Welcome back!

Happy New Year SRR! It's great to be back for another term, and we're all looking forward to starting up meetings again. This term, our meetings will be held every Monday at 3pm in SUB 42V. However, our first meeting on January 10th will be held in an alternative location which we have yet to determine. We will send out the location as soon as we have the information. Everyone is welcome to join us as we discuss events we have planned for the upcoming term. Snacks are provided!

In awesome news over the Winter Break, Canada's anti-choice bill C-510 was officially defeated on December 15th. This was a thinly-veiled Private Members Bill put forward by Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge and designed to make it harder for Canadian women to obtain abortions. Bruinooge, along with his supporters, attempted to use the tragic murder of Roxanne Fernando to prohibit coerced abortion. They argued that the murder was the result of her refusal to have an abortion, but as the prosecution and judge in the case have both stated, the motive was Fernando's refusal to end a relationship with her boyfriend. While the death of Roxanne Fernando was horrid, what's even worse is Bruinooge's attempt to use her death to promote his own political agenda.

So what exactly is the problem with this bill? While coercion is wrong and women should always be able to freely choose between terminating or carrying to term a pregnancy, coercion is already illegal in Canada. In addition, councilors at clinics already screen clients for coercion. What this bill does is intimidate abortion providers, many of whom already live with regular harassment from anti-choice protesters. The bill is also extremely patronizing, suggesting that women would not make the choice to terminate a pregnancy unless they were being coerced to do so. In reality, it is much more common for women to be coerced into not having an abortion! But by far the worst, the bill defines abortion as causing the death of a child - clearly attempting to open a door for the criminalization of abortion.

Thankfully, this bill was not passed. To see how your MP voted on this issue, click here.