In the aftermath of last week's resounding
defeat of Motion 312
in the House of Commons by a vote of 203 to 91, the pro-choice movement
has not been celebrating. No doubt, some activists downed a glass of
champagne or two, but only because they really
needed a drink.
The defeat was the biggest loss of an anti-choice motion or bill in
Canadian history. So why the tears in our beer? Blogger Fern Hill
watched the vote and
describes her reaction:
"As MPs bobbed up and down for yeas and nays, my head was spinning
and my gut was clenched. I quickly lost track of the count, but it was
crystal clear that this was no crushing defeat. There were waaaay too
many yeas. I felt I was going to throw up. My reaction surprised me. It
was visceral and emotional and not too rational. When the count was
final, I was dazed. Then I saw this tweet from JJ [@jjhippie]: 'Relieved
but still feel like puking. That was like waiting for a decision from a
Therapeutic Abortion Committee: remember those?'"
Indeed, we do remember those. Before 1988, a woman had to appear
before a committee of strangers -- three doctors, almost always male,
often anti-choice -- who exercised total veto power over her most
personal and life-changing decisions. Why shouldn't women be angry and
disgusted to watch women's basic human rights being put back on
Parliament's agenda, almost 25 years after they won the right to
abortion on request, and 27 years after they won equality? Why
shouldn't women feel threatened and unsafe at the spectacle of 91
members of Parliament, including the Minister who's supposed to defend
their rights, displaying their official disdain for women's rights to
bodily security, life and liberty?
The motion, which wanted a Parliamentary committee to examine whether
fetuses should be deemed as "human beings" under our Criminal Code,
should never have been deemed votable to begin with. Not only would it
have threatened
women's constitutional rights, it posed questions that the
courts have already decided -- fetuses are not legal persons under our Charter, Quebec's Civil Code, or common law.
Of course, anti-choice MPs have become quite clever at hiding the
true intent of their motions and bills, because to have any chance of
success, they can no longer attack women's rights and abortion rights
directly. When a motion is worded innocuously or a bill pretends to
protect women, however, Parliamentarians may be fooled into taking it at
face value. But the main goal of such initiatives is to establish a
toehold from which to restrict abortion as far as possible -- ideally to
ban it completely without any exceptions and force women back into a
child-bearing role. Parliament has no obligation to waste its time on
such nonsense.
Perhaps it would behoove Parliamentarians to be more aware of which
of their colleagues are hardline anti-choicers, to help them more easily
see through the pretense of their colleagues' bills and motions. The
vote on Motion 312 handed us a gift in that regard -- now we know
exactly who these hardliners are. For years, the Abortion Rights
Coalition of Canada has been monitoring the
voting records and public statements of MPs
around the abortion issue, and listing MPs according to their revealed
stance on abortion: pro-choice, anti-choice, or unknown. Of the 106
anti-choice MPs on ARCC's list
prior to the vote, 75 MPs voted Yes and 29 voted No (2 were absent),
while 16 of the 54 "unknown stance" MPs voted Yes. None have any excuse
for their Yes vote other than fervent anti-choice beliefs, because each
one was inundated with letters from our supporters explaining the
potential consequences of the motion and asking them to oppose it to
protect women's rights.
These 91 anti-choice MPs need to learn the following lessons:
fertility control is the foundation of women's rights, women cannot
achieve equality without contraception and legal abortion, and women's
rights are human rights. MPs' personal views against those rights --
even if most of their constituents agree -- never gives them license to
vote against human rights in Parliament.
Canadians also witnessed the scandal of 10 members of Harper's
cabinet voting against their own government and leader. Since the
"Harper government" had promised to oppose the motion, Harper is
accountable for the dishonourable behaviour of his ministers and should
discipline them accordingly. In particular, if the Minister for Status
of Women, Rona Ambrose, refuses to step down after the many loud
calls for her resignation, Harper should personally hand her a pink slip.
In all the spilt ink and raised voices over Ambrose's Yes vote, one
telling detail was overlooked by most. Ambrose justified her vote by
tweeting her concern over discrimination against girls because of
sex-selection abortion. But why would Ambrose bring up that issue when M-312 had nothing to do with it? Ruth Farquhar astutely
notes: "I guess she was getting ready for the next attack on women's rights."
That attack came the very next day. Conservative
MP Mark Warawa introduced Motion 408
asking Parliament to "condemn discrimination against females occurring
through sex-selective pregnancy termination." Since Ambrose has long
graced the pages of ARCC's anti-choice MP list, her tweet certainly
raises a few questions worth asking: Is she also a member of the
infamous
Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, which works to advance anti-choice initiatives? And did she know about or have any direct role in Warawa's motion?
Of course, the timing of the new motion is a transparently
manipulative ploy by the anti-choice movement to keep the momentum going
after losing Motion 312, as well as try to put pro-choicers on the
defensive. But we've been
through this issue before and the
pro-choice position on sex-selection abortion is consistent and principled.
Condemning the tools used to carry out sex selection is an unwise
distraction. The problem is not abortion, ultrasounds, or urine and
blood tests that predict gender -- the problem is deeply ingrained
societal prejudices that impels some people to choose boy babies over
girl babies. The experience of China and India has shown the
unworkability of laws criminalizing sex-selection abortion. Such laws
are paternalistic and contradictory because they purport to protect
women by restricting their rights, when in fact they compound
discrimination against women. Many women will resort to unsafe and
illegal abortion to avoid having a girl, and some may even face abuse
and violence from their families if they bear a girl. Other women may
not want to raise a girl knowing she will be
discriminated against in a patriarchal culture.
The only solution to sex selection is to counter sexist beliefs and
practices through public education, community-led initiatives, and
progressive social policy that advances women's rights and status.
In any case, Canada does not appear to have a significant problem
with the sex selection of female fetuses, certainly nothing like India
and China. Even if it happens in some ethnic communities on a small
scale, it would likely be confined mostly to new immigrants, meaning the
practice would naturally peter out after one or two generations. The
entire issue is really a tempest in a teapot -- another covert
anti-choice attempt to attack abortion rights in general, just like
Motion 312.
Coming back to our reaction to the motion vote, journalist Chantal Hébert
chastised pro-choice advocates,
saying they "would not know a victory if it's staring them in the
face." True, the vote was a major defeat in a majority Conservative
government, even beating the previous record of 95 votes for the
"coerced abortion" bill in 2010, when the Conservatives only had a
minority. Wouldn't it be nice to believe that someday we will look back
and see this vote as a pivotal turning point in the abortion "debate"
-- the point of no return to the bad old days of mandatory motherhood
and criminal abortion?
However, Hébert compared the abortion debate to that of capital
punishment, forgetting that the opposition to abortion is far stronger
and more determined and fanatical than the support for capital
punishment. We must not forget that women's freedom is what most
anti-choicers dislike more than anything else. Cracking down on women's
rights, including their sexuality and access to health care -- is the
favourite strategy used by fundamentalists everywhere to gain power.
Eternal vigilance is required to keep a lid on them.
The reaction of Canada's pro-choice movement to the vote does not
reflect short-sighted ingratitude -- it reflects a keen understanding of
the relentless risks to women's fundamental human rights and a
determination to fight any inroad.
