Why PM Harper Deserves Consideration for Nobel Peace Prize

Previously on Bad Company, I took the signatories to a petition demanding that the Nobel Peace Prize committee reject Prime Minister Stephen Harper's nomination out to the woodshed. They didn't like it.

Not one of them substantively answered the criticisms contained in that blogpost. The reason for this is obvious: it's because they can't.

And of course they can't. The only reason to demand that the NPP committee circumvent the process of considering nominations made to it is that they're deathly afraid that Harper will get serious consideration, if not the award itself. Personally, I expect that Prime Minister Harper will get serious consideration, although I don't necessarily expect he'll win the prize.

I don't disagree with Frank Dimant that Harper has shown remarkable, even unique, moral clarity on the issue of Israel. Unlike those who signed this ridiculous petition, Prime Minister Harper knows were the blame for the conflict, and for civilian deaths in Gaza, belongs: on Hamas. They, who go out of their way to start armed conflict with Israel, then put their civilians in harm's way.

That being said, that's not the reason I think Harper warrants serious consideration for the award.

The reason in my mind is the maternal health initiative Harper has championed on the global stage. It was once said that mother is the name of God on the lips of a child. Prime Minister Harper is well aware that when you take steps to improve the health of mothers and their children you take a vital step toward alleviating health crises in the developing world.

Now I'm certain that many signatories to the "deny Harper" petition will object strenuously. Their idea of "maternal health" seems to be funding abortions in countries where the procedure is often contrary to law. Harper has wisely defied them by refusing to fund abortions as part of the MHI. This is another reason why he should be considered.

I'm not holding my breath for Prime Minister Harper to win the prize based on this achievement. If helping to stem the devastation wrought by AIDS in Africa wasn't enough to win President George W Bush the Peace Prize -- and having accomplished nothing was enough to win President Barack Obama the prize -- the Maternal Health Initiative likely won't secure it for Harper.

And that's OK, so long as the award goes to a more deserving nominee. I'm entirely open to that possibility. I'll be waiting... and watching... to see who ends up winning.

Quebec Women's Groups Call For Rona Ambrose to Resign... For Acting Responsibly

Minister for Status of Women acts more responsibly than any previous Minister ever

In voting in support of Stephen Woodoworth's motion to establish a Parliamentary committee to discuss abortion, Rona Ambrose has acted more responsibly than any previous Minister responsible for the Status of Women. Ever. Bar none.

A number of women's groups in Quebec -- where nearly one in three women will have an abortion during their lifetime -- couldn't have that. They're demanding that Ambrose resign as Minister for the Status of Women.

Of course she should do no such thing. And hopefully she won't.

"The role of the office of the Minister for the Status of Women is to look after the interests of women," declared Quebec Federation of Women President Alexa Conradi. "By voting for this committee, which has no other goal but to reopen the debate on abortion, she is shirking her responsibility."

Quite the contrary. It isn't Ambrose's responsibility as the Minister  for the Status of Women to slap down discussion of abortion, nor is that even in the best interests of women. In fact, it's distinctly in the best interests of women -- in fact, in the best interests of all Canadians -- that abortion be discussed openly and frequently.

Simply put, whether people like Conradi care to admit it or not, abortion deals with the termination of human life. For any country to have no law governing it -- and to refuse to even discuss it -- is the very definition of madness. But that's only the first reason abortion should be discussed by Parliamentarians.

Perhaps the best reason to establish this committee is for the simple fact that Canadians are woefully under-informed of what the facts regarding abortion in Canada are. Conversely, the best reason for groups like QFW to oppose that debate is because if Canadians did know the facts regarding abortion in Canada were, there is no way the status quo would be allowed to stand.

To start with, Canadians do prefer that abortion remain legal. So that portion of the status quo would remain unchanged. However, 60% of Canadians were found to support some restrictions on when a woman can receive an abortion (57% of men supported this, and 60% of women did as well.)

That's a very severe blow to two common arguments used by the pro-abortion movement. The first, their argument that the current abortion-related status quo is in the best interests of women -- clearly a sizable majority of women do not agree. Secondly that only women have the right to an opinion on abortion -- clearly discounting men does them no good, as even more women than men believe that the law should restrict abortion in some way.

Even though some previous polls have suggested that Canadians are comfortable with Canada's abortion status quo, those polls also found that the majority of Canadians didn't know what that status quo was! Canadians tended to believe that Canada has abortion limits similar to those in the United States.

The pro-abortion lobby, unfortunately, is perfectly comfortable with Canadians not really knowing just what the status quo related to abortion in Canada is. No sooner was Woodworth talking about this abortion than the pro-abortion lobby hit their panic button, fear-mongering as fiercely as they possibly could.

Because they, of all people, know the facts. They know that they cannot afford for Canadians to become aware of the facts. Because if Canadians did, there would be big changes related to abortion -- changes that the pro-abortion zealots won't like.

More Forbidden Questions... With Rajendra Kale

Mere weeks after Conservative Party MP Stephen Woodworth called for a renewed public debate on abortion, another bombshell has landed that has made the subject impossible to ignore.

Writing in an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr Rajendra Kale has warned that abortion for the purpose of sex selection is happening in Canada. He suggests it may be prevalent among Asian immigrants to Canada. It's a common practice in India and China, where parents prefer having boys over having girls.

Of course, the question that Kale is asking are forbidden on more than one count. Not only is he asking questions about abortion -- forbidden by those most invested in Canada's lawless abortion status quo -- he's also asking hard questions about multiculturalism.

That's what the far-left considers a double no-no.

What's bound to infuriate the far-left most is that the kind of Charter arguments they favour -- using the equality provisions of the Charter to attempt to empower their agenda on a Constitutional basis -- against the abortion-related status quo.

“It really works against everything we believe in Canada in terms of equality. It works against our Charter [of Rights and Freedoms],” explains University of Toronto bioethicist Kerry Bowman. “At very least, it would be fair to ask why a couple wants to know the gender of their child ... because that in itself is not directly linked to the health or well-being of the child, except in rare cases of sex-linked diseases or disorders.”

To make matters even more concerning, UBC economist Kevin Milligan has identified, via analyzing census data, an unnaturally high prevalence of male births in areas with large South and East Asian immigrant populations. And those pattenns of male births? Yeah, they're consistent with those in areas in Asia where sex-selection abortion is practiced.

Of course this isn't supposed to be happening in Canada. We aren't supposed to discriminate against women or girls in Canada, regardless of whether that discrimination is taking place before or after birth.

Of course, there are those who are going to insist that it's those who are now raising questions about sex-selection abortion who are being discriminatory. I fully expect to be called racist over this -- it's the typical impotent response offered by those who have nothing else to say.

But they'll have a far more difficult time making that argument about Dr Rajendra Kale. He was born in Mumbai.

Forbidden Questions With Stephen Woodworth

If there's one topic the left is desperate to declare off-limits, it's abortion.

For obvious reasons. Few topics reveal just how little an individual life is worth to the collectivist hordes of the far-left as abortion. The idea that a life can legally be terminated at any point before birth is a detail that they seem desperate to ensure doesn't reach the Canadian public.

So it's only natural that University of Waterloo Professor of Philosophy (sorry, that's Assistant Professor of Philosophy) wrote an allegedly-scathing column on TheComment.com attacking Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth for even bringing it up.

I say allegedly-scathing because I've seen a couple of Twitter comments insisting it's so. But when examined at length, it's actually toothless far-left fluff, evading the crux of the questions Woodworth is asking.

Of course these are the kind of questions that a co-President of Planned Parenthood could never afford to answer. They're forbidden questions, and Dea can't afford to justify them with an honest answer -- even if they don't require an answer in order to be justified.

In particular, Dea objects to Woodworth describing Canadian law as treating unborn children as "subhuman". Yet Dea herself admits that "the law does not regard a breathing child whose little toe remains in the birth canal to be a human being".

Suffice to say, if the child is not human, it's considered something else.

But the the determination that a child was not considered a human being -- as Woodworth himself notes, a determination counter to medical and scientific fact -- originates in a legal decision to strike down Canada's abortion laws. The function of that ruling was to note that an unborn child doesn't have the rights of a human being. Ergo, an unborn child is considered less than human. Which is only a slightly nicer way of saying subhuman.

Whoops. What has Dea done here? Simply put, she's made the most startling admission to slip from the tongue of a pro-abortion lobbyist ever.

Dea's admission notes that she and her fellow pro-abortion lobbyists understand full well how fragile and flimsy the law governing who is considered human and who is not considered human really is. She's admitted that a hypothetical big toe really can make the difference, and doesn't seem to understand that she's just revealed the foundational law for the entire pro-abortion lobby in Canada to be almost entirely arbitrary.

At the height of her ideological frenzy, Dea does vainly attempt to wash this distinction away entirely. She calls it a "red herring". "Anyone who has attended the birth of a child will know that, once the head and shoulders have emerged from the birth canal, the toes (big and little) follow very quickly," she writes. "The notion of someone taking advantage of the very brief period in which the toe is the only part of the baby left in the birth canal in order to do that child harm is straight out of science fiction, and reveals Woodworth’s news release to be cynical polemic rather than the product of genuine practical considerations."

Interestingly, Woodworth hasn't ever claimed that any such thing has ever happened. Nor has he ever suggested that it would happen. But the detail that it could happen is rather sobering, one that Dea quite clearly cannot answer.

But, in the end, Dea excuses herself from ever having to answer such questions by arbitrarily declaring them to be irrelevant.

"Medical science is irrelevant to the question of when a fetus becomes a human being — that matter is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical one," Dea writes.

She could not possibly be more wrong. The very definition of what a "human being" is is deeply rooted in medical science.

No definition of "human being" can escape the most fundamental philosophical reality surrounding the topic: to be "human" is to be a homo sapien. To be a "being" is to exist. Neither of these things are for the law or philosophy to determine. They are both objective states.

An unborn child, regardless of whether or not it has exited the birth canal and breathed, is homo sapien. And it exists. No law in the land can deny that, and although philosophy may try, all but the most deranged would-be Nietzches couldn't deny it either. And even they with absolutely zero credibility in the minds of rational people.

If Dea spoke any further on this particular topic, she would surely expose the self-indulgent standard of virtue epistemology -- effectively, the means test of knowledge -- that the pro-abortion lobby is founded on. She does as much, although regarding a separate topic, when she claims Canadians don't want to debate abortion. As it pertains to Canada's abortion law -- or lack thereof -- this is tantamount to a desire to not debate something on which they are woefully misinformed.

Or, perhaps, that should be "woefully disinformed." The pro-abortion lobby has been relentless in their promotion of public ignorance on the topic.

There's good reason for a healthy debate on abortion, and good reason for that debate to continue indefinitely. After all, another fact the pro-abortion lobby cannot avoid, however desperately they may try, is that abortion deals with the termination of human life.

It's a disturbed society that would allow matters related to the termination of human life to go undebated. A society wherein abortion is not the subject of debate is as disturbed as one in which capital punishment is not the subject of debate.

Shannon Dea may not like it. But tough. It's more important for Canada to have an ethically healthy society than for the pro-abortion zealots of the land to have their way, which is unfortunately the only thing they really care about.