wish to defend abortion will join us in finally debating this before the people of Ontario.”…(Source).
Stephen Harper wants to preserve religious freedom in other countries. But for some reason, he won’t allow religious people a voice in this debate. Talk about hypocrisy.
It’s all part of Harper’s “no-way-no-how-abortion-debate-in-Canada” policy.
He came to power on the (dismembered) backs of the unborn. Now he’s become paranoid about not debating the issue or even allowing others in his own Party to do so, even to the point that he will permit infanticide to protect abortion and his political career.
This is not the behaviour of a rationale or balanced man. He’s not normal. Why are “conservatives” voting for such a politician? What does it say about their kind of “conservatism”? If they are not conserving or respecting human life – both inside and outside of the womb – just what exactly are they conserving except their own egos and pensions?
I wonder if Harper and his lapdog lackies would even be marginally disturbed if they were to ever see a dead baby in a Parliamentary trash bin some day as they walked by. Would they pass over her in cold silence, reminding themselves that political power and “the economy” is the source and summit of their own dignity as human beings?
Just exactly how will they stand before their Maker on judgement day and excuse this conduct? It makes you wonder whether they have given up completely on not only themselves, the Good, their country, but their own Eternity as well.
God is not mocked. He will demand an accounting for the trampling of human dignity. And the price paid will be an eternal one. There is grace and mercy that God offers everyone, but it doesn’t last forever.
The politicians need to understand that their decisions (and ours) have eternal consequences. Life is not a political game or an ego trip. It consists of more than a cheap political/sexual thrill.
So, Prime Minister Stephen Harper “there’s-not-going-to-be-a-debate-no-way-no-how” plan hasn’t really worked out that way. The debate is here, Steve, so you need to deal with it…now and in the future. I’m sure there’ll be at least 2 other Bills coming round your way before your 4 year term is up.
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