Are you obsessive and troubled?

Though so. 


I mean, I really hate to pick on Heather Mallick (Actually, I don't. So what I lied, sue me) but sometimes (always) she deserves it.

Abortion rights across Canada are like computer-generated word clouds, or to use a more old-fashioned analogy, ordinary sky clouds. Abortion availability is good and prominent in bigger cities in bigger provinces, wispy in small towns and the more backward provinces like New Brunswick. And in P.E.I., as always, it’s a heartless and empty sky.

Stop the presses. You mean that abortion is like everything else in Canada, more readily available in urban centres than in small towns? Who woulda thunk?

You can talk Anne of Green Gables all you like but imagine this country containing a province that treats its women the way the Irelands do. You must gather cash in your apron from kind friends and leave the island for the 10-minute procedure that’s easy to get in Toronto but would send you straight to hell in Potato Island, you filthy slut. So no change there then.

Heather Mallick, whatever her innumerable faults, has a gift for evocative language. Or at least would-be evocative language that comes across as rather humorously manipulative unless you happen to agree with her anyway. The kind motherly (oops) woman, bravely defying the judgementalism of her backwards and faintly sinister community, tearfully gathering money in her apron, deposited there by kind friends who look like Judy Dench in a period film. Oh, it tugs at the heart strings. And yes I can easily imagine living in a country like Ireland. Apparently I do anyway, but I will consider Ireland as a backup destination if something ever gets into the water supply and a certain person becomes Prime Minister.

New Brunswick is continuing its torment of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the bravest man in Canada, by dragging its heels on his lawsuit that would make the province actually obey health-care laws. Abortion is legal and covered under medicare, therefore free. But since timely abortions are extraordinarily difficult to get in the only two provincial hospitals that do them, women have to go to clinics where they pay upfront.

Well I'll be dipped in butter and rolled in breadcrumbs, the bravest man in Canada is he? And I never even knew it. Next they'll be telling us all the marijuana protesters are the bravest men (Ed: people Marmalade, no sexist language) in Canada too, after all they risk going to jail for their deeply held beliefs, and they aren't even risking having to make an acceptance speech when they get an honorary doctorate! One swoons at such manly courage. (and maybe Captain Kirk can step aside long enough for Morgentaler to become the next GG write in)

The province is clearly waiting for the good doctor, who is 87 and not in good health, to die. In his boyhood, my dear friend Henry also distressed people by not dying. They happened to be Nazi soldiers in Auschwitz, and no, I am not making a link. I am, however, pointing out an irony.

No we wouldn't be making that link now would we? We would just be making that link and then saying we didn't make that link from which people can draw their own links to match the linkage of their hearts to the gates of heaven or hell (because we all know that only pro-choice people get to choose heaven). Actually speaking of irony, the pro-lifers have a great deal to say on the irony of a holocaust survivor leading the charge to kill babies who are "unwanted", "imperfect", and "nonpersons". Did I mean to make that link? You judge for yourselves (for the more obtuse, the answer is yes).

There are now three women in the Conservative New Brunswick cabinet. One would hope they’d extend a generous hand to their youthful rural sisters and push for abortion care in the province. Thinking of you, Attorney General and Minister of Justice Marie-Claude Blais!

The SisterhoodTM! (Mutually exclusive with the deviant category defined as pro-life individuals of the gender "female")

Calgary has seen more anti-choice clamour this year, although the protesters at the University of Calgary appear to be the same as those who protest at other universities too, reports the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. This rather dilutes the local effect. Calgary is a sophisticated city. I won’t compare its new mayor to ours, as it hurts too much.

Oh shoot. I had an open mind on the subject of Naheed Nenshi (alright I know nothing about him whatsoever, but I was prepared to approve if the evidence supported such an endorsement) but now I am afraid I must irrevocably turn my back on any thoughts of considering the man anything but a Calgary tragedy. Unless of course Mallick really only supports him because she thinks a Muslim mayor in Calgary just sticks it in the eye of Alberta (Disregarding the fact that they voted for him) and thus her support is purely racially and religiously based and has nothing to do with policy. Hm, could be. Maybe I better continue to keep an open mind on the subject of Mayor Nenshi.
And wonder of wonders, pro-life students manage to simultaneously enroll in U of O, U of C, and several dozen other campuses across Canada. Where are they getting that money? Where is the CRA? Why aren't they auditing these miraculous students?

Another issue is Bill C-510 on “coerced abortion.” Priests for Life loves it, and is passionate in its desire for women to bear more children, even unwanted ones.

One assumes that, by definition, coerced abortions were not unwanted by the women. Who then? The men in their lives? Mallick thinks that if a man doesn't want a child he should be able to force a woman to abort it, and kill her if she refuses? Before she sues me I know she doesn't, but that interpretation aside I am at some loss to understand what exactly the above sentence meant, if anything.

As always, I see political debates in graphic terms, mainly because I translate debates on principle into the suffering they cause to actual humans. And I remain disgusted by the continuing efforts of anti-choicers to figuratively stick their fingers into the uteri of women, as though they have a right to set up shop there.

In which case I am sure she absolutely loves the fact that public displays containing images of aborted fetuses allow us to move the debate into the realm of graphic human suffering. After all, that is her chosen battle ground right? Right? 

They do not. A person’s body is their own fenced-off area and it is their choice what they do inside it.

Except put it in front of an abortion clinic.

And yet we have hard-right Canadian newspapers and magazines debating whether women should be allowed even to have caesarean births or to cut back on the number of embryos that survive implantation during IVF procedures. No, a woman shouldn’t have twins if she doesn’t wish to. No, she shouldn’t have to be an octomom if her IVF has been badly handled.

And, incidentally my dear Mallick, we have every single letter to the editor on the subject professing horror and disgust that anyone would murder a child's twin as a measure of convenience. Do you really enjoy living in that kind of Canada Mallick? Knowing that the person you say "hi" to every day shudders at the thought of killing a twin so that the remaining child can have more new clothes? Actually, I take that all back. As you have yourself admitted to not knowing anyone who is a serious Christian I assume you live in a fairly sheltered Canada and don't have to deal with that. My mistake.

Women will find it almost impossible to be self-supporting or have satisfying careers until they can direct their own reproduction. So childbirth must often be delayed till their 30s. As usual, Quebec is at the forefront, paying for IVF procedures but with the goal of a woman ending up with one healthy infant as opposed to six damaged ones (which is what happens in private clinics that charge enormous fees and roll the dice on infant health).

Because most women love to live through the pain of infertility and IVF because no one told them that glib statements about delaying childbirth have less than glib realities. I'm not forcing anyone not to use birth control. I just prefer that we don't kill children already in existence. I also, for the record, oppose mothers being able to kill their dependent children when they realize a year after cute Suzy was born that being a single Mom really puts a damper on education and career.

It will never end, this need for troubled obsessive people — the Harperites of Canada — to take ownership of others, to prod inside the female body — and into the stuff of our souls — for control. Should Stephen Harper win a majority in a possible spring election, every right women have won over the decades will drift into the ether, like clouds.

And here we are again, back at Harper and the conservatives. It's always the Harper, isn't it. I sure hope for Mallick's sake that liberals, or worse yet NDP, don't take over Canada. She'd be out of business overnight. Unless you count several years of victory cheers business. 
   But just savor this passage for a moment, to prod into the "stuff of our souls - for control" because we just know that under a Harper majority women would lose the right to vote (honest, that is what that says. Read it), and before you knew it every woman in Canada would have invested in a Julia Child pearl necklace and be scrubbing floors all day long for 50 cents an hour, if they were allowed to work at all. 


You almost have to feel sorry for someone who's entire security and assurance of freedom is nothing more than clouds, to be whisked away by malevolent men at the drop of a hat if a few seats tip the wrong way. Actually one really does feel sorry for her, it must be hard to live in such an angst ridden "reality". 


But I'm still going to laugh at her if she insists on parading her paranoia to the world of Star readers.