The Government Owns Your Body

...at least according to The Supreme Court of Canada.

Most at the CBC seem quite happy with this decision - that a 14-year-old-girl's rights were not violated when she was given a forcible blood transfusion against her wishes.

Read that again.

To me, this is one of the most horrifying decisions any court has ever made. The Court has said, essentially, that this girl did not own and control her body. Not even her parents owned and controlled her body. The Manitoba Child and Family Services department did.

For the record, I abhor the idiotic, superstitious nonsense that is religion and what it does to people. But so long as no one is harmed by this choice except the person making the choice or others that consent, then, yes, one is free to believe any mythological baloney they want.

Sometimes being free means letting people make choices that are not those we would make, or even choices that are wrong, or choices that are based on idiotic beliefs.

That girl was not being beaten, not being starved or otherwise abused against her will. She made the choice knowing the probable consequences. And no one but her would pay those consequences.

Ask yourself this - would you want some fundamentalist Christian sect or Muslim sect that somehow attained power to have this same power over your children, the power to invade their physical bodies against your wishes and theirs?

"Saving lives" is the same excuse used by the Chinese government to harvest the organs of Falun Gong prisoners. After all, if it means saving a life - especially the life of a child - why shouldn't the state be able to invade your body against your will?

It is the excuse the fetus fetishists use to try to take away a woman's right to choose or control her body as well.

That is exactly what this decision says - given a good enough reason (decided by them, of course) the state has the right to violate the bodily integrity of someone against their will, or against the will of their parents or legal guardians.

That is horrifying.

Don't let our natural instinct to help a child open us to giving the state the power to control our bodies. That is far worse than one 14-year-old girl making a bad or stupid choice and dying.

I Get Mail

Yesterday, I received the following email:

Dear friend,

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, approximately 1 out of 3 women in the United States will have had an abortion by age 45. You may be surprised, as were we; but it’s fair to say that the majority of Americans have either had an abortion or know someone who has experienced an abortion.

“Abortion” – the word stopped you for a moment, didn’t it?

Typically, the reactions that surround this word impede any reasonable discussion on the topic, especially the real feelings of those who have been touched by an abortion experience.

Please keep reading.

After 35 years of polarization and judgment, Michaelene Fredenburg is looking to change this. Using the Internet to provide a confidential space and support resources, Michaelene has created a safe environment for men and women who have been touched by an abortion experience. And she can relate to what they need. She’s been there.

The outreach Michaelene created acknowledges that each person’s abortion experience is unique - some positive, some indifferent, some negative. However, a common thread weaves through every story. It is this common thread that has created the outreach’s name - Abortion Changes You. These are words echoed by the hundreds of people Michaelene has spoken with over the years whose lives have been touched by an abortion experience.

I invite you to visit AbortionChangesYou.com. I am certain you will be surprised by the experience. After visiting the website and exploring the interactive content and amazing drawings, poems and stories that have been contributed, people from different abortion perspectives have remarked that it’s a “breath of fresh air.” This is not about debate. It’s about personal experiences that people have regardless of their beliefs or political views on abortion. The link to the movie mail is as follows: www.abortionchangesyou.com/aboutus. I also encourage you to visit www.abortionchangesyouresources.com to download the movie and banner ads for use on your blog.

Michaelene has also authored a book that will be released in early May. Changed: Making Sense of Your Own or a Loved One’s Abortion Experience is as unique as the Abortion Changes You outreach. Combining a collection of very different stories from people who have had an abortion experience with creative elements such as the Healing Pathways and a journaling component, this book creates a new standard for issue-inspired literature. These stories come from both men and women and provide a rare expression of feelings and perspectives following an abortion experience.

“Abortion” – it doesn’t have to be a word we avoid. This is a real opportunity for a conversation with your audience that will inspire, encourage and equip them.

Best,

Andrew Long

Sound friendly enough, doesn't it? Well, given my clear stance on abortion and my record vehemently defending choice, I was both skeptical and curious. Just who is Michaelene Fredenburg?

Turns out, she is an anti-choice activist from San Diego who is one of the darlings of Lifesite and folks like Jill Stanek. Hardly the person to change "35 years of polarization and judgment" - she has been one of the causes of it. Check out even a small number of those sites from the Google search - she is anti-choice and fighting for an end to a woman's choice in the US.

My reply:

Mr. Long,

With all due respect, please do not try to peddle your dishonesty with me. It only took me a few minutes on Google to find out who Michaelene Fredenburg is. It did not take long for me to discover she - and you, I assume - is nothing more than an anti-choice activist trying to peddle the unfounded nonsense about abortion causing mental anguish in people like fathers who don't actually have abortions. I suppose you have to grasp at something now that the abortion-breast cancer link has been proven completely false.

In other words, stop using stealth and subterfuge to try to force your agenda and opinions on people. Stop trying to "trick" people into thinking you and your organization are something you are not. You are an anti-choice organization but you know saying that will get you (rightly) ignored.

In my books, that makes you and your organization nothing but liars and cowards.

I am proudly and fiercely pro-choice. If you don't think abortion is right, don't have one. That is your choice.

I promise you that if you or anyone else tries to tell my daughter or wife what they can or cannot do with their bodies, you will be resisted and fought by any means necessary. Freedom of choice and security of the person are not negotiable.

Please do not contact me again with your lies. Your email address is being added to my spam filter. That is the price of dishonesty. I'll ask you to kindly remove my email from any lists you may have.

Good day.

And Mr. Longs quick reply back:

You completely missed the point of the email, and the nature of the outreach. It’s not about anti-choice –- it’s about pro-choice – and about some of those pro-choice people who may need help after an abortion.

I’m sorry your own personal agenda clouds something good. I couldn’t find the will not to respond, but out of respect I will remove your email address and you will not be contacted again.

And my final reply to him:

"and about some of those pro-choice people who may need help after an abortion.

"

Right, by someone so openly anti-choice that she is the favourite of the so-called "pro-life" sites and has testified before the US House of Representatives about her anti-choice views?

You really don't know when to stop lying?

No, I didn't miss the point of the email at all.

Good day.

Yes, once again another attempt at trickery and subterfuge. Another example of dishonesty and outright lies to further their own "personal agenda". Clearly honesty and ethics is something these people know nothing about.

And Andrew Long? Who is he?

Why Mr. Long is the Production Coordinator with the Maximus Group. Who are the Maximus Group? Why they are a "specialized and full-service communications marketing agency" who sell PR marketing of "Catholic or other authentically Christian products/messages to the secular world".

It seems then, based on all of this, that this email was part of a paid PR campaign to spread and promote a specious, unfounded connection between abortion and mental health of both women AND men, via stealth and subterfuge - by seeming to be part of a supposedly non-partisan group that is, in reality, the whole cloth creation of the Catholic anti-choice movement.

So, beware. And if you receive (or have received) a similar email from Mr. Long (or one of his co-workers) , be sure to let him know we are on to them.

I'll say it again, just to be really clear:

If you don't think abortion is right, don't have one. Feel free to do all you can to make the choices other than abortion the one chosen. Just stop thinking you can tell other people what they can do with their body and stop lying about your true position and intent.

One Body, One Person, One Count

The Conservatives are attempting deception. They are attempting to introduce via the back door a bill to grant a fetus the rights of a person. They are taking the first steps to allow the state to control your body.

This is not just about a woman's right to choose. If the so-cons and their Conservative Party of Canada allies open the door to placing the "life" of a fetus above the right of a woman to control her bodily integrity, they are setting a dangerous precedent. They can then decide anyone's life is more important than your bodily integrity and your life. The implications of this are far more horrible and horrendous than abortions - it means that your or I, men or women, could become unwilling organ donors or medical guinea pigs, so long as "the right to life" of another (more worthy) person is at stake.

This must be fought in no uncertain terms.

My friends at Birth Pangs want you to write to Stephane Dion to tell him to whip his caucus to defeat this bill on March 5. If you are so inclined please join this campaign and the blogburst starting on February 25th.

I will do that, but I will also send the message loud and clear to these people:

The gloves are off.

Bad enough that they want to punish a woman for daring to have sex, any attempt to remove the total right to personal bodily integrity in any circumstance will be fought. If this bill somehow passes into law, it will be ignored. Any other law resulting from it will be ignored.

You can try and pass all of the laws you want, but they will be ignored. You cannot control another person, you do not own anyone else. You cannot rule us.

There are thousands, if not millions, of people who will not stand by and be subjected to your pompous, moralizing, holier-than-thou authoritarianism.

I, personally, will ensure that all peaceful means of resistance to this are used - protest, tax revolts, any form of civil disobedience.

I would like to propose to all those that support security of the person and a woman's right to choose vow, as I am today, that if this bill passes on March 5th, that we stop paying taxes. If they won't listen to reason, they must be deprived of the ability to work.

This must be stopped at all costs.

Its really quite simple....

If you don't think abortion is right, don't have one.

If you want there to be less abortions, you can work to ensure that abortion is not the option chosen by making the other options more attractive. That might mean supporting charities and organizations that provide education, housing, and care for pregnant women during pregnancy and long after the child is born. That may mean advocating on behalf of women who choose to give birth. That may mean simply not being a judgmental ass who considers single women or teenage mothers sluts or whores.

If you want to be taken seriously in your opposition to abortion, be intellectually honest. Considering that 92% of all abortions in Canada happen before 12 weeks, before any brain activity, it is dishonest sensationalism to argue against abortion with pictures and posters of late term fetuses. It is lying. Even more so when one considers that abortion after 20 weeks is so rare that it only takes place if the mothers health is in danger. Even Henry Morgantaller won't perform them on demand.

If you want there to be less abortions, you may have to accept that people, including teenagers, have sex even when you tell them not to. You have to accept that abstinence only doesn't work and that proper sex education and access to good birth control will prevent a lot of aborted children from being mistakenly conceived in the first place. Defence in depth, as we call it in IT security. Teach your kids that they shouldn't have sex before marriage if you wish, but also teach them better safe than sorry and get them either on the pill or used to condoms, preferably both.

But you must also accept that you do not own anyone else. You cannot control their bodies. You have as much right to prevent a woman from having an abortion as you do to force a man to donate a kidney against his will - none at all. Part of being free is accepting that people are going to do things you find repugnant and abhor. So long as they don't harm you while doing it. Anything other than this is support for slavery.

It really is just that easy.

Ode to Geddy Lee: Against Mandatory Voting

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"
- Rush 'Free Will'

With that one simple line, Canadian rock group Rush has summed in total, the arguments against mandatory voting.

The belief seems to be that if we force people to choose, then government will truly be democratic and representative of the will of the people - all the people, since they vote. Further, it will prevent disenfranchisement, as the 'Jim Crow' laws of the 50's and 60's.

Brilliant, if only the root cause of 'not voting' were merely being too lazy to show up to cast a ballot or being kept away by the Klan. But such is not the case in modern Canada. During the last few elections voter turnout has dropped to the between high 50 to low 60s after traditionally being around 70%. The rates are higher the younger the person is. What this shows is not laziness on the part of the electorate, but rather disillusionment with the choices or the system in general.

If there are no real choices, is being forced to choose really free? The Soviet Union had 100% voter turnout regularly, but that did not mean their system was free. There is precious difference between being forced to choose from a field of one and being forced to choose from a field of two or three or even 4 if there is no real difference between them, or if there is no choice that represents your views.

And that gets to the heart of the matter - voter turnout is not only provided a measure of legitimacy for the government and the state, but it indicates the health and legitimacy of the system itself. Thus, in a truly free society, it is a legitimate political stance to choose not to participate in a system one feels is illegitimate or no longer represents that person's wishes and beliefs. It is Tommy Douglas' 'Mouseland" taken to its logical extreme - rather than merely being forced to vote for the white cats or black cats, or choosing other mice, some may choose to forgo the system altogether and strike out on their own.

So, if it is wrong and contrary to the ideas of freedom and liberty to, by force and coercion, prevent someone from exercising their franchise as the Jim Crow laws did, it is equally contrary to those principles to force people to exercise that franchise if the choose not to.

There are many perfectly legitimate reasons for not voting:

1. No choice - all of the running candidates either do not differ to offer real choice, or none provide a platform that matches the voter's preference. This could be for one election or all of them.

2. Choice - the person has decided that they do not wish to lend legitimacy to a system they no longer support. This could range from simply not supporting an unfair "first-past-the-post" voting system all the way to those who do not see the state, non-consensual government and non-voluntary laws as illegitimate and do not wish to enable and empower the current system (ahem...).

3. Just don't want to - for whatever reason, a person is simply not engaged and does not wish to, for whatever reason.

The result of mandatory voting will not be, then, more legitimacy, but less. As in the Soviet Union, it will create a false legitimacy, because no dissent will be accepted and people will be forced to vote for people and positions they do not truly believe in. Or worse, force legitimization from an ignorant, uninformed and disengaged electorate.


Mandatory voting and forced enfranchisement is as draconian and against the idea of freedom as race-based Jim Crow forced disenfranchisement and should fought just as hard. Mandatory voting is the moral and logical equivalent of 'freeping' an election.


To see the other side, check out this debate at The Great Canadian Debate on Mandatory Voting where I match up with Dr. Dawg.

To comment, please drop by the debate forum.