Despite what you might think about Canada and our universal health care system, it may be responsible for violating human rights. Well, not really.
Sorry to dash all those dreams of moral victory over socialized medicine. We just have an MP who’s trying to table a bill that would redefine the legal definition of what is a human being to include everything from a living baby to a Zygote.
According to Conservative Member of Parliament, Stephen Woodworth, Section 223 of the Criminal Code of Canada fails to accurately describe, in modern scientific terms, what a human being is.
Woodworth claims that his pleas to form an exploratory committee are “about fundamental human rights and about a 400-year-old law, frozen in time.”
How can a 400-year-old law exist in a document first drafted in 1892 you ask? Humor me. It’s getting cold up here and it warms me as a Canadian to think that some American read past the first mention of Canada and kept reading.
What would be an explosive issue south of the border has been unfolding with little drama in Canuckistan. Our Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has stated unequivocally that he does not want to reopen the debate and will vote against Woodworth, despite allowing him to continue submitting the motion, to be tabled next Wednesday for a vote in Parliament.
Members of Woodworth’s Conservative Party have stood in opposition to his motion and the Liberal and New Democratic opposition have followed traditional lines citing jurisprudence, women’s rights and the obsolescence of religious texts. The abortion debate is thought to have been settled by the Supreme Court in 1988 when existing abortion laws were judged unconstitutional. Provinces have assumed responsibility since then for providing and regulating the service through provincial heath authorities.
Although I think the motion will ultimately be voted down, theoretically the majority Conservative government could vote in favor of it, clearing the way for an exploratory committee.
Like any self-respecting insecure Canadian, I can’t help but wonder if for one brief moment, the U.S. TV cameras will point north and stiffen the backs and arseholes of every MP in Parliament. The attention would make this whole ordeal a lot more entertaining, and not just for Canadians. Just imagine how Tea Party Republicans would react to the realization that America’s friendly neighbor to the north has no abortion laws. I can hear the stories of teen mothers escaping to Canada for late term abortions materializing already.