Stop telling us what we can believe

Dear Chris Selley,

I really must take issue with your recent column in the National Post on abortion. 

You say:

“It probably doesn’t need explaining how fantastically stupid abortion-to-Holocaust analogies are — the two things are overwhelmingly more dissimilar than they are similar — but I suppose it couldn’t hurt. The Canadian Institute for Health Information reports 83,576 women underwent an abortion procedure in 2019. They made that choice for a wide variety of reasons, some of which would attract more sympathy in the court of public opinion than others.”

To begin with CIHI grossly under reports the numbers of abortions done in Canada every year. If you had delved a bit deeper into the subject you would have learned this yourself. See here and here. (This is due to a complicated bunch of reasons but I would be happy to send you all of my research on abortion numbers in Canada if you care to learn the facts.)

This means that since 1988 there have been at least 100,000 abortions every year, which would mean at least 3,300,000 abortions since that year, never mind the ones done before that. Some find this comparison to a holocaust offensive. In fact you call it "fantastically stupid".

So what is the definition of holocaust? According to Merriam-Webster:

a: usually the Holocaust: the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II
b: a mass slaughter of people, especially GENOCIDE (emphasis added)

So you see there are many Canadians (Group A) who believe that abortion is a morally horrific act. They believe that taking the lives of defenseless human beings on such a massive scale scale, each and every year, is in fact a holocaust. On the other hand, there are many Canadians (Group B) who believe that abortion is an acceptable solution to an unwanted pregnancy. You seem to belong to Group B. While I don't agree with you, I wouldn't call your viewpoint "fantastically stupid".

Next you say:

“The vast majority of people who might retweet or nod in agreement with that NCLN tweet clearly do not, in fact, believe it. If you actually think a Holocaust is ongoing in your country’s clinics and hospitals, you don’t cheerfully promote online events featuring “pro-life badasses.” You don’t say things like “there’s a lot of joy in the air,” as a spokesperson for the anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition effused of 2018’s March for Life in Ottawa. You’re beside yourself. You’re pulling your hair out, chaining yourself to things, frantically trying to keep people out of abortion clinics. Maybe you’re even blowing stuff up.”

"Joy" and "cheerfully"? Since you are not pro-life and have no idea what it is like to be pro-life and be discriminated against and marginalized by every Tom, Dick and Chris, we must try to, you know, keep each other's spirits up in such a difficult and thankless task it is, to advocate against abortion. As for "chaining ourselves to things trying to keep people out of abortion clinics"-- have you heard of abortion bubble zone laws where pro-life people have no freedom of expression rights, and at the March's for Life where handfuls of screaming antifa people are allowed to block thousands of us on our approved routes, and the police do nothing to stop them? See:

https://run-with-life.blogspot.com/2020/01/pro-life-right-wing-extremists.html

https://run-with-life.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-peaceful-prolife-people-are-dealt.html

https://run-with-life.blogspot.com/2017/05/march-for-life-2017-we-will-never-give.html

https://run-with-life.blogspot.com/2018/05/march-for-life-2018.html

And as for "blowing stuff up"? Did you really haul out that tired old mantra?

Finally, and most importantly, why is it that people from (Group B) always want to dictate what people from (Group A), are allowed to believe, allowed to say, and how they are allowed to act?

Thomas Mulcair: please don't quit, we need you

Chris Selley thinks Thomas Mulcair is the man to hold Justin Trudeau to account for all his election promises:

"They have, after all, pledged to “save home mail delivery”; to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by year’s end; to modify anti-terror laws in a way that satisfies civil libertarians and to implement more robust national security oversight; to ditch the F-35s and find cheaper fighter jets somewhere; to legalize and regulate marijuana; to table electoral reform legislation within 18 months; to restore the retirement age to 65; to comprehensively reform access-to-information procedures; to appoint an advertising commissioner to decide whether government ads are partisan; to “establish an independent commission to organize leaders’ debates”; to reform Senate and Supreme Court appointments; to allow MPs free votes on everything except platform items, “traditional confidence matters” and matters pertaining to “our shared values and the protections guaranteed by the Charter”; to alter the House of Commons’ standing orders to prohibit mammoth omnibus bills; to empower and enrich the Parliamentary Budget Office and to extend its purview to parties’ election platforms; to make government accounting “consistent and clear”; to restore the mandatory long-form census; to establish “a pan-Canadian framework for combating climate change” within 90 days of the Paris conference; to “renew Canada’s commitment to peacekeeping operations”; and to “enact the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” which at the federal level means calling an inquiry into missing and murdered women, adopting and implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “eliminating the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in custody over the next decade,” closing the aboriginal educational achievement gap in a single generation, building a Residential Schools National Monument in Ottawa, “restoring and increasing” funding for CBC, statutorily exempting criminals suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome from all mandatory minimum sentences, having new citizens swear observance to treaties with indigenous peoples and outlawing spanking."

Good idea.

Notice this promise:

"And matters pertaining to “our shared values and the protections guaranteed by the Charter”

Mr. Trudeau thinks of course that abortion is a shared value and is protected by the Charter--untrue and untrue. See here and here.

And this one:

"to comprehensively reform access-to-information procedures"

I look forward to this promise. I remember when Harper said something smilar with his Federal Accountability Act, which of course didn't amount to a hill of beans. Let's hope Trudeau does a better job of it. We'll be watching.

Justin Trudeau's Liberal Charter of Values

Chris Selley on Trudeau's moral exhibitionism

"Are we really at a point where Liberal MPs must believe Norway’s abortion laws are a misogynist abomination? 

Odd as it is, it is what it is. There is clearly no political gain to be had for any party from engaging this issue — except by trying to out-pro-choice the others, or so the Liberals and New Democrats seem to believe. (NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is also touting a pro-choice-only rule, though this seems less surprising.) But if you want to run with Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals, it’s apparently not enough to be content to leave the abortion status quo alone. If you have the slightest appreciation for the abortion laws in the aforementioned feminist paradises, it seems you are unwelcome — because those governments, in Mr. Trudeau’s words, dare to limit “what a woman chooses to do with her body.” 

It’s a weird position. It seems totally unnecessary. It smacks of moral exhibitionism more than anything else. And I’m sorry, but I can’t quite get past this: Mr. Trudeau, you’re a practising Catholic. Are we really at a point where Liberal MPs must believe Norway’s abortion laws are a misogynist abomination, but are free every Sunday to give alms to one of the most powerful anti-abortion organizations on the planet? And if so, are their evangelical colleagues who disavow reopening the abortion debate also now free to worship? Or will they still hear the whispers of hypocrisy, hidden agendas and political conspiracies from across the aisle?"

I guess we can next expect Trudeau to come up with his very own Quebec style Charter of Values.

He can then dictate how all Liberals will be allowed to think, what their personal beliefs can be, how they should look, what they can wear, what they can eat and who they can associate with.

That'll fix em, eh Justin?

Stephen Harper's house of cards

It's been an interesting week for Stephen Harper.

Abacus is reporting that more Canadians think that Justin Trudeau would do a better job of the economy than Stephen Harper. Imagine that?

(UPDATE: I just looked at the report in greater detail and it seems to me that the questions asked in this poll on the economy were only asked about Thomas Mulcair, and not all the leaders. Yet when I google the topic, all the news agencies including Abucus, seem to be framing this as how the leaders would do on the economy.)



And Justin Trudeau released his Liberal Senator bombshell this week, making all Liberal Senators independents. Read today's Chris Selley: Look who suddenly has a plausible Senate reform plan for a good analysis on this move.

And veterans aren't happy with Conservative Minister Julian Fantino.

And last but not least, Social Conservatives haven't been too happy for some time now, with Stephen Harper's world famous refusal to let us debate abortion in Parliament.

Everyone else seems to be just catching up I guess.

My oh my. Where will it all end?

Down the rabbit hole

Thank goodness Margaret Somerville stands up for the unborn.

But there was tough competition today with Judith Timson in the Globe and Mail, Chris Selley in the National Post, and Valerie Percival in the Ottawa Citizen. All complaining loudly over Mr. Harper's Maternal Health care initiative and the fact that it will not cover abortion.

But what was really odd, was that Timson thinks she speaks for me. I wonder why she would think that?
"In exactly whose name has the Harper government decided to withhold funds for access to safe abortion in their international maternal and child health initiative? Not in my name. And not in the names of countless Canadians who have relied for years on safe access to the procedure at government expense...Is that really what we want – to deal with abortion again ? Although there has been a slight drop in the number of Canadians supporting full access to abortion, polls show a majority still support it."

She even admits that fewer Canadians support abortion. Curiouser and curiouser.

But what is more troubling than the pro-abortion types' misguided notion that they somehow speak for other Canadians, is their ever increasing shrillness about "women's rights" and their corresponding complete dismissal of fetal rights.

They don't just dismiss the unborn child and its rights, they pretend that the children who are the victims of abortions don’t exist at all. Like some kind of fairy tale dream world where women have "procedures" but let's not talk about what the "procedure" is doing, or how it is done. And please, please, whatever you do, don't show us any pictures of the "procedure".

Nope. Women's Rights. All for one and one for all.