Undermining democracy and human rights: A cautionary tale about anti-choice politics

Cross-posted from Rabble, February 7, 2014

Last week, Parliament and the pro-choice movement got a temporary reprieve from the relentless  onslaught of anti-choice motions and bills introduced by Conservative backbenchers who won't take Harper's "No abortion debate allowed" for an answer. Not a single one made the list of pending private members' business for this session.

The news must have come as a huge disappointment to the anti-choice movement, which had been eagerly anticipating the introduction of two explicit anti-choice motions that had already been fully prepared and announced in December by long-time Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin). So what happened?

Vellacott actually had a total of four private member items on the order paper. This forced him to make a "difficult decision," since only one item can proceed to second reading and a vote. On January 31, he chose to go with his Bill C-560, which would require judges to apply the principle of "equal parenting" in custody disputes unless there is proven abuse or neglect.

Vellacott's fourth item was a cloaked anti-choice motion. It would have made it easier to bulldoze just about any private member bill or motion through Parliament, no matter how offensive or illegitimate, by removing committee powers to deem them non-votable. Ironically, Vellacott called this a "democratic reform initiative." All three of his dropped motions can be viewed here.

One might wonder why Vellacott created this surplus of private member business to begin with, knowing he'd have to sideline three out of four items. The main clue is his announcement last July that he's stepping down from politics and will not run again in 2015. The motions therefore represent his last kick at the can, the "pro-life" legacy he wants to leave, and the final kudos he wants to bask in from the anti-choice movement.

Still, why bother with three extra motions that won't go anywhere? Likely because Vellacott is confident that they'll be back soon, even if he won't be: "[B]ased on considerations I have been a part of, I have good reason to believe that the other three items I have on the order paper will be picked up in due course by other good MPs who have spine and foresight." The wording hints that Vellacott himself is a member of this elite club of brave visionaries, and that he's been busy convincing the other members to boldly go forth into the future with his motions.

Vellacott has been an MP since 1997 and has a perfect "pro-life" record according to Campaign Life Coalition. Over the years, he has introduced six anti-choice private member bills, all with the same single-minded goal: to protect healthcare workers from any negative consequences of refusing to do their jobs if they object because of personal or religious beliefs. The last version was the most preposterous.

Returning to the "equal parenting" bill for a moment, it's notable that this bill is at least several degrees less contentious than abortion (although it makes one wonder about Vellacott's possible affinity with "Men's Rights Activists"). One might also wonder whether Vellacott was the object of a talking-to by some higher-up who may have been anxious to avoid yet another iteration of the dreaded "abortion debate."

Since Vellacott's three dropped motions may indeed be coming back, are they worth worrying about? It's almost certain the two explicit anti-choice motions would never go anywhere even if they were introduced, but the cloaked motion to remove the ability of the Committee to veto private members' business, M-490, is perhaps a bit of a wild card. Vellacott claims that:

The motion would fix a current vulnerability in the system that has led to a situation where a small group of MPs are able to control, often from behind closed doors, what issues are and are not allowed to be voted on in the House of Commons. … The motion I am proposing is a bulwark against arbitrary and capricious decision-making when it comes to Private Members Business. Were this motion to pass, decisions on the votability of private members' bills and motions would be made in a fair and objective fashion, free from any sort of political interference or shenanigans.

Really though, the shenanigans are mostly on the side of anti-choice politicians like Vellacott (and Stephen Woodworth, Mark Warara, and others), who continually put forward these hopeless motions and bills against the wishes of Harper, and occasionally throw a hissy fit when they fail to go anywhere. Or, when a bill start to go somewhere like in 2008 with Ken Epp's Bill C-484, it creates division in the caucus, a media circus, and a headachy distraction from the government's agenda. Instead of getting the message though, anti-choice stalwarts in Harper's caucus carry on like they're more determined than ever -- not unlike true fanatics.

With his M-490 motion, Vellacott is complaining about the treatment of Mark Warawa's Motion 408 last March by the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Private Members' Business. That motion, to "condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination" was deemed non-votable because it failed to meet two of the four votability criteria -- so it wasn't exactly an "arbitrary and capricious" decision.

Bills and motions must not concern questions that are outside federal jurisdiction, or are substantially the same as ones already voted on in the current session of Parliament. The Subcommittee members said that abortion is healthcare and therefore under provincial jurisdiction, and that Stephen Woodworth's Motion 312 was also about abortion and was voted on just six months previously, in September 2012.

The other two criteria are that the bill or motion must not "clearly violate" the Constitution Acts and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that it must not be on the same topic as items currently on the Order Paper or Notice Paper as items of Government business.

Vellacott's motion would have dispensed entirely with the constitutional and Charter violation criterion, as well as the one requiring it to be within federal jurisdiction. One can only imagine the kind of odious private member business from backbenchers that would have to be "debated" in Parliament without the Charter criterion in place to deflect them.

Ironically, Warawa's Motion 408 wasn't deemed non-votable based on the Charter criterion, so Vellacott's motion would have made no difference to the result anyway. Vellacott even retained in his motion the criterion that bills or motions could not be "substantially the same" as ones already voted on in the current session, even though that was probably the key criterion that deep-sixed M-408. The Subcommittee's decision was made unanimously by three MPs from three parties (Liberal, NPD, and Conservative), which weakens Vellacott's accusations of political interference. Finally, although the Subcommittee's "expert analyst" had advised the members that Motion 408 was votable under all criteria, the analyst's interpretation was nowhere to be found in the criteria's straightforward language and had no evidence or precedent to support it. Also, his advice was non-binding, so the MPs were free to discount it.

Vellacott's "democratic reform initiative" in M-490 was designed to undermine democracy and remove basic safeguards that protect human rights and other constitutional guarantees, in order to make it easier to smuggle in anti-choice bills and motions.

It's worth remembering that the anti-choice movement has never been a friend of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Let's also remember the decidedly undemocratic motivations behind this motion should it arise again in Parliament.

In the meantime, the pro-choice movement will be happy to say goodbye to Maurice Vellacott.

Motion 408 and sex-selection abortion: Pretending to care about women

Cross-posted from rabble.ca

With several female MPs at his side, Conservative MP Mark Warawa held a press conference Wednesday on Parliament Hill to promote his Motion 408, which would "condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination." How ironic, considering that his Conservative government has been busy institutionalizing discrimination against women since 2006, while Warawa and the rest of the anti-choice movement wants to send women back to the days of unsafe criminal abortions or mandatory motherhood.

It's very odd to see Warawa's sudden concern over the abortion of only female fetuses, when we know he hates all abortions.

In the U.S., sex-selection abortions of male fetuses appear to outnumber those of females, and it may not be much different in Canada. By trying too hard to appear sympathetic to women, Warawa falls into the trap of seeming to condone such abortions of male fetuses, while also managing to give his motion an unsavoury racist taint by focusing attention on ethnic communities in Canada that allegedly abort females for cultural reasons.

Since Warawa and his Greek Chorus of supporters are all fervently anti-choice (including Conservative MPs Joy Smith, Stella Ambler, Kelly Block, and let's not forget Rona Ambrose with her infamous tweet), what's the real motivation here? NDP leader Thomas Mulcair nailed it. He called the motion another attempt to re-open the abortion debate, pointing to the fact that it was introduced immediately after Parliament defeated Motion 312 on September 26.

Canada's anti-choice movement has learned to be stealthy and not attack abortion rights head-on. The repeated claims by Warawa and the women MPs that the motion is not about recriminalizing abortion, and their refusals to even discuss abortion, are simply not believable. Obviously, the goal of this motion is to try to increase public disapproval of abortion and cast doubt on women's capacity to make responsible decisions. Success would help pave the way for a later bill to ban sex-selection abortion, and ultimately to ban all abortions.

Warawa wants Parliament to "condemn this worst form of discrimination against females," which he calls "gender violence -- gendercide."

But women are the ones having sex-selection abortions, which means Warawa is accusing women of violence and gendercide -- and courtesy of MP Stella Ambler -- "atrocities." Ending discrimination against women does not start with making nasty accusations against them. Yes, sex selection can be a sexist act, but it's nonsensical to protect women from discrimination by restricting their rights. In India, laws against sex-selection abortion cause women to 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.

Warawa may be wrongly assuming that women are always coerced into aborting female fetuses. Of course, abortions are not something women want to do -- they make this difficult decision for one reason or another -- family needs, their personal circumstances, their health, or their own inability or reluctance to be a parent. As blogger Jane Cawthorne explains, having an abortion for reasons of sex selection is not much different than having one for financial reasons, or because the baby will be disabled. The answer is not to coerce a woman into giving birth to an unwanted girl just "to make some sort of anti-sexist point." Instead, we must strive to "make the world a place where little girls are as wanted as little boys, where the systemic discrimination of women is a thing of the past."

The vast bulk of this systemic discrimination arises directly or indirectly from women's childbearing capacity. This makes control over fertility the bedrock of women's rights. It's not possible for women to fully exercise any other fundamental right if they don't own their own bodies, and that entails the right to contraception and abortion.

In a recent rabble piece on the issue of sex selection, Anjali Kulkarni et al. pointed out the centrality of a reproductive justice framework for the pro-choice movement, which promotes a range of women's rights from different cultural perspectives, and doesn't look at abortion rights in isolation:

"While up-in-arms to defend 'female fetuses,' the Conservatives are silent about discrimination affecting women -- missing and murdered aboriginal women and the denial of indigenous sovereignty, criminalization and cuts to refugees, disability oppression, lack of childcare and pay equity, homophobia and transphobia, defunding of women's groups nationally and internationally, and threats to abortion rights."

Warawa's focus on sex-selection abortion to the exclusion of all other problems affecting women exposes his hypocrisy. While professing deep concern over discrimination against women and girls, the actions of his Conservative government since 2006 tell a very different tale. Murray Dobbin has called Harper's assault on women's rights "one of the most dramatic examples of his wider assault on democracy."

Let's start by recalling that Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks women's rights organizations are a "left-wing fringe group."

Under his reign, the Conservatives cancelled the universal childcare program, abandoned pay equity legislation, closed down most of the regional Status of Women offices, changed Status of Women funding criteria to end support for advocacy or lobbying for law reform, cut the Court Challenges Program, barred public sector workers from making pay equity complaints, refused to fund safe abortion for women in developing countries, slashed funding from dozens of women's advocacy groups, eliminated the mandatory long-form census, increased the age of eligibility for Old Age Security, destroyed the gun registry, failed to hold a public inquiry into missing Aboriginal women, cut Aboriginal health services, and allowed votes on several anti-choice private member's bills and motions.

Now let's take a look at how women are treated by the anti-choice movement in general. Warawa himself started his anti-choice political career as a councillor for the City of Abbotsford, B.C. In 1999 and 2000, he sponsored motions that granted permission to the Abbotsford Right-to-Life Society to erect an anti-abortion display of thousands of crosses in a private field next to the freeway, each cross representing an abortion. The display has been up every year since then, despite complaints from female passersby who are traumatized at this public co-opting of their personal abortion experience. Anti-choice people have a way of misappropriating a woman's private experience that is absolutely none of their business, and making invisible the woman's own feelings, wishes and experience. It's extremely disrespectful -- and discriminatory.

Anti-choice laws are responsible for the deaths of 47,000 women a year in developing countries and the injuries of over 8 million, because women are forced to resort to unsafe illegal abortion. Recently, a sick pregnant woman in Ireland was refused an abortion to save her life because of Ireland's strict abortion laws. She died, because the anti-choice position boils down to the view that fetuses are worth more than women. Similar well-publicized deaths of women who were denied abortion have also occurred in Poland, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and other countries with restrictive abortion laws.

Even in developed countries with more liberal laws, women suffer and their rights are sacrificed. In the United States, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women "can now say for sure that feticide laws, and anti-abortion and other measures designed to establish 'personhood' for fertilized eggs, are providing the basis for the punishment of pregnant women whether they are seeking to end a pregnancy or go to term." In Canada, when Mulroney's Conservative government tried to pass a new abortion law in 1990, a Toronto woman tried to self-abort and died. She apparently believed that abortion was already criminalized -- the prized goal of anti-choicers in order to "protect" women.

The United Nations recently declared contraception to be a basic human right. Yet, anti-choice groups largely oppose birth control because they believe women's purpose is to have babies and sex should always be open to procreation. Meanwhile, lack of access to birth control leads to large numbers of unnecessary maternal deaths, and extreme poverty for women and their over-burdened families. Family planning can prevent one in three maternal deaths by delaying motherhood, spacing births, avoiding unintended pregnancies and abortions, and stopping childbirth when women have reached their desired family size.

The anti-choice movement often accuses pro-choice folks of promoting a "culture of death," with our alleged zeal for killing babies. But the real culture of death -- the one without quotation marks -- is the one waged by right-wing religious fundamentalists, who elevate the contents of women's wombs above that of women's own lives and health and rights. We vehemently "condemn this worst form of discrimination against females."