Educate your MP on abortion not being a Charter right

Theresa Winchester recently sent this letter to Justin Trudeau and to her MP.  

I will send a copy to my own MP as well. I encourage others to copy and also send to their MP, with a handwritten note on Theresa's letter. Something like this:

"I agree with the author of this letter to the PM. There is no Charter right to abortion in Canada".

Sign your letter and print your mailing address on it. You can mail your letter postage free to:

[Name of Member of Parliament]
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6

November 18, 2018

To the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada:

As a former Canadian military staff officer, I write to advise you that you have been badly briefed concerning the contents of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Certainly, since you are the PM, you would not want to be misquoting a seminal Canadian document, particularly one with which your father is intrinsically linked. 

Your pre-election statements about “Charter right to an abortion” were perhaps excusable. However, since the election, you are embarrassing yourself with these repeated declarations. Please, have a look at the enclosed copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; a woman’s Charter “right to an abortion” is not there, it just ain’t, no matter how hard you search. Not. There. 

While you are looking closely at the Charter, you will notice a few items that are there:

• Section 2 (a)  Freedom of conscience
• Section 2 (b)  Freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression

The 2018 attestation signatures required to access the federal funding for summer jobs flies directly in the face of these two Fundamental Freedoms. 

After hearing you speak on this when you were attempting to defend the indefensible, I thought, “well, following this argument, when the Conservatives win the next election, he will accept if the PC party requires that those wanting federal summer jobs funding sign an attestation stating that the applicant agrees with an elected senate or some such Conservative platform item”.  

Ummmm, you understand that freedom of conscience is all encompassing, that the Charter doesn’t say “except for topics which the ruling party disagree with”? Nope.

• Section 7 Legal Rights - Right to life
• Section 15 (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has a right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. 

Mr. Trudeau, surely your staff advised you of the contents of Sections 7 & 15? These are fairly basic stuff as Charters of Rights and Freedoms go. So, how do you square them with sex selection and “might be handicapped” abortions done daily in Canada? Do you get around the absolute guaranteed rights by telling yourself that the pre-born are not human and not “individuals” to whom the Charter applies? Oh, and note the Charter right to protection from discrimination based on mental or physical disability -- death being the ultimate discrimination. Doh!

Hmmm, that “not a human” thing? That is exactly how the great atrocities of history have occurred, for example, in Nazi Germany and more recently in Rwanda where individuals who were Jews and Tutsis were declared to be not human, thereby justifying their killing. Do you get the connection? Those with power, control and voice need simply declare those without power, control and voice to be less than human. In all cases, scientific evidence shows these declarations contravene basic human rights. 

You declare yourself loud and often as a feminist. Just so’s ya know, real feminists truly understand how those with power, control and voice abuse those without power, control and voice. Again, do you get the connection? 

Now, with a fuller understanding of the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, your staff needs to create a working document by which you can gracefully backtrack. This will be the opportunity to make up for the great harm done to your place in history. In less than 100 years, humanity will view abortion in the same way that we now see the formerly acceptable practise of human slavery -- those with no power, control or voice versus the loud, the powerful, the controlling. Your record as a PM who wrongly defended abortion as solely about a women’s non-existent Charter right to choose will speak for itself - seriously, how embarrassing would that be??

Yours sincerely,

Theresa Winchester, OMM, CD, rmc