Have You Heard the Good News?

...Bill C-510 has been defeated! It's a Christmas miracle! Mwahahaha. No really, while I am delighted by this development, I'm hardly surprised. Even Harper didn't vote for this stinking garbage fart of a bill.

I'm hoping that these constant failed attempts to create ridiculous legislation aimed at chipping away at abortion rights are discouraging Bruinooge and his ilk, but I somehow doubt it. I'm sure a few months from now we will be reading about some other bill introduced to combat a problem that doesn't exist or to create a law we already have. I wish they would expend their efforts on supporting the women they are pretending to care about - the ones in violent relationships, in dangerous situations, in poverty.

I've been arguing in circles about this proposed law for months now with antis who just don't get it. Coercion is already illegal. And the reason you don't see anyone getting arrested for coercing women into ending their pregnancies is because generally that is the symptom of a bigger problem - abusive relationships, most often (but not always) between men and women. If you have such a problem with men using their power to force women into making coerced "choices" about their pregnancies, you wouldn't be supporting Bruinooge, because he is doing just that.

I also think that there is a coercion problem around unwanted pregnancies, and it is widespread and extremely pervasive through our society. But it's on the other side of where Bruinooge thinks the problem is. It's people who take advantage of women who are in emotionally vulnerable positions, who tell them lies about their pregnancy, who use their religious beliefs to bully women into giving birth to children they don't want and can't afford, who tell women what to do with their own bodies while coaching it in emotionally triggering language. If Bruinooge is worried about women being coerced into making decisions about their pregnancies, he needs to visit a Crisis Pregnancy Centre.

Think of it this way. Abortion clinics exist to provide a service that is in demand. Thousands of women call every day to make appointments - they seek out the clinics, through the internet, their friends, their family doctors. Abortion clinics, for the most part, do not have an advertising budget - they don't need one. They could be located on the dark side of the moon and women would still find them when they needed to. CPCs, on the other hand, have people out on the sidewalk LURING WOMEN IN. They have giant billboards, giant Yellow Pages ads, grotesque window displays. They lie over the phone, and they lie to women's faces, to get them to come into their buildings, and they do everything they can to keep women in there - sometimes to the point of locking them in.

Abortion clinics don't need to coerce anyone. If a woman wants an abortion, she'll get one. If she wants to keep the pregnancy, she will. So maybe it's the CPCs we need to be looking at when we talk about coercion.