SO well stated...
Listening to: Still, nothing. I'm liking quiet.
Reposted from: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/02/f-vp-mallick.html
Viewpoint: "The debate is over: Time to honour Henry Morgentaler"
Heather Mallick, CBC News
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 7:06 PM ET C
I laughed out loud on hearing Dr. Henry Morgentaler had been given the Order of Canada. I figured it was a hoax.
Every time I had written about his great courage and his incalculable rescues of individual Canadians, it reminded the misanthrope in me that we're not the type of people who reward someone for sticking his neck out.
Canadians value prudence and caution. A man who takes an almost suicidal risk, as Morgentaler did when he took on the federal government over its ban on abortion rights for women, is in our eyes a gambler, not a hero. We don't like mavericks. We frown on people who cash in their RRSPs early, tsk tsk.
And we don't like women much either, I notice, but Morgentaler has always liked women and has always helped us. This small now-frail person went to jail for us.
I like that in a man.
For his commitment
After I had stopped laughing, I gulped and searched the Governor General's website for the words that justified his honour. I read "For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy," etc.
That sounds like what you'd say to a retiring insurance agent who had campaigned for acupuncture to be added to female employees' health benefits plans nationwide. It doesn't capture the drama of what life was like pre-Morgentaler, with girls bleeding to death from back-alley abortions, their bowels protruding through a crevasse torn into the uterus and massive infections from filthy instruments or poisoned twigs used as abortifacients.
Things are more civilized now, we think. Every child a wanted child, as Morgentaler says. You can take Plan B, or the abortion pill, or have a medical abortion in a clinic or perhaps a hospital, correct?
But as I always tell young people (and indeed old people), women should never underestimate how much they are hated. For their own peculiar reasons, some men and some women target women at their most vulnerable. There is something about a pregnant woman that brings out the bully.
An epic survivor
Morgentaler, with great support from allies and his wife, Arlene Leibovitch, has endured decades of calumny in his own country for standing up in defence of the bullied. I don't know why his opponents often email me about his Jewishness - I have grasped that fact, thanks - but anti-Semitism has without a doubt been a factor in the political and personal campaigns against him. Jew-hating is as universal as the bullying of females apparently.
I resent this, as much as I resent the fact that Morgentaler's windows have to be bulletproof or that I have to watch his back when I dine with him in restaurants. Someone might shoot him or slash him. It has happened to other abortion providers.
I keep flashing back to tales of his childhood in Lodz, Poland where he was bullied by other children. "Jew! You killed Jesus Christ!" I remember what Morgentaler has told me about Lodz, about how he had a repeated dream of being surrounded by Nazi guards in uniform. In 1944, he was taken to Auschwitz by train, his mother was sent off for immediate gassing, and he scarcely survived his time there, literally dodging bullets in the last days of the Second World War.
That destructive element
Times passed. He became a doctor in Montreal. Life was sweet, life was downright cushy. And Morgentaler then did what few of Hitler's and Mengele's surviving young targets ever had the will or the desire to do. He broke the law, knowing he would be imprisoned again by uniformed guards; he would relive his fears of the worst moments of the most violent century ever endured by mankind.
I cannot even imagine that kind of courage. I do not possess it.
The words of another Pole, the novelist Joseph Conrad, have always lingered when I think of Henry Morgentaler. In his 1900 novel Lord Jim, a young man who wants to be a hero is advised, "The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertion of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up."
This "destructive element" is what Morgentaler has dived into, repeatedly. He has faced down tormentors, killers, torturers, racists, hostile crowds, cops, religious zealots, personal hurts, poverty, ill health in old age, every destructive element the world has on offer.
I swear, there is something about it that attracts him, as if he has to prove his moral worth to himself over and over again.
What do we debate next?
The Order of Canada is particularly touching, coming at a time when politicians are held in deserved low regard. But the truth is that honouring him assists the Order by giving it welcome publicity, and it also benefits the anti-choicers, small in number as they are, because it gives them a platform to complain about a human right that is no longer up for debate.
I always refuse to join such "debates." Is an individual woman's body a private place or a public cavity to be prodded and examined according to religious doctrine?
What are we going to debate next? Should women be allowed to retain their own legs? Or are they public legs?
Women's rights are still under siege. Bill C-484 is succeeding in the House of Commons right now, thanks to Conservative scheming and Liberal cowardice.
It would make it twice the crime to kill a pregnant woman, the key being that the fetus is the second victim. This is a sly, emotion-tugging way to give the fetus personhood, although the Supreme Court has already explicitly denied this.
Women are persons. I thought we decided that in 1929.
Morgentaler is 85 now. The Supreme Court ruled in his favour in 1988. The fight for women's rights last crested in the 1980s and despite the harrowing attacks since then, there are no women giving feminism a public face.
I call myself a feminist, but only reluctantly because it's like declaring yourself in the fight against leprosy. Everyone thinks leprosy was cured long ago.
Sadly, feminists are partly to blame for this dilemma. They're human. As they aged, they worked on preserving their own turf - economic, academic and personal glorification - without welcoming younger women into the battle.
I want women in their twenties to study Dr. Morgentaler's fight. I want them to dive deep into the destructive element, as he did, and with constant movement, keep themselves afloat.
Reposted from: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/02/f-vp-mallick.html
Viewpoint: "The debate is over: Time to honour Henry Morgentaler"
Heather Mallick, CBC News
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 7:06 PM ET C
I laughed out loud on hearing Dr. Henry Morgentaler had been given the Order of Canada. I figured it was a hoax.
Every time I had written about his great courage and his incalculable rescues of individual Canadians, it reminded the misanthrope in me that we're not the type of people who reward someone for sticking his neck out.
Canadians value prudence and caution. A man who takes an almost suicidal risk, as Morgentaler did when he took on the federal government over its ban on abortion rights for women, is in our eyes a gambler, not a hero. We don't like mavericks. We frown on people who cash in their RRSPs early, tsk tsk.
And we don't like women much either, I notice, but Morgentaler has always liked women and has always helped us. This small now-frail person went to jail for us.
I like that in a man.
For his commitment
After I had stopped laughing, I gulped and searched the Governor General's website for the words that justified his honour. I read "For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy," etc.
That sounds like what you'd say to a retiring insurance agent who had campaigned for acupuncture to be added to female employees' health benefits plans nationwide. It doesn't capture the drama of what life was like pre-Morgentaler, with girls bleeding to death from back-alley abortions, their bowels protruding through a crevasse torn into the uterus and massive infections from filthy instruments or poisoned twigs used as abortifacients.
Things are more civilized now, we think. Every child a wanted child, as Morgentaler says. You can take Plan B, or the abortion pill, or have a medical abortion in a clinic or perhaps a hospital, correct?
But as I always tell young people (and indeed old people), women should never underestimate how much they are hated. For their own peculiar reasons, some men and some women target women at their most vulnerable. There is something about a pregnant woman that brings out the bully.
An epic survivor
Morgentaler, with great support from allies and his wife, Arlene Leibovitch, has endured decades of calumny in his own country for standing up in defence of the bullied. I don't know why his opponents often email me about his Jewishness - I have grasped that fact, thanks - but anti-Semitism has without a doubt been a factor in the political and personal campaigns against him. Jew-hating is as universal as the bullying of females apparently.
I resent this, as much as I resent the fact that Morgentaler's windows have to be bulletproof or that I have to watch his back when I dine with him in restaurants. Someone might shoot him or slash him. It has happened to other abortion providers.
I keep flashing back to tales of his childhood in Lodz, Poland where he was bullied by other children. "Jew! You killed Jesus Christ!" I remember what Morgentaler has told me about Lodz, about how he had a repeated dream of being surrounded by Nazi guards in uniform. In 1944, he was taken to Auschwitz by train, his mother was sent off for immediate gassing, and he scarcely survived his time there, literally dodging bullets in the last days of the Second World War.
That destructive element
Times passed. He became a doctor in Montreal. Life was sweet, life was downright cushy. And Morgentaler then did what few of Hitler's and Mengele's surviving young targets ever had the will or the desire to do. He broke the law, knowing he would be imprisoned again by uniformed guards; he would relive his fears of the worst moments of the most violent century ever endured by mankind.
I cannot even imagine that kind of courage. I do not possess it.
The words of another Pole, the novelist Joseph Conrad, have always lingered when I think of Henry Morgentaler. In his 1900 novel Lord Jim, a young man who wants to be a hero is advised, "The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertion of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up."
This "destructive element" is what Morgentaler has dived into, repeatedly. He has faced down tormentors, killers, torturers, racists, hostile crowds, cops, religious zealots, personal hurts, poverty, ill health in old age, every destructive element the world has on offer.
I swear, there is something about it that attracts him, as if he has to prove his moral worth to himself over and over again.
What do we debate next?
The Order of Canada is particularly touching, coming at a time when politicians are held in deserved low regard. But the truth is that honouring him assists the Order by giving it welcome publicity, and it also benefits the anti-choicers, small in number as they are, because it gives them a platform to complain about a human right that is no longer up for debate.
I always refuse to join such "debates." Is an individual woman's body a private place or a public cavity to be prodded and examined according to religious doctrine?
What are we going to debate next? Should women be allowed to retain their own legs? Or are they public legs?
Women's rights are still under siege. Bill C-484 is succeeding in the House of Commons right now, thanks to Conservative scheming and Liberal cowardice.
It would make it twice the crime to kill a pregnant woman, the key being that the fetus is the second victim. This is a sly, emotion-tugging way to give the fetus personhood, although the Supreme Court has already explicitly denied this.
Women are persons. I thought we decided that in 1929.
Morgentaler is 85 now. The Supreme Court ruled in his favour in 1988. The fight for women's rights last crested in the 1980s and despite the harrowing attacks since then, there are no women giving feminism a public face.
I call myself a feminist, but only reluctantly because it's like declaring yourself in the fight against leprosy. Everyone thinks leprosy was cured long ago.
Sadly, feminists are partly to blame for this dilemma. They're human. As they aged, they worked on preserving their own turf - economic, academic and personal glorification - without welcoming younger women into the battle.
I want women in their twenties to study Dr. Morgentaler's fight. I want them to dive deep into the destructive element, as he did, and with constant movement, keep themselves afloat.