Bloggers note : extract from article:: While the ranks of abortion opponents traditionally have been dominated by religious Christians, it’s the pro-choice side that now channels the spirit of inquisition
Jonathan Kay: Why progressives desperately stifle any dissent on abortion (even from Elizabeth May)
While the ranks of abortion opponents
traditionally have been dominated by religious Christians, it’s the
pro-choice side that now channels the spirit of inquisition
Green Leader Elizabeth May, seen in
Toronto on Sept. 3, 2019, has backtracked on earlier remarks concerning
the possibility of allowing a Green MP to reopen the debate on abortion.
If a single politician can be said to symbolize the strange way we
talk about abortion in this country, it would be Elizabeth May. Speaking
to Vassy Kapelos of the CBC last week, the federal Green party leader
said that her “personal hero” is “Jesus Christ.” Why?
“Because he led a
revolution that was non-violent. He inspired people for a mil … it’s
been 2,000 years. I rely on … I rely on his advice. A lot.” On the other
hand, May added, she is a fully committed supporter of abortion rights —
a position she says she has maintained consistently “since I was, like,
eight years old and realized what was going on when I heard my mother
arguing with people about the issue.”
To the extent there is any
contradiction in these two ideas, it is one of those officially
permitted fudges that have been an accepted part of Canadian political
life for decades. If Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin could be practicing
Catholics while leading a pro-choice party, Elizabeth May should be
allowed to have, and eat, that same cake.
It is one of those officially permitted fudges that have been an accepted part of Canadian political life
But things got more complicated on Monday, when
that aforementioned Sept. 4 CBC interview was published. In it, May had
been asked about the possibility of “a backbench Green MP (who) came
forward and wanted to introduce a private member’s bill that reopened
the (abortion) debate.”
“I could talk to them,” she answered. “I
could try to dissuade them.
I could say it would be unfortunate … but I
don’t have the power as leader of the Green party to whip votes, nor do I
have the power to silence an MP … Frankly, I think that’s a good thing,
because democracy will be healthier when constituents know that their
MP works for them and not their party leader.”
In this regard, May
was channelling the founding spirit of the Green party, whose oddball
charm traditionally has been linked to the ideological latitude afforded
its members, its tolerance of heterodoxy, and, sometimes, its flat-out
weirdness.
Certainly, there is no other federal party whose leader could
survive politically after delivering a gonzo dinner speech about Omar
Khadr to the parliamentary press gallery that sounded like something out
of a Leslie Nielsen movie.
May also once went on Twitter to tout
crackpot warnings about Wi-Fi technology and household smart meters
damaging our brains with “electromagnetic frequencies.” The only other
Green party MP in Parliament, Paul Manly, won his B.C. seat after being
bounced by the NDP for his hard-left views on Israel.
The Greens have a
tendency to give their folks a mulligan or two. And in this age of
“cancel culture,” I respect them for that.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduces Vancouver Kingsway candidate
Tamara Taggart at a rally in Vancouver on Sept. 11, 2019. The Liberals
do not accept as candidates individuals who are opposed to abortion.On the specific issue of abortion, you also could say that
May was following the traditional spirit of Canadian politics more
generally — at least insofar as that spirit existed before Justin
Trudeau brought cancel culture to Ottawa in 2014. To their credit, both
Chrétien and Martin recognized that abortion was a subject on which
reasonable people may disagree, and generally tolerated the handful of
pro-lifers within their caucus.
As recently as 2002, four Liberal MPs
appeared on stage at the annual March for Life in Ottawa — which would
be an unthinkable act of heresy under the leadership of Trudeau, who
explicitly banned incoming anti-abortion candidates from his caucus.
May
herself reflected this modern shift toward abortion dogmatism on
Monday, when she shamelessly walked back every word she’d said to
Kapelos about making democracy “healthier.” Just hours after the
interview was aired, the Green party responded to the social-media
backlash with a statement declaring that “there is zero chance an
elected representative of our party will ever reopen the abortion
debate.”
And when it was determined that two Green candidates had made
extremely unambiguous declarations of pro-life beliefs on social media
in their pre-Green years, a party spokesman used the same three words —
the candidate “does not remember” — to describe the dreamy wormhole into
which any memory of either thoughtcrime had escaped.
Trudeau explicitly banned incoming anti-abortion candidates from his caucus
For good measure, the party mandated that all
Green candidates must “wholeheartedly agree that the abortion debate is
closed in Canada.” And a Green party social media post went even
further, declaring that Green candidates must additionally commit to “expanding”
the right of women to abortions — which would be a tall order, given
that Canada is currently the only country in the OECD with no abortion
law whatsoever.
While the ranks of abortion opponents
traditionally have been dominated by religious Christians, it’s the
pro-choice side that now channels the spirit of inquisition. An observer
from any other country would find it completely bizarre to watch a
Canadian national party leader pivot 180 degrees on a profound
bioethical issue that she claims to have thought deeply about since
tugging on her mother’s hem 57 years ago.
But in Canada, this kind of
abortion confession kabuki now is seen as perfectly normal. When it
comes to “electromagnetic frequencies,” Israel, or Omar Khadr, let a
hundred flowers bloom, we say. But on the existential question of when
human life begins, on which philosophers have disagreed since time
immemorial, there’s “zero chance” of discussion.
A March for Life rally winds its way through the streets of Ottawa on May 10, 2018.Julie Oliver/Postmedia NewsIt should be said, at this juncture, that there really are
some issues on which “zero” discussion is a perfectly defensible policy.
I don’t have much problem with party leaders putting the kibosh on
private member’s bills demanding the “truth” about how the Twin Towers
fell, or quoting long passages from the oeuvre of David Irving. But
abortion doesn’t fit at all into this category, because opposition to
the current state of Canadian law on abortion isn’t exactly a fringe
position. Just the opposite: Polls show that a majority of Canadians —
61 per cent, according to a 2018 Angus Reid survey — agree either that
(a) “there should be some laws on abortion in Canada, especially in
areas such as late-term pregnancies” (49 per cent of all respondents);
or (b) “we should have abortion laws in Canada which severely restrict
availability of abortion except in cases of sexual assault” (12 per
cent).
These numbers haven’t changed all that much in recent
years, which will seem surprising to those Canadians who have followed
the issue casually in the media, and so may be under the impression that
Canadians overwhelmingly support a hardcore libertarian legal regime
permitting unfettered access to abortion, at any stage of gestation, for
any reason whatsoever. As noted above, this extreme libertarian
approach, embraced emphatically by the Liberals, Greens and NDP,
actually represents a minority view in Canada. I’m pro-choice in my own
personal outlook. But as a journalist, I find this state of play to be
shocking: I know of no other policy issue that features such a massive
disjunction between elite-enforced orthodoxy and the actual views of
ordinary Canadians.
I know of no
other policy issue that features such a massive disjunction between
elite-enforced orthodoxy and the actual views of ordinary Canadians
Of course, my own profession is much to blame.
While pro-choice orthodoxy may be embraced by only 39 per cent of
Canadians, the figure among prominent journalists in major urban media
centres is closer to 100 per cent. To the extent that the abortion issue
is covered at all, it is usually so that pundits can raise the hue and
cry over the latest evidence that those troublesome 61 per cent are
trying to assert their hillbilly concerns. In July, when an
anti-abortion movie named Unplanned played a week-long run in about 50
Canadian theatres, Toronto Twitter responded as if Triumph of the Will
were playing to sold-out goose-stepping audiences at the Rogers Centre. A
headline featured in one local outlet was — and I am not making this up
— “Unplanned Is a More Terrifying Movie Than You Think.”
That’s
why it’s absurd for the Greens to tell us “there is zero chance an
elected representative of our party will ever reopen the abortion
debate.” The debate doesn’t need to be reopened because it never closed —
as evidenced by the fact that May herself was forced to call herself a
liar for words she uttered only last week. It’s just that it’s a very
different kind of “debate” than that which you see in countries with
less parochial and clannish political cultures. The Canadian abortion
“debate,” if you can call it that, isn’t about the rights of women or
unborn children. It’s about enshrining a fashionable minority viewpoint
as immune from critique.
It’s about enshrining a fashionable minority viewpoint as immune from critique
In the countries of Europe, national laws
typically stipulate that a woman can get abortions for any reason until X
weeks of gestation, after which she must get a doctor’s permission. And
so a national debate might centre on whether X should be 16 weeks, or
18 weeks, or 20, or 22. Which is to say, a very real and important
debate about the difficult question of how to balance the rights of a
woman with the rights of a fetus. In the hyper-liberal democracies of
Scandinavia, this debate goes on all the time without any of these
countries ever transforming into the sort of misogynistic hellhole that,
Canadians are told, will be their inheritance if they ever utter so
much as a syllable about implementing any kind of abortion law.
Canada’s
own bizarro-world abortion debate — which plays out every election
cycle, especially when a progressive party has a scandal to bury — is
actually a meta-debate about whether anyone should even be allowed to
hold a real debate about abortion in the first place; and what political
consequences should befall those who dare raise a peep about it: should
the aborto-heretics be thrown out of caucus and excommunicated
altogether … or merely made to submit to a humiliating confession
ritual? On your typical CBC panel discussion on the subject, that pretty
much defines the acceptable range of viewpoint.
Pro-choice and pro-life demonstrators rally outside Brantford-Brant MPP
Will Bouma’s constituency office in Brantford, Ont., on May 13 2019.Brian Thompson/Postmedia NewsAt various Canadian universities, student governments have
tried to ban pro-life groups from campus for years, on the theory that
advocating for restrictions on abortion is tantamount to misogynistic
hate speech. And to some extent, the climate in Ottawa is a natural
consequence of these graduates growing up and imposing similar taboos on
the world of politics more generally.
In 2017, the Liberals and NDP
claimed that a woman with pro-life views wasn’t fit to chair a House of
Commons status-of-women committee. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has
promised repeatedly that he wouldn’t legislate on abortion. But that
didn’t stop a Maclean’s writer from warning us of the sinister agenda
lurking in the hearts of Christ’s soldiers.
At the Toronto Star, the
newspaper’s most conservative columnist, Rosie DiManno, actually felt
compelled to write a column insisting that Unplanned shouldn’t be banned
from public exhibition. This is what now passes for conservative
commentary on abortion: a defence of the right to even discuss the
A-word.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer greets supporters in Trois-Rivieres,
Que., on Sept. 11, 2019. Scheer has promised repeatedly that he wouldn’t
legislate on abortion.The party line on the enshrined view is that Canadian
politicians are merely protecting a woman’s right to choose. In a
country like the United States, where state politicians really are
trying to roll back abortion rights, that is indeed an urgent task. But
Canada isn’t the United States, and even a Conservative government is no
more likely to ban abortion outright than it is to legalize a
concealed-carry handgun law for every Canadian adult. And the pundits
warning us hysterically of the horrifying contents of pro-life cinema,
or the years-old content of a candidate’s Facebook page, know this full
well.
The only thing that left-of-centre politicians and pundits
are seeking to “protect” is their own self-pronounced monopoly on the
conversation about abortion. And the reason for this ongoing culture-war
stunt isn’t had to fathom: the statistics I’ve cited above aren’t
exactly secret. Progressives know that once people in positions of power
or influence — hey, even some no-name Green candidate out in the
sticks — start flouting the taboo against discussing abortion policy,
it may become public knowledge that (audience gasps) there are millions
of Canadian centrists who would openly welcome just such a discussion.
And
if that should be allowed to happen, then — who knows — we may go down
the same hellish road as Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. The word
“terrifying” barely seems adequate. • Twitter: JonKay Jonathan Kay is Canadian editor of Quillette.
Sofiane Ghazi, 39, also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault on 2nd day of proceedings
CBC News ·
Sofiane Ghazi, 39, has pleaded guilty to lesser charges a day after his trial began. Ghazi was accused of stabbing his pregnant wife, resulting in the death of their baby.(SPVM)
A Montreal man accused of stabbing his pregnant wife, resulting in the death of their baby, pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder and aggravated assault.
Sofiane Ghazi, 39, was originally charged with first-degree murder in the death of the child and attempted murder against his wife in their Montréal-Nord apartment in 2017.
The woman, whose name is subject to a publication ban, was more than 36 weeks pregnant at the time.
Ghazi pleaded not guilty to the original charges.
His trial began Wednesday morning but ended abruptly in the afternoon — after hearing the first two witnesses, defence lawyer François Taddeo asked for court to be suspended until morning so he and his partner could consult with their client.
In tears on Thursday, Ghazi pleaded guilty to the lesser charges before Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-François Buffoni at the Montreal courthouse.
Buffoni told the court he believed Ghazi's pleas were appropriate and acceptable.
Second-degree murder carries an automatic sentence of life in prison. Sentencing arguments will begin Sept. 17 to determine how much time Ghazi must serve behind bars before he is eligible for parole.
Baby died of stab wounds sustained in utero
In an agreed statement of facts presented by prosecutors Thursday, court heard that at the time of the attack, Ghazi and his wife had been married 12 years.
Ghazi admitted that he abused hard drugs. He was under a court order that forbade him from taking drugs, drinking, communicating with his wife without her consent and being at their apartment without her consent.
On July 23, 2017, he showed up to their apartment. His wife asked him to leave, suspecting he had taken drugs.
He refused to go so she called 911. He got angry and left before police arrived.
Justice Jean-François Buffoni asked Ghazi a series of questions Thursday, including whether he was pleading guilty voluntarily. Through tears in the prisoner’s box, he answered 'Yes.' (MHP)
But in the early morning hours of July 24, he returned and stabbed his wife, who was 33 at the time, with a carving fork.
She had 19 wounds, mainly in her stomach area but also to her left thigh.
She was taken to hospital, and the baby, known to the court only as "Baby Ghazi," was born via caesarean section but died shortly after.
It was later determined the baby died as a result of the wounds inflicted on the mother.
Wife expected to make statement during sentencing
His wife was among those slated to testify during the trial, along with police investigators, crime scene technicians and paramedics.
She is now expected to make a statement during the sentencing arguments.
Prosecutor Chantal Michaud said the Crown is satisfied with the day's events, and that her thoughts are with the woman and her two children, a four-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy.
"We hope that what happened today will help her turn the page and live a life that is as normal as possible," Michaud said.
She wouldn't answer specific questions about the plea or the next steps in the case, saying she is saving that information for the sentencing hearing.
Green Leader Elizabeth May, seen in
Toronto on Sept. 3, 2019, has backtracked on earlier remarks concerning
the possibility of allowing a Green MP to reopen the debate on abortion.
