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Conservatives approve policies to limit transgender health care for minors
Other debate focused on female spaces, the energy industry and Canada's passport
John Paul Tasker · CBC News · Posted: Sep 09, 2023 1:55 PM PDT |
Conservative delegates on Saturday voted in favour of some new social conservative policies, including banning medical or surgical intervention for children experiencing gender dysphoria. The controversial resolution passed with 69 per cent of the vote at the party's convention.
Conservative delegates voted Saturday to add some new social conservative policies to their policy playbook, including a proposal to limit access to transgender health care for minors and another to do away with vaccine mandates.
Despite warnings that these policies could be weaponized by their political opponents to hurt their standing among more moderate voters, a strong majority of the delegates on hand voted for a motion that stated children should be prohibited from gender-related "life-altering medicinal or surgical interventions," and for another that said Canadians should have "bodily autonomy" when it comes to vaccines and other health treatments.
About 69 per cent of the delegates agreed that young people should be barred from gender-affirming care, which sometimes includes hormone-related treatments that delay puberty or promote the development of masculine or feminine sex characteristics.
Michelle Badalich, an Edmonton delegate, said dysphoria is a "mental health disorder" and it should be addressed with treatment not "irreversible procedures."
Nor with experimental treatments. This move by the CPCs brings them in line with the UK and 3 Scandinavian countries who have stopped almost all medical treatment of gender dysphoric children because of the extraordinary damage it can do to them, and because of the increasing lawsuits against such medical providers.
The vast majority, about 80% of gender dysphoric kids will normalize to their biological sex after puberty.
"Please protect our kids," she said to thunderous applause.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is not bound to adopt any of the policies that were passed at this convention. Poilievre did not take questions from reporters after the votes.
'Protect your wives and daughters'
Liam O'Brien, a Newfoundland and Labrador delegate, noted that "Canada is watching" as Conservatives debate controversial policies like this one.
"Canada is also watching our leader kick Justin Trudeau's ass," O'Brien said as he urged delegates to keep the focus on the high cost of living and "Liberal incompetence."
On another transgender-related policy, delegates voted by an overwhelming 87 per cent to support a plan to demand single-sex spaces that are only open to women, which the party now defines as a "female person" with the adoption of the policy.
The policy is intended to keep transgender and other gender-diverse people out of women's prisons, shelters, locker rooms and washrooms.
Badalich said it's "not extremist" to demand that what she calls "biological women" have a space to call their own.
"Vote yes to protect your wives and daughters," said another delegate, a 15-year-old from Sherwood Park, Alta.
A dissenting delegate from Quebec who did not give her name said "the Liberals will love nothing more" than to see Conservatives pass policies like this one and use discriminatory rhetoric to describe sexual minorities.
"Please, let's get the Liberals out. Let's get elected," she said.
The convention also adopted a proposal from the Alberta riding of Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner to impose stiffer penalties on sex offenders and pedophiles.
"Children are little angels of the world," a delegate from that riding named Logan said during the debate. He said there are nefarious actors who are trying to "assault, sexualize and traffic our children," and a Poilievre-led government needs to crackdown on the practice.
About 86 per cent of the delegates agreed there should be "stronger legislation" from a Poilievre-led government to try and curb these activities.
I have been waiting for 8 years for Trudeau to do something, anything, on this file and he has done absolutely nothing. Canada is one of very few western countries to completely ignore child sexual abuse - the worst atrocity in the world.
There is more on the CPC convention at CBC News.
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Mexican Supreme Court’s abortion decision expands access to millions,
stands in contrast to US
BY FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ AND MEGAN JANETSKY
Updated 2:16 PM PDT, September 7, 2023
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The decision by Mexico’s Supreme Court to invalidate all federal criminal penalties for abortion opened access for millions of people in the sprawling public health system a year after the court’s U.S. counterpart went in the opposite direction.
Wednesday’s ruling did not have the same immediate impact as Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing women’s access to abortion. But it was a dramatic change in this predominantly Catholic nation that could lend momentum to efforts to legalize abortion across the country.
Under Mexico‘s legal system, the ruling did not invalidate all criminal penalties for abortion, which remained on the books Thursday in 20 of Mexico’s 32 states.
But the ruling does mean that government health providers now need not worry about federal penalties for abortion, because the court ruled that they were an unconstitutional violation of women’s human rights.
Millions of Mexican women receive health-care services from the national government, granting the ruling immediate impact. The ruling also gave abortion rights advocates a powerful tool that they can use to continue their state-by-state work of challenging abortion restrictions.
However, along with those restrictions still on the books in many states, many millions of Mexican women work outside the formal economy, placing them outside those quickly affected by Wednesday’s ruling.
Abortions are not widely prosecuted as a crime in Mexico, but many doctors refuse to provide them, citing the law.
Celebration of the ruling spilled out onto social media.
“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality.
Sen. Olga Sánchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice, said on X that the ruling represented an advance toward “a more just society in which the rights of all are respected.”
But others in Mexico decried the decision. Irma Barrientos, director of the Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived, said opponents will continue the fight against expanded abortion access.
“We’re not going to stop,” Barrientos said. “Let’s remember what happened in the United States. After 40 years, the Supreme Court reversed its abortion decision, and we’re not going to stop until Mexico guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception.”
Across Latin America, countries have made moves to lift abortion restrictions in recent years, a trend often referred to as a “green wave,” in reference to the green bandanas carried by women protesting for abortion rights in the region.
Some American women already had been seeking help from Mexican abortion rights activists to obtain pills used to end pregnancies.
Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 16 years ago.
Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion could not be treated as a crime in one northern state. That decision set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.
Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th to drop criminal penalties.
What Wednesday’s ruling does now — in theory — is obligate federal agencies to provide abortion care to patients, said Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.
Díaz de León said removing the federal ban also takes away another excuse for denying abortions in states where the procedure is no longer a crime.
But she and officials at other feminist organizations said they worried that women, particularly in more conservative areas, may still be denied.
After decades of work by activists across the region, Argentina in 2020 legalized the procedure. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same.
Since last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, most states led by conservative lawmakers and governors have adopted bans or tighter restrictions. Meanwhile, states with liberal governments have taken steps to try to protect abortion access.
The fact that the U.S. government is politically divided makes a nationwide ban or legalization unlikely, at least in the short term.
In the southern state of Guerrero, Marina Reyna, director of the Guerrero Association Against Violence toward Women, cautioned that challenges would persist. Her state decriminalized abortion last year, but there are 22 open investigations against women accused of ending their pregnancies.
“There is still a lot of resistance,” she said.
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