unrepentant old hippie

Mexico/Abortion/Greens: random thoughts

A recent proposal by Mexico's Green Party to increase prison sentences for women who have abortions came up today on the feminist site, "Birth Pangs". While BP is a satirical humour site, this story is anything but amusing: it's pretty disturbing to think women are already going to jail for 6 months to a year for the "crime" of exercising reproductive choice, and the Greens want to increase that sentence. Not surprisingly, the news didn't go unnoticed by anti-choicers , one of whom (I'm not linking her -- obvious) pondered: "I wonder if they could convince Elizabeth May to become pro-life."

The Green Party has a real problem with this issue. Last year, federal Green leader Elizabeth May made some idiotic unfortunate comments about abortion, characterizing the right to choose as "frivolous" in some cases, and stating that nothing could induce her to have an abortion. (Well, la-di-friggin-dah. Walk a mile in my shoes, baby, before you say that.) Her comments were ill-advised at best and arrogant at worst.

Perception of the Green Party's stance on abortion is murky, and this latest news from Mexico could muddy the waters even further. As a party, there seems to be a distinct lack of coherency on this issue. They need to form a cohesive party-wide stand and take it: they're either pro-choice or they're not. Being supposedly "pro-choice" while also being in favour of "nuanced-discussion-and-debate-of-the-issue" is tantamount to being anti-choice. To tell you the truth, this debate-and-discussion bullshit really wears me down. Because as any true pro-choicer knows, there is no discussion. There is no debate. There's just "fuck off and mind your own business".