April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

reproductive choice

Humanists Award Honour To Morgantaler

by


Dr. Morgantaler to receive another award. This one from the Humanist Association of Canada. Press release below.

h/t Antonia

Kathy Meidell

Executive Director, Humanist Association of Canada

www.humanists.ca

[1ft2b_caption id=”attachment_804″ align=”right” width=”150″ caption=”The Humanist Association of Canada”]The Humanist Association of Canada[/1ft2b_caption]TORONTO, July 10 — The Humanist Association of Canada (HAC) will be bestowing pro-choice champion, Dr Henry Morgentaler with the Lifetime Achievement award during its blockbuster 40th anniversary convention the weekend of August 2. This award honours Dr Morgentaler’s extraordinary efforts in advocating for health, dignity and human rights for all Canadians during his 40 years of service to the organization. For details, please see: www.humanists.ca

The organization is delighted that the timing of the Lifetime Achievement Award coincides with Dr Morgentaler receiving the 2008 Order of Canada award for his decades-long humanitarian work to improve healthcare for Canadian women. This award, our nation’s highest honour, comes on the 20th anniversary of the landmark decision by the Supreme Court of Canada that declared the nation’s archaic abortion laws unconstitutional.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently condemned the decision to award Dr Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada saying that he feels it may trigger dissension among Canadians. The Humanist Association of Canada, however, feels that this prominent award will help unify Canadians – more precisely, those Canadians who believe in democracy, better healthcare, human rights, and respect for women.

The award ceremony will be taking place during the largest freethought convention in Canadian history: Saturday August 2 to Sunday August 3 at the InterContinental Yorkville Hotel at 220 Bloor Street West, Toronto. This anniversary celebration is especially meaningful to HAC as Dr Morgentaler was its first president in 1968.

Convention highlights include: great food, live music, comedy, a fabulous awards banquet, book-signings and presentations by 12 acclaimed speakers from across North America, including award-winning activists: Chris diCarlo, critical thinking powerhouse and winner of TV Ontario’s 2008 Professor of the Year award; Brian Alters, evolution education champion and co-host of popular CBC series “Project X”; Ellen Johnson, past President of American Atheists; Dan Barker, President of the Freedom from Religion Foundation; Dr Robert Buckman: cancer specialist and past member of Monty Python comedy troupe; and, of course, Dr Henry Morgentaler, Holocaust survivor and pro choice crusader.

The Humanist Association of Canada is a not-for-profit charitable organization that supports and promotes educational initiatives to advance critical-thinking and Humanist culture, social and outreach opportunities for non-believers, and advocacy for equality and fairness for all Canadians.

Blogging for Choice

by

Today Americians who believe in freedom and democracy celebrate the day that women were given a right to reproductive liberty.

At a time when so much talk centres around bringing democracy, freedom, women’s rights, to other countries, it is ironic that those things are being scaled back in America itself.

{The death of habeas corpus
Wire Tapping
limiting abortion rights
Indifference to equal pay just a small sampling}

The vocal minorities and special interest groups have organized while decent people just assumed that what was obviously right would continue. Unfortunately the courts and various places of political representation are now stacked with those who would have America become a theocracy. Whose idea of reproductive choice is whether to do it with the lights off or on. And who would happily revert to days when scores of women were on drugs in order to cope with the drudgery and danger which was their lives.

The slanderous sexist and misogynist comments around Hilary Clintons’ campaign is a glaring example of low esteem in which these right-wing, anti-choice, anti-democratic types hold women. It may be amusing for those women in the anti-choice to see their political foes treated thusly, however, they need to bear in mind that these men think pretty much the same way about them.

It is time to fight back. It is time to remember the women who died because they had no choice, because a piece of flesh within her was considered more important than her life. A time when constant pregnancy made women weak and many succumbed to death from hemorrhage.
The step family is not a new invention, men remarried, families blended, this is not an invention of feminism as the misinformed would like to believe.

Birth control is also under attack. There will be no peace until women have lost all the rights so long fought for. It may start with glurgy soft focus pictures of pregnancy and newborns, but it will end only when the jackboot of patriarchy is once again firmly lodged on the throats of women everywhere.

It is your body, your choice, your life, your future. Defend it!