Login / RegisterGreen party leader Elizabeth May says her abortion stance “massively misreported”
Elizabeth May is eager to clear up any confusion about her views on abortion.
Videos
The Green Party of Canada leader says her position on this hot-button issue has been “massively misreported”.
“I’ve been a feminist all my life, or at least as long as I’ve been conscious of being a woman,” May said during an interview at the Georgia Straight offices. “So, women must have access to legal, safe abortions, whenever a woman needs one.”
According to the Saanich-Gulf Islands candidate, the Green party’s “pro-life, pro-choice” policy on abortion is one of sources of the confusion.
“If a woman is in a situation where she’d like to keep her child and needs support, we also want to be there to support that choice and also to ensure that as much as possible we, in our society, provide—not just for women, but for male partners—responsibility, birth-control information in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies,” May said of the policy. “So, it’s a mixed and nuanced position, but there’s absolutely no wiggle room on maintaining the right of women in this country to safe and legal abortions.”
In 2006, May stirred controversy during the federal by-election in Ontario’s London North Centre riding—where she ended up placing second—when she told nuns at a convent that she has talked women out of having abortions and could not imagine any circumstances that would have caused her to have an abortion.
“If one group of people say a woman has a right to choose, I get queasy because I’m against abortion,” May said at the time, according an audio recording posted online. “I don’t think a woman has a frivolous right to choose. What I don’t want is a desperate woman to die in an illegal abortion.”
This week, May told the Straight that she was trying to explain to the London nuns “why their belief in right to life means that they should support abortion”.
Asked if she thinks abortion is morally wrong, May replied, “No.”
“I don’t think that anyone is for abortion in the sense that you hope people are going to have abortions,” the Green leader elaborated. “You hope in an ideal world that every pregnancy is a wanted pregnancy. My friends and family members who’ve ever gone through abortions have found it a traumatically difficult decision to make. It’s a personally difficult decision. You can’t trivialize how hard that choice is. But a women has a right to make that choice, and it’s not a morally wrong decision by any means.”
May stressed that there’s “no room for going backwards” on the abortion issue.
“I’m very militant about it,” May said. “So, being misreported on it has driven me slightly mad.”
You can follow Stephen Hui on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenhui.
If legally, anyone can get an abortion for any reason at any time, what about the ethics of the following situations:
* A woman finds out her fetus may have Down Syndrome, hydrocephalus, etc. She decides to abort based on her reluctance to raise a child with a disability (most women who find out thier fetus is disabled decide to abort). Is this okay?
* A woman finds out she is going to have a girl. Either boys or preferred in her culture, or she would just prefer to have a boy for whatever reason. So she aborts. Is this okay with you?
* A woman decides when she is eight months pregnant that she would rather not have the baby. So, even though the child would survive on its own at this point, if it were simply removed through Ceasarean, she decides to abort. (according to Canada's laws, she can). Is this morally okay?
Given how much prenatal testing has changed since abortion laws were enacted 30 years ago or so, is having a conversation about this stuff really so bad?
It seems that the left is screaming that ANY infringement on a woman's right to choose is a roll-back in women's power. I'm not sure it's that simple anymore.
Women are responsible for a massive genocide of disabled and female fetuses, worldwide, through abortion. The numbers are in the hundreds of millions. And the underlying cause - revulsion against disabled people and girls - is troubling. While that revulsion obviously can't be solved through restriction on abortion, neither should women get off the hook for their decisions, based on the fact that abortion is legal.
I don't have any problem with May's comments. A little reflection on abortion - notice she never called into question a woman's right to choose - is perfectly appropriate, in 2011, for Canada's left.
I wish she stood behind her original statements. But given the media's urge to oversimplify the issue, I understand why she's waffling.
And it`s interesting how nearly every anti-feminist woman considers herself to be a feminist these days! The likes of May and Palin don`t even know what feminism is all about. You simply cannot be anti-choice AND a feminist! Got it ladies?
All feminist do not get pregnant. And possibly less of them do than women supporters of right to life.
Any stats on this are appreciated?
Abortion is an Agenda 21 promoted program. Unless you know about Agenda 21 then you will not see the bigger picture agenda
that is being met by the 100million abortions to-date globally.
Getting into a feminist vs non feminist argument serves Agenda 21
that the feminist movement did not create but was mostly men that
created it that are not feminists. Don't let you genital differences deprive you of being informed. Agenda 21, are you in it or against it is a more important issue than feminist or non. Thank you, AdvisorX