International Women's Day

I am not wishing anyone Happy IWD today. IWD is not a hallmark holiday, it came from the women, the women workers, the women activists and fighters for change.

I stand in sisterhood and solidarity with all the women working for change, equality rights, peace, and yes, our liberation.

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

James Oppenheim - lyrics. Martha Colman, Caroline Kohlsaat - music.

Organizing Women for International Women's Day

How to Prevent Rape:
Go to this website now for a step by step guide.
Smart stuff!

There seems to be a new and much needed upsurge in discussion about rape. While the link above is from 2009, it is still getting passed around the interwebs, and there is a reason for this. It is directed toward men, as many of the other new campaigns are. Women are more media savvy then ever before, and more of us have tools we did not have in the past in order to agitate on our own terms. Women's groups are also savvy, and are using the lessons learned on the ground in organizing alongside cutting edge marketing and advertising techniques to get the message out. These messages aimed squarely at men make me grin ear to ear and hope for a new wave of even more and better agitation from the next women anti-rape activists around the world. Watch out Julian Assange, the women are onto you and your cronies, and we are not going to let you get away with it!

Still, I was struck by something about women's organizing on Saturday.

It is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day on March 8 and there was a march in Vancouver, one of many around the world, to commemorate. I could not go because of my health; but I did end up out and about for some part of the afternoon. What struck me was not only how little impact the march had on the city, but also how big the city is, and how much work we women have to do to make a mark that with change things. For surely things cannot go on, business as usual, and yet they do. As I moved through 3 different neighbourhoods I realised that no one knew what was happening a few blocks away, that this city's organizers' small vision for this day would leave little trace, and all of our hard, hard work of the last 100 years and more has no place in the day to day life of the place.

My workplace is hosting a pancake breakfast for women staff tomorrow, a small women only event which is again questioned by women and men alike for it's appropriateness. There are a handful of identifiable feminists in the organization, who are activists away from work, but we have not been asked to speak. Instead, we are playing Jeopardy, eating pancakes (I am having Lenten body memories from this! ha!) and listening to three good hearted women, all supervisors and managers, talk about women's leadership.

It just makes me sad; this agency de-certified from a union several years ago, a move which I think was a good one at the time, as they moved from being public sector to non profit employees. The history of the agency is an activist one, so the general inclination around the place has kept our wages, benefits, and working conditions decent. But change is coming in the form of government funding formulas and sources; hirings to management have already taken place which signal a move away from a social change agenda. So we are disconnected from the reasons to host an International Women's Day event, which was afterall International Women Workers Day - the day women socialists organized for themselves in Russia, and then the rest of Eastern Europe, which carried so much momentum it is one of the driving forces behind the Revolution of 1917.

I am of conflicted because I hold dear to the idea that unions are of and for the working class, and my job is not a working class one; still, it would be nice to talk about our work and what it means to be a woman doing our work in some sort of context. We work with poor and unemployed people, from 18-65, across race, class and gender, and we are not to encourage insurrection amongst them, although in all good conscience we should be. I personally do not know how to 'teach' the 'lifeskill' called 'Empowerment' without some sort of discussion about how to access power in a patriarchal society. I do not find eating pancakes while listening to management discuss women's leadership empowering to me as a woman, nor as a woman who works outside my home, not one bit. Instead, it makes me want to be a bit rebellious. Well, it all makes me want to be a lot rebellious.

Back to International Women's Day and organizing working women in a city now. I stand beside all unions, public sector unions of the professional middle class as well, and of course. But as the unions are more upwardly classed, something is lost - the rank an file is not the rank and file it used to be, fighting for a wage to keep food on the table is inherently different from doing the same for a salary which pays a mortgage payment (mine won't,) and the heart, soul, street, fight, and context or union organizing is completely lost in the current state of affairs. Case in point: the garment workers were not organized away from their machines for the march. Neither were the women working in the poultry processing and rendering plants. Neither were the women working in retail and restaurants.

We have won much. Yet worker's rights, women's rights are under attack.

Since I mentioned garment, factory and service industry workers, let's look at minimum wage. We know minimum wage is not enough to survive on anywhere, especially here, one of the more expensive cities to live in in the world. On that basis alone, we should be gathering women to us, to each other, into the working class movement, into the women's movement. We need a Living Wage and then we need a Guaranteed Living Income. As a start, every single union should be signed up to the Living Wage campaign and insisting on this wage ($16+ in Vancouver) for their members. Every single feminist organizer needs to insist they do.

Organizing working class women to these goals could be a step toward change which makes everyone look up, take notice, pay attention. For more then an afternoon.

Agree~!

My friend Erin posting for feminist lesbians in Van-City.
End Prostitution NOW!

http://easilyriled.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/feminist-lesbians-argue-for-the-abolition-of-prostitution/

Wanna be...

This series makes me laugh and laugh. Watch all of them, you will too!

There's nothing like taking the piss out of hipster poets, not really.

It seems like there is some sort of techie template thing to make these videos. I'll investigate and report back. In the meantime, enjoy!

Poets and Operas

So I almost peed my pants with glee tonight.

I was doing research for my new project and found this gem of literary genius: Anne Carson created a libretto around Simone Weil.

I don't know why it surprises me when I find operas written by poets and why I get excited by this form in particular. But I am delighted each and every time I make a new discovery. These libretto tend to be gifts of often glorious writing.

Margaret Atwood was interviewed on CBC radio on February 2nd, when she was in town. She discussed how she is working collaboratively with groups of 3 writers/actors/musicians at a time to create the readings around The Year of the Flood. This all got me very excited. I did not get out of my car until she finished talking about these performances (and bird watching in Stanley Park before her interview,) and I did not care that my neighbours were looking at me funny as they walked by.

Atwood also recently wrote a libretto about Pauline Johnson. You can read an article about that equally exciting project here.

I took Meryn Cadell's Lyric and Libretto class at UBC a few years back and not only did I just love, love, love all the young musicians I got to work with, I considered myself thoroughly blessed to get 4 months to muck around with a form that was outside my ken with Meryn as my guide. I have my own libretto of sorts in the works; reading and listening to Carson tonight made me want to revisit this work of mine and see how to make it come alive again.

Stay tuned.

I'm back!

Yes, yes I am.

A few short hours ago someone dear to me said I never finish anything. That sucked to hear. But then again, I haven't worked this blog for 3 years, so that's something, a big boulder of truth lurking in cyber space doing its own little truth tell. I liked this blog and what I was doing with it. Blogs have changed since then, so I will be catching up and hopefully moving ahead in new directions for myself, for the writing. I ask yor patience gentle reader as I work out the kinks.

Here is a literary thing that is new to me but isn't new. Thank you for Daniel Z from Poetry is Dead for the link to: BookThug News

cheers, and cheer me on!

a bit of Pat Lowther

BEFORE THE WRECKER COMES

Pat Lowther

From: Time Capsule, Polestar 1996, p.201.

---

Before the wreckers come,
Uproot the lily
From the hard angle of earth
By the house.
Crouch by the latticed understairs
Rubbish and neglect
(The sudden lightning
Of sun
On your back
Between the opening
And shutting
Of the March-blown clothesline,
Rise and fall of the swift light
Like blows.)
Here a lifetime's
Slimy soapsuds
Curdle the earth,
In this corner
Under the stairs,
But have not killed
The woodbugs
Nor the moths' pupae
Which brush your fingers
As you dig
For the round, rich root,
The lily root
Which has somehow, senselessly,
Not been killed either
But has grown every year
An astonished babyhood,
An eye-struck Easter.
Pack it among the photographs,
The silver polish,
And the last laundry
Which will not again
Lift and shutter
For the shattering sun.
Mark its container: X
Two intersecting lines,
A lattice point
Of time
And the years' seasons.

Before the wreckers come,
Carry away
The lightning-bulb of sun.

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/lowther/poems.htm

I've been a bad blogger....

I broke all the rules and didn't write or add anything for a month. I was supposed to be excelling at English Literature and learning French instead. But I was not doing those things either. I could blame facebook, but that's a cop out - and everyone knows I hate de pigs.

So...

I've been hiding out in anxiety disorder land, laying about fatigued from stupid MS, watching my typing deteriorate because of stupid MS, (this would cause anxiety in a writer, no?) and covetting electronic gadgets I don't need but really, really want. Like a digital camera I can really work with. Even my old SLRs are pieces of crap, broken, hand me downs, the usual crud of working class existence. Two of my friends got brand new MACs and I got this ancient crappy one, so I end up using Diann'es PC anyway. I could harumph all day about how hard done by I am with my substandard equipment - one last whine - an artist needs this shit! - okay that's done.

Really, the problem is anxiety. Fine, I admit it, I'm a basketcase. I throw great parties though... just like a desperate housewife, I am. (not the sort on TV, more like my working class mom...) sigh...

okay, enough. blah. blah. out, out, damn spot!

confessionals suck....

next!

okay here's something to enjoy and savour: Fag bug!

This is a most excellent activist called Erin Davis, who everyone should support!

Some arseholes wrote 'fag' on her car and instead of wiping it off, she got even by keeping it that way and becoming a transcontinental activist. She was in the Pride Parade in Vancouver and is apparently off to Laramie to meet Matthew Sheppard's parents. She is trying for a gig on L-word too - if you read my blog and got a connection, contact her through the website below and let her know. Apparently, she had a line on "Shane" - Apparently "Shane" goes to the same Blenz every day. RUFK Me? Which Blenz, I ask? There are like 50 of them in this city... Sigh... "Shane"

oh... right... back to activism...

here's the link: http://www.fagbug.com/

make a donation, grab a sticker from her, put it on your car: help her get one million cars designated as fag bugs!

My car is a fag bug - is yours?

peace.

Sue Goyette is this week's poet

I picked this book of poetry up cheap and it is a wee gift, indeed. A big one actually. If you find it, pay full price for it, or send her the difference or something. Working poets need us to read their work and buy their books.

Sue Goyette
Undone
2004, Brick Books

http://www.brickbooks.ca/BL-Goyette.htm

BTW: Brick Books is a great Canadian small press, producing amazing and beautiful books. Buy their books!

Here is an interview and a poem, Three Tulips, reposted from Contemporary Verse 2 (which you shold subscribe to. (hint: buy Canadian literature in all its forms.))

http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca/vol27_3excerpts.htm#poet_goyette

enjoy.

a new old obsession...

good day all.
poetry today.
Monsieur Leonard Cohen.

THE PARTY WAS OVER THEN TOO

When I was about fifteen
I followed a beautiful girl
into the Communist Party of Canada.
There were secret meetings
and you got yelled at
if you were a minute late.
We studied the McCarran Act
passed by the stooges in Washington,
and the Padlock Law
passed by their lackeys in Quebec,
and they said nasty shit
about my family
and how we got our money.
They wanted to overthrow
the country that I loved
(and served, as a Sea Scout).
And even the good people
who wanted to change things,
they hated them too
and called them social fascists.
They had plans for criminals
like my uncles and aunties
and they even had plans
for my poor little mother
who had slipped out of Lithuania
with two frozen apples
and a bandanna full of monopoly
money.
They never let me get near the girl
and the girl never let me get near the girl.
She became more and more beautiful
until she married a lawyer
and became a social fascist herself
and very likely a criminal too.
But I admired the Communists
for their pig-headed devotion
to something absolutely wrong.
It was years before I found something
comparable for myself:
I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed
zealots
who considered themselves
the Marines of the spiritual world. It's
just a matter of time:
we'll be landing this raft
on the Other Shore,
we'll be taking that beach
on the Other Shore.

Copyright © by Leonard Cohen. Mt Baldy, May 1997.
Reprinted with permission. Any other use forbidden.
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/


here are some youtube vids... enjoy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocq_noEO2uU&mode=related&search=

this was my intro to him: (i'm a child of the video age...what can I say?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrPEM2qc-j8&mode=related&search=

there's a bunch more in the middle navigation bar.

A great thing about Cohen: he embraces other media. This transforms the poetry. Read Suzanne off the page. Then listen to him sing the poem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czQoGSYBeHU&mode=related&search=


namaste

you just can't make this stuff up

Here's a link:
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html

When I worked a student newspaper we sat around cracking ourselves up with stupid story ideas and ridiculous headlines, mostly too high on sugar to know that we were not very funny, and very embarassed by some of what we saw in print with the light of day.

We, however were not strategizing to save the free world, and we were not on crack!

The real reason they scrapped this "idea:"
All those bombed gay insurgents would want to get gay married next of course. This would for sure destroy the last of the carefully build infrastructure the US has so carefully put in place and been protecing. It would particularly undermine the high priority the US government and military leadership places on the preservation of the traditional Iraqui family unit.

You know, they should have dropped the gay bomb - then they could blame the outcome of the war on gay people, just like everything else they blame homosexual blasphemers for.
It is ok, we can carry the load. We're used to it by now.

peace

poetry promised

Hi,
I promised poetry and politics but the anti-choicers took up sooo much of my time and so did the existential angst about the BFA program (and okay, okay, I admit it - facebook too.) But enough of that I say - be banished and gone, all distractions from poesy.

I will post at least a link about a poet accompanied by a copy of their already published poem or other writerly contributions at least once a week.

to start us off... a little of the Margaret Atwood herself. Some story telling about becoming a poet. (note: upon re-reading I realize bits of this speech have been recycled in others, most recently the speech she gave for the Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture for the Writer's Union, here in Vancouver this past May...it doesn't matter.)

http://www.web.net/owtoad/lecture.html

http://www.owtoad.com/ ~Margaret Atwood's official site.

I am beginning to see there is a long history of poetry writers writing about poetry and being a poet. Open the Norton Anthology of the Major English Writers and see for yourself...

If you surf the net and find a poem from Margaret A. or you are ambitious and want to transcribe it, please post in the comments section below. Make sure to give credit info. No plagarism (wagging finger!)

Here's a poem, to get us started!

In the Secular Night

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.

– By Margaret Atwood,
Copyright © O.W. Toad Ltd. 1995.
Originally published in Morning in the Burned House
(McClelland & Stewart, Houghton Mifflin, Virago, 1995)

sweet relief...now what?...oh yeah, global patriarchy awaits

So I got the news and it wasn't good... sigh... at least I am no longer in stasis. UBC does not want to give me the opportunity to write for two years and end up with a BFA. Fine. Fine then. (I am being passive aggressive...ha! crackin' myself up...) I am of course quite capable of rerouting myself to a poets life without them. Hmpphf!

So then there is the CBC hosting a "5 wishes for Canada" thing on facebook for the kids. The whole thing is now overrun with anti-choicers.... here's what I posted to the CBC blog, Editorial #1 on topic:

I am a bit shocked that the discussion about abortion came up this way in a forum that is essentially nationalist. I believe stongly in all that I do, but it seems this little project has been hijacked... Abortion has nothing to do with our nationhood, although how each state chooses to deal with abortion medically and legally might be said to define the nation in some way.

We in Canada have a Supreme Court and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 1988 it was decided that legal sanctions by the state against the provision of abortion is a violation of women's equality rights under the Charter.

If the 'wish' for Canada' is in fact a return to a legal situation where any person participating in abortion (mother and doctor/other medical staff in particular) can be criminalized, then this wish, should it be acted upon, would be a return to this version of women's legal inequality with men.

If the 'wish for Canada' is really 'abolish abortion' and it is meant to be taken outside of the legal relationship between the state and each Canadian, and perhaps is a call to the wider social contract, there are some basics that are required:

1) A Guaranteed Annual Income for all. We have raised generations and generations of children in poverty, but there is no need to continue this. Several governments have come to power in Canada promising to alleviate the poverty of children. Give their parents and potential parents money and the children will not be poor. Give a woman some money in her own name and she will be able to decide what to do about her pregnancy without the worry about feeding, clothing, and sheltering the child after birth

2) Proper and thorough and yes, culturally and religiously sensitive, health and sexuality instruction. Too many people become sexually active as adolescents and as adults without an understanding of the mechanics of their bodies, how to behave sexually with self-respect and how to deal with the bombardments of crass and sexist messages about proper sexual behaviour for men and women.

3)Free and widely available contraception of all sorts. Why do we have to pay for the pill? for ECP? for condoms, male and female alike? Why are young men and women who go to doctors looking for tubiligations and vasectomies discouraged and put-off? If you don't want to have a baby, you don't want to have a baby. Why are the people who don't want women to have abortions often the same ones that refuse to respect someone choosing to take responsibility for themselves and their sexuality by using contraception?

4)Discuss parenting early with young people. Why do they value raising children? What tools and supports will they need to do so? If they think they do not want to parent, why not? How can each person's decision be valued before the crisis of an unplanned abortion?

5) The End of Violence Against Women. If men who rape stop doing so, if men who batter stop doing so, raped and battered women will not be in the position of having to deal with the after effects of rape and violence, which sometimes includes pregnancy and abortion.

There is probably more, but this is a start. I am pro-choice, pro-abortion even, and I heartily agree that I would like to live in a world where pregnancies are welcome and women are free to birth and parent, (with or without a partner to parent alongside them.) I hope that world will also have room for the people who don't want to have children, and that all of us will have the tools and wherewithal to prevent a pregnancy or to get pregnant without the moral judgements of others interfering with our ability to do so. In this world, perhaps abortion won't be abolished, it will only become a mostly unnecessary and very occasionally used medical procedure, offered by those who are trained to provide the best and most respectful health care.

*************************
You can find the whole thing on facebook, look here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2392827649
join the facebook group and then support progressive wishes, make up your own.

And the CBC site is here: http://www.cbc.ca/wish/2007/06/editorial_1.html
and here: http://www.cbc.ca/wish/2007/06/editorial_2.html
(editorial 1 is where all the action is...but support 2!)

as an aside: I'm on facebook now, I gave in, its a good distraction on a day like today...

peace.

waiting....

Waiting for information about anything is difficult. Waiting to know if you 'passed' the test, the necessary hurdles, &c is worse. Triple that if you are an anxious anxious worrying anxious person. Who can sleep?

I understand that patience is a virtue but the perpetual "Am I good enough?" button is firmly and repeatedly getting pushed. I shoud know better, and stay away from competition of all kinds, I am not laid back, and it does mean something, at least to me, if I do not make the cut. I did not overthrow my entire life to participate in competitive crap, especially as a poet. Am I taunting the Olympian gods by trying my luck once more after winning the first round? Are my offerings good enough? See, I intend to be 'Great,' but these times of enforced waiting encourage one to beg for smaller portions: 'good enough. '

I just want to get in. Buy a bit more time to write, think, write, think. Write.

I know it has nothing to do with Karma or Gods or Goddesses or God. I am not praying, but all this hoping is getting to be a bit like it. Striking bargains like a good catholic, but with the fates, not an higher power. My muse is very sluttish when it comes to getting her way. For instance, I wrote a very slutty sonnet (indeed) as an Ode to Poetry the other day. Not publishing it here, as then I can't get it published elsewhere...you'll have to wait for my chapbooks dear readers...which will arrive shortly...

Maybe, by day's end, I will have some news to report. She's licking her lips in anticipation. I'm fretting.

fingers & legs crossed!

Dixie Chicks rock

Two months after the Grammy blah blah hoopla crap, relistening to the last Dixie Chicks album, Taking the Long Way, you gotta admit this is a great album. One the best made by the mainstream these days: love, politics, home, protest, great musicianship, song writing, and arrangments. I laugh, I cry, I bellow (er, sing.)

I watched them at the Grammies and thought they weren't ready for all the hoopla, and so didn't do themselves justice. And they clearly thought it was political only, the reasons that they won. It was political of course, a great big mea culpa pretending that sexism in the industry is non-existant and they didn't have to stand up for themselves through music and movies. They had to fight back hard, and they won. I just hope the music stands on its own and they and everyone else get it as a whole: they deserved the win for the music as well as for the fight back.

Art and politics and women's lives...

ya, sometimes it comes together...

(now on to Indigo Girls - more southern women doin' more than kickin' the dirt...sing it Amy and Emily!... (album: Become You))

Tamara

Cookie Cookie Cookie starts with 'C'

Here's the poetry post for today...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCsMWx8Re4A

This explains me+Kermit, me+poetry, me+cookie monster, me+COOKIES!!!

mmhmm ummunn nnunnmm nummm

me love poetry too!

peace.

Here's an article I wrote...

http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/gorin.htm

This is an article I published in Rain and Thunder in 2002 about lesbians, romanticism, legal marriage.

I am fairly pleased to find it posted and though I cringe at some of the sentence structure (ack!) I am glad to see it holds up over the 5 years since I wrote it.

What has changed since then: Gay marriage is legal in Canada, L-word & Ellen are on the tele, I am in a new long-term relationship where we are planning some sort of non-legal, public-in community celebration, (finding this at feminist-reprise helps me get my head around what we are trying to do, so thanx again for posting it Amy!) I left the Vancouver Rape Relief collective in June 2005, and my kid is now 17.

I spell 'honour' with a 'u' BTW - they must have edited for american spelling. All is forgiven between sisters in the struggle, though...and honor is honour afterall...

peace

Abortion and Reproductive Health News

Here's some updates re: reproductive health/abortion, courtesy of ARCC-CDAC, also courtesy, me...

NEW BRUNSWICK ABORTION ACCESS -- As you all know, the New Brunswick government enforces a regulation thatlimits funded abortions to those performed in hospitals by a specialist withthe written approval of two doctors. This regulation violates the Canada Health Act as well as the 1988 Supreme Court Morgentaler decision. The latter tossed Canada's abortion law because it set arbitrary obstacles toaccess that discriminated against women and violated women's "security ofthe person." The NB regulation does exactly the same thing. Dr. HenryMorgentaler is pursuing a lawsuit against the province, and the issue currently before the courts is whether he has "standing," which the NB government is disputing. We believe Dr. M has a great defense on this point, which will be decided in just a few days.

One of the doctors at the Morgentaler clinic in Fredericton is is being subjected to an ongoing campaign of intimidation by anti-choicers in NB, via demonstrations outside the clinic, and letters to her colleagues. We are urging the government to publicly support this doctor and NB abortion services in general, and we also are supporting the National AbortionFederation in its efforts to implement a bubble zone law in New Brunswick to protect the clinic. This avenue looks promising so far.

Heather Mallick was a recent keynote speaker at a popular event in Fredericton at the University of NB on April 11. Heather spoke to anoverflow crowd of 300 supportive people. The event was sponsored and organized by several groups including the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

Read Heather's article about New Brunswick here:
"Abortion rights and abortion fights: Court fight over legal payments about to begin" http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20070420.html


HOSPITAL ACCESS IN CANADA -- A sister pro-choice group, Canadians for Choice, issued a report in April called "Reality Check: a close look at accessing abortion services inCanadian hospitals." It found that only 15.9% of Canadian hospitals provideaccessible abortion services, compared to 17.8% in 2003. To put this intoperspective, it's important to note that clinic access has increased overthe years, which explains to some extent the overall decline in hospitalaccess. Clinics actually do about 45% of all abortions in Canada now,compared to less than 7% in 1988. Access is generally good to very good inmajor centres in Canada, but is lacking in rural and remote areas, wherehospital services are most urgently required. Canada remains in a veryenviable situation compared to all other countries in the world in terms ofabortion rights and laws, although somewhat less so in terms of access. Wedefinitely need more hospitals doing abortions, and more providers too. Butto ARCC-CDAC, one of the key findings of the report is the shocking lack ofrespect and the degree of misinformation or lack of information given towomen looking for abortion services.

Links:

The full Canadians for Choice report:
http://www.canadiansforchoice.ca/report.html

ARCC press release: "New report highlights lack of respect for womenaccessing abortion" http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/press/media-release-apr10-07.pdf

"Accessing Choice in Canada" by Pamela Pizarro (interview with reportresearcher)http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/04/26/accessing-choice-in-canada


BERTHA WILSON'S LEGACY -- Bertha Wilson passed away on April 28. She was Canada's first female Supreme Court judge. She helped stirke down Canada's restrictive abortion law in the 1988Supreme Court Morgentaler decision, and her concurring decision wasfar-reaching and visionary, going beyond the other justices. She saw women'sright to "liberty" and "freedom of conscience" as encompassing the right tohave an abortion. Recently, Joyce Arthur co-authored an unpublished piece with a law student, part of which argued that the Supreme Court today has a more evolved view of the Charter and would be likely to adopt Wilson's view of abortion rights, rather than fall back on the narrower interpretation of the other justices. If you'd be interested in reading this, please email Joyce at (jharthur@shaw.ca) and she can send this excerpt to you.

Joyce Arthur's favourite quote by Wilson from the Morgentaler decision:

"Liberty in a free and democratic society does not require the state to approve the personal decisions made by its citizens; it does, however, require the state to respect them. A woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy falls within this class of protected decisions. It is one that will have profound psychological, economic, and social consequences for her. It is a decisionthat deeply reflects the way the woman thinks about herself and herrelationship to others and to society at large. It is not just a medica ldecision; it is a profound social and ethical one as well."

Links:

Bertha Wilson, 83: First female Supreme Court justice. Canadian Press, May01, 2007, by Tracey Tyler http://www.thestar.com/News/article/209065

'The great dissenter: The first female judge to ascend to the Supreme Courtdies at 83." The Globe and Mail, Tue 01 May 2007, by Kirk Makin http://osgoode.yorku.ca/media2.nsf/83303ffe5af03ed585256ae6005379c9/06563e796b80e7a8852572ce00694530!OpenDocument


MEXICO LEGALIZES ABORTION -- Abortion was decriminalized in Mexico City (not the whole country) on April24, with a legislative vote of 46-19. Women can now have abortions on request up till 12 weeks of gestation. City hospitals must provide the procedure and private abortion clinics may open. Girls under 18 have to get their parents' consent, but the procedure will be almost free for poor or uninsured city residents. Unfortunately, except in cases of medical emergency, women seeking abortions will have to prove residency in Mexico City.

Outside the city, abortion is allowed only in cases of rape, severe birth defects or if the woman's life is at risk. Also, abortion after 12 weeks is punishableby three to six months in jail. Still, Mexico now has one of the most progressive laws on abortion in Latin America, after only Cuba and Guyana.

The health law was also strengthened to guarantee sexuality education and campaigns on reproductive and sexual rights, the availability of birth control methods, as well as comprehensive and quality abortion services upon request. Up until now, about 800,000 illegal abortions were estimated t otake place every year in Mexico. Well-off women could easily get abortions at private clinics, but poor women had to self-abort or go to unskilled practitioners.

Links:

"Mexico City legalizes abortion; defies church", April 25, Reuters, byCatherine Bremer http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2007/04/25/mexico_city_legalizes_abortion_defies_church/

"Mexico City law may push out abortion subculture", May 1 2007, MiamiHerald, by Cecilia Sanchez and Hector Tobar
http://www.miamiherald.com/579/v-print/story/92099.html


PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN UPHELD IN U.S. -- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the so-called "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act"on April 18. This travesty of a decision, made by 5 male, devout Catholic judges, guts over 30 years of case-law precedent on abortion, and criminalizes a particular type of abortion for the first time. Most significantly, the decision says an exception to protect the woman's health is NOT required when passing abortion restrictions (only the woman's life). This means that women's health is subordinate to the fetus' right to live, so in American society today, men are now on top, with fetuses second, andwomen third (tied with children). Anti-abortion groups are ecstatic because this opens the floodgates for more anti-abortion restrictions, as well as signalling the possible overturning of Roe v Wade in the not-too-distant future. The decision itself is paternalistic and ideological, and based on flimsy legal arguments, such as irrationally asserting that the law can only be challenged in court now by an individual woman who suddenly needs the procedure in an emergency. The decision basically lets legislators into the operating room to make the medical decisions, and prevents doctors from making medical decisions in the best interests of their patients.

The lone woman on the court, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, read aloud from the bench her scathing dissent, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer. It is well-worth reading: http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/05-380_All.pdf
Scroll down to page 49 to view.


IRISH GIRLS WINS RIGHT TO TRAVEL FOR ABORTION -- An interesting case that has not gotten much media attention in NorthAmerica is unfolding in Ireland. A 17 year old girl who is a ward of the Health Service Executive (HSE) had a wanted pregnancy with her boyfriend that turned bad. She is now 18 weeks pregnant and her fetus has anencephaly (a brain condition) so it cannot survive after birth. The HSE refused her permission to travel to England for an abortion because she is underage and in care. (Abortion is illegal in Ireland; the country has a constitutional amendment protecting life from conception with "equal regard" to the life of the woman.) The girl, known as Miss D, very bravely went to court and has endured a major 10-day media circus. Today, the Irish high court granted her leave to go to England, under certain conditions.
For details and a complete record of events, see the Safe & Legal campaign site in Ireland: http://safeandlegal.blogspot.com/

Sense of humour

I really thought the Black Eyed Peas were going to go somewhere, repoliticize hip-hop-pop after their first song. But, no, they went the way of the cash/sex vortex and now Fergie is forever stuck in 30-something adolescent sex-crazed crap. Too bad.

But, out of the ashes of pop-porn (that's my copyright!) , here comes Alanis Morissette with a lovely, quiet send up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZw-8RSyvh8

This is coming to you on youtube, so you can click on the B.E.P/Fergie original (which shows up right beside it) to see what she's on about. Or just turn on Much Music...

merci beaucoup, alanis.

things like this help a feminist move on with her day.

Links for you

Hi,
my blog time today was spent adding links to the site... a start and by no means exhaustive... sit back, grab a cuppa something you like and surf the feminist webscape...

peace