Like I Knew I Would

I can’t wait to be part of the pro-choice camp at the University of Calgary campus tomorrow. 

Today and tomorrow the anti-choice so-called “Campus Pro-Life” club have their “Genocide Awareness Project” displays up in the middle of campus just around the corner from the Macewan Hall Student Centre. They show awful images and falsely link the Holocaust, lynching in the American South, and the Rwandan genocide to abortion. 

Women have the right to do whatever they want with a clump of cells growing inside their uterus. That’s what the Supreme Court of Canada decided in 1988 and that’s the law in this country. The Supreme Court of Canada decided in 1989 that it is the woman’s right only to decide what she does with her body. 

We must do more to expand access to abortion services for Canadian citizens, not restrict it. 

The Pro-Choice Camp is organized by the Women’s Studies and Feminist Club, and is a non-confrontational demonstration. We are passing out condoms, directing students to peer support in the Women’s Resource Centre, showing that there are pro-choice students on campus, and creating a positive space especially during the busiest time of traffic toward Mac Hall (11-1) to counter the negativity of the GAP demonstrators. 

Come by and say hi, get a condom or a hug and show your support for the right to choose! 

Calgarians will bear witness to images of aborted fetuses on a weekly basis if a locally based pro-life group sees its boldest campaign to date through.

The Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform recently launched End the Killing, an advancement of past controversial efforts that have included targeting Calgary high school children with graphic images of unborn fetuses and plastering those same pictures to a truck driven through major commuter areas.

Now, the group hopes by 2020 to grab the attention, at least once a week, of all Calgarians old enough to consider an abortion. 

To accomplish this, staff members are preparing a postcard campaign that will target every city mailbox, as well as far more frequent demonstrations in high-traffic areas and in front of schools.

More on the Kansas situation from before the injunction was announced. Thank the Fates that it can’t be enforced yet and hopefully will be overturned due to Roe v. Wade. 

The law that Republicans passed in Kansas setting new standards for abortion clinics on Tuesday, sent out the packages detailing the changes on Wednesday and were slated to start enforcing it today - with the power to shut down non-complying clinics - was halted by an injunction today. Thank the Fates!

downlo:

It’s official. Every abortion provider in the state of Kansas has been denied a license to continue operating as of July 1. As we reported last week, strict new state laws put in place this month threatened to close the remaining three abortion clinics in Kansas. […]

The new law, which takes effect Friday, establishes new standards for abortion providers—standards apparently designed to make compliance difficult. The rules require changes to the size and number of rooms, compel clinics to have additional supplies on hand, and even mandate room temperatures for the facilities. Given that the rules were released less than two weeks before clinics were expected to be in compliance, many providers knew they wouldn’t be able to obtain a license to continue operating. The laws, often called “targeted regulation of abortion providers,” or TRAP laws, are an increasingly common legislative maneuver to limit access to abortion by rendering it tough, if not impossible, for providers to comply.

The story is still developing, but the prospects for keeping abortion clinics open in Kansas seem grim.

Great job, Kansas! If this new law has the effect that anti-choice legislators intended, then you’ll be the first state to outlaw de facto a constitutional right. The tactics anti-choicers are using to undermine reproductive choice reminds me of grandfather clauses and poll taxes in the Jim Crow south. A right is worthless if the state does everything in its power to make it inaccessible to you.

ETA: Update here.