Canada has zero pro-choice Conservative MPs, watchdog says
Canada has zero pro-choice Conservative MPs, watchdog says
Abortion rights group places remaining 15 Conservatives on list of anti-choice MPs after vote on ‘fetal rights’ bill
Abortion rights group places remaining 15 Conservatives on list of anti-choice MPs after vote on ‘fetal rights’ bill
Conservatives. The type that don't support abortion because "think of the children!", but fly flags on their vehicles that say "Fuck Trudeau" with children walking down the sidewalk and sitting in the cars beside them.
31This is the best summary I could come up with:
A vote on a controversial bill meant to expand “fetal rights” in Canada has left the country without a single pro-choice Conservative MP, according to an abortion watchdog organization.
This week, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) placed the last remaining 15 Conservatives on its list of anti-choice MPs after they voted in support of Bill C-311, dubbed the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act.
ARCC’s executive director, Joyce Arthur, said the private member’s bill was a thinly veiled attempt to encroach on Canada’s longstanding view that fetuses do not have personhood status.
Previous bills – the latest of which were also sponsored by Wagantall – have tried to ban sex-selective abortion (which is not widely practised in Canada) and to criminally punish people who injure a fetus while committing a crime against a pregnant person.
The Conservatives have long allowed free, unwhipped votes on issues related to abortion, euthanasia, conversion therapy and other “matters of conscience”.
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27I thought this sort of extremism was more of a feature of the States, but to think that it had infected our country as well to such a degree. The hilarious thing is that it was the religious figures that were originally pro-choice decades ago and were one of the deciding factors why abortions were originally legalized.
It's hard to imagine that this is considered a right wing issue rather than something radical, but more and more it feels like the right are defining themselves through the act of degrading personal freedoms and rolling back the clock wherever they can to the Victorian era.
20It didn't "infect" anything. It was always here. I noticed it when I moved from Vancouver to Calgary as a kid. If you live in one of Canada's three major cities, you just aren't exposed to it, but the second you get into the suburbs or further, it's on full display. There's a reason we had Harper for an entire decade, gagging scientists, cutting corporate taxes, cuts to education and health care, and driving profits into the hands of the rich.
12I suppose that's true. Harper specifically is a good example of that after all, as you say.
3
O'Toole got voted out of the conservative leadership because of social conservatives. This is just the cumulation of that.
15Honestly most babies would die quickly without 24/7 monitoring, and for the first 6 months they look like little aliens lmao they BARELY count as people.
If fetuses count as people I guess so does a mosquito when it's sucking your blood, can't kill that!
Oops just got tapeworms and it's for life since they are living beings that I have an obligation to support since they are gods creations hurrdurr
12Yep. A newborn is pretty much a strange, smelly potato that poops and screams. Then a year or so later it sprouts legs and starts running around breaking stuff while screaming and pooping.
7I wish logic worked on them, I really do.
5Jainism revisited.
1And you know, I'd respect Conservatives if they were consistent like that: if they were pro-life, but also supported comprehensive social services, a welfare state, sex education, full maternal, natal & pediatric care, etc.
But they don't. They don't even care particularly much for neonatal care. It's okay if your baby is gestated by someone who has nowhere to live, who has no access to quality food, no medical care and/or an abusive spouse.
It really is forced-birth, not pro-life.
4
so when does ww3: revolution edition start about basic human rights
6I really dislike the arguments with this bill. The idea that it’s a slippery slope and this is the top of the slope is just mind numbing.
Conservatives want to show they support pregnancies, they don’t want to outlaw abortion, so they are going write bills that support what they want: pregnancies. That’s what this bill does, it signals they want more people to have children and to punish those who willfully attack those who’re pregnant.
The stretch that this is anti-abortion to me is non-constructive. Just because one group says it is, doesn’t make it so. Sure, it comes from some of the same camp, but it has nothing to do directly with abortion in Canada. The arguments against it look like fishing for outrage, and really makes these people look ridiculous when you read the text of the bill.
But I get it, fear the potential stretch, if abortion becomes illegal they could use this bill to say doctors willfully causes harm to a pregnant woman. But lots of laws can be stretched by the same reach.
All of this is unconstructive and a waste of time. We already have laws that protect against assault, this is just a virtue signal to begin with. And the argument against it is just a signal too. All just so tiring and wasteful.
-21Trying to grant fetuses rights isn't "supporting pregnancies", the line to restricting what pregnant people can do, including abortions, is direct and obvious. The fact that the sponsors of the bills have previously passed bills attempting to restrict abortion is a fact.
Supporting pregnancies would be doing things like passing more healthcare funding, better parental leave, literally just giving money to people with kids. That's not what this bill was about.
33this is just a virtue signal to begin with. And the argument against it is just a signal too.
It's almost like the politicians are playing politics.
I feel like sentencing should be based on forseeable harms, not victim characteristics.
Parliament shouldn't put pregnant people above people with other vulnerabilities.
if abortion becomes illegal they could use this bill to say doctors willfully causes harm to a pregnant woman.
I think the concern is more along the lines of, if there is a court case seeking to recognize the personhood of a fetus, then anti choice folks will point to this law and say "see there is precedent, the criminal code considers pregnant women to have more rights" and a biased Supreme Court can use this as a fig leaf to overturn abortion rights.
21I remember all the people in the USA saying "the republicans dont want to ban abortion, they are just pro-pregnancy, and pro-children". A couple years later, Roe V Wade has been overturned, and a bunch of states ban abortion.
16I'd agree with you, but having watched what the US backslide, this is necessary. It's important for centrists and leftists to make sure that it's very clear what conservatives are and what they stand for. If they'd just voted yes and moved on--since this is a symbolic vote--this would be a non-issue. But they didn't; they virtue-signalled to their base.
It's also why Steven Harper, of all people, would nuke from orbit any CPC MP that would raise the spectre of abortion (and why, when he let anti-Muslim bigotry run rampant it cost him) and it's why Poillievre is playing a very dangerous game courting that same vote.
4Sir, you’re not allowed to have centrist or non left views on Lemmy.
0This seems like a pretty reasonable take.This article does seem intentionally devisive. From the very beginning, its premise was that anyone supporting this bill is automatically pro-life, and uses that as justification to dismiss all conservative MPs. It jumps to huge conclusions based on very little.
I don't understand those disagreeing with you. If you heard a story about a woman who was assaulted, any reasonable person would be angry about that. Would you not be even more angry if you heard that she was pregnant with full intent to have the baby?
We all treat pregnant women as special. Because a wanted pregnancy is very special. Anyone assaulting someone who is pregnant should get the maximum punishment the law allows.
-9I wouldn't be particuallly more angry if someone who was pregnant was assaulted than a random woman, or a man for that matter, as long as they were assaulted the same way. Assault is assault.
10