Freedom from religion: An essential right for all

Cross-posted from Rabble.ca

The integrity of the Conservative government's newly minted Office of Religious Freedom is already in grave doubt after 10 days of pointed criticism. It's a noble-sounding endeavour, but it suffers from too many unanswered questions, glaring incongruities and serious omissions.

Given that it's the right-wing Conservative government behind the initiative, it carries a high risk of being Christian-centric, with a primary focus on the persecution of Christian minorities. Another purpose may be to help ensure the government's future electoral chances by pandering to its Christian constituency, as well as a handful of other religious groups that were invited for consultation. Further, the new agency could divert attention and resources from other human rights issues. Why does the cause of religious freedom deserve its own office in a world filled with deep poverty, violence, discrimination against women, environmental degradation, and a host of other ills and human rights violations? John Moore points out: "It's all the more cynical when you consider that this government regards our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms as liberal puffery."

Confidence is not increased by the appointment of the Office's new ambassador, Dr. Andrew Bennett. Harper has hailed Bennett as a scholar even though he has virtually no published writings and his academic experience consists largely of being a part-time dean and teacher at a tiny evangelical school in Ottawa. A devout Catholic, Bennett subscribes to his college's Statement of Faith, which requires strict doctrinal adherence to a fundamentalist version of Christianity and the literal truth of the Bible, including the virgin birth and resurrection of the dead. I do not discount the possibility that Dr. Bennett is a great ecumenical guy who truly respects and values religious diversity, but let's not forget that devout Christians are taught that they are right, everyone else is wrong, and it's their god-ordained duty to convert all heathens and infidels before the imminent return of Jesus.

The very existence of an Office for Religious Freedom raises serious questions about the separation of church and state, and whether it's possible for a government office to be impartial. And when faced with the Hydra monster of religion, how can the Office possibly pick and choose its casework fairly, while satisfying its constituents at the same time? With a tiny budget and small staff, it's hard to believe that the new Office will have even a snowball's chance in hell at making a dent in the rampant religious persecution around the world.

The Office's website waxes on about countries and regions where "rights to freedom of religion or belief are being threatened," and how the Office will protect and advocate on behalf of "religious minorities under threat." But who is doing all this threatening? It's almost as if the Conservative government wants us to assume that tinpot dictators and evil atheist conspirators are behind attacks on religious believers. In fact, the culprits are largely theocratic governments or other faith groups: 

"Jon Stewart poses the problem with an economy of words: 'Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.'"(from Dawg's Blawg)

How will the Office of Religious Freedom negotiate the highly volatile terrain of religious strife and intolerance between competing groups, without seeming to favour one faith group over another, and without risking an angry backlash or even violence from the side doing the persecuting? Moreover, the understanding of religious freedom takes many different forms, especially in a culture with a religious majority. The protection of one group of adherents might lead to discrimination against another vulnerable group. Catholic schools in Ontario recently claimed that anti-bullying legislation violates their religious beliefs because it requires them to allow gay-alliance clubs in school, even though about 21 per cent of LGBTQ students are bullied compared to about 8 per cent of non-LGBTQ students.

What other religious "freedoms" might the new Office be urged to protect? The "right" to harass women outside abortion clinics? The "conscience" of hospitals that let women die if they need life-saving abortions? How about the "right" to teach creationism and attack evolution in public school science classrooms? Maybe the funding of a Christian anti-gay group in Uganda with its "kill the gays" law? Or the "right" of orthodox Jews to send women to the back of the bus?

 

Finally, let's not leave out the "right" of religious beliefs and holy books to be immune from criticism, as enforced through blasphemy laws in many countries -- which brings us to a final and major criticism of the Office of Religious Freedom. In most theocracies, religious minorities at least have some rights, but the Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFI) notes that, "In many parts of the world the very existence of atheism is outlawed, in some cases punishable by death."

Yet John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs and a key player in the formation of the new Office, ignorantly stated last September:

"We don't see agnosticism or atheism as being in need of defence in the same way persecuted religious minorities are. We speak of the right to worship and practice in peace, not the right to stay away from places of worship."

A report on global discrimination against non-believers was submitted to the US Department of State last year by several atheist and humanist groups. The report documents numerous prosecutions against non-believers in 47 countries, largely through blasphemy or apostasy laws. The following breakdown of countries is my own, derived from the report, and it illustrates what I see as the key problem:

• 21 countries give specific recognition and protection to Christianity, including 13 in Western Europe plus Poland, and 8 in Africa or Latin America.
• 20 countries are officially Islamic or have a largely Islamic population.
• Four have other religious majorities (Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish), and one has a roughly equal mix of Christians and Muslims (Eritrea).
• Only one secular country with broad religious diversity is cited (Russia).

Prosecutions of non-believers for their lack of faith or for criticizing religion occur almost exclusively in countries that favour one religion over another, or religion over non-belief. This points to the best way to protect religious freedom for all -- secular societies with laws that protect not only freedom of religion, but freedom from religion. The latter is just as much a universal right, because whether one has religious beliefs or not, we all need to be free from having the belief systems of others imposed upon us. In reality, most religious persecution is a product of one religion being intolerant of another religion, with both being equally intolerant of those with no religion. Unfortunately, the new Office of Religious Freedom seems to have no inkling of this, which does not bode well for its future success.

It wasn't until the press conference launch of the new Office on February 19 that the government suddenly declared that non-believers would be included too, after being challenged on the issue. "All people of faith and, again, those who choose not to have faith, need to be protected, their rights need to be respected," said Dr. Bennett.

As an atheist, I don't feel reassured by this last-minute hasty add-on, given the Conservative government's prior total ignorance of the often-horrific persecution of non-believers around the world. However, the Centre for Inquiry Canada has more optimism. The group (full disclosure: I'm a member) issued a joint statement with Humanist Canada applauding the efforts to include all religious perspectives, and offering to help the new Office with information and ongoing consultation on the challenges and persecution faced by non-believers across the world.

I talked to Michael Payton, CFI's Executive Director, who sees the potential for good in the Office's creation. He emphasized that there are many examples of extreme human rights violations because of religious beliefs. "If resources were there that could help stop that, I think overall the world would be a better place. And if there's an opportunity to protect non-believers too, we want to take it up." He acknowledged the potential for the Office to be abused, saying: "We'll be monitoring the Office very closely to make sure they stay true to their commitment, protecting freedom from religion equally as they would for freedom of religion." However, Payton was concerned about the total lack of consultation with atheist/humanist groups before the official launch. "We've been left out of this process. We were quite insulted that we weren't invited." He also decried the language on the Office's website, which still focuses solely on the right of religious minorities to practice their faith: "The language is wrong, it doesn't apply to us. Even to use that language is a back-handed type of discrimination," but adding that "this takes a backseat to people being executed for apostasy."

Time will tell whether the Office of Religious Freedom will fulfill its potential to protect both religious and non-religious minorities. But I wouldn't advise you to hold your breath -- or pray.

Motion 408 and sex-selection abortion: Pretending to care about women

Cross-posted from rabble.ca

With several female MPs at his side, Conservative MP Mark Warawa held a press conference Wednesday on Parliament Hill to promote his Motion 408, which would "condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination." How ironic, considering that his Conservative government has been busy institutionalizing discrimination against women since 2006, while Warawa and the rest of the anti-choice movement wants to send women back to the days of unsafe criminal abortions or mandatory motherhood.

It's very odd to see Warawa's sudden concern over the abortion of only female fetuses, when we know he hates all abortions.

In the U.S., sex-selection abortions of male fetuses appear to outnumber those of females, and it may not be much different in Canada. By trying too hard to appear sympathetic to women, Warawa falls into the trap of seeming to condone such abortions of male fetuses, while also managing to give his motion an unsavoury racist taint by focusing attention on ethnic communities in Canada that allegedly abort females for cultural reasons.

Since Warawa and his Greek Chorus of supporters are all fervently anti-choice (including Conservative MPs Joy Smith, Stella Ambler, Kelly Block, and let's not forget Rona Ambrose with her infamous tweet), what's the real motivation here? NDP leader Thomas Mulcair nailed it. He called the motion another attempt to re-open the abortion debate, pointing to the fact that it was introduced immediately after Parliament defeated Motion 312 on September 26.

Canada's anti-choice movement has learned to be stealthy and not attack abortion rights head-on. The repeated claims by Warawa and the women MPs that the motion is not about recriminalizing abortion, and their refusals to even discuss abortion, are simply not believable. Obviously, the goal of this motion is to try to increase public disapproval of abortion and cast doubt on women's capacity to make responsible decisions. Success would help pave the way for a later bill to ban sex-selection abortion, and ultimately to ban all abortions.

Warawa wants Parliament to "condemn this worst form of discrimination against females," which he calls "gender violence -- gendercide."

But women are the ones having sex-selection abortions, which means Warawa is accusing women of violence and gendercide -- and courtesy of MP Stella Ambler -- "atrocities." Ending discrimination against women does not start with making nasty accusations against them. Yes, sex selection can be a sexist act, but it's nonsensical to protect women from discrimination by restricting their rights. In India, laws against sex-selection abortion cause women to resort to unsafe and illegal abortion to avoid having a girl, and some may even face abuse and violence from their families if they bear a girl.

Warawa may be wrongly assuming that women are always coerced into aborting female fetuses. Of course, abortions are not something women want to do -- they make this difficult decision for one reason or another -- family needs, their personal circumstances, their health, or their own inability or reluctance to be a parent. As blogger Jane Cawthorne explains, having an abortion for reasons of sex selection is not much different than having one for financial reasons, or because the baby will be disabled. The answer is not to coerce a woman into giving birth to an unwanted girl just "to make some sort of anti-sexist point." Instead, we must strive to "make the world a place where little girls are as wanted as little boys, where the systemic discrimination of women is a thing of the past."

The vast bulk of this systemic discrimination arises directly or indirectly from women's childbearing capacity. This makes control over fertility the bedrock of women's rights. It's not possible for women to fully exercise any other fundamental right if they don't own their own bodies, and that entails the right to contraception and abortion.

In a recent rabble piece on the issue of sex selection, Anjali Kulkarni et al. pointed out the centrality of a reproductive justice framework for the pro-choice movement, which promotes a range of women's rights from different cultural perspectives, and doesn't look at abortion rights in isolation:

"While up-in-arms to defend 'female fetuses,' the Conservatives are silent about discrimination affecting women -- missing and murdered aboriginal women and the denial of indigenous sovereignty, criminalization and cuts to refugees, disability oppression, lack of childcare and pay equity, homophobia and transphobia, defunding of women's groups nationally and internationally, and threats to abortion rights."

Warawa's focus on sex-selection abortion to the exclusion of all other problems affecting women exposes his hypocrisy. While professing deep concern over discrimination against women and girls, the actions of his Conservative government since 2006 tell a very different tale. Murray Dobbin has called Harper's assault on women's rights "one of the most dramatic examples of his wider assault on democracy."

Let's start by recalling that Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks women's rights organizations are a "left-wing fringe group."

Under his reign, the Conservatives cancelled the universal childcare program, abandoned pay equity legislation, closed down most of the regional Status of Women offices, changed Status of Women funding criteria to end support for advocacy or lobbying for law reform, cut the Court Challenges Program, barred public sector workers from making pay equity complaints, refused to fund safe abortion for women in developing countries, slashed funding from dozens of women's advocacy groups, eliminated the mandatory long-form census, increased the age of eligibility for Old Age Security, destroyed the gun registry, failed to hold a public inquiry into missing Aboriginal women, cut Aboriginal health services, and allowed votes on several anti-choice private member's bills and motions.

Now let's take a look at how women are treated by the anti-choice movement in general. Warawa himself started his anti-choice political career as a councillor for the City of Abbotsford, B.C. In 1999 and 2000, he sponsored motions that granted permission to the Abbotsford Right-to-Life Society to erect an anti-abortion display of thousands of crosses in a private field next to the freeway, each cross representing an abortion. The display has been up every year since then, despite complaints from female passersby who are traumatized at this public co-opting of their personal abortion experience. Anti-choice people have a way of misappropriating a woman's private experience that is absolutely none of their business, and making invisible the woman's own feelings, wishes and experience. It's extremely disrespectful -- and discriminatory.

Anti-choice laws are responsible for the deaths of 47,000 women a year in developing countries and the injuries of over 8 million, because women are forced to resort to unsafe illegal abortion. Recently, a sick pregnant woman in Ireland was refused an abortion to save her life because of Ireland's strict abortion laws. She died, because the anti-choice position boils down to the view that fetuses are worth more than women. Similar well-publicized deaths of women who were denied abortion have also occurred in Poland, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and other countries with restrictive abortion laws.

Even in developed countries with more liberal laws, women suffer and their rights are sacrificed. In the United States, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women "can now say for sure that feticide laws, and anti-abortion and other measures designed to establish 'personhood' for fertilized eggs, are providing the basis for the punishment of pregnant women whether they are seeking to end a pregnancy or go to term." In Canada, when Mulroney's Conservative government tried to pass a new abortion law in 1990, a Toronto woman tried to self-abort and died. She apparently believed that abortion was already criminalized -- the prized goal of anti-choicers in order to "protect" women.

The United Nations recently declared contraception to be a basic human right. Yet, anti-choice groups largely oppose birth control because they believe women's purpose is to have babies and sex should always be open to procreation. Meanwhile, lack of access to birth control leads to large numbers of unnecessary maternal deaths, and extreme poverty for women and their over-burdened families. Family planning can prevent one in three maternal deaths by delaying motherhood, spacing births, avoiding unintended pregnancies and abortions, and stopping childbirth when women have reached their desired family size.

The anti-choice movement often accuses pro-choice folks of promoting a "culture of death," with our alleged zeal for killing babies. But the real culture of death -- the one without quotation marks -- is the one waged by right-wing religious fundamentalists, who elevate the contents of women's wombs above that of women's own lives and health and rights. We vehemently "condemn this worst form of discrimination against females."

Honouring truth for Vancouver's Missing and Murdered Women

Cross-posted from Rabble.ca

On a chilly October day, people listened somberly and some wept quietly as the words were read out loud, a microphone amplifying them across Vancouver's Library Plaza:

"The record … reveals that violence against sex workers was widespread."

"The Vancouver Police Department discriminated against survival sex workers by failing to deploy adequate resources to address the risks they knew were faced by sex workers."

"Stereotyping, overt expressions of bigotry and discriminatory attitudes against sex workers, drug users, and Aboriginal women undermined the investigations of missing women."

"The Vancouver Police Department and RCMP actively suppressed public recognition that serial killers were killing sex workers working in the Downtown Eastside."

Some family members of the Missing and Murdered Women, current and former survival sex workers, and sex worker allies and advocates (including myself), had come together on October 25 for an emotional public reading of a 102-page report by Jason Gratl, who was appointed as Independent Counsel to the Commissioner of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to represent the interests of sex workers and community advocates in the Downtown Eastside. The Inquiry itself was launched last year to find out what went wrong with the investigation into the serial murders of sex workers in B.C. by Robert Pickton.

Gratl's report on the Inquiry is scathing in its indictment of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) and RCMP. Many individual officers and civilian employees are singled out for criticism, but the shocking failures and bigoted views reached all the way up to senior ranks, permeating the entire force and sabotaging the entire investigation. The report's title says it all: "Wouldn't Piss on Them If They Were on Fire: How Discrimination Against Sex Workers, Drug Users and Aboriginal Women Enabled A Serial Killer". It is a direct quote from the Inquiry testimony of a VPD officer assigned to the "Missing Women" case.

To read the report on your own is heartbreaking enough -- but to read it aloud, to hear the callous sexism and racism of the police laid bare in the public square -- was almost overwhelming. Some of the readers -- 25 of them taking turns -- broke down at the mike. One was unable to continue. "This event felt powerful because it brought many of us together to speak the truth and honour the women," said Kerry Porth, a former survival sex worker and part of the organizing group for this "Honouring Truth" event.

The overall police attitude towards sex workers and Aboriginal women (60 per cent of the Missing and Murdered Women were Aboriginal) was one of indifference and disrespect, as if their lives did not matter, as if they weren't even human. Missing persons reports were often not taken or not investigated because officers relied on insulting stereotypes, such as Aboriginal women being "out on a binge," or survival sex workers being transient and "lacking address books, known schedules, reliable routines and homes" -- even though most are residents of Vancouver with homes and families.

Police routinely used the word "hooker," even in official documents. Some officers or staff were hateful or dismissive towards sex workers, saying things like: "fucking whores," "just a bunch of fucking hookers," and "we don't look for missing hookers." A witness at the Inquiry testified that she heard an officer say "good" when told that a sex worker had been violently sexually assaulted. These discriminatory attitudes about sex workers undermined the investigation, according to Gratl, by "precluding the gathering and analysis of vital information about missing women, by misdirecting police investigators, by undermining the integrity of investigative teams, and by preventing investigators from drawing inferences crucial to solving the cases."

Comparisons with unrelated cases showed that the VPD had the resources and capability to carry out large-scale, high-quality investigations, but the "Missing Women" case was always grossly underfunded and understaffed. An officer assigned to the file in 1998 worked mostly alone and unsupervised for almost a year even though she was inexperienced and lacked training in investigative work.

The doctrine adhered to by the VPD and government was that the women were just missing, not murdered (an assumption still reflected today in the omission of "Murdered Women" from the Inquiry's name). But the police had many strong indications that a serial killer was likely involved, and even a list of suspects that included Pickton. The VPD tried to squash the growing recognition of a serial killer at work by engaging in a vicious smear campaign against the family and friends of Missing and Murdered Women who complained about the police's refusal to even investigate the possibility. Advocacy groups and individuals in the Downtown Eastside who tried to raise awareness were attacked using police powers and resources -- for example, the VPD publicly defamed the authors of a PACE Society report on violence against sex workers that criticized the police, removed the PACE representative from sensitivity training for its recruits, and arrested sex worker advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton for running a brothel that helped keep street workers safe. Even dissenting police officers and civilian employees who wanted to look for a serial killer were silenced and marginalized.

The RCMP and VPD also misled higher-ranking officials and the general public and media. At least 87 newspaper articles during the Inquiry's period of reference (1997 to 2002) repeated the police's public message that that there was "no evidence of a serial killer." Although the Vancouver Police Board and B.C.'s Attorney General supported a reward for information and a serial killer task force, the VPD persuaded them that a reward would be "counterproductive and a waste of resources" and that a task force was unnecessary, since the "women said to be missing were likely not even missing." According to Gratl, the deception of the Attorney General "directly contributed to the failure of the investigation."

B.C.'s Crown Counsel shares some of the blame. Largely because of a "self-imposed shortage of time," Crown counsel Randi Connor decided to stay attempted murder charges against Pickton in January 1998. Tragically, in the intervening four years until the serial killer's arrest, 19 more women disappeared who were later connected to Pickton's farm.

Our public reading of Gratl's report was scheduled to coincide with the much-awaited release of the final report of the Missing Women Commission Inquiry. But on the same day of the reading, B.C.'s Attorney General granted another extension to Wally Oppal, Commissioner of the Inquiry. The report is now due November 30.

Will truth be honoured and justice served when Oppal's report finally comes out? Sex workers and their allies do not have high hopes. Early on, the Inquiry lost credibility with the very people it was supposed to help, when the B.C. government denied legal funding to 13 community and Aboriginal groups from the Downtown Eastside who had valuable knowledge and experience with the Missing and Murdered Women case. All but one of these groups were forced to withdraw from the Inquiry, and others soon followed in solidarity.

The Inquiry's hearings began last October and lasted till June 2012. The plodding pace accelerated to a mad rush in the final months, with Oppal refusing to call certain critical witnesses at the request of family members and lawyers, cutting off cross-examination of key police witnesses, and lumping witnesses together on panels, which meant they couldn't be adequately questioned. In March, the lawyer appointed by the Commission to represent Aboriginal people, Robyn Gervais, resigned to protest the lack of Aboriginal witnesses. Although both the provincial government and Oppal had rebuffed family members' requests to hear more witnesses because of the time crunch, when the hearings wrapped up, Oppal requested and received a four-month extension to write his report.

Family members and community groups condemned the Inquiry as a "sham" while the lawyer appointed to represent the families of the Missing and Murdered Women, Cameron Ward, called the Inquiry a "fiasco."

Nonetheless, much useful and damning information did come out in the Inquiry, as demonstrated by Gratl's hard-hitting report. It remains to be seen whether Oppal's report will honour truth and justice in the same way, and whether he adopts any of Gratl's 32 recommendations. These cover numerous reforms to practices and policies of the police and Crown Counsel, financial compensation to the children and grandchildren of Missing and Murdered Women, harm reduction services for street sex workers, human rights and labour protections for sex workers, and decriminalization of sex work or non-enforcement of the communication offence (section 213 of the Criminal Code), among others.

Although Robert Pickton has now been in jail for 10 years, it appears that very little has changed in the VPD and RCMP. "We certainly know these discriminatory attitudes and practices are still the norm," said co-organizer Kerry Porth. At the close of the event, a group of readers recited the names of about 60 Missing and Murdered Women, accentuating the painful reality that these were real human beings who had lives, families, dignity, and hope. "We will not forget our sisters," said Porth. "We will not forget their names and their faces. We will keep fighting for real change."

The author is grateful to Esther Shannon, co-organizer of the Honouring Truth event, for contributing to this article.

Why the UK doesn’t need an abortion law at all

Reposted with permission from Abortion Review, an online news and comment website in the UK produced by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas)

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After the defeat of M-312: We won the battle. Next, the war

(Reposted from Rabble.ca, October 5) 

In the aftermath of last week's resounding defeat of Motion 312 in the House of Commons by a vote of 203 to 91, the pro-choice movement has not been celebrating. No doubt, some activists downed a glass of champagne or two, but only because they really needed a drink.

The defeat was the biggest loss of an anti-choice motion or bill in Canadian history. So why the tears in our beer? Blogger Fern Hill watched the vote and describes her reaction:

"As MPs bobbed up and down for yeas and nays, my head was spinning and my gut was clenched. I quickly lost track of the count, but it was crystal clear that this was no crushing defeat. There were waaaay too many yeas. I felt I was going to throw up. My reaction surprised me. It was visceral and emotional and not too rational. When the count was final, I was dazed. Then I saw this tweet from JJ [@jjhippie]: 'Relieved but still feel like puking. That was like waiting for a decision from a Therapeutic Abortion Committee: remember those?'"

Indeed, we do remember those. Before 1988, a woman had to appear before a committee of strangers -- three doctors, almost always male, often anti-choice -- who exercised total veto power over her most personal and life-changing decisions. Why shouldn't women be angry and disgusted to watch women's basic human rights being put back on Parliament's agenda, almost 25 years after they won the right to abortion on request, and 27 years after they won equality? Why shouldn't women feel threatened and unsafe at the spectacle of 91 members of Parliament, including the Minister who's supposed to defend their rights, displaying their official disdain for women's rights to bodily security, life and liberty?

The motion, which wanted a Parliamentary committee to examine whether fetuses should be deemed as "human beings" under our Criminal Code, should never have been deemed votable to begin with. Not only would it have threatened women's constitutional rights, it posed questions that the courts have already decided -- fetuses are not legal persons under our Charter, Quebec's Civil Code, or common law.
Of course, anti-choice MPs have become quite clever at hiding the true intent of their motions and bills, because to have any chance of success, they can no longer attack women's rights and abortion rights directly. When a motion is worded innocuously or a bill pretends to protect women, however, Parliamentarians may be fooled into taking it at face value. But the main goal of such initiatives is to establish a toehold from which to restrict abortion as far as possible -- ideally to ban it completely without any exceptions and force women back into a child-bearing role. Parliament has no obligation to waste its time on such nonsense.

Perhaps it would behoove Parliamentarians to be more aware of which of their colleagues are hardline anti-choicers, to help them more easily see through the pretense of their colleagues' bills and motions. The vote on Motion 312 handed us a gift in that regard -- now we know exactly who these hardliners are. For years, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has been monitoring the voting records and public statements of MPs around the abortion issue, and listing MPs according to their revealed stance on abortion: pro-choice, anti-choice, or unknown. Of the 106 anti-choice MPs on ARCC's list prior to the vote, 75 MPs voted Yes and 29 voted No (2 were absent), while 16 of the 54 "unknown stance" MPs voted Yes. None have any excuse for their Yes vote other than fervent anti-choice beliefs, because each one was inundated with letters from our supporters explaining the potential consequences of the motion and asking them to oppose it to protect women's rights.

These 91 anti-choice MPs need to learn the following lessons: fertility control is the foundation of women's rights, women cannot achieve equality without contraception and legal abortion, and women's rights are human rights. MPs' personal views against those rights -- even if most of their constituents agree -- never gives them license to vote against human rights in Parliament.

Canadians also witnessed the scandal of 10 members of Harper's cabinet voting against their own government and leader. Since the "Harper government" had promised to oppose the motion, Harper is accountable for the dishonourable behaviour of his ministers and should discipline them accordingly. In particular, if the Minister for Status of Women, Rona Ambrose, refuses to step down after the many loud calls for her resignation, Harper should personally hand her a pink slip.

In all the spilt ink and raised voices over Ambrose's Yes vote, one telling detail was overlooked by most. Ambrose justified her vote by tweeting her concern over discrimination against girls because of sex-selection abortion. But why would Ambrose bring up that issue when M-312 had nothing to do with it? Ruth Farquhar astutely notes: "I guess she was getting ready for the next attack on women's rights."

That attack came the very next day. Conservative MP Mark Warawa introduced Motion 408 asking Parliament to "condemn discrimination against females occurring through sex-selective pregnancy termination." Since Ambrose has long graced the pages of ARCC's anti-choice MP list, her tweet certainly raises a few questions worth asking: Is she also a member of the infamous Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, which works to advance anti-choice initiatives? And did she know about or have any direct role in Warawa's motion?

Of course, the timing of the new motion is a transparently manipulative ploy by the anti-choice movement to keep the momentum going after losing Motion 312, as well as try to put pro-choicers on the defensive. But we've been through this issue before and the pro-choice position on sex-selection abortion is consistent and principled.

Condemning the tools used to carry out sex selection is an unwise distraction. The problem is not abortion, ultrasounds, or urine and blood tests that predict gender -- the problem is deeply ingrained societal prejudices that impels some people to choose boy babies over girl babies. The experience of China and India has shown the unworkability of laws criminalizing sex-selection abortion. Such laws are paternalistic and contradictory because they purport to protect women by restricting their rights, when in fact they compound discrimination against women. Many women will resort to unsafe and illegal abortion to avoid having a girl, and some may even face abuse and violence from their families if they bear a girl. Other women may not want to raise a girl knowing she will be discriminated against in a patriarchal culture. The only solution to sex selection is to counter sexist beliefs and practices through public education, community-led initiatives, and progressive social policy that advances women's rights and status.

In any case, Canada does not appear to have a significant problem with the sex selection of female fetuses, certainly nothing like India and China. Even if it happens in some ethnic communities on a small scale, it would likely be confined mostly to new immigrants, meaning the practice would naturally peter out after one or two generations. The entire issue is really a tempest in a teapot -- another covert anti-choice attempt to attack abortion rights in general, just like Motion 312.

Coming back to our reaction to the motion vote, journalist Chantal Hébert chastised pro-choice advocates, saying they "would not know a victory if it's staring them in the face." True, the vote was a major defeat in a majority Conservative government, even beating the previous record of 95 votes for the "coerced abortion" bill in 2010, when the Conservatives only had a minority. Wouldn't it be nice to believe that someday we will look back and see this vote as a pivotal turning point in the abortion "debate" -- the point of no return to the bad old days of mandatory motherhood and criminal abortion?

However, Hébert compared the abortion debate to that of capital punishment, forgetting that the opposition to abortion is far stronger and more determined and fanatical than the support for capital punishment. We must not forget that women's freedom is what most anti-choicers dislike more than anything else. Cracking down on women's rights, including their sexuality and access to health care -- is the favourite strategy used by fundamentalists everywhere to gain power. Eternal vigilance is required to keep a lid on them.

The reaction of Canada's pro-choice movement to the vote does not reflect short-sighted ingratitude -- it reflects a keen understanding of the relentless risks to women's fundamental human rights and a determination to fight any inroad.