Jordan's Blogarama

This is a blog telling about what I did in the run of a day and/or my opionion on whatever topic I feel like posting about.... yep, check back often for more details and don't be afraid to spread the word about my blog!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

The issues of abortion, the environment, Charter Rights and the problems of excessive Individualism

Hello everyone, I know it's been ages since i've updated this blog. But hey, I was busy being the Director of Youth Organizations within the NL First Party, doing 5 courses both in the Fall and Winter, doing 2 courses over the summer (in progress),finding a summer job (i.e. MUCEP),etc.. so please forgive me.

So ya, i've finally got another issue to talk about! The National Post recently wrote an article titled 'the "a" word' (Link: )

On this story, the article is about why people are so tight-lipped about the subject: 1. complacency, 2. the polarization of opioions,etc..

Anyways, here's the comment I posted in response to this article:

"Hello everyone, I think the main reason people don't want to re-open this debate in Parliament is because we live in a very individualistic society and with the advent of the Charter, some people argue that to restrict one's ability to have an abortion would be violation of section 7 of the Charter which reads, " Legal Rights

7.Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice."

However back in 1988, a Quebec man tried to argue that 'a feotus is a person, and should therefore be protected under Section 7 of the Charter.' And what did the Courts decide? They decided that the rights of the feotus are subject to the wishes of third parties (i.e. the parents,etc..) [the case is called "Tremblay v. Daigle, [1989], which can be viewed at ( )]

Yet, what many people don't know is that the preamble of the 'Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms"'and Section 1 of the Charter say this,

" Part I

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

In other words, the Rights within the Charter are not absolute: sometimes, the rights in this Charter can be overried "only to such reasonable limits... as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

To speak of the Law and Society 2000 course i'm doing over the Summer at MUN (Memorial University of Newfoundland), he told us that for example, the right to "freedom of speech" in the Constitution isn't absolute.

For example, when a man applied to the SCC (Supreme Court of Canada) because he felt that denying him the ability to use "freedom of speech" to spread literature denying the Holocaust violated this freedom of speech. Although the courts find it to be true, they found that denying him the right to spread such literature "can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." In other words, they found that by forbidding him from doing so, they were protecting the rights of minorities (such as Jews) and the general public who could possibly be misled by such information.

So indeed, using this as a precedent, Canada could regulate abortion: but "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." In other words, if the focus of the Law was on REDUCING the number of abortions by 1.Reforming the Adoption System to make it a more humane and credible alternative, 2. Reform Social Assistance to help women-at-risk for abortions (such as single mothers, teenage mothers, low-income mothers,etc and conscious objectors to abortions who get caught up in a bad situation) who might otherwise opt for Adoption, but feel that due to the excessive bureaucracy in the process, their children would spend their whole life wandering from foster home to foster home.

Third, we need to realize that abortion isn't just a moral issue, but also a financial, social justice and demographic issue. Because some women only get an abortion because they lack the finances to care for their children, developing more accessible and affordable childcare spaces would help such women take care of their children instead of having to abort them or give them away. Also, because Canadian women abort 1000's of children a year and the birth rate is below replacement rate, there's going to come a point in time when they'll be few young people and therefore when the older people die off, the population of Canada will drop dramatically (unless of course, we want to rely on immigration, as right now, two-thirds of our population growth comes from Immigration, according to the Special Standing Committee on Aging".

Fourth, the main reason that abortion is such a touchy topic is that the "Sexual Revolution" in the 1960's marked a change in viewpoint from "No Sex before marriage" to "No CONCEPTION before marriage". So basically, with the advent of new technologies, people began to try to be able to have Sexual Relations before marriage (while trying to avoid the responsibilties and/or risks of unwanted pregnancy).

Fifth, the fact that the media phrases this debate as a 'pro-choice vs. anti-choice debate' shows how individualistic we've become: we currently live in a society that rewards self-interested individuals and does little to no to reward selfless and community-minded individuals. In many ways, this idea has its roots back in the Protestant Revolution of the 16th/17th century: with the ideas of the "Protestant work ethic" (the secular and modern version of it today is known as "meritocracy": the belief that those who work hard will get ahead and those who don't work hard deserve to be poor."

Of course, due to secularization in Canada over the last half-century, the checks and Balances contained within the protestant Work Ethic (such as doing your work to please God ) has been replaced with either serving the common good (a left-wing idea) or leaving self-interested individuals to do as they please: clinging on the Words of Adams Smith's "invisible hand", whereby he believed Self-interested individuals would spontaneously pursue interests that benefited themselves and the greater good.

Yet as he know, self-interested individuals DO NOT always carry out the greater good. To give an example from the Political Science 1000 text from the University of Calgary Titled "An Introduction to Government and Politics", under Part 2 of the Book on Ideology and within Chapter 15 of the book on Environmentalism, the issue known as "The Tragedy of the Commons" (see pg.219 of the text)(and no, this isn't referring to the House of Commons, but to public property, (i.e. commons), it lays out a scenario in which when individuals seek only to serve their self-interest.

The text puts it as such, 'Thus, you have an incentive to add livestock BEYOND the carrying capacity, and so do all the other owners. If all owners follow their incentives for private gain, the result will be the destruction of the commons through overgrazing. With ironical reference to Adam Smith, theorists cal this "the back of the invisible hand" [a play-on-words for a 'slap on the face']. In situations of common property, unregulated pursuit of individual interest produces collective loss rather than the common benefit that Smith described in "The Wealth of Nations." "

Now what does the idea of the environment have to do with the issue of abortion? The reason we have an issue in both disciplines is because we've taken Adam Smith's "The invisible hand" to the extreme of trying to deal with issues as self-interested individuals, rather than as selfless members of a larger society. Once again, this is why we often get the 'small government [Adam Smith's "invisible hand"] vs. big government [which recognizes "the back of the invisible hand" and hence a certain degree of social conservatism in restraining the ability of the individual to pursue their own self-interest for the greater good of society, or at least in theory].

Of course, no such debate includes 'a medium-size government' or 'a communally-enforced government', because we're so fixated on individualism.

As Mr.Monbiot in his book "Heat: how to stop the Planet from Burning" put it, we need to have "a revolution of austerity to change the meaning of freedom from the ability to pursue individual self-interest to the freedom to choose what is [environmentally] right."

Now I know this all seems like a big tangent and ramble, but i'm just trying to point out some observations that noone seems to have put in words in public so far!

June 2, 2007 9:36 AM "