Thursday, March 30, 2006

Does Freedom of Speech Include the "A" Word?

There is a spirited debate going on in the National Post right now, unlike anything you'll hear in the Canadian political arena.

People are actually talking about, (quiet now, close your doors and windows...) abortion... *gasp*.

That was an absolute taboo subject in the last election, and the mere whisper of the word would bring shrill shrieks from womens' rights groups. Indeed Paul Martin used this issue to pillory Stephen Harper even though the Conservative party agreed in a policy convention that this would not be an election issue.

Actually, I'm surprised the word abortion is still in the Canadian dictionary. There have been a lot of words eradicated lately - like 'husband and wife' for example.

Back to the Post - Jonathan Kay courageously reopened the debate in Monday's column, "Canada Needs an Abortion Law". He points out that most, if not all other countries have some degree of restriction against open access to abortion.

Mr. Kay states, "Secure in the basic right to abortion, voters recognize that some restrictions are a moral necessity, and that the nature of those restrictions presents exactly the sort of issue that should be the meat of politics."

Why aren't we discussing this? How have we allowed ourselves to be so intimidated by radical special interest groups that this not even allowed to be raised in the political forum? How many people are actually in agreement that there should be no law at all regarding this issue in a supposedly civilized country?

I guess 'equal rights' don't apply equally.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hats off to Jonathan Mckay for the brave article he wrote. I am sure that the raging feminist's will be asking for his head on a platter for daring to bring it up. It is truly shameful that this "civilized" country does not have an abortion law! It's time our politicians got a back bone and stood up to this vocal minority. Abortion up to 40 weeks gestation is unacceptable!

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Yeah, Jonathan went out on a limb, but there's been some very interesting commentary all week in the Post.

Strong opinions pro and con.

At the very least I think we should not allow partial birth abortions.

And perhaps we Canadians might consider forming a law which would allow the murderer of a pregnant woman to be charged on two counts of murder rather than one? At least if we knew she wanted the baby?

Give me a break. We have bent over so far backwards to the radicals that we lost our common sense!

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Jonathan Kay noted in his piece that even Hillary Clinton said that abortion is an evil to be avoided.

Too bad there aren't any leftist politicians in this country that have the courage to do the right thing. If it came from the left, there would be no contest.