Conservatives continue efforts to roll back women's rights

Another private members bill that would set the stage to radically roll back a woman's right to choose and to control her own body has been proposed by a Conservative member of parliament, Maurice Vellacott, MP for Saskatoon-Wanuskewin. Bill C-537 would allow health care practitioners to refuse to participate in a medical procedure that "offends a tenet of their religion."

If a person's religious beliefs prohibit them from offering a certain service, then that person should not get into a profession where they might be required to provide that service. If a person feels that their religion prevents them from giving out the 'morning after' pill, then they shouldn't be a pharmacist. If they can't perform an abortion, or prescribe emergency contraception, then the person shouldn't be a physician. If they can't perform a blood transfusion, they shouldn't practice emergency medicine. This really isn't that complex.

This bill is framed in the context of protecting religious rights, but it should tell you something that Vellacott is the chair of the "Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus" which includes both Conservative and Liberal MPs (but thankfully no New Democrats). This nonsense would allow doctors, who are being paid by the state, to refuse to provide abortions, in effect banning a practice that the Supreme Court of Canada (in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988) said the government could not use the law to ban, because doing that violated the right of women to "security of the person" under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This is the same philosophy that has seen women left without pharmacists willing to dispense emergency contraceptives in various parts of the United States. It is the philosophy that says that a doctor's dogmatic beliefs are more important that a woman's right to control her body. That is utter garbage and nonsense.

Furthermore, this bill follows hard on the heels of Bill C-484, which would impose extra penalties for killing a pregnant woman since the assault also terminates the fetus. That bill deems the fetus to be a person, since only a person is legally capable of being murdered, setting us back on the road to banning abortion as murder.

The Conservatives are being cagey on how they push this radical patriarchal and misogynist agenda. It is being done through private members bills, not government bills, so in the next election campaign Harper can claim his government had nothing to do with it. This is very important, because the majority of Canadians think this issue is settled, and that a woman has a right to choose. The Cons want to roll back a woman's rights, and want to take our society back to some twisted 1950s ideal, where everyone is white, everyone is straight, everyone is Christian, people don't have sex until they are thirty and a woman stays in the home, with a martini for her husband at the end of the day. That's not my Canada, and I sure as hell know it isn't any Canada I want to see. We have to remember that women's rights are human rights. If the Cons take rights away from one group, it is only a matter of time until they are taking them away from everyone else.

To everyone reading this in Canada, I encourage you to get in touch with your MP and let them know that you oppose this bill and bill C-484, and that you want them to vote against both bills. Tell your friends, make noise, be heard. Don't let the Conservatives take rights away in the dark and in silence.


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