The leaking of a draft US Supreme Court document on a possible abortion rights ruling and the insinuation to reverse Roe v Wade’s ruling set the US political powder keg on fire. This is easy to understand. Oddly enough, this event in the American political debate has made a lot of noise here in Canada. We are in the middle of politics. This column aims to tell you why. Reflections on an inflationary and demagogic political discourse.
Abortion: some characters
For us, the issue of abortion is more of a medical issue than a political one. For example, in Quebec, the number of abortions was not that low. The latest data shows that in 2021, 20,803 women chose to terminate their pregnancies, according to data from the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) that we took from an article in the newspaper. Journalism. This is just under 2,000 miscarriages compared to 2020, the year in which a sharp decline was already observed. The number of abortions in Quebec continued to decline in 2021, reaching a historic low … except for women 40 and over. (La Presse, May 5, 2022)
Which should lead us to tell ourselves that abortion is not a hot topic. This is worth thinking about and should go beyond the narrow-mindedness of the petty politics our political class engages in on this subject. It makes sense, right?
Pro-life or pro-death?
Start by observing the vocabulary used to discuss this topic. Opposing pro-life to pro-death leads to nothing. In fact, I don’t know anyone in my immediate environment who is a miscarriage messenger or who wakes up at night to weep over the fate of a fetus. Abortion is, for countries like Canada at least, a medical problem and for some opponents it is a moral issue.
In my opinion, talking about it properly requires us to adapt our vocabulary. Instead of life-supporters opposing death-supporters, kinds of immoral killers, we should speak instead of those who advocate as a supreme principle the free choice of women as to whether or not to choose motherhood according to their life paths. For me, that’s basically what it’s all about, the desire to recognize that a woman has every right to decide for herself whether or not she wants to become a mother. last point. No one can impose on another person the burden of unwanted motherhood. And when I say bad, I think mainly of us guys. How can we, as some members of Canada’s Conservative Party do, decide to act on women’s bodies? Who are they to defend such positions? Surely, if it was men who gave birth to children, this topic would not have been discussed for long. The essence of this crusade is the control of the women’s womb. This is not new, it dates back to the Neolithic era and is the basis of systematic discrimination against women.
For my part, I am not in favor of abortion, but I do support the inalienable principle of a woman’s right to dispose of her own bodies. This is an important nuance. No one can impose on others the burden of unwanted motherhood. end of discussion.
So why this false debate in Quebec and Canada?
What is interesting is to see our politicians and our media take this issue out of American politics and bring the discussion to us when the topic is not in the public eye. We understand Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s interest in achieving a great deal of this because he wants to hand over his conservative opponents, who have a handful of elected officials not in favor of the right to abortion and, therefore, of the rights of women to get rid of their bodies. This is true and one might worry about it if the conservatives set up the government and that elected unit was strong enough to make it law as we have seen in many US states and the US Supreme Court. This is not the case. Away from this.
According to the latest news, the government of Canada is controlled by the Canadian Liberal Party as one cannot be a candidate or an MP if one is against the right to abortion. This minority government is backed by the National Democratic Party, which supports the right to abortion. So why is this noise useless, Mr. Trudeau? If you want to be consistent, you should instead focus on the accessibility of abortion services available to women across the country. You will then discover that in many provinces, other than Quebec, abortion services are still out of reach for women.
What is even more demagogic is that the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party has sought to make connections between Prime Minister Legault’s political support for the Conservatives during the recent federal elections and his government’s stance on abortion. It’s not a bad strategy, it’s desperation that has made itself heard. You are better than that, Mrs. Engled.
No, there is no reason to leak a document from the US Supreme Court to be discussed here.
last word …
The question of abortion can be discussed for a long time. We can mention the right to life, women’s rights, equality between men and women, the moral character of the question and many more aspects of this complex question. For my part, I believe that no one is in favor of abortion. I am, however, not one of those who think abortion is a method of contraception. For me, it is a medical question and above all else that is within the individual discretion of the woman involved. This does not mean that it is not important to take lightly. I repeat that abortion is not a method of contraception.
Be this way, like Margaret Sanger, the American activist who fought for contraception and free speech in the United States at 19And Century: “No woman can consider herself free before she can consciously choose whether to be a mother or not. From this perspective, the right to abortion can be interpreted as necessary for women to achieve equality with men, whose freedom is not restricted when it comes to It’s about having children. That’s the side I choose. The feminine field…