Readable in screen-friendly Blog format here.
(Or read in Broadsheet format in the post below.)
DEAR PATIENT READER, YOU RARE & BLESSED PERSON, YOU SWEETHEART YOU: It is time now, if we can, to expose Motion 312 for what it is.
Is it a reasoned plea for innocent inquiry into human beginnings?
OR is it a devious effort (involving irrelevant pretense about facts and science) to remove human rights from those who have them?To readers who have said ‘Yes!’ already, what’s yer rush? That may be your conclusion, but bring us with you. Let us view your EVIDENCE.
People have been saying that,
“The word ‘DEBATE’ is being used as a cover for the desire to pass anti-abortion laws.”Is the word ‘Debate’ being used “as a cover”? Then it is not True Debate that is under the cover: it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So let’s examine what is under the skin. If the Cry of Wolf is empty, then let us see its emptiness. We can expose an empty charge, as you know, by hearing its case. Let us look carefully (not hurriedly, dismissively, indifferently, but with care) at the evidence for the claim that the Motion is dishonest and deceptive.
MISS TRUSTER
But first, enter MISS TRUSTER. If you are thinking, ‘Oh, I think I will put this paper down right now, because I don’t trust this Dissenting Futilitarian to do justice to this case (who is this person?),’ then you are a MISTRUSTER. And let us speak for a moment with our friend Miss Truster, to whom I say: - Indeed, yes: you don’t trust me. That is a fact, isn’t it?
MISS TRUSTER: Yes it is; you will just have to accept it.
MISS T: Nothing.
THE DF: And who can be sure of anything in this world? So you are ready to put The Dissenting Futilitarian down and read no further.
MISS T: Well, actually, I have already tossed it aside with exasperation. It was very annoying to hear you say that you are going to look carefully at my evidence for the claim that the Motion is dishonest. You - ha! You make me laugh.
THE DF: But you have said you don’t know me; I am an unknown: you have tossed me aside because you are not sure about me. Which leaves me confused, because it seems in reality that you are quite sure about me: you are quite sure that I have no capacity to present your argument fairly. Apparently I gave you all the grounds you need to conclude that I cannot present your case. - So what would you read? A newspaper written by yourself?
MISS T: Ridiculous! I trust lots of people to write about this.
THE DF: Do the people you trust happen to be people who agree with you? Does a person begin to seem trustworthy when he starts talking like you? I know that is not what you are conscious of doing, but I am asking if that is in fact what you do, if that is the pattern. That would be foolish, because in that case you are confusing two entirely unrelated things: VERACITY & CORRECTNESS.
You think that if I don’t have the CORRECT view (the one you swear is right) then I can’t be trusted to TELL THE TRUTH about anything related to this case (I must be entirely unreliable on this issue).But what evidence have you gathered of my gross untrustworthiness? The evidence is that I am unknown to you - OR, to come to the point, you can’t yet smell what my view is! But you have gathered all you need to dismiss me! Miss Truster, you are Full of Trust, and so you are an Amazing Irony!
(I have omitted Miss Truster’s response to the above because it consisted, as you have no doubt guessed, in a series of denials. After all, it “cannot” and “could never be true” that anyone would “be so stupid” as to “do such a thing.” Indeed no. Im-possible.)
But ... if MISTRUSTERS were possible, we would have plenty of people who, as they begin to read strangers, start sniffing for agreement or disagreement with themselves, so that they can know whether to bother reading or just start scoffing. A culture rich in mistrust and dismissal. Ahh, home sweet home!You must note one important thing: MISTRUSTERS cannot Debate. No, not at all, since Debate involves listening to someone on the other side of the issue and assessing the truth of what they say, and the MISTRUSTER does not do that. He or she does not listen: listens briefly but quits and goes back to declaiming slogans, because there is no point in listening (‘That blowhard cannot be trusted’).And if you agree that Debate is a piece of the infrastructure of Democracy then you will agree also, I think, that MISS TRUSTER is bad for Democracy. Perhaps we could have a kind of zoo to protect ourselves from her: Come see the Amazing Irony, the Danger to Democracy! Mind you, it would be easy to win release from that cage: just STOP CONFUSING ACCURACY & CORRECTNESS! You want to see if someone is trustworthy? Don’t STOP listening but LISTEN: do they make a good case or not? Do they make a case you would accept from an ally? The evidence of that isn’t that they are in your clique.
When people refuse to say ‘That is true’ to someone whose ‘pedigree’ is unclear (or who is actually, gasp, on the other side!), then our Democracy (this land’s solution to governing difference) turns jaundiced and takes to the sickbed - because now it seems that it is only ‘our kind’ who can be trusted. (Bye bye ‘Tolerance of Difference.’ We liked you until....)
THE DEVIOUSNESS OF MOTION 312
With the MISTRUSTERS ejected, let us hear the case for dismissing Motion 312 as a fraud, a devious effort to take Human Rights away under a cover of reasoned concern for Human Rights:
“When I first heard about this motion, I was appalled and outraged, and saw it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It struck me as an insidiously deceptive motion that refused to acknowledge its evident aim: the illegalization of abortion.”
“Motion 312 is a Trojan Horse attempt to introduce rights for the fetus - thereby limiting the rights of a woman to obtain an abortion.”
“The issue isn’t whether zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are human; the issue is whether a zygote, embryo, or fetus has RIGHTS that trump those of a pregnant woman.”What Motion 312 proposes, recall, is to consider what “evidence exists to demonstrate that a child is or is not a human being before the moment of complete birth.” Nowhere does it contain the word ‘abortion’. In what way is Motion 312 deceptive? Would you not agree that IT IS DECEPTIVE because it does not disclose its true purpose:
“If the legal definition of when one becomes a human being were to be adjusted so that a fetus is declared to be a legal person at some earlier stage of gestation, then the homicide laws would apply. As a necessary consequence, aborting fetal development anywhere in the potentially new adjusted period would be considered homicide. Thus the ultimate intention of this motion is to restrict abortions in Canada at some fetal development stage.”Was the Trojan Horse deceptive? Case closed.
1 | DECEPTIVE INTENTIONS
I do apologize for toying with you, but did you really think that ‘Trojan Horse’ business closed the case? You are so manipulable.
If a thing is deceptive THEN IT INVOLVES A DECEPTION - agreed? Was the Trojan Horse deceptive? Yes. It intended to deceive. It had an actual purpose other than the purpose it presented, which was fake. THE DECEPTION was that it stood there looking like a peace-offering to the Trojans, but it was not a peace-offering to the Trojans; it was anything but.
Does Motion 312 deceive? - Well, the purpose it presents is, as you will appreciate, not fake. Its manifest purpose is to see if a human being exists before birth - and everybody agrees that that is what it intends because that is the way it will challenge abortion. If we find that a human being exists before birth, as its author suggests we would (he has said,
“I conclude that science will show a child is a human being at some point before the moment of complete birth”)then abortions kill human beings, etc. So if the Motion is deceptive it isn’t because of that Trojan-Horse/fake-purpose business. What, then?
How else can you deceive? How about by ULTERIOR MOTIVE, a motive “beyond that which is avowed.” You claim that your motive is A (which you admit, and yes you do want A), but your true motive is B (which you always deny to be your true end).
At a function cocktail you meet the CEO of AfriCaf, a coffee company, who begins to talk about his company’s aid to African communities.
YOU: Yeah, I’ve seen your ads ... the African kids with the little slates. Sure, you are helping Africans. - But, y’know, let’s face it: your real agenda is making me like AfriCaf more than its competitor, which has no charity wing.
CEO: Well, I do want you to like us more but - really I do want to give back to these communities, which grow our coffee.
YOU: Ah! So you deny that your real reason for building those schools in Kenya is ($ka-ching$) profit! You deny what you are really up to. Now I know that you have an ULTERIOR MOTIVE!
CEO: But why do you say that profit is what we really care about? We want both things: yes, we want to be profitable; yes, we want to help. What’s deceptive about that?
YOU: The deception is that you don’t want to admit why you are building those schools; you won’t say that it is profit! You keep talking about charity!
CEO: Well, I was talking about the charity, which it seemed worth telling you about.
YOU: Your deception lies in the fact that you won’t confess to the one thing you really do care about. You keep hiding it!
CEO: But it isn’t the one thing I care about.
YOU: Aha! You deny it, just as I said!
CEO: I deny it, yes. Yes I do. The charity isn’t just a means to profit. It is good in itself.
YOU: Oh it is, is it? All right then: now we’ll flush out the proof that profit is what you are really all about. Would you be happy with just the charity and not the profit? Then stop advertising your charity. When A cannot lead to B, then I will know that B isn’t what you are really after.
CEO: But profit isn’t all we care about. If charity is a means to profit, it’s just that much better. Why not have the profit too?
YOU: You can’t live without profit, can you? You won’t let go of it! Give up your profits!
CEO: But ... we’re in business. Are you some kind of ... - it’s almost as if you hate profit.
YOU: Profit! Always on your mind, isn’t it?
***
I hope you are mad at me for writing ‘you’ so many times - because you are not such an idiot, are you? So why that dialogue? To raise the issue of REAL INTENT and how we can know it.
“The real intent of Motion 312 is to bestow legal personhood on fetuses as a way to re-criminalize abortion.”Is the Motion a Wolf that slyly intends criminalization without admitting it? What’s the clue? What that dialogue shows is that, if we are not to come off as an idiot, there has to be some EVIDENCE that shows what a person’s REAL INTENT is. It’s stupid just to keep insisting. So what reveals that a person’s TRUE intent is B? It isn’t that A leads to it. (One thing can predictably lead to another - gambling to pennilessness - without that thing being your true objective.)
You have an ULTERIOR MOTIVE, about which you are DECEIVING PEOPLE, when you commence A, and B is the only logically possible result of A, but then you deny that your purpose with A is B. - That is what people are calling the deviousness of Motion 312. The author of the Motion says:
“M312 does not propose to deny recognition of women’s rights.”But to that, people say:
“[In September] we will have to sit through another hour of ‘debate’ on something that pretends not to be about abortion, but that everyone knows is about abortion.”Does the Motion pretend it has no bearing on abortion? Well, its author does say:
“I am not shying away from the fact that the question of whether or not a child is a human being is relevant to the issue of abortion. It certainly is.”Indeed. Yet the charge laid is this: a reassignment of personhood and the attendant criminalization of abortion is WHAT THIS MOTION INTENDS, since this is LOGICALLY THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCE of altering this section of the Criminal Code:
“Either Motion 312 means to change public policy on personhood OR it’s a waste of government time, taxpayer dollars: Pick A or B, there’s no 3rd option.”
“M312 supporters, Stop lying. M312 is about fetal rights, fetal personhood, and criminalizing [abortion].”
“Supporters of Motion 312, and Woodworth himself, bend over backwards with assurances that it’s nothing of the kind.”The Motion’s author, noted one writer,
“is back lying about Motion 312 again, [claiming it] ‘does not propose to deny women recognition of their rights’. The magic question, again: Why M312 then?”The Motion’s supporters, it is charged,
“will not grant [that] M312 would open [the] door [to criminalizing abortion]: if it has no public policy goal, it’s a waste of time.”A journalist reporting on the first debate, in April, points out the MP who:
“stresses that the section [placed] in question [by the motion] is in the Criminal Code - the one that deals with homicide.”
2 | IS THE DECEPTION DEEPER?
But that is not all the deceptiveness charged to this Motion. As I noted not long ago, I spent a little time in an interesting corner of the Internet in which daily ‘Debate’ (whether Debate it was, I leave to the informed) unfolds on Motion 312. A rather strange Debate, I must say, for it was conducted only in tiny, fragmentary statement-lets of fixed length, shorter even than this sentence! Imagine a public billboard (titled #M312) where citizens arrive several times daily to post their comments, sometimes replying to previous postings. I read with interest.
What began to attract my attention was a series of comments giving a reason for rejecting the Motion outright. That reason was the one we have just set forth: DECEPTION ABOUT INTENT.
“I’d say the Evidence is In re Motion 312 being a straightup Personhood and Abortion motion.”I confess that at that time I was puzzled, for it so happens that Motion 312 does not use the words ‘person’ or ‘personhood’ at all. And on that basis I was prompted to post a ‘corrective’ message: “M312 is not a personhood motion.” And so my roller-coaster ride began. My reply received a reply, and it soon became clear that the Motion was charged with a second kind of deception.
“Motion 312 wrongly conflates ‘being’ with ‘legal person’.”Allow me to explain the import of this, which I believe I now understand. (You be the judge!) When the Motion says ‘HUMAN BEING’, it really means ‘PERSON’. That is, when the Motion asks,
Is a fetus a HUMAN BEING?it is really asking,
Is the fetus a LEGAL PERSON?
But, it is charged, the author of the Motion does not admit this, and indeed wants to capitalize on the perception that he is not chiefly interested in personhood at all.
Hearken back to our little cocktail-party chat, switching the names, and you will see that the cases are somewhat alike: actual admission that B is relevant. It is true that B (the definition of personhood) is indeed an issue; the author of the Motion has said so:
“If there’s no objective criteria for who’s a human being, then personhood and the fundamental rights that go with it can be defined in any way any powerful ... group decides.”But, he insists, redefining legal persons is not the Motion’s REAL AND ESSENTIAL INTENT. Its concern is HUMAN BEINGS and the law.
CHALLENGER: Your deception [so you might argue, challenging the Hon. Member] lies in the fact that you won’t confess to the one thing you really do care about: personhood. You keep hiding the fact that that is your concern!
THE HON. MEMBER: But it is not the one thing I care about.
CHALLENGER: Aha! You deny it, you deceive!
THE HON. MEMBER: I deny it, yes, I do. But I don’t deceive, because the Motion isn’t just a means of redefining personhood. It is valuable in itself, even without that.
And so the drafter of M-312 has said:
“I honestly want what the motion asks, and that is for a respectful dialogue and an open-minded study of the evidence [as to the point at which a human being exists].”
“I don’t think it necessarily resolves the issue of abortion. And, more important, I think that the question of whether any law should declare that a person is not a human being without good reason is a greater worry than the issue of abortion.”But shouldn’t that have been: ‘I think that any law declaring that a human being is not a person without good reason is unjust’? Isn’t that what this is truly about? So the Motion has been charged with a second kind of TRICK: DECEPTIVE USE OF LANGUAGE.
“M312 intends to confuse 2 concepts: biological humanity and legal personhood. They are separate.”
“Motion 312, built on a disingenuous and self-serving misinterpretation of legal jargon, [fully intends to usher in] the Beginning of the End of Abortion Rights in Canada.”
What is the evidence that this Motion means legal person when it says human being? The evidence is, once again, that you CANNOT EXAMINE THE BEGINNINGS OF A HUMAN BEING FOR ANY OTHER REASON BUT THE REDEFINITION OF PERSONHOOD IN THE LAW.
“Once more, The term ‘human being’ is a red herring in this. THE Only thing that matters is legal ‘personhood’.”
“M312 pretends that fetuses are not human. Yes they are. What they are not is ‘persons’.”(As to a THIRD DECEPTION - the wording of the Criminal Code was based on archaic science, when it was chosen IN FACT to mark this very distinction between protected and unprotected human beings - no evidence as to this FACT re. the intent of the law has yet been brought forth. Legal historians please?)
*
AND WHAT IS OUR CONCLUSION? I certainly do not need to tell you; a conclusion is what you can see for yourself. If THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCE OF EXAMINING WHEN A HUMAN BEING BEGINS IS A CHANGE TO THE LAW CONCERNING LEGAL PERSONS, then, what is the conclusion that you must draw?
Is M-312 A REASONED PLEA for INNOCENT INQUIRY into HUMAN BEGINNINGS?
OR is it a DECEPTIVE ASSAULT on EXISTING HUMAN RIGHTS?Would the scientific evidence presumably push personhood back into abortion territory (turning abortions into homicides)? If the CRIMINALIZATION OF ABORTION IS LOGICALLY THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCE OF ANY CHANGE THE MOTION WOULD BRING, ....
But I don’t need to remind YOU, Wise Reader, that in a Debate we hear the other side too. What’s to fear? Let the Concluding Conclusion stand!
Next issue: WOLF’S CLOTHING?
I am, etc.