A Boston Marriage

When I get really angry, I cry. I’m not talking about a quick-flash-of-outrage anger or momentary-eye-rolling-exasperation anger; I mean anger that is so deep and pervasive and overwhelming that it’s almost numbing. When I’m experiencing that kind of anger, tears come a’splashing and I stop talking while I grind my jaw, trying to calm myself the hell down.

I hate having this reaction. In my ideal world, I wouldn’t cry when uber-angry. Crying is so often perceived as a sign of weakness. Crying is distracting—it makes people think my feelings have been hurt, not that I am furious. But when something happens that is so absurd that it defies logic, that I can’t argue against because it simply doesn’t conform to the laws of reality, I cry.

I get mad a lot. I’m a queer woman who’s spent more than two seconds thinking about the way the world works, so anger is basically my natural state. But crying-mad? That’s truly something special. Having said that: this week, Stephen Harper made me cry.

I don’t care much for Stephen Harper. I think he hates my uterus. Well, not mine specifically. He hates uteri (yes, that’s really the plural form of uterus). I think he hates that women now have (at least in Canada and at least theoretically) control of them. Because women having control of their own uteri is a big fucking blow to the old patriarchal structure of society. It’s a sign that times are changing, that his male privilege is going to be challenged and, goodness willing, torn down. My empowered, uterus, awesome with all its autonomy, is a symbol of the decline of the given power males enjoy.

I’ve always suspected that Harper hated my uterus. Back in 2006 when he defanged Status of Women Canada (by cutting their budget, closing 12 of the 16 Status of Women offices, rendering advocacy and research projects ineligible for funding under the Women’s Program, and removing “equality” from the mandate of the department) my suspicions were confirmed. But this week, Harper moved to a whole other level of uterus-loathing. Here’s the back story:

-In late 2009, Harper announced that he would be making maternal and child health a priority at the 2010 G8 summit Canada would be hosting. G8 summit = the heads of 8 industrial democratic nations getting together to talk about important shit in broad strokes. Since the more inclusive G20 has largely usurped the G8 as a guiding force on economic issues, the G8 is attempting to stay relevant by focusing on humanitarian affairs. Since it’s in Canada this year, Harper sets the agenda.

-Maternal and child health in the developing world is a crisis and the United Nations has made reducing maternal mortality a Millennium Development Goal. According to the World Health Organization, a woman dies every minute from complications relating to pregnancy or labor—that’s over 500 000 a year and 90% of them are in the developing world and most of them are attributed to causes that are preventable, and have been for decades. These women leave behind about 1 million children every year and that they, in turn, are 10 times more likely to die within two years of their mother’s death. Another 10 million women suffer from disease/infection related to their pregnancy and/or childbirth.

-After Harper’s declaration that he would focus on this issue, people were like “Whaaaaaa? Harper is helping out the lady-folk? For reals?” So the liberals pushed the issue asking if this initiative would include family planning (meaning: contraception and abortion). For a spell, there was a lot of confusion and double-speaky[1] answers from people of import (such as Canon’s now infamous “It does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed the purpose of this is to be able to save lives”). This week, Harper’s Minister for International Cooperation, Bev Oda (who was, incidentally, the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women when the department was “revamped” in 2006) was in Halifax for pre-G8 summit meetings with other ministers and clarified: “Canada’s contribution to maternal and child health may involve various interventions, including family planning, which includes the use of contraceptive methods. The details remain to be determined; however, Canada’s contribution will not include funding of abortions.”

End of back story, beginning of my hot hot tears of anger.

I understand that Stephen Harper believes that abortion is murder—I even understand why he’d think that. I respect his (notably uterus-free) opinion. What I won’t abide by is Stephen Harper giving his personal fucking opinion primacy over all else and forcing it on women at the cost of their lives, autonomy, dignity and so on[2].

You see, in this world there aren’t that many problems that we know how to fix. This one? We know how to deal. All the heavy hitters—the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and so one—agree that access to comprehensive reproductive health care that includes contraception and abortion is the way to effectively deal with the maternal health crisis. And since in Canada abortion has been decriminalized since 1969 and without any legal restriction since 1988, it would make sense for our government to totally listen to the experts and spend our money effectively and fund an initiative that includes providing, where legal, a medical procedure that we believe is a basic right, right? Nope.

In the face of the facts provided by those rockstars of international humanitarian collaboration and our constitution’s own primacy-of-woman’s-choice position, how the hell are we carving out a caveat that says ‘we draw the line at abortion’? Especially considering that funding abortion overseas would be nothing new for Canada—we’ve been giving money to International Planned Parenthood Federation for about 25 years now (their last application for funding, however, has been in limbo in Bev Oda’s office for the last few months).

The conservatives keep giving this line about not wanting to reopen the abortion debate–that makes me want to pull out my hair because 1) for a group that doesn’t want a debate,  they’ve thrown down some fighting words 2) there is no authoritative “The Abortion Debate” in Canada. “The Abortion Debate” was settled in 1988[3]. The only abortion debate of any consequence in this country should be the one that women have with themselves and/or their partners, if they so choose. My uterus has the right to not be forced to carry an unwanted or untenable pregnancy to term; the courts decided this. Deal with it.

And this is how they do just that: they can’t outlaw abortion at home (though they can allow provincial governments to make them super inaccessible), so they sure as hell aren’t going to fund it overseas, even though it goes against reason and right. Even though women are pregnant because they are raped as a tactic of war, or raped as a measure to “correct” their “deviant” sexuality, or married off and raped while they’re still children. They’re not going to fund abortion even though some pregnancies are life threatening or will permanently disable or render the lives of women and their existing children unlivable in innumerable ways. They’re not going to fund abortion even though it’s a fucking human right to be in control of when and if you reproduce. They’re not going to fund abortion even though women who are denied that right will find a way to terminate their pregnancies on their own in clandestine and dangerous ways.

They’re not going to fund abortion because, for our government, ideology trumps women’s lives. To accommodate Stephen Harper’s personal belief system, women are yet again the ones who must accept that their health and lives must be offered as compromise if they want any help at all from our government. When those are the terms and when it’s a matter of life and death, the Conservatives are going to get their way because they can trust that while they will gamble with women’s lives, people like me won’t. They trust that the rest of us will ultimately choose some maternal health care, even if it is limited, over none (sound familiar, USA?). They know that, unlike them, we won’t pout until we get our way if it costs women’s lives, that we will take what we can get. It’s because his opposition is reasonable that Stephen Harper gets his unreasonable way. And that clusterfuck of illogic is why I am reduced to tears.

This isn’t just about abortion. This is ultimately about whether or not we will tolerate a government blatantly ignoring reality, whether we will let them construct their own inaccurate, ideologically-driven version of how-things-are-done and act accordingly—even if it costs women and children’s lives—and whether or not we will let them tell us that up is actually down and forward is really backward.

I’d like to shout from the rooftops, or at least this blog, that I am a proud member of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and encourage you to consider joining. Or, you know, doing anything other than being apathetic on this issue.

---

[1] Yeah, that’s a 1984 reference. I never make them. I think they’ve become cheap and overused. I’m so mad about this that I’m using literary references I think are played out because IT’S EXACTLY WHAT ORWELL WAS WRITING ABOUT.

[2] For a more detailed take on how I understand the “abortion is murder” belief but loathe the pro-life/anti-choice movement, read this.

[3] More information on the legality of abortion in Canada and why it’s paternalistic, unconscionable, and misogynist to have laws against abortion, read this.