"Nearly half of all Canadians today don't want any legal restrictions on abortion."
This is first and last a health care issue and no one's business but the woman's and her doctors. It is beyond ridiculous that anyone thinks the legal system has any place in my "business"
Shouldn't we have constitutional talks? It's been sixteen years since we've had negotiations among the provinces and feds. How about Meech III? I'm kidding.
Coyne, not to put too fine a point upon it, is making social mischief with his suggestion.
That's exactly what he's doing and I'm a tad surprised, but not really.
When Canadians refuse to answer questions definitively, it means that the question itself is illegitimate.
Fired off to Maclean's this afternoon:
RE: Andrew Coyne's ''It's Time to Talk About Abortion,'' July 21, 2008.
Andrew has done a fine job of explicating the precarious legal limbo that Canadian women are in with respect to their reproductive rights.
However he errs when he reports that Bill C484, commonly known as the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, “mentions the fetus.”
It does not.
Instead, it refers, throughout, to “the child.”
It is this language that has, as Coyne puts it, “the pro-choice movement rushing to the barricades.” That’s because “the child’’ confers personhood on a fetus which, according to the law, does not become a human being until “it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.”
Should C-484 pass, that blows the back door wide open to judgements that would return women to back alleys.
Antonia Zerbisias
Antonia:
With respect, Canadian women aren't in a "legal limbo" regarding reproductive rights. Those rights remain largely outside the legal framework, as rights should. But some of them will be back in hell, not limbo, if we get another abortion law, no matter how "liberal."
I think we should have a national referendum on both C-484 and whether we should re-open the abortion debate -- but only if:
1) The anti-choice movement solemnly promises to permanently STFU if it doesn't go their way, and
2) Only women of reproductive age get to vote in it. WTH business is it of the estrogen-challenged like myself?
Im pro-choice and dont necessarily think we need to have any abortion laws in Canada (like you said late term abortions are rare and not every "moral" issue needs to be decided by government) but I have a few issues with your post:
1) The 49% figure is one poll based on one particularly worded question. There are others that provide different results: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Abo...a#Opinion_polls.
2) Im surprised someone concerned by the democratic deficit of FPTP (http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com/2007/10/
democracy-and-our-broken-system.html) is so willing to accept as "democratic" the Senate shutting down a bill passed by the house).
3) If we needed a "broad public consensus" on issues to pass laws homosexuality (not to speak of gay marriage) probably only would have been legalized a few years ago. We probably also wouldnt have trade unions for that matter(which I know you're fond of).
I dont know why I argue against posts I agree with. I just like Andrew Coyne.
Dr. D,
I am not sure they aren't in a legal limbo since so much is still open to interpretation.
Consider: If a bill like C-484 passes, and some judge comes along and see a fetus as a child, well, then ...
Doesn't that make for a limbo?
Otherwise, why are we so worked up about 484 and C-537?
You chewing gum analogy is a weak one I believe, only because chewing gum has never been prohibited here. Abortion has.
(My typos are unforgivable.)
Antonia:
C-484 will (I believe) open the door to a recriminalization of abortion. But it could have a similar effect if there were already liberal abortion laws on the books. My only point was that "legal limbo" suggests something framed by law, if not in itslef law. In the current case, abortion rights are outside the legal framework, where I believe they should remain.
My chewing gum analogy was simply to expose the distinction without a difference that Coyne is presenting: "not lawful, merely not unlawful."
KC:
A few quick points.
1) The Senate vote, as I explained, didn't have to be the end of the matter. But the Mulroney government, after three tries, saw that as closure. It made the decision to let the matter drop. That's how democracy, or Parliamentary democracy at least, works.
2)Which poll are you drawing attention to? The more recent ones seem close enough.
3) I don't understand your point about homosexuality and trade unions. I'm not arguing for consensus. I'm arguing against abortion legislation when there's no consensus. Trade unions won recognition strikes and were broadly based: legislation came afterwards, really (in my view) to ensnare them in a legal framework. As for homsexuality, laws making it illegal were abolished in the 'sixties. There was no consensus to keep them. Am I missing your point?
Eamon - You might have been tongue-in-cheek with your suggestion of a referendum, but just in case you weren't, I must respectfully disagree.
Reproductive choice is a human right, and human rights should never be put to a referendum. I don't want a lot of total strangers (or anyone other than me, for that matter) deciding what kind of reproductive choices I should have -- it's nobody's business. Referenda are for things that affect all citizens, not human rights and personal issues.
As for C-484, many (if not most) people aren't informed enough about that bill and its potential horrendous repercussions to vote on it.
Dawg,
1) Democracy, and the way our democratic institutions work in practice are different. To use your FPTP example. A majority government that won 38% of the vote is democratic in the sense that thats the way our institutions work but on a philosophical level it is anythin but. An argument could be made that the "democratic" will of Canadians manifested itself in a 140-131 vote in favour of restrictions of abortion that was squelched by an undemocratic institution (the Senate). From that perspective our lack of abortion laws is more a reflection of our undemocratic institutions than our democratic will... I think I see where you are going though.
2) I put a link in there. One of the most noteworthy is the 2005 Environics poll--whose wording was a little skewed too--but suggested that 60% of Canadians thought a fetus should be protected after 6 months. Polls being polls and all. Just the other week I saw two national polls--one showing a majority of Canadians support a carbon tax and the other showing a majority of Canadians wanted government to take action to reduce gas prices even if it meant running a deficit.
3) Maybe Im misunderstanding you. But there was no "consensus" to change the laws to legalize homosexuality, or to give trade unions collective bargaining rights. Both were divisive and hard fought for. Both were positive advancements IMO but there certainly wasnt a "consensus" in favour of changing the law.
KC:
JUst on the homosexuality issue: laws against homosexuality were repealed in Trudeau's 1968 omnibus bill to amend the Criminal Code.
Now, this is important: he didn't bring in a law absent a consensus; he abolished a law for which there was no consensus. Homosexuality in Canada now, to use Coyne's vocabulary, is not lawful, merely not unlawful. On reflection, that would have been a far better example than my gum-chewing one.
Gotcha... so no consensus is required to change the status quo; only a consensus to criminalize something.
Precisely. Or, more precisely: if the citizenry doesn't agree that something should be criminalized--it shouldn't be.
If only that standard werem applied to marijuana we wouldnt have to spend billions of dollars punishing people for a non-crime.
Yup. Latter-day Prohibition.
Dawg:
Excellent pillorying of a chronically self-impressed dork. But...
You say that Coyne's "conservative credentials" are "impeccable". In fact, they are not at all, and the argument you critique is typical in that it reflects the man's abiding commitment to post-Enlightenment liberal rationalism.
Like all such liberals, Coyne requires that the full range of all "natural rights" be excavated from the depths of the human psyche (through a process of perpetual deliberative de-sublimation) and then codified in a binding, constitutional document. Only then, he argues implicitly, will the undecidability and spontaneity with which real conservatives are comfortable but which is an affront to the liberal urge to bring every aspect of the human being under techno-rational control be tamed.
I can't stand to see Coyne and his free-market fundamentalist, libertarian-continentalist ilk referred to as "conservative". They are about as conservative as were Thomas Paine and Robespierre.
Re: “... the January 1988 Supreme Court decision that struck down Canada's abortion law.”
Not all of Canada's abortion laws have been struck down. Canada still has an abortion law.
Within the meaning of the Canadian Criminal Code, a “child becomes a human being” “during its birth” as a human being. The Criminal Code recognizes a “child” in “a living state” in the “body of its mother” “before” its birth as a human being.
A child, in the body of its mother, within the meaning of the Criminal Code, is that which could completely proceed, in a living state, from the body of its human mother, whether or not (a) it could ever breathe; (b) it could ever have an independent circulation; or (c) the navel string is severed.
Section 218 of the Criminal Code states:
“Every one who unlawfully abandons or exposes a child who is under the age of ten years, so that its life is or is likely to be endangered or its health is or is likely to be permanently injured,
(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding eighteen months.”.
It is unlawful in Canada to abandon or expose a child so that its life is endangered. Aborting a child involves abandoning or exposing a child so that its life is endangered. Thus, an artificially induced abortion of a child is unlawful in Canada.
People should have the “right to choose” to enforce Section 218 of the Canadian Criminal Code.
A national referendum on abortion only if it is restricted to women of reproductive age? Probably a bad move, Eamon. A front-page Globe national poll back in June 1984 (I think it was) showed that Canadian men were in general more liberal (pro-choice) than women. It's likely men remain more pro-choice. I've many times taught a university course on moral issues, including abortion; while only a small portion of students are strongly "pro-life", almost without exception those strongly anti-abortion students are female. So if you want to pass a pro-choice law, make sure to include the men.
JJ: "Reproductive choice is a human right, and human rights should never be put to a referendum." I agree in principle that human rights should not be subject to override by referendum. But you're begging the question here. How do we decide whether abortion should be regarded as a human right? The matter is contested. In a democracy, no issue is ever off the table once and for all, nor should it be. Andrew Coyne is just engaging in the rough-and-tumble of politics -- but this is a fight I doubt he will win.
A national referendum on abortion only if it is restricted to women of reproductive age?
Well, that leaves out all the women who fought for abortion rights through the 60s, 70s and 80s, doesn't it? I can't see how it's enforceable anyway. What's a reproductive age? Who is going to check? How?
And thanks David Wozney for that. I still believe that we are in legal limbo and it is only because nobody wants to open this Pandora's Box that it remains that way.
Aeolus: sovereignty of person seems like a pretty fundamental right to me...
David: So you've redefined unborn fetuses as children? When did that get written into law then?
What was that? Never you say..
Ah, so your argument is baseless you say?
Ah..
Next.
You know, I was thinking of adding a disclaimer, but decided not to. So that there's no doubt about the referendum thing:
I WAS JOKING!!!!!!!
But just to belabor a silly point: I restricted it to women of reproductive age, because they're the ones with a serious stake in the outcome. The rest of us, not so much.
But since it was a joke, it really doesn't matter.
And so the abortion debate we're not having continue.
Section 223, of the Canadian Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46, refers to “a child before or during its birth” as a human being. Section 223 also refers to a “child” in “a living state” in the “body of its mother”. Section 243 indicates that it is possible for a “child" to have “died before, during or after birth”.
One-note Wozney strikes again.
Greater and smarter LEGAL minds with more knowledge of laws, statutes, etc. than you do - the Supreme Court of Canada Justices - considered the case brought before them, and passed judgement.
Abortion is a medical intervention; it is available through health care providers and that is appropriate.
You don't support it? Then don't have one.
You don't want to beat your spouse? Then don't. But don't tell me what to do with mine. Please respect my sovereignty.
I am pro-choice (on abortion, not spouse-beating), but I find many arguments advanced in favour of choice to be less than compelling, either because they beg the question or because they include questionable premises. I am pro-choice on abortion for much the same reason that I am anti-choice on beating spouses or killing animals: the right to swing one's fists ends where the face or body of someONE else (not someTHING else) begins.
deBeauxOs: Those so-called “Supreme Court of Canada Justices” have stated their allegiance to Elizabeth the Second.
Elizabeth the Second is not Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, contrary to the requirement in this Fifth Schedule, which states:
“Oath of Allegiance
I A.B. do swear, That I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
Note. The Name of the King or Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the Time being is to be substituted from Time to Time, with proper Terms of Reference thereto.”.
The provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick expressed their desire to be federally united into one Dominion under the Crown of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”, not the Crown of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, according to the British North America Act, 1867.
Eamon - I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you might have been joking, but when it comes to this particular topic, you never know. People say some pretty effed-up things about it. (Example, this guy above.)
Aeolus - "You don't want to beat your spouse? Then don't. But don't tell me what to do with mine. Please respect my sovereignty."
Not an apt analogy. Self-ownership doesn't extend to wives or any other person. Your body is your property, your wife's or husband's body is not, it's their property. Therefore it doesn't compromise your sovereignty if someone objects to how you are treating someone else's property.
And further up, you said
"How do we decide whether abortion should be regarded as a human right?"
Self-ownership. Every individual owns their own body and everything attached to it.
Oh David Wozney, leave off with your ignorant batshit.
I do love the fact that when the Senate blew off the last attempt to pass a Bill regarding abortion, it did so with the help of Conservative Senators who were unhappy with the legislation because it didn't criminalize all abortion but left them available on a pretty broad (though still unacceptable)basis. The Conservative Senators wanted the whole deal, abortion is criminal period.
They're willing to settle for less now. It's called incrementalism. But they're not fooling anyone, much, I hope.
Antonia:
What would the ideal state of affairs be, then, legally speaking? Do you want an abortion law? If so, what would it look like?
Apparently Mr. Wozney does Stock Day one better. Day thinks humans walked with dinosaurs. Mr. Wozney believes that there were no dinosaurs.
JJ:
Every individual owns their own body and everything attached to it.
How frothingly libertarian of you. You would fit right in at SDA with that one. However, I doubt you would command a consensus on the proposition that a late term viable foetus equates to a tumour anymore than the radical anti-abortionist commands one by equating an embryo with a human being.
The interesting thing about the Blackstone quote I cited below is that it seems in the 17-18th century the law found a position that corresponded more or less to what folks actually sense, intuit, respect and fear in the existentially miraculous journey from orgasm to birth, while we modern folks are stuck between rigid hyper-rational ideological poles that turn off many in equal measure.
Peter,
No one at SDA is a libertarian. Most of those mouth breathers would support re-criminalizing abortion. They are all angry authoritarian prigs.
Don't insult real libertarians with that association.
"I doubt you would command a consensus on the proposition that a late term viable foetus equates to a tumour"
Utter nonsense. It is still part of the mother, but, that being said, late term viable fetuses are NOT ABORTED. Lets try for some intellectual honesty here and stop talking about things that DO NOT HAPPEN.
As I said in the other thread, women in Canada, through free and individual actions and choice, have exactly matched Blackstone's ideas exactly, without the need for laws or interference in their decision by third parties. Without legislation, they have, in the eyes of the vast majority of Canadians, done the "right thing".
So why then, do we need a law? Just be cause we don't have one? We don;t have a law against drinking battery acid or shoving knitting needles up your nose either. Do we need laws to prevent these thing that people do not do as well?
"Every individual owns their own body and everything attached to it."
Peter, if you have a problem with that statement, I suggest you don't sign you organ donor card. If a woman cannot control her body for the purpose of being pregnant, you can't control it for the purpose of keeping your kidneys. As soon as the state can control any part of your body, it can control the whole thing.
Slavery, in short.
You may not like or agree what other people do to their bodies, but since its their bodies and not yours, it is (or should be) none of your business. Perhaps if we got rid of a few more laws that tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies - drugs, marriage, health etc - we would have a far better society.
Just because we don't have a law, doesn't mean we should.
while we modern folks are stuck between rigid hyper-rational ideological poles that turn off many in equal measure.
What hyper-rational ideological poles? And how do you know the "turned off" are in equal measures?
Sounds like bullshit, Peter.
"the existentially miraculous journey from orgasm to birth"
Perhaps it should be a criminal offence to abort an orgasm then?
RE: What would the ideal state of affairs be, then, legally speaking? Do you want an abortion law? If so, what would it look like?
You know, Dr. Dawg, that is an excellent question. I will discuss that next week while on vacation with some girlfriends who are all judges.
Just because we don't have a law, doesn't mean we should.
Pretty much says it all.
Chet:
Precisely. My chewing gum analogy may not have been the most apt to make my point. Contraception and homosexuality come to mind. But the main point, of course, is that most of what we do is outside the law. To bring any of it into the law's purview requires a solid public policy rationale. Coyne fails to provide anything of the kind.
"Just because we don't have a law, doesn't mean we should."
Precisely. If anything, our accidental experiment in 20 years of "lawless abortion" has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that we don't need an abortion law. Women & doctors have the situation well in hand, and are doing a good job of it: abortion rates are steadily declining, and without the imposition of any regressive laws.
But in spite of the overwhelming evidence that no law is needed, the thought that women and doctors could successfully police themselves is still anathema to these authoritarian, law-happy idiots.
They don't understand that just because a thing isn't illegal, it doesn't necessarily follow that people will be doing it (ie aborting 8-month fetuses).
OK, now cue all the "Then why should we have laws against stealing if people can police themselves?" arguments.
Sigh.
Peter - "I doubt you would command a consensus on the proposition that a late term viable foetus equates to a tumour"
Did I say that?
More to the point, who's aborting "late-term viable fetus(es)" anyway? Do you seriously believe that just because there's no law against it, people are doing it? Please. No doctor in Canada would abort a late-term viable fetus, and it's disingenuous to suggest that we need a law because it *might* happen.
One law I'd like to see regarding abortion is that anyone who needs one should be able to get one, within a reasonable distance of her home. Did you know there are no abortion providers in PEI?
Mike:
I agree that late term abortions are rare and constitute a very, very tiny proportion of abortions (although they do occur), in no small part because hardly any mothers at that stage see their fetus' as bodily appendages over which they exercise absolute rights of ownership and disposal. But so what, only an infintesimal number of new mothers kill their newborns, but we still are horrified by and prohibit infanticide, notwithstanding the likes of Peter Singer. And if it is so rare as to be almost insignificant, why are you battling so hard to keep it unsanctioned when it is the trigger point of doubt and second guessing for so many? I really don't believe those doubts stem from widely held "life begins at conception" convictions, I think they stem from an eyes-wide-open recognition of the nature of a third trimester fetus. To but it bluntly, it is the stage where people stop thinking of it as a fetus. Leaving aside dubious concerns over slippery slopes, I'm having a hard time understanding why you and so many would go to the barricades over this.
Peter:
It seems to me that we need more information about late abortions. My understanding is that they are performed in hospitals for bona fide medical reasons, to save the life of the mother. They aren't done in clinics. I think it is risky to assume that these are cases of uncomplicated choice.
Very few abortions are performed after 20 weeks - less than 1% and I've heard more like .5%. After 26 weeks, they're even less common, for obvious reasons I think, one being that it can be risky for a woman to have an abortion after that time. The reasons are, most commonly, severe fetal abnormality for things that can't be diagnosed early in the term; risk to the mother's health, as in when women are diagnosed with cancer and must undergo chemotherapy; teen pregnancies that aren't identified till later in the term - not exactly common, but it happens; women who have been the victims of rape or sexual abuse with late pregnancy diagnosis; women who couldn't raise funds for the abortion earier; women who had to travel long distances to obtain an abortion due to lack of local availability and physician shortages.
I think it amazing that someone who believes that women and their doctors are the only people who should be involved in an abortion decision would want to control that later in the pregnancy. These are medical decisions which no one could possibly take lightly. To suggest that women and their doctors need supervision in making this decision is to seriously question women's autonomy and to characterize them in an extremely misogynist fashion. Imagine being in one of the situations noted and having to undergo state supervision in making your decision!
For those wanting to check out the info and date, this is a good site, I think:
http://www.abortionisprolife.com.../
statistics.htm
and the Guttmacher Institute site:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ib13.html
I must add that it's actually difficult to get data that are REALLY late term abortions as the numbers for after 26 weeks and later are mixed in together.
Dr. Dawg:
That is fair and injects quite different considerations, but law is not always just about preventing behaviours that would predictably occur but for the law. It also plays a role in reflecting baseline common values (human rights codes?). In all these tough life-related issues like abortion, euthanasia, mercy-killing, ending life support, etc. we either draw messy and imperfect lines that bespeak a reverence for human life, however burdensome, and set points where it trumps individual freedoms or we progressively talk ourselves into rationalizing the dispensing with inconvenient or unwanted people by defining them as other than human or asserting absolute control over them and appropriating the right to delare their lives marginal and "not worth living". I wouldn't begin to suggest it is easy; indeed I often think simplicity and straightline thinking are the enemy. But I don't fear a return to Victorian or ultramontane absolutism as much as I fear the postmodern march of the latter.
Peter - "I'm having a hard time understanding why you and so many would go to the barricades over this."
One word: precedent.
You're suggesting that if there were a "law" against late-term abortion, it would end there. Do you seriously believe that?
As I said upthread, we're completely aware that there's little difference between a fetus at 38 weeks and a newborn. That isn't the issue, although for some reason you keep trying to bring it back to that. The issue is, why have a law to prevent something that isn't even happening? To make some kind of "values" statement?
If the government ever decides they need to make a public statement about our society's values, they can take out a billboard or a full page ad in the Star. Sorry to say, the womb is not an advertising vehicle.
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