08.03.2011 06:36 AM

Feminist blogger: Hudak’s record on choice

Here:

In 1996, under the Harris Conservatives, an MPP by the name of Frank Klees introduced a private member’s bill that would limit access to abortion by mandating parental notification before any minor can terminate a pregnancy. Regardless of the myriad of reasons a young woman may not want her parents to know.

Tim Hudak voted in favour of the bill. The same Tim Hudak, who as premier, would be Ontario’s chief lawmaker. And Frank Klees is still an MPP.

In all, 34 MPPs voted in favour of this legislation. All of them Conservatives.

So, what would Hudak, a pro-life leader, do as premier? The questions continue to mount but his silence speaks volumes. In absence of answers, his record stands.

12 Comments

  1. Jerome Bastien says:

    WK:

    The thread for this is a bit old, so I will post here.

    Thanks for alerting me to that defamatory Heather Mallick column. I was able to let Melanie Phillips know about it, and now she has initiated legal proceedings, and the Star has already published a retraction on their web site.
    http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1031886–mallick-what-to-do-when-a-monster-likes-your-work

    • Warren says:

      And now the Toronto Star knows will be quite interested in you, Jerome…

      • Jerome Bastien says:

        That’s fine Warren. Im an open book and have nothing to hide.

        Besides, Im sure you dont support defamation, whatever side of the spectrum it’s coming from. And I would not hesitate to let you know if I saw defamatory material about you on the Internet.

    • Attack! says:

      Still not sure what was defamatory about it, though, and the “retraction” citing that July 26 column only muddies the waters:

      because the column Mallick was responding to, which she complained lacked sufficient expression of condemnation for the act, was actually the day BEFORE that, on July 25:

      http://melaniephillips.com/a-wider-pathology

      • Jerome Bastien says:

        Mallick’s column is from July 28. On July 26, two days before Mallick’s column was published, Melanie Phillips published a blog post including the following paragraph:

        “No, no, no! Any variety of such ‘yes-buttery’ inescapably makes some kind of excuse for the atrocity, however dressed up it may be in suitably pious expressions of horror. There is never any justification for mass murder. None. Any concerns about the Norwegian ambassador to Israel’s disgusting comments or European Islamisation or anything else are a totally separate matter and must be addressed through the democratic process of argument, persuasion and public debate. ”

        And Mallick had suggested that Phillips had never condemned the Norway attack. Mallick never suggested that Phillips had not condemned the attack in that specific column of July 25, although the Mallick column links to the July 25 column. Had she said that, I dont think it would have been defamatory – and it would also have been rather a lame point.

        The important point is that Phillips did condemn the Norway attack, before the publication of Mallick’s column, and Mallick’s column states unequivocally that Phillips did no such thing.

        • Attack! says:

          Uh-huh. Well, the ToStar editor may have some ‘splaining to do for not fact-checking whether there’d been any update to Phillips’ site, but I wouldn’t go putting too much stock into those dates as proof that Mallick did anything wrong.

          Because you don’t know when she wrote and submitted it; my guess is late on the 25th or early on the 26th (UK time, where she’s based), after Phillips’ “wider pathology” column, and before the later ‘oops, I better condemn him in no uncertain terms’ one on the 26th.

          And note, the Star publishes Mallick’s columns on an irregular schedule — mostly every second day — and they’d already published one on the 26th about the US debt crisis, so this one might’ve remained on deck for a while.

          http://www.thestar.com/opinions/columnists/847463–mallick-heather

          • Jerome Bastien says:

            Indeed. The exact time line of this whole thing needs to be clarified. I note though, that although the Mallick column appeared online on July 28, it was in the July 29 print edition.

            Im not sure whether the “but i submitted it on the 25th” excuse would be a valid defense. It might be for Mallick, maybe not for the TorStar. I dont know.

            Also, your bias is showing (yeah, mine is too, I know):
            -oops I better condemn him in no uncertain terms: suggests Phillips had her hand forced and did not actually want to condemn the Norway attack.
            -my guess is late on the 25th or early on the 26th: suggests you cant fathom that Mallick is at fault here.

          • Attack! says:

            you were doing so well… until the 3rd par.

            I’m not biased against Phillips — I’d never heard of her before this. And I don’t in the least think she approved of the attacks, in the least: but the point – Mallick’s — is, she didn’t take the first available opp’y to condemn the action in the strongest poss. terms after she’d been implicated as one of this whacko’s influences; she only did that a day later. Her FIRST instinct was to get all defensive and wrote about how the whole world’s crazy, and some liberals are out to smear her.

            Nor am I particularly enamored of Mallick. I’ve never subscribed to the Star, and only really pay attention to her when WK singles her out on something.

            But my ‘guess’ about the time of her post was just elementary reasoning, that she, like most any other columnist (outside of the QMI chain, that is), wouldn’t be especially keen to be face a lawsuit, and so she almost certainly would have qualified her claim with something like, ‘her initial reaction was…’ if she’d seen the later post above the one she was quoting from, when she wrote that column.

            As for the legal defense, I should think that it should be understood that,

            ‘at the time I am writing this, her only public statements that I am aware of…’

            is implicit; she can’t be responsible for what her subject might say or do in the future.

          • The Doctor says:

            I don’t think the “oh well the article was sitting on the shelf while the facts changed” defence would work for the Star. No way. A bit more of a grey situation for Mallick, perhaps. But basically in Canada, if you defame somebody, there are a limited, enumerated set of defences available to you, and this ain’t one of them as far as I know. But I defer to WK, who has certainly been around the block a couple of times when it comes to this sort of stuff . . .

  2. Yitz says:

    I don’t see what’s unreasonable about parental notification policies for minors having abortions. As far as I know, if you’re under 18, you can’t have your tonsils taken out or have any medical procedure whatsoever without a parent or guardian signing off.

  3. Gritchik says:

    Interesting that this entire comment thread has absolutely nothing to do with its subject.

Leave a Reply to Gritchik Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.