Bark!
I think that a good many Liberals who would likely support this bill have (thankfully) announced their retirement. Consequently, Dion has little-to-no power over them in a whipped vote. A whipped vote would end up showing him as a weak leader.
Judging from the marriage vote, having a whipped vote would also result in years of whinging that \"it wasn't a free vote\" from the other side and the accompanying pretense that it might have gone the other way in a free vote.
I'm actually far more interested in what the Conservatives do with this than the Liberals. More landmines for them than the other parties. I'm predicting a mass outbreak of diplmatic flu.
coming out of Lurker status, yet again. I signed the petition the first day, but just wanted to add my 2cents worth. I had hoped we had put this all to rest 30 years ago. Are we regressing as a society? I fought hard the first time around, and I've engaged my daughter and son, both adults now, to continue that fight by my side. It's just a shame that it's necessary in this day and age, when there are so many other fights that need to be addressed - HIV/AIDS, homelessness, a string of murders of aboriginal women over a 50 year period that have gone unsolved, domestic violence, pollution, climate change, unnecessary wars, global takeover by corporations, the coming recession....I could go on and on, and yet, our elected parliamentary representatives are wasting time and money on this? What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong with them? I feel like I've woken up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon... and Elmer Fudd is winning! /rant.
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RB - The Libs have a few fetus fetishists (Lee, Szabo etc) that would vote in favour of this thing... other than that, I really doubt any of them will support it. Nobody wants to be tied to anything that's so close to the abortion issue with an election coming up.
The tory vote will be interesting for sure![\"\"](\"http://www.haloscan.com/images/smileys/lol.gif\")
Guys like Baird and McKay will undoubtedly be somewhere else that day.
Oh sure, the wingnuts will whinge on about it being a whipped vote. Good, gives them something to think about besides gay marriage.:p
HCT - You're expressing how a lot of people feel about this... Whaaat? Again?
It's cyclical. People who don't remember what it was like in the bad old days are more easily led, and the anti-choice movement has become far more media and marketing savvy of late. However, anti-choicers can't resist beaking off and that's where things go sideways on them... most people don't regard abortion as \"murder\", a \"holocaust\" or any of the other hyperbole they use. They are their own worst enemies.
I think it just confirms that old saying about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance.
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I wasn't actually thinking of guys like Baird and Elmer Jr. More about ones like Harper, Nicholson and Toews. The last time this came up it was Toews (then Justice Minister) who killed it in committee on constitutional grounds - and the fetishists simply HOWLED in pain and outrage, since they counted him as a friend.
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Words are cheap Mr. Epp. Nothing like allaying the legitimate fears of a crowd with nice cheap words.
RB - Toews!!? I thought he was a fetus fetishist of the highest order!? Oh, that makes it really interesting then...
Bruce - The lies, that's what gets me. The outright, obvious lies. \"Protect\" -- how?! I keep asking and nobody has an answer.
(o/t My keyboar is sticking like a bastard -- how can I fix it, it's driving me apeshit)
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Correction, there have been two convictions here in SC (from my link):
In 1997, Talitha Garrick became the first woman in the state convicted of killing her unborn child by smoking crack cocaine. She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and received probation.
Four years later, in 2001, Regina McKnight of Horry County was convicted of homicide by child abuse for using cocaine during her pregnancy and was sentenced to 12 years.
The S.C. Supreme Court upheld her conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case.
He was justice minister at the time. If I recall correctly, the previous bill didn't make any exemption for legal abortions, making its real intent even more blatent.
It's the responsibility of Justice department officials to offer an opinion on the constitionality of private members' bills. That one wasn't constitutional, and it was his obligation to deliver that opinion. I believe the Conservatives on the committee nevertheless voted for it to go forward, but it was voted down by the opposition members.
Here's Lifesite's take on it: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006...n/06062804.html
Hi Daisy, thanks for the correction. 12 years!! I was shocked when I read that story on your blog, and even more so after subsequent googling -- it seems like women get charged for things like this on a fairly routine basis.
One would hope that a pregnant woman (who chooses to carry the pregnancy) would be careful of her (and the fetus's) health, but it's bizarre to imagine that the state could mandate it at risk of a criminal conviction. A woman's uterus, and anything in it, is her property: the state needs to stay out completely.
RB - OMG, can you just imagine the exploding heads after Harper said that? bwahahahaha!
The shock of the sudden realization that they've been completely and totally... suckahhhhed!!!
That was then. I am sure with an impending election nobody will want to touch this thing, they'll want to get away from it as quickly as possible. Like you said before, it's a bone they're tossing, just like the marriage vote.
Oh, they've realized it a few times now. :P
There was the \"be quiet on abortion and I'll outlaw same-sex marriage\" at the policy convention. Perhaps the most stupid move on their part ever. Not only did it prove conclusively that they care more about controlling the lives of others than the pretext that they care about preventing \"murder,\" but it also proved how monumentally stupid they are. Everything Harper promised about same-sex marriage was a lie. He kept promising something he couldn't deliver under the constitution - civil unions, a matter that is 100% provincial jurisdiction and that the Supreme Court has already ruled are not equal to marriage.
Then during the election campaign he betrayed them three times - promising no use of the notwithstanding clause on marriage, recognizing all existing marriages (how can a fetishist be happy knowing there's even married lesbian couple somewhere in the same hemisphere?), and worst of all, saying that he'd do everything in his power to discourage any private member's bills on abortion.
For the marriage vote he angered them by making it a motion to consider legislation - effectively giving himself an out if it somehow passed. He then angered them by saying the matter was closed.
Then came the previous \"unborn crime victims\" bill I mentioned and they learned just what he meant by doing everything in his power to prevent private members' bills on abortion - far more than anything Martin or Chrétien would have ever dreamed of.
He'll manage to outrage them again with this one. I don't know how, but he will.
All of this leaves them in two camps.
1) Those who cling to the belief that with a majority he'll ban abortion, same-sex marriage and shut down the human rights commission (they conveniently forget their real beef is with the Alberta commission and government)
2) Those who realize he'll do nothing of the sort. Harper has plenty of ways to outrage us (Court challenge program, Status of Women, organ donor policy, etc.) without doing things that the general public might notice.
The second camp is itself divided into those who support him anyway, and those who support fringe parties and think they have electoral power.
This was illustrated by a recent post from Connie on FreakShowDominion, where she said:
I'm tired of hearing Conservatives crowing one day about how they have the Liberals over a barrel and they can do whatever they want because the Liberals will do anything to avoid an election....and then turning around the next day and telling us that the Conservatives can't stand up for our most basic human right because they don't have a majority.
I'm tired of their crap, and they would do well to take a long look at what happened when we decided to \"Vote conservative, Not Tory\".
So even though I'm not in the Harper government (an understatement) I decided to take up the challenge and see the results of FD's campaign to get people to
(Damn, it got cut off). Not going to rewrite it, but basically, the two right-wing fringe parties did much worse in the 2007 Ontario election than they did in 2003. All the FDers supporting (or even running for) these parties managed to prove is they're a tiny bunch of extremist nutbars who Conservatives are ecstatic to be rid of.
RB - \"Oh, they've realized it a few times now\"
You'd think that, having come to that realization, they'd face the fact that the majority in Canada isn't interested in being governed by a hard-right extremist party, and give up on expecting the tories to govern that way. Majority or not, it ain't gonna happen. As you say, they can be assholes in a million other ways without even touching abortion and equal marriage.
While there's definitely a completely insane hard-core religionist reform party element in the CPC, there are also a lot of moderate tories who could care less about social issues like who marries who. The Big Two aren't even on the radar for a lot of these guys.
Whether this would change in the event of a majority is anyone's guess -- marriage is a closed issue, that won't change, but abortion might be subject to some kind of time limitations.
I've noticed the discussions at FD about the Family Coalition and Christian Heritage parties. But Catholics won't vote CHP for some reason (something to do with religious doctrine, what else). So even within the tiny sliver of the electorate that extreme social conservatives make up, there's division And they wonder why the CPC has no use for them.
There are also a lot of people who like power more than they hate queers and women.
I think that legislation on term limits might be problematic. Regulating health care is a provincial responsibility. Abortion law in the past was a criminal matter, where an abortion was illegal unless it was performed by a qualified doctor with the approval of a committee.
People might be willing to accept a provincial law saying no abortions after xx weeks unless the mother's health is in danger - which we all know is in fact the status quo. A federal law criminalizing abortion unless it takes place within a certain time is a whole other thing.
I think there's a very broad consensus that abortion is a medical procedure, not a criminal act. Even people who would like to see it more regulated wouldn't see the criminal code as the way to do it.
The anti-choice movement in the United States has been far more successful at the state level than at the federal. There's all kinds of roadblocks you can place in the way of choice without getting into federal jurisdiction - waiting periods, parental notification, \"informed consent,\" etc.
Of course there's the same problem at the provincial level as at the federal. Sane politicians don't want to touch it, unless you can demonstrate you have a block of voters who care enough to base their votes on it.
For the CHP, I think the issue is that its outlook is fundamentalist, with the bible being supreme. That's unacceptable to Catholics, since the pope is supreme. It's therefore a conflict between those who think the country should be run according to a bad novel, and those who think it should be run according to a bad drag queen.
Of course it's not just devout Catholics who won't support the CHP. 99% of Fundamentalists won't either.
RB - There might be some acceptance for a time limit, merely because most people don't understand why late-term abortions are done, and how few are done.
The anti-choice movement has done a spectacular job of propagandizing late term abortion. Most of their graphics depict LTA, and the average uninformed person might think that women routinely get abortions at 7 or 8 months just because they feel like it. When in fact it's always a health issue, nobody wants to get a LTA \"just because\".
In reality, a law that dictates \"no abortions after (ie.) 28 weeks unless it's a health issue\" actually wouldn't change anything since LT abortions are always health issues. But it would be dangerous precedent to introduce the law into womens' bodies -- once the precedent is set it's only a matter of time before more legalities ensue.
I prefer there be no law with regard to abortion or any other medical procedure. A person's body is their property and so is everything attached to it. The state has no place there.
SoCons don't have any real voting alternatives other than the CPC. The CHP (or FCP if they went federal) has never gotten more than a sliver of the vote. The CPC knows that this sliver represents the people who are disgruntled with them for being too \"liberal\", so they won't risk alienating the rest of the electorate by pandering to them. They will occasionally throw them a bone to get them all excited (like C-484 or the marriage debate), but ultimately, they do love power more than they hate women and gays so they're unlikely to actually act on these things.
Oh - I'm well aware that such a law would change nothing. But it's the only way a LTA ban could pass constiitutional muster, if there were actually a provincial government insane enough to voluntarily touch this issue.
The \"pro-life\" movement are as aware as we are that such a law would change nothing in reality. I'm just suggesting that if having this symbol gets them all excited, they're going about it in the wrong way.
Medical procedures are best kept in the realm of the profession. If there must be legislation (such as the age at which a minor's rights supercede those of her parents), it belongs to the provinces. It does not belong in the criminal code unless we are dealing with criminal negligence, fraud, etc.
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