“Women Can’t Be Trusted.” That’s the new name that women activists at the NDP convention have given to Motion M-312, Tory MP Stephen Woodworth’s thus-far successful trek down the bloody path of ending abortion rights in Canada. Women are angry, and the NDP is hearing them.
The slogan is not as snappy as my favourite, “Wombs for Woodworth,” but it has the virtue of being direct, much better than the Kitchener MP’s own timid “Canada’s 400-Year-Old Definition of a Human Being Motion M-312.” He’s passing himself off as a modernizer, this absurd MP who Tweets about his head cold and declares on his website, “All Canadians want the same things.”
No. We don’t. I hope your cold gets better. But we don’t all agree that a girl or a woman should be forced to give birth. Please leave us alone, sir.
Woodworth pretends that allowing a woman dominion over her own body is as old-fashioned as carbon paper. Golly, let’s digitize these old rules for gals and what goes on Down There. He won’t use the word “abortion,” and I call that cowardly.
His progress so far: in April, he will begin a Commons debate on establishing a Conservative-led MPs committee to decide how deeply the state can intrude into the body cavities of every pregnant woman.
We can reasonably assume the committee will find that life begins right at conception, when the egg and sperm meet. It may even begin before that, who knows, when a man reaches orgasm and his sperm travels hopefully toward a lolling egg. I know, it’s hard to believe we’re discussing this again.
A woman’s uterus is not her own, according to many Conservatives. I cannot help envisioning bony — or indeed fat — government fingers inside what I called “Ladyland” in a recent column, for the sheer colloquial fun of it. More realistically, these MPs want to rule on what happens medically in the vagina, cervix, uterus and, let’s get breezy again, Female Whatnot.
But the fact is, the Supreme Court decided the matter in 1988; the motion is legal nonsense born of misogyny, and it violates a woman’s right to “life, liberty, bodily security, conscience and equality,” as the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has elegantly put it.
The fact that there is no legal case to make isn’t stopping Woodworth.
NDP women — and men — must make sure women’s rights are front and centre at the convention. A majority Conservative government gets its way on everything. The NDP needs a fiery leader who can win over Canadian voters on abortion rights, even if the House of Commons votes against women.
There is indeed a war on women. It’s boiling in the U.S. right now, with birth control under threat and women being tormented, and not just by thugs like Rush Limbaugh either. Texas women, told that their fetus is terribly deformed and will suffer constant pain, cannot now have an abortion without enduring ultrasounds, elaborate fetal descriptions, waiting periods and incorrect medical advice that abortion causes breast cancer. The women sob and the clinicians apologize repeatedly, saying the law makes them do this.
An Arizona bill would allow employers to not only refuse to pay for birth control but demote or fire women who then choose to pay for their own.
Women are responding with ridicule, posting news of vaginal events on politicians’ websites and Facebook pages. Comedian/commentator Stephen Colbert, misplacing his blender, used a transvaginal ultrasound wand on his show — to make margaritas.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the most primitive politicians in the U.S. and Canada — elected partly because our political systems no longer attract the best, brightest people — are targeting women, sexuality, modernity and urban ways.
So much is at stake here. Feminism has faded from the screen. We women took our rights for granted. The candidates for NDP leader are hardly charismatic, Layton having failed to groom a terrific successor. We are paying the price now. The party needs a firebrand, a passionate soul, maybe a yeller.
Will the new NDP leader have the courage, luck, intelligence and stamina to defeat a long-held — if currently stifled — Conservative desire to end women’s right to choose? The issue is crucial to how women vote, donate and believe.
I watch the NDP and tremble for the future of our daughters.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Heather Mallick
The slogan is not as snappy as my favourite, “Wombs for Woodworth,” but it has the virtue of being direct, much better than the Kitchener MP’s own timid “Canada’s 400-Year-Old Definition of a Human Being Motion M-312.” He’s passing himself off as a modernizer, this absurd MP who Tweets about his head cold and declares on his website, “All Canadians want the same things.”
No. We don’t. I hope your cold gets better. But we don’t all agree that a girl or a woman should be forced to give birth. Please leave us alone, sir.
Woodworth pretends that allowing a woman dominion over her own body is as old-fashioned as carbon paper. Golly, let’s digitize these old rules for gals and what goes on Down There. He won’t use the word “abortion,” and I call that cowardly.
His progress so far: in April, he will begin a Commons debate on establishing a Conservative-led MPs committee to decide how deeply the state can intrude into the body cavities of every pregnant woman.
We can reasonably assume the committee will find that life begins right at conception, when the egg and sperm meet. It may even begin before that, who knows, when a man reaches orgasm and his sperm travels hopefully toward a lolling egg. I know, it’s hard to believe we’re discussing this again.
A woman’s uterus is not her own, according to many Conservatives. I cannot help envisioning bony — or indeed fat — government fingers inside what I called “Ladyland” in a recent column, for the sheer colloquial fun of it. More realistically, these MPs want to rule on what happens medically in the vagina, cervix, uterus and, let’s get breezy again, Female Whatnot.
But the fact is, the Supreme Court decided the matter in 1988; the motion is legal nonsense born of misogyny, and it violates a woman’s right to “life, liberty, bodily security, conscience and equality,” as the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has elegantly put it.
The fact that there is no legal case to make isn’t stopping Woodworth.
NDP women — and men — must make sure women’s rights are front and centre at the convention. A majority Conservative government gets its way on everything. The NDP needs a fiery leader who can win over Canadian voters on abortion rights, even if the House of Commons votes against women.
There is indeed a war on women. It’s boiling in the U.S. right now, with birth control under threat and women being tormented, and not just by thugs like Rush Limbaugh either. Texas women, told that their fetus is terribly deformed and will suffer constant pain, cannot now have an abortion without enduring ultrasounds, elaborate fetal descriptions, waiting periods and incorrect medical advice that abortion causes breast cancer. The women sob and the clinicians apologize repeatedly, saying the law makes them do this.
An Arizona bill would allow employers to not only refuse to pay for birth control but demote or fire women who then choose to pay for their own.
Women are responding with ridicule, posting news of vaginal events on politicians’ websites and Facebook pages. Comedian/commentator Stephen Colbert, misplacing his blender, used a transvaginal ultrasound wand on his show — to make margaritas.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the most primitive politicians in the U.S. and Canada — elected partly because our political systems no longer attract the best, brightest people — are targeting women, sexuality, modernity and urban ways.
So much is at stake here. Feminism has faded from the screen. We women took our rights for granted. The candidates for NDP leader are hardly charismatic, Layton having failed to groom a terrific successor. We are paying the price now. The party needs a firebrand, a passionate soul, maybe a yeller.
Will the new NDP leader have the courage, luck, intelligence and stamina to defeat a long-held — if currently stifled — Conservative desire to end women’s right to choose? The issue is crucial to how women vote, donate and believe.
I watch the NDP and tremble for the future of our daughters.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Heather Mallick
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