Calls to Action on Woodworth Motion

Besides writing letters, there are some pretty interesting calls to action on the now nicknamed "Women Can't Be Trusted Motion" in which MP Woodworth proposes to make fetuses into persons. A Twitter feed asks that you tell anti-choice MPs everything about your reproductive health. It makes over-sharing useful. Find it at https://www.facebook.com/TellAntiChoicemPsEverything

Also knitters and textile artists are getting to the point creating nifty uteri, vulvas, and other lady parts and sending them to anti-choice MPs. Have a look at the group called "Womb Swarm Parliament" on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/354104927964655/

I'm getting my craft supplies out now, and I think I feel the need to share something about my last mammogram.

More arguments against Woodworth Motion

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has posted its list of arguments against the Woodworth motion, (and it is even more extensive than my letter to the PM that I included in my last post). In the ARCC article, you will find all the footnotes and references your heart desires to the source material. I was particularly happy to see the list of Supreme Court Challenges and the summary of why the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld a woman's right to choose.

By the way, I want to argue against using the language "reopen the debate." Let's get to the heart of the matter. They want to criminalize abortion. So let's all call it what it is. Don't say they want to reopen the debate; say they want to criminalize abortion. And don't forget that other word; misogyny. It's important not to pretend these things are something else, something less terrible, than what they actually are.

Now, go write your letters, go talk to people about this, and go have an impact on the world.

A letter against Woodworth's anti-choice motion

As you've heard by now, MP Stephen Woodworth's anti-choice motion is going forward in the house. If you don't know anything about it yet, keep reading.

For a pretty good overview, check out this article by Mercedes Allen in Rabble, which also includes the text of the motion.

I am sharing my own letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for you to use as a template for your own, to cut and paste and change as you see fit. The letter I have sent is below. Underneath that, you will find email addresses to the PM, Bob Rae, Nycole Turmel, and Elizabeth May and I also urge you to write to your own MP. Remember, the leader of the ND is about to change, so keep that in mind if you write after next week. It is important to get these letters in now. The motion will be considered in the House at the end of April. Here it is:

Dear Prime Minister,

Your fellow MP and Conservative member, the Honourable Mr. Woodworth, is asking Parliament to decide when a fetus becomes a human in Motion M 312. I urge you to reject this motion and to stop this attempt to infringe on the rights of women. You have promised Canadians repeatedly that you will not reopen the abortion debate. Unfortunately, that is what the passage of this motion will do. 

Mr. Woodworth argues that the Criminal Code bestows legal “human being” status on infants born alive and finds this problematic because if the “little toe” is still in the birth canal, the infant has no protection. His characterization misrepresents existing laws. The motion proposed by Mr. Woodworth can have only purpose, and that is to bring legal restriction to abortion services in Canada.

The Criminal Code section 223(1) states that “a child becomes a human being within the meaning of the Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not a) it has breathed; b) it has an independent circulation; or c) the navel string is severed.” To be clear, Section 223(1) conveys that a live born child, even if it hasn’t breathed, even if it hasn’t established independent circulation, and even if it is still attached to the mother by the umbilical cord, is a human being. Further, Mr. Woodworth is simply wrong to imply there is no legal protection to the infant during birth. The very next point in the Criminal Code, Section 223 (2) says that “a person commits homicide when he causes injury to a child before or during its birth as a result of which the child dies after becoming a human being.”

His “little toe” argument is a red herring. Even if what he says were true, which it is not, Mr. Woodworth is describing a situation which may exist for a split second in real life. Once the head and shoulders are delivered, the rest of the body is delivered very quickly. The toe does not linger in the birth canal. His musings are intended to make the public think that abortions are being performed on fetuses up to the due date of the pregnancy, and to provoke in Canadians an image of a fetus being terminated during delivery. No such thing happens.

The vast majority of abortions in Canada are performed during the first trimester. The practice, although not regulated by law, is regulated within the medical profession, where all medical procedures are best regulated. Second trimester abortions are rare, and most often performed in the presence of a severe fetal anomaly or when a threat to the life of the mother exists. Fewer than one percent of Canadian abortions are undertaken after 20 weeks, and none are performed on an elective basis after 24 weeks. To imply otherwise is disingenuous and even alarmist. 

The anti-choice movement’s concern for fetuses is one that can only be acted upon at the expense of the rights of women. Two persons cannot exist in one body and both have rights within that single body. This impossible situation threatens to take personhood away from the woman in order to give it to the fetus.  

If women do not have the right to exercise control over our own reproduction and our own bodies, we simply are not free. Control of our bodies would reside outside ourselves, in the hands of others whose ideas and beliefs we may not share and who cannot know our consciences or the circumstances of our own lives as we do.  

There are precedents that help us understand what happens when personhood is given to the fetus. In the United States, where personhood rights have been given to fetuses in 38 States, laws are used primarily to prosecute pregnant women who use drugs and alcohol, pregnant women who refuse a caesarean or who have a stillbirth or miscarriage. These cruel prosecutions scare pregnant women in need of prenatal care away from authority figures. A better option is to ensure women have access to all the health supports they need. 

Ironically, according to the Guttmacher Institute, limiting access to abortion does nothing to reduce abortion in the end. As the Guttmacher Institute notes, “Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates.”  (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html). Every country in the world in which abortion is illegal still has abortion. When abortion is illegal and clandestine, it is dangerous to the health of women and maternal deaths rise. Alternately, when abortion is legal and women have all the health supports they need, including unfettered access to contraception, abortion rates inevitably go down. 

Finally, if this motion were to pass, it cannot resolve any resulting conflict in rights between the pregnant woman and the fetus. It will muddy waters that have been relatively calm in Canada for over a generation. This is what it is meant to do. Our system, a system in which abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor and in which abortion is a regulated medical practice within the medical profession like all other medical practices, works. It works, except in the eyes of those who will not rest until abortion is illegal.

The people who wish to make abortion illegal would be happy to force their moral and religious agenda on all Canadians. Since the Morgentaler decision, a woman’s right to choose has been challenged in Parliament nearly forty times. These attempts to infringe on abortion rights are often couched in other terms, as is Mr. Woodworth’s motion. Even if any of them were to succeed, it is highly unlikely any attempt to take a woman’s right to control her body away from her will pass a constitutional challenge. But women would suffer in the meantime, and the fabric of Canadian society would be strained  as we currently see happening in the United States in which the debate over women’s health has reached absurd heights. The Supreme Court of Canada has already rightly determined that impeding a woman’s access to abortion violates her right to life, liberty, conscience, equality and security. Women are no less human now than we were when this ruling was made, no less in need of our rights, and no less in need of our rights when pregnant. Nothing has changed.

I urge you not to accept this attempt to re-open the abortion debate in Canada and not to allow this threat to women’s rights to go any further. We can trust women to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. Our current system has worked for over a generation. There is no reason to change it. I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Your name here (and don't forget your address)

To find your own MP, look here

To email the Prime Minister stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca

To email Bob Rae bob.rae@parl.gc.ca

To email Nycole Turmel Nycole.Turmel@parl.gc.ca

To email Elizabeth May

Elizabeth.May@parl.gc.ca

Added March 21: Here is another sample letter from ARCC that you might also consider using as your template.

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The Abortion Monologues is now an e-book. Look for it here on Smashwords.

National Day of Appreciation of Abortion Providers

March 10 is the day we pay tribute to abortion providers, remember those who have been killed, and thank those who continue to heroically provide this vital medical service to women. There is a wonderful piece in RH Reality Check today by Dr. Linda Prine of Physicians for Reproductive Choice, focussing on Dr. Tiller and talking about conditions today. 

Although the so-called "pro-life" movement continues to denouce violence and the killing of doctors, they also continue to provide a milieu in which this violence is tolerated if not actively encouraged. For example, see the article posted the other day about Dr. Mila Means and what she has gone through in attempting to fill Dr. Tiller's shoes. The article notes that when her plans to reopen an abortion clinic in Kansas leaked, "Posters circulated with her picture on one side scrawled with the words 'child abuser'; the other side urged protesters to 'reach out' to her at her home and office." That phrase "reach out" is utterly terrifying, particularly in an environment where the faces, names and home addresses of abortion doctors are posted online. We all know what the purpose of this is. It can only be to incite harassment and violence.

I look forward to the day when abortion providers, women's health providers, no longer have to work behind bullet proof glass to take care of us. And today I thank every provider, everyone who works in clinics and hospitals that respect women's reproductive rights and everyone who waves the pro-choice banner. You are all heroes to me.

Hate in America

I just read two articles back to back that need to be read back to back. The first is about Dr. Mila Means and how she has struggled to fill the void left in the provision of abortion services in Wichita Kansas after the murder of Dr. Tiller in his church by a bat-shit crazy anti-abortion zealot, of which there are many in Kansas. Dr. Means' life has been made a living hell by these people.

The second is about all the people who hate in America and how they are anti-American. I can't tell you how relieved I was to read this. It actually brought tears to my eyes. These are the people who have targetted Dr. Means and who are turning the United States into an inexplicable place, a place I thought could only exist in fiction. They are racist, classist, misogynist, homophobic haters. They hate science, they hate logic, they hate brown people, they hate gay people, they hate disobedient wives and sexually active daughters, they hate sex, they probably hate vegetarians. They hate. That's what they do. Why does anyone listen to them?

Call them what they are. Haters. It is my most sincere hope that America can be brought back from the brink, a brink that these haters keep trying to push it over. It is my most sincere hope that this hate stops spreading to Canada like the virus that it is. We see their tactics being used flagrantly here now. Rob "McCarthy" Anders calls veterans seeking homes for their unfortunate brethren Communists. Robo calls try to suppress the liberal vote. Parliament is prorogued. Dissent is squashed in hundreds of ways. It must stop.

The current state of abortion and access in Canada

Here is a very comprehensive article about abortion in Canada today by Sara Vitet at Capilano University and found on Canadian University Press Newswire. I have nothing else to say about it except please read it and keep yourself informed and up to date. And, thanks to Ms. Vitet for such a thorough article.

Pornography's Influence on the War on Women

I've been wondering lately about why the Virginia legislators thought it was acceptable to legislate transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions (or, in other words, demand the state sanctioned rape of a woman with a foreign object in response to her asserting her right to reproductive freedom) and why women expressed so little outrage about this. Maybe you think we've expressed lots of outrage. I don't think we've come close to expressing enough.


Today, my thoughts are on how pornography has both become part of the war on women and affected our response to it. 


About a month ago, I was at a fundraiser for a local sexual health organization. They were showing the documentary Miss Representation. It describes the portrayal of women in popular culture. It's a good film. I recommend seeing it. It doesn't go as far in its analysis as an earlier documentary (actually a series of four documentaries) by Jean Kilbourne called Killing us Softly. I recommend seeing these films too. Kilbourne, who is also interviewed in Miss Representation, has a much better take on pornography and makes the links between the portrayal of women in advertising and popular culture and the portrayal of women in pornography much clearer. Miss Representation soft pedals this a bit. I thought a lot about why as I was watching.


At the end of the film, there was a Q&A session in which a young woman announced herself as a "pro-pornography feminist." Ahhh, I thought. That's why. The creator of Miss Representation knows her audience, knows what young women today are thinking. She knows that there is this creature out there who calls herself a pro-pornography feminist. Pornography has gone mainstream, much moreso than in the pre-internet days when Kilbourne was making Killing Us Softly.


I'm generally not absolutist about much, but seriously, anyone who calls herself feminist and pro-pornography is confused about the basic ideas of feminism, or possibly about the meaning of pornography. Perhaps they are confusing pornography with erotica or with the notion of being "sex-positive."  Definitions are important here.  The word "erotica" is rooted in “eros” or “passionate love." It inlcudes positive choice, free will and the yearning for a particular person. It leaves open the question of gender.  There is no power imbalance in erotica – not even in the power of the gaze. In erotica, sexuality is celebrated. There is power with, not power over. There is mutuality, desire, respect.


Pornography lacks this. The word pornography is rooted in prostitution or female slavery. There is always a power imbalance, either explicitly depicted or in the gaze of the viewer/consumer. The word ends with the root meaning of “writing about” or “description of” which puts still more distance between the subject and object and replaces a spontaneous yearning for closeness with objectification and voyeurism. Pornography takes power away from women in sexual expression and asserts male supremacy. It is the outward expression of patriarchy and misogyny and turns women into objects to be fucked, existing only to enable sexual gratification. To be clear, in pornography, other men can also exist for men's sexual gratification. Anyone can be objectified and dominated. (And women can objectify others too.) But this is the key: pornography makes people into objects. It creates "the other" and the other's needs, wants and feelings are of no concern. Neither is their safety, psychologically or physically. In pornography, someone is always being exploited. That's what makes it pornography. Pornography is patriarchy and misogyny in action.


Feminism, as I've always understood it, is broadly about women's empowerment. So how can anyone call themselves a pro-pornography feminist? Similarly,  how can anyone be anti-choice and feminist? You can't claim feminism and at the same time claim that it is acceptable to impose your will over another woman.


As I was thinking about this, I read a timely post from "I Blame The Patriarchy" about pornography. I could direct you to the works of Andrea Dworkin and other feminist theorists, but if you want the short version, read this post. And I do urge you to read it. To quote the Spinster Aunt:

"Pornography is the graphic representation, not just of violence against women, but of male supremacy. It degrades all women. It erodes the humanity of all women. Porn use fetishizes violence and supports male supremacy. Porn is the expression of patriarchy. Porn use is the practice of patriarchy."

Spinster Aunt describes how we've been sold a terrible bill of goods. She writes:

"Convincing women that they are being unreasonable, that dudely porn use is natural, normal, and even necessary-for-his-health behavior, and therefore you should support his porn use, and by the way you’ll never even find a dude who doesn’t use porn — this is one of the most successful misogynist campaigns of the modern megatheocorporatocracy."

Our misogynist abusers have succeeded in convincing a generation of women, even women who call themselves feminist, that pornography is okay, it's natural, every man uses it, it's unreasonable to expect them not to, that women are empowered by using it too, and if we do expect something better, that is our problem, not theirs.

I'm wondering how thirty years of the pornification of our culture has aided and abetted the war on women and brought women onside in a war against our own selves. It's like the Stockholm Syndrome. Are we so accustomed now to being pornified, so coopted into believing that we must go along with our abusers, that we can no longer speak up against state sanctioned rape? Pornography is a tool of the oppressor. It is used to beat us into submission. Now we have elected officials saying it's okay for the state to rape women who don't behave as they think women should. These things have to be related. To quote Robin Morgan, "Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice."