RIGHTS and FIGHTS
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Abortion is, once again, gaining headlines lately. In the U.S., laws are being passed that will go into effect in many states once a long-standing decision on Jane Roe’s case being upended (maybe) if the leaked-draft decision is the same as the final decision. Tricky stuff inside and outside the U.S. Supreme Court – and everybody with newspapers to sell is giving major ink to those issues.
Meanwhile, women who felt secure in their decision-making rights are up in arms without regard to whether they are of child-bearing age or not – and many men are voicing opinions too – and, aside from the abortion issue everyone is focusing on, I wonder if we (the whole societal we) understand where rights come from.
We are citizens under a regime called democracy, and our government has our consent to make rules, allocate rights, and change them from time to time. They don’t fall out of the sky, aren’t permanent (like gravity) , and they are not inalienable …
The tricky bit with abortion and capital punishment is they are often 50/50 splits in public opinion, so politicians have a love/hate relationship with the type of issue because a win with one constituency is a loss with another – so having someone like a high court to credit or to blame is convenient politics, but murky at best for citizens. This is true in most countries that label themselves democratic, implying fairness and rights.
So, what about rights?
Is there an irrefutable right of anything for anyone?
I don’t think so.
Nature and natural occurrences on our planet don’t make lines on maps, put up fences or walls, make court decisions, or write laws and their regulations. All of that is done by people. It always has. And when those with power decide they don’t like the rules, they change them. History books are littered with examples, so I won’t list any here.
So, if rights are given by man, they can be taken away just as easily – by a stroke of the powerful person’s pen. And this is regarding public policy, which is quite different than the unwritten policies of governments, corporations, and individuals – who say one thing to one party, something opposite or nuanced to another party, but mostly keep their mouths shut.
Sadly, too many of them shut their mind too.
So, is abortion rights important and valuable to our society? Or not?
The earth will spin every day. Women will get pregnant every day – thankfully because that is how we replenish our population.
In a democracy, we live in a society where we consent to be governed. Every rule, regulation, law and court decision is created by a system of government called ‘consent to be governed’ and embedded within that body of laws in our country, the right to protest, to vote, criticize our government and overthrow that government in elections.
Or, I can leave to go live in another country.
The right to anything is not given by anything divine or natural – it is about the winning argument before the government of the day, or the courts, that rule in terms of what our rights are or ought to be.
I don’t need a right to an abortion. Since I’m not partnered with a child-bearing-age partner, I don’t have a direct impact …
But I have daughters. And I have a granddaughter who is coming up to her 10th birthday – so a discussion on what rights we all have is of interest to me too!
If we believe in democracy, do we believe in rights/rules for some or everyone? And whose job is to ensure they are correct, fair, and equitably enforced/defended?
While many Canadians smugly believe we have laws protecting women and their reproductive rights, we don’t need to worry; they forget who makes laws and who changes them. Legislative bodies and courts do. They make them and change them. Courts are appointed, and their members serve a long time in ‘independence’ which is a grand theory. The people who do the appointing are first, themselves, elected. And they can be un-elected if we vote them out, which is no guarantee their successor will see it our way …
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"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill, SC, Chestermere, AB