Well, that happened (Part Duh)

Motion 312 (aka Woodworth’s Wank, aka The Men Who Stare At Zygotes Motion) finally got its much-anticipated 2nd (and thankfully, last) hour of debate yesterday.

I had hoped to be all over it in Real Time, but as luck would have it I was waylaid by Real Life and away from my computer most of the day — in retrospect probably fortunate from a blood pressure point of view.  Through the miracle of modern cell phone technology I was able to keep track of the frenzied online response to the debate, but my participation was limited because I was preoccupied and I really hate typing on my phone, and frankly, after weeks of following this thing, I needed a break.  There’s a limit to how much idiocy one can endure, and the tsunami of stupid from Motion 312 supporters far exceeds it.

The debate itself started about 10:30am (Pacific), but the Twitterstorm raged all day and well into the wee hours of last night.  “#M312” quickly became the 2nd-highest-ranking trending topic on Twitter in Canada, so furiously were people on both sides of the issue tweeting. I mostly just observed, other than a mocking tweet to USian fetus fetishist Lila Rose.  Her cataclysmic dumbness was irresistible: she seems to think that a deluge of letters from Americans is just the leverage our Parliament needs to pass Motion 312.  If anything, more foreign letters compromise the fetus fetishists’ already-compromised letter campaign, but hey: it works for me.

The actual debate went about as expected, from what I saw. The motion’s sleazy sponsor, Stephen Woodworth, made his last stand, referring to non-sentient, non-autonomous zygotes as “people” while not granting women the same courtesy.  Maybe thoughtless, badly-written prose is to blame; or maybe women really don’t count as more than receptacles for the Almighty Fetus in Woodworth’s antiquated view.  (I’m pretty sure anti-choice women, quislings all, are by now immune to such contempt since their churches have been laying it on them for thousands of years).  Woodworth and his small cadre of supporters performed as expected, obfuscation, wordplay, sophistry and dishonest rhetoric about fetuses as a “class of people” being the order of the day.  Nothing new to see here.

Then the opposition rebuttals: I was impressed with the NDP’s Irene Mathyssen, who hauled Woodworth out to the woodshed for a well-deserved spanking…:

“This is quite literally a slap in the face to women who have fought long and hard for the right to control their own bodies and their ability to determine for themselves when they wish to have children,” NDP MP Irene Mathyssen said Friday during the final hour of debate.

“The member for Kitchener Centre’s desire to open up this debate has an end goal of changing the legislation to enable the fetus to be declared a human being,” Mathyssen said. “We are all very aware that such a change in the definition will directly place Canada on the regressive path to banning abortions.”

…then kicked his flabby fetus fetishizing ass around the block:

She slammed Woodworth for suggesting a “fertilized egg” is a “class of people” and cited case law that says otherwise.

Criminalizing abortion, she added, is only going to drive it underground, the consequences of which can be deadly.

Hear hear. I’m definitely non-partisan, but as fern hill tweeted earlier this week, I know who’s got my back when it comes to reproductive rights.

That Motion 312 is doomed by virtue of being a dimwitted and dishonest scrap of pious reproductive tyranny with little support among Canadians is a foregone conclusion, and yesterday’s debate did nothing to change that.  But I have to say: after all these years, seeing womens’ liberty re-litigated in Parliament (and so disingenuously at that) is somehow a little nauseating — even from the winning side.  I look forward to Wednesday’s vote, a short celebration, and then back to the barricades.

Canada’s Docs Rock

The doctors are IN:

Canada’s doctors have sternly rejected what they see as a stealth attempt to recriminalize abortion.

At the general council meeting of the Canadian Medical Association on Wednesday, delegates called on the federal government to reject attempts by a Conservative backbench MP to amend the Criminal Code so that a fetus is defined as a human being.

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

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.

In other words, regulation of the abortion procedure is their job, and they don’t need some government bureaucrat, driven by brainless religious fanatics, telling them how to do it.

Now that everyone seems to be picking their side, at some point I’d love to do a graphic chart showing who’s for and against Motion 312.  It would be very telling to see the line-up of lab-coated scientists on one side and the gaggle of jabbering bible school haircuts on the other.

(h/t Sharkdancing on Twitter)

“Let’s stop the pretense”

“Let’s Stop The Pretense” indeed:

Yes, let’s stop the pretense that Motion 312 aka Woodworth’s Wank (aka the “Men Who Stare At Zygotes” Motion) is anything other than a sleazy, stupid and screamingly obvious attempt to pave the way for ludicrous “fetal rights” legislation that would ultimately curtail reproductive freedom in Canada.

The Motion’s intent couldn’t be any clearer than the way its own supporters interpret it: as a “personhood motion” meant to change a legal definition of personhood that’s “one of the reasons Canada has no abortion regulations”.  (It’s not, but that’s another post.)

I’ve never seen a campaign of lies conducted so ham-fistedly.  What do they think, we don’t know how to Google?

P’wndering the Non-Debate Debate & Subsquent Foolish Fallout

So that happened.

I was unfortunately waylaid by a flu bug of such savage magnitude that I was unable to participate in any bursting of blogs, but it seems to have all worked out for the good.  Motion 312 was exposed for the sleazy little fetus-humping sham it is, an attack on womens’ rights unworthy of the time and taxpayer dollars wasted on debating it.

The highlight was MP Stephen Woodworth, the source of this demented irritant, being given a top-drawer pro-choice asskicking by his own caucus whip, Gordon O’Connor, while the world watched.  Among other things, O’Connor reminded Woodworth in no uncertain terms that the House is neither a medical nor religious body:

The House of Commons, however, is not a laboratory. It is not a house of faith, an academic setting or a hospital. It is a legislature, and a legislature deals with law, specifically, in this case, subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code.

Woohoo!  Go Gordio!  But this little nugget was my personal favourite:

The decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision, and in a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual must be paramount and take precedence over that of the state.

Hear hear!  And here here!

But predictably, in the wake of the M312 debate we’ve been beset by a frenzy of furious pearl-clutching over Canada’s lack of legislation governing this personal medical decision.  Apparently “Canada needs a proper open debate on abortion policy” because the status quo isn’t what the Supreme Court intended.

Well guess what: the status quo isn’t what anyone thought would happen.  Back in 1988, even I assumed that eventually abortion would be codified in some kind of law.  I doubt anyone could have imagined that Canada was about to embark on a 24-year experiment in glorious “lawlessness” that would work out so incredibly well.  An experiment in which women and doctors proved themselves more than capable, thankyouverymuch, of making these kinds of decisions and regulating themselves without the long hairy arm of the State reaching in and using its coercive power to manipulate private lives.  An experiment that concluded with a lower abortion rate.

Could it be that women and doctors know better than government bureaucrats?  Say it ain’t so.

In fact, our “experiment” worked out so fantastically well that the only answer to the suggestion that Canada needs abortion legislation is…

Why?

(h/t AntoniaZ)

BALLS!

And with that I bid PBs a fine farewell.  But first…

I have to admit I’m impressed with the nerve, the gall, the chutzpah, the unmitigated, brass-plated, gold-gilded, steel-belted BALLS of the disingenuous pricks defending the idea that Motion 312 might be a pretty cool, or at least not too bad, idea.  While I have no desire to revisit the Progs vs Progs donnybrook, there is something that’s come up in the course of the altercation that I’d like to set straight, which is the way Dr. Morgentaler has been misrepresented by some of the, uh, “Motion 312 isn’t such a bad idea” bloggers, aka “disingenuous pricks”.

These guys (and gals) fell all over themselves to quote Dr. Morgentaler’s remark about having ethical issues with late term abortion:

Morgentaler said he has concerns about late-term abortions.

“We don’t abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies,” Morgentaler said from his Toronto clinic.

— as if Dr.M’s private, personal opinion on this extremely rare procedure (an opinion which, interestingly, he somehow restrains himself from imposing on others) means it’s okay to have a public debate about the possibility of Open Season on Abortion Rights.  Worse yet, and this is where the stench of duplicity rises like putrid swamp gas, they ignore the all-important follow up quote — from the same interview, no less:

Morgentaler said he does not see a need for rules on late abortions, despite his personal ethical opposition to them.

“DOES. NOT. SEE. A. NEED. FOR. RULES.”  Whoopsie.

Yet when I pointed this out to a couple of the bloggers who were using the first quote to intimate that “Even Morgentaler Himself!” might favour restricting abortion… *crickets*

Now I am the last person to question anyone’s “progressive” cred, since my own is routinely beaten like a gong, rode hard and put away wet.  “Progressive cred” has never been my issue with this thing as much as… The Lying.  Such as insinuating that women are having late term abortions Right Up Until The Moment of Birth!! because we have OMFGWTF NO LAW!.   Such as omitting little factoids about Dr.Morgentaler’s views that don’t fit the desired narrative.

“Pro-life” I can handle.  Pro-lie, not so much.

Shouting “Abortion!” in a crowded blogosphere

No, human rights — including womens’ rights — are not like free speech rights which some (though not I) believe can and should be legally curtailed in the interest of the so-called “greater good”.

In fact, the state’s prerogative to impose its will ends where my uterus begins.

Human Rights — including women’s rights — are non-negotiables: the benighted who walk among us may privately agonize over the rights of others all they want.  But in the interest of maintaining those rights, they’d be well-advised to keep their inner conflicts to themselves, particularly in the face of an imminent threat to said rights.  There is no valid “nuanced” position when it comes to human rights, and anyone who disagrees has never had theirs “up for debate”.

It is mindblowing in the extreme that some people can’t understand how completely and utterly, dumptruck-full-of-dirty-assholes offensive this whole “Debate My Rights” thing really is.

Woodworth’s Wank Revisited

Like many progressives, fern hill is looking for a way to unite the opposition parties, and she may have found one.

Regular readers will recall MP Stephen Woodworth’s bilious bleating on Twitter about “when life begins”, which unlike most Canadians, Woodworth contends is “in the petri dish”.  His embryo-obsessed Twit-jaculations started in December and evolved into the waste of taxpayer dollars known as the Motion 312 debate scheduled for April 26th.  There’s been a surprising dearth of commentary from our elected officials on this thing, considering the profound impact it could have on women’s reproductive freedom.  The motion is a dumbly transparent attempt to get a foot in the door to turning back the clock on rights which were hard-fought and hard-won by the side of liberty many years ago… yo, fetus fetishists, we won.  You lost.  Get the fuck over it.

As decidedly absurd as the motion is, assurances that pro-choice MPs, opposition and otherwise, will unite against it would be most welcome.  They are, after all, our only voice in the thing.  Which brings me to Fern Hill, The Uniter.

Yesterday in an Open Letter to Opposition Women’s Caucuses, she lit the proverbial fire under some pampered Parliamentary arses by reminding them of this issue and asking that all pro-choice MPs stand against Woodworth’s Wank (Fern’s nickname for 312: your suggestions are welcome!) when it comes up for debate.  Something like pronouncing it a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to hard-working Canadians concerned about REAL issues like jobs and the economy, then walking out in unison, would turn my frown upside-down.  (A full-on toothy grin could be achieved if the MPs were to roughly stand up, upending the debate table, and amid tumbling papers and laptops and coffees scream “Fuck you people!” and then walk out in unison… but I don’t think it’s in the cards.)

The good news is, we have signs of life!  We may see a unified opposition yet, at least on this issue.