abortion

Wednesday June 29, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 29, 2022

What are they thinking?

June 24, 2022

In the days leading up to Canada Day, the same people who brought you the trucker convoy that occupied Ottawa are pledging to return on Friday, over the weekend and on weekends during the summer.

So, of course, 24 members of the Conservative party caucus agree to meet with the convoy organizers in a government building secured by those MPs for a friendly little gathering. Just to make them feel welcome no doubt. What on earth are they thinking?

This, at the same time as the man who will almost certainly be the next Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, still hasn’t commented publicly about the decision overturning Roe v. Wade in the U.S.

Poilievre has something to say about just about everything else, but not on one of the most important legal decisions in a half century? This, from a party that insists it will not reopen the abortion question in Canada, even though one of the leadership candidates is staunchly anti-abortion and socially conservative? She, who almost certainly cannot win the leadership, will be in a position to throw her support behind the man most likely to win — the aforementioned P.P.? Could his silence be linked to needing that social conservative support? What on earth is he thinking? (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday June 28, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 28, 2022

Equitable abortion access now

The U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion ruling was not a surprise. But it was stunning all the same.

Stunning for the fact the court actually reversed its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, upending almost 50 years of constitutionally-protected access to abortion. It’s disturbing for its impact on gender rights. And it’s deeply upsetting for the immediate practical effect it now has on individuals seeking the procedure.

May 23, 2014

We knew it was coming, thanks to the leak of a draft ruling in May. Those who held out faint hope that the outcry that followed that revelation might prompt the top justices to rethink or water down their ruling were left disappointed. They did not.

The decision removes the protection which had guaranteed access to abortions. With that protection gone, it’s now up to each individual state to determine the legality of the procedure. In more than a dozen states, abortion is now illegal as a result of the decision. Other states, like California, are looking for enshrine the right to abortion. And in many others, the fate of the procedure will hinge on protracted political debates.

In their dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan declared that the majority refused to consider the “life-altering” consequences of reversing the law.

“After today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. The majority accomplishes that result without so much as considering how women have relied on the right to choose or what it means to take that right away,” they wrote.

Saturday June 24, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 24, 2022

U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion rights up to states

May 6, 2022

The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the Roe v. Wade opinion that has secured constitutional protections for abortion in the country for nearly 50 years.

The milestone ruling, a draft of which was leaked last month, has the potential to claw back abortion access across the U.S. by allowing states to restrict or outright ban the procedure.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law without taking the additional step of erasing the Roe precedent altogether.

That original 1973 Roe v. Wade decision ruling found that a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy was protected by the rights that flow from the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects a citizen’s right to “life, liberty and property.”

But Associate Justice Samuel Alito disagreed with that interpretation in Friday’s majority opinion on the case challenging the Mississippi law, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote in the opinion, which was very similar to the leaked draft.

Saturday May 7, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 7, 2022

Let’s take a deep breath over Roe V. Wade

Could we all take a deep breath?

May 13, 2017

A leaked draft decision from the U.S. Supreme Court about abortion has created a bizarre political firestorm here in Canada. The most dangerous place to be these days is between a live microphone and a Canadian politician wanting to tell us how they will fight until their dying breath to protect Canadian women against the insidious evil emanating from south of the border.

Can we bring a little sanity to the situation?

First, the court has not banned abortions. A draft internal document was leaked on a case challenging abortion law which may or may not reflect the court’s final decision. If the leaked decision stands, abortion will lose its constitutional protection and individual state legislatures will be able to regulate or outlaw it. Although a dramatic change, it would not create a nationwide ban

This case has no effect on Canada where there hasn’t been an abortion law since 1988 when the Canadian Supreme Court found the existing law unconstitutional. No successive government was able to come up with a replacement and no major Canadian political party currently supports reopening the issue. Although several Conservative MPs and a second-tier leadership candidate have tried to raise restrictions, it is simply not on the political radar.

Friday May 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 6, 2022

The Supreme Court might never recover from overturning Roe v. Wade

October 23, 2020

On Monday, Politico published a draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling declaring that the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to end their pregnancies. The court later confirmed that the document, written in February, is genuine, but emphasized that it is not the court’s final word. We hope not. If the justices embrace the sweeping document, they will deal a grievous blow to freedom in the United States — and to the legitimacy of the court itself.

Such a leak from the court’s typically tight inner sanctum is itself astonishing. The court works on trust among justices and staff, so that the justices can deliberate frankly. Whether the document leaked from a conservative justice’s chambers, in an effort to lock in the support of others on the right for its far-reaching language, or from a liberal’s, in an effort to mobilize outside pressure against such a ruling, the leak represents a dire breakdown in norms and another dramatic sign of the court’s political drift.