Bodily Autonomy

This evening I posted to my Facebook a link to an interview with former member of the Ohio State Legislature Christina Hagan. Ms. Hagan was elected to the legislature at age 20, and championed the “Heartbeat Bill” that’s recently been signed in by new Ohio Governor Mike deWine. I captioned the link, “This lady is my new hero”. I posted it with this picture:

A friend of mine replied, “I don’t understand … she’s against women having a say in their own bodily autonomy, so she’s your hero?”

Now this business about bodily autonomy has been featuring in my social media feeds in a big way lately, ever since Alabama passed its new law restricting abortions. So I think it merits addressing. But is her stance on women’s rights what makes Ms. Hagan my hero?

No, although I do share her view on that point.

Christina Hagan is my hero because:

At the age of 18 she had the courage, creativity, and tenacity to run for office in the 7th most populous State, with the 7th biggest economy, in the Union. The first time she ran, the Republican Party spent $70,000 campaigning against her notwithstanding that there was no incumbent. She lost that one but had the guts to come back and give it another shot, which she won. Ladies (and gents), let’s just all celebrate that together for a moment shall we?
While serving as a Legislator, this woman had three babies, two of whom were twins. I can’t even bathe myself when I have one baby, but Ms. Hagan just brought hers to the legislature and kept on trucking. See:

Less importantly, she looks confident and beautiful and altogether amazing, seven weeks after having twins (see first picture above). Twins, people. Fleek, slay, goals, whatever you want to call it – she is a picture of feminine power and class. Look at her resolutely pushing that double stroller through a crowd of ladies swearing at her and flipping her off as she makes her way into the LEGISLATURE where she is going to pass LAWS because that is where she BELONGS because she is an elected BADASS LEGISLATOR WHO DOES NOT CARE WHAT THOSE PEOPLE THINK and she just loves her babies!! GO GIRL!!!
- My Caps Lock key is now disabled from zealous overuse.

And that is why Christina Hagan is my hero. Aside from her views about women’s bodily autonomy, and the laws she’s helped pass in that respect, I think she should be every ambitious young woman’s hero. She has done what so many of us stop ourselves from doing, through fear or self-doubt or maybe just laziness. She’s changing the world, courageous in the face of adversity, looking fantastic, and she’s a mom. Of twins. And after all that, she was even brave enough to put it all on hold and focus on her kids: Ms. Hagan is a stay-at-home mom now. Having the confidence to give up on who you’ve made yourself, and be seen by society to step down into a motherhood role – that is courage. My hero.

As an aside, there are now lots of legislators in the USA who have assisted with passing legislation similar to Ms. Hagan’s “Heartbeat Bill” in various states. They’re not all my heroes because they’re not all beautiful young moms like Ms. Hagan – but if any of them are, I would like to learn about them.

Now what about this bodily autonomy business? As a woman with a body, I myself have a personal interest in this topic, and I suspect that Ms. Hagan, who also seems to have a body, does too.

First off, what does “autonomy” mean? It’s Greek for “self governance” or “self rule”, literally, auto, “self”, and nomy, “laws”. The law over oneself, what a fantastic concept. Until we’re deprived of our bodily autonomy by the state or other individuals or the operation of disease, we all have bodily autonomy.

Some of us have less bodily autonomy than others, for example, those who are physically unable to govern or assist themselves, including the very young. Some of us, by virtue of our position, are able to govern the bodies of others, permanently or temporarily. The obvious example here is a woman with a baby in her womb. She is temporarily able to physically rule over her child. Eventually, assuming the child is born and develops in the usual manner, the child will develop his or her own bodily autonomy. The baby in the womb has potential bodily autonomy.

Bodily autonomy is never unfettered. Laws prevent us from doing things with our bodies that hurt others or damage property, and from ingesting substances that are seen as harmful to the public good. We are compelled by laws and societies to do certain things with our bodies, like clothe ourselves in public. We may at some point be compelled to get vaccinated against certain diseases, whether we want to or not.

Some women exercise their bodily autonomy by having consensual sex. Some women are deprived of their bodily autonomy in the sexual act, and this is a tragic crime that must be punished and stopped. In both cases, because women are designed to incubate and deliver the miracle of science and metaphysics that is the formation of a new human being, we can get pregnant. Now there are two bodies.

Because I believe that human life begins at conception, and because I believe that it is wrong to take the life of humans, I must therefore also believe that it is not morally acceptable to kill humans who have not been born yet.

I am a person who tries to reason using logic, so it’s hard for me to escape from this conclusion. I believe that human life begins at conception because, frankly, when else would it begin? Any other position puts you on a sliding scale that may change with the advance of scientific discovery. For example, before we had ultrasounds, it was easy to believe that babies were just blobs of cells for some time before they started looking like humans. But even then, is it looking like a human that makes you a human? Humans come in all varieties, it’s wonderful. Now, because prenatal imaging has improved, we know that fetuses start looking like babies pretty early on. Lumpy babies, but recognizable as babies of a sort. In any event, setting the date for humanness at some specific number of weeks is overly simplistic – this is probably why the Canadian legislature hasn’t managed to do it yet.

I believe it’s wrong to take the life of humans. I hope we can mostly agree on that. And most of us tend to think that the killing of vulnerable humans is worse than the killing of able, strong, self-defensible humans. I’m thinking child murder versus death in battle of Navy SEAL here. Both are bad, but there tends to be more moral outcry over the former. And who is more vulnerable, more deserving of protection, than a tiny baby? More on status as “babies” below.

So back to autonomy then. Specifically women’s bodily autonomy. The fact is, again, women have babies. If men were the ones who had babies, and maybe someday they will be, then my view would (will?) change to “the bodily autonomy of men should not extend to the voluntary killing of their unborn humans”. As it stands, women have this honour and I do not believe that the bodily autonomy of women should extend to the voluntary killing of unborn humans. This is not because I hate women and think they should suffer, it is because it’s the only logical position. Any other position is arbitrary. The law should be devoid of arbitrariness.

It’s not quite fair for critics of the pro-life position to say that we’re all perpetuating the patriarchy by forcing women to have babies. Relatively few women are forced to have babies. In the case of those women who are exercising their bodily autonomy by having consensual sex, they could avoid having sex, or take various steps to avoid getting pregnant if they keep having sex, if they wanted to be quite sure they would not have babies. Obviously the considerations are different for those women and girls who are the victims of rape, which as I’ve said above is terrible and every effort should be made to prevent it from happening. In both cases, however, my position remains that humans should not be killed by others at the beginning of their life, at the end of it, or anytime in between.

Back to the status of the unborn human. I have two children, but I have had four babies. Two of them died: one at 12 weeks gestation, and one at eight weeks gestation. I delivered the first one in the Law Society toilet while writing an exam – this happened six years ago last week. If the second had not died, I would be on maternity leave right now. My heart remains broken to this day because I did not lose fetuses or clumps of cells. I lost babies. My babies died. They were tiny humans who lost their lives in my womb. I am confident that there are very few abortion supporters out there who, on hearing of a friend’s miscarriage, would say “Oh but you know, it was just a clump of cells. Cheer up.” It’s duplicitous to assert that the wanted child was a baby, while the unwanted one was not. They’re all babies. And if you take the view that human life begins at conception and that killing humans is wrong, then you must also take the view that there is in fact a limit on women’s bodily autonomy that prevents them from taking the lives of unborn humans.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t address the practical outflow of my position. I believe it is incumbent on every pro-life person to make every effort to make abortion obsolete. Not necessarily unlawful, because women will find ways of terminating unwanted pregnancies (and, while we’re here, may I just say that heckling women on their way into abortion clinics is literally the least helpful way to achieve anything, please all of you just stop, you’re making it worse).

Obsolete. Unnecessary. Anachronistic.

Abortion clinics should be going out of business because we are passing laws that support mothers societally and financially and in the workforce. Pregnant mothers should have no fear of the future, because we as a society should be meeting them, caring for them, supporting them, in whatever way they need to raise their baby. We should be adopting babies whose mothers are unable or unwilling to care for them. This isn’t just a job for the government, which after all hasn’t had the balls to touch this issue in 30 years. It’s up to individuals, families, communities to make this huge societal change. There are enough of us to make it happen in this generation. I don’t think you need to share my opinion on women’s bodily autonomy to agree with me that in a society as affluent and privileged as ours, no baby should be unwanted.

Should religious schools receive public funding?

I woke up early this morning and made the error of reading an article on CBC. In the article, the CBC “Go Public” reporter tells the story of a former teacher of Surrey Christian School, who was “forced to resign” when the school indicated it would not renew her annual teaching contract because she was discovered to have been living with her boyfriend (in fact the school intended to employ her until the end of the academic year, but she chose to resign). This was a breach of the contract she had signed with the School. The reporter used a click-bait headline referring to “heterosexual marriage”, notwithstanding that the teacher was in a heterosexual relationship and LGBT rights were not involved in the story at all.

The following is a selection of the type of comment left by concerned CBC readers:

“It’s obviously time to stop funding religious schools that won’t abide by BC Human Rights laws.“

“(Religious schooling) amounts to child abuse.“

“Don’t create contracts that create Charter violations.” (There was a lot of Charter commentary from this one person who appears to be a pathological CBC commenter and Charter applier.)

Four main trends appeared in the comments that led me to believe the commenters had limited access to the law and logic generally. I can summarize my thoughts as follows:

Religious schools are not impacted by the Charter.
Religious schools have special exemptions under the Human Rights Code that allow them to “prefer” people who adhere to their religious views.
Religious schools should continue to receive public funding for the same reason that they were initially granted it, that is, to provide for the education of children;
Religious schools are an important and increasingly well-utilized alternative for parents who do not wish to have modern sexual ideas imprinted on their children at the early ages.

1. Opinion: Charter rights are engaged in a private contract

They are not. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms governs how the government deals with citizens. It does not govern how citizens (including private organizations) deal with each other. If the teacher had been arrested and put on trial, or kicked out of subsidized housing, her Charter rights would have been engaged. The Charter does not extend to private contracts. The School is private (even though it receives partial funding from the government) and the individual is private. Therefore, contrary to the repeated assertions of the commenters, the contract and the School’s behaviour not only do not breach the Charter, they have nothing to do with it at all.

2. Opinion: Human Rights are engaged and violated

They are not. Although religion, marital status, and gender orientation (not engaged here, although it somehow made it into the headline) are human rights protected under the BC Human Rights Code, there is a specific exemption for religious institutions that aren’t operated for profit:

“If a religious organization that is not operated for profit has as a primary purpose the promotion of the interests of an identifiable group characterized by religion, that organization must not be considered to be contravening this Code because it is granting a preference to members of the identifiable group.”

BC Human Rights Code, S. 41(1), edited for brevity

Surrey Christian is a religious organization that is not operated for profit. It has as a primary purpose the promotion of an identifiable group of protected persons (Christian families and children). It grants a preference to people who comply with the statement of its faith-based code of conduct. This preference was codified in its employment contract, which the teacher signed. When she breached the contract, the employer had the right not to re-engage her for another term.

3. Opinion: Religious schools should not receive government funding

The thrust of this kind of comment is that because Christian schools do not comply with the Charter or the Human Rights Code, they should not receive money from the government. Of course the threshold problem here is that the Charter does not apply and there is a specific exemption in the Human Rights Code: not being in violation of either, why should religious schools not receive government funding?

But this mentality is much more flawed and, I suggest, insidious. The reasoning requires that, in order to access the funds they require to operate, private non-profit institutions should have to compromise their religious practice (dare I say freedom?). Many commenters cited modern sensibilities to support this: mainstream secular ideas about marriage, faith, and family life should govern who gets government money. I must point out that sensibilities change regularly, and not always for the better (hello, anti-vaccine movement). If religious schools are to be cut off from government funding because some people disagree with their practices, I suggest the following institutions ought also to be put on the chopping block:

Income Assistance, insofar as it may be paid to individuals who hold unpopular opinions or beliefs;
The University of British Columbia, which unlike Surrey Christian has had a litany of recorded decisions issued against it in BC’s Human Rights Tribunal for proven breaches of the Human Rights Code, including the province’s highest ever HRT damages award for exceptionally cruel conduct against a mentally disabled student;
Abortion facilities, which terminate or are involved in terminating the lives of perfectly viable – if unloved – pre-born infants, contrary to the sensibilities of many Canadians;
Agricultural subsidies to farmers that do not use organic methods;
The Canada Summer Jobs program … oh wait;
Pride Parade, to the extent that it renders inaccessible whole quadrants of the city for a week at a time, to the general inconvenience of motorists and residents, for celebrations directly relevant to only about 5% of the population;
CBC, which permits a riot of vitriolic anti-religious slander to be posted on its government-funded pages and promotes such through the use of hot-button headlines irrelevant to the topic at hand.

(Note to reader: I do not actually support the withdrawal of public funding from Income Assistance, UBC, farmers, Canada Summer Jobs program, or Pride Parade. Please do not light my house on fire.)

4. Opinion: A religious education is irrelevant and even abusive

This was not necessarily the opinion of the journalist, but it was the stated position of many commenters. Basically, to educate your child in a religious school is to subject him or her to an obsolete indoctrination that will harm their mental health and career prospects, not to mention their views of consensual sexual relationships. Monotheistic religion is responsible for slavery, all major wars since AD 1, the whole political situation in the Middle East, bigotry, homophobia, global warming (OK not global warming, but someone actually did suggest a list containing those other things). Why indoctrinate the little ones to follow this hideous path?

Many parents have excellent reasons for sending their children to religious schools. Small class sizes, special community, and academic rigour are three compelling reasons that many non-religious people choose religious schools. Since 2016, there has been a major push factor on a religious basis: SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) 123. This curriculum is billed as an “anti-bullying” program, but is mainly aimed at promoting an LGBT-positive worldview from an early age. Teachers are encouraged to incorporate the SOGI 123 curriculum into every subject. They are not required to warn parents in advance about how, when, or what they will be teaching in this respect. This removes the parent’s control over their child’s education, in a way that is fundamental to what their families may believe. I think that not only Christian parents, but also observant Muslim, Jewish, and Sikh parents, as well as traditionally-minded parents of no faith, would be opposed to this curriculum.

Almost every Christian couple I know is sending their children to private Christian school because of the imposition of SOGI 123 on their family life. While it’s a shame that the withdrawal of Christian children will reduce the diversity of opinion and experience in public schools, I tend to agree with any parent who wants to retain the right to teach their children about sexuality in the manner and timing they deem best. This is not a job for the government, it is a delicate and intimate task for parents, one that involves discretion, sensitivity and a loving knowledge of their child’s capacity for understanding and resilience. No teacher could ever offer the depth of care and attention that many parents would employ to treat on this subject with their children.

Because public schools are being used as a vehicle for early indoctrination in the government’s special interests curriculum, those who disagree with the government’s view must have a viable and accessible alternative. That means that private schools, including religious schools, should receive government funding in spite of – and maybe because – they don’t teach the government’s platform. The schools that give families an alternative to SOGI 123 are the ones likely to have policies supporting traditional family values. At risk of sounding hyperbolic, this trade-off is essential to the functioning of democracy. It’s not really a question of money so much as the imposition of the government’s views on the population.

Religious schools should receive government funding in spite of – and maybe because – they don’t teach the government’s platform.

Do I think that LGBT kids should experience bullying or discrimination? Of course I don’t. Am I going to teach my children to respect the intrinsic and extrinsic rights, innate characteristics, and lawful choices of others? You bet I am. However, I do not accept that anyone should be made to teach their child anything but the “Three R’s”, or in any particular way, either by operation of some law imposing such on all schools everywhere as demanded by some of the commenters, or by operation of financial necessity because alternatives are not properly funded.

On the other hand, because religious schools do receive public funding, they are required to incorporate the SOGI 123 curriculum in their teaching. Many of them tend to do so with discretion and religious sensibility. So, one benefit of losing public funding would be the immediate loss of government control over religious schools’ curriculum.