Thursday 10 May 2012

How About 'March For Choice' Day?

I wrote about this fucking shitshow last year, and it seems like we've reached that time again. Yes, once again, it's time for all those who value vague bits of genetic material over the lives of actual human women to gather together, march to our nations' capital and give away a free iPod or two to the kids that are there on mandatory field trips.... wha???

Okay, I don't think I need to get into how fucked up it is that the pro-life movement is targeting young people with a 'hip and with it' new campaign strategy. It's pretty obviously, completely fucked up. I'm not even going to get into how bizarre it is that is seems to be working, although it is, to me at least, quite effing bizarre. Let's instead focus on what fucking frightening timing this rally comes at.

I've talked about Stephan Woodworth before, haven't I? In case you need a quick refresher he's the asshole who seems to be pushing the hardest for the abortion debate to be reopened. As a backbencher for Herr Harper, one can hardly be surprised. However, the P.M. has held strong to his promise that the debate shall not be reopened. Woodworth seems unfazed by his masters' words and presents himself as an ally, perhaps even a leader to the evangelical and otherwise brainwashed hordes, their shining beacon, their voice on Parliament Hill.

People like Woodworth and his followers are the people that picket clinics set up to help women in need. They're the ones that perpetuate the myth that women use abortions as birth control. They're the ones that leak clinic records to the public at large, shame single women that couldn't support the children they'd have to care for, shame the rape victims for aborting the fetus that shares the DNA of their attacker, shame every woman who dares to make a choice. They're the ones that bomb clinics, kill abortion doctors and make women fear the potential of getting pregnant even more than they already have to. They're bullies. Some might even call them terrorists. But, in the name of their god, they're just doing what they think is right, aren't they? Am I so off base here? To compare pro-lifers with any other group of religious, god-fearing terrorists?

Of course I am. I couldn't say that if it weren't for the anonymity the internet provides. That's your freedom of fucking speech right there. The freedom goes to who it always goes to. That's why there's a 'March For Life' Day, but the supposedly Liberal mayor of Ottawa won't greenlight a 'March For Choice' Day. That's why there isn't a 'March For Choice' Day. And if there is somewhere, that's why it's not of this magnitude. Because no matter how "Liberal" you are, no matter how much you're all for freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom over yourself and your body, etc. it always stops short of women. No one ever backs a womans' freedom of speech unless they're slamming other women. The pro-lifers get heard all the time, because the freedom of speech is not universal. It belongs to men, and men do with it as they see fit.

These people, marching for life, are they ever around after the babies are born? Are they ever there to help the single mothers who go through with their pregnancies? Do they babysit to these women can finish school and get better jobs so that they can support their children better, in lieu of the fathers in absentia? Do they provide financial support to the women who can't make ends meet, but had no choice but to conceive? Of course not. Doing god's work isn't about making sure people turn out okay. It's just about getting your message across and getting your way, whatever the consequences, innocent bystanders be damned. Those are the people in the "March For Life". Rest assured that this parade will never march with one like that.

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