Right-Wing War on Woman: Lest We Think Canada’s Wingnuts Aren’t Also Trying To Criminalize Women’s Choice

Yep, that’s right. Canada can’t get smug about the absolute insanity being perpetrated against women in the United States. We’ve got our own anti-woman crowd up here too — and by golly, now they’ve got a parliamentary majority.

What that means is that they have more seats in parliament than the total of seats for all other parties combined. And what that means is that they can do. anything. they. want.

Anything. And nobody can vote them down and defeat them on a “non-confidence motion” to force an election where we can turf them for good. That was the beauty of keeping them in a minority government for the past few years: if they became truly atrocious, the other parties could combine votes against them and force an election.

But not now. So what are they doing?

One of their crowd, MP Stephen Woodworth from Kitchener, Ontario, has introduced Motion M-312, bent on analyzing the definition of a “human being” in subsection 223(1) of the Canadian Criminal Code, which says this:

“A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this 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.”

This motion is clearly aimed at alloting “personhood” to an unborn fetus. This crowd has tried the same thing before, and been defeated. But I guess they’re encouraged by the rabid rage of their heroes and anti-woman brethren to the south, and now that nobody can stop them from doing anything they want — they’re trying again.

Joyce Arthur, of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), has explained wonderfully how this motion and its hoped-for outcome violates women’s rights, in this article, Counter Arguments Against Motion M-312: “Women Can’t Be Trusted”.

The ARCC has also provided a sample letter to oppose Motion M-312, for women to use as a basis for their own letter-writing campaigns.

So we’ve got our own battles to fight too, to retain our independence and personal sovereignty against the onslaughts of these right-wing men and their Stockholm Syndromed women.

 

In the “It’ll never happen (dammit)” category…

…we have Ben Armbruster’s post at Think Progress.

Next week, George W. Bush is heading for my former hometown, Calgary, Alberta, to give his first speech as an ex-president. I am already appalled that my birthplace would welcome him at all, for any reason, ever. But Armbruster reports one response to Bush’s visit that cheers me up.

instead of greeting Bush with open arms and (potentially) wads of cash, activists and human rights lawyers in Canada are hoping their government will greet him with handcuffs — or at the very least — bar him entry in to the country.

I gather we’ve got some kind of law in Canada forbidding us to allow entrance to anyone for whom there is reasonable grounds to think that they’ve committed war crimes. And of course…endorsing torture, which Bush has done (and admitted, in public, to doing)…is one of those crimes.

It’s a nice thought, and I’d love to see the plane he flies in on escorted (without being allowed to land) back across the border by fighter planes or something.

But it’ll never happen. As a friend pointed out, if we harass this criminal at the border, every single Canadian who ever crosses the border going south (or entering U.S. airspace at all — remember Meher Arar?) can expect to be harassed and worse.

Maybe the Hague would have the authority to issue arrest warrants (though both Canadian and American neo-Cons’ heads would explode, and they’d just be confirmed in their stupid belief that the International Criminal Court is “anti-good-ol-USA”), and then Bush might have to stay home, not knowing exactly where would be safe to go. Though even then, I bet Canada wouldn’t arrest him, for fear of angering the big southern neighbour.

But without that sort of backing — never. Not gonna happen here.

So George W. Bush is going to land at my Calgary airport and talk in my city.

Ew. Ew ew ew!