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OPINION: Pro-life a facade

Kelowna - Outlawing abortion doesn’t mean it won’t happen, people will still do it in an unsafe manner
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Students stand on the pro-choice side during a pro-life rally on Okanagan College campus Wednesday. - Credit: Carli Berry/Capital News

It’s difficult as a reporter to give publicity to a group that infringes on human rights.

The Kelowna Right to Life Society parades its message outside of hospitals, on university and college campuses and even in front of high schools, pushing its message to young students.

It’s scary we’re having discussions about whether a woman should have the right to choose what to do with her own body in the 21st Century.

It’s scarier to see women advocating for pro-life. I wonder if they’ve ever faced that decision, late one night after they find their birth control didn’t work, or worse, after suffering from sexual assault.

More interesting still is the men who preach of a baby’s right to life, as if it lies with a man to decide what to do with a woman’s body, a body that creates life in the first place.

Related: Abortion rallies clash on campus

I would like to echo the words of a woman I spoke with at one of the recent pro/anti abortion rallies: Outlawing abortion doesn’t mean it won’t happen, people will still do it an unsafe manner.

Look at other countries with strict abortion laws.

In May, an Argentinian woman was sentenced to eight years in prison after having a miscarriage. She was admitted into a hospital for stomach pains and miscarried in a hospital toilet, according to The Independent.

Scariest of all lies close to home, with U.S. President Trump’s recent reversal of Obama’s contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

In it, an employer will no longer have to cover contraception “based on its sincerely held religious beliefs.”

This, in a country where it’s legal in many states for institutions and individuals to refuse to perform abortions.

This right to life facade is nothing more than the age-old argument to place power in the hands of politicians, primarily male politicians, to determine what a woman does with her body.

Propaganda, by definition, is “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”

The Right to Life Society says the graphic images shown of dead fetuses during its rallies are not propaganda because they’re truthful images. They say disturbing images have been used to shift the public opinion in the past, including on smoking, drinking and driving, slavery and the Jewish Holocaust.

The definition says nothing about truthful images, it’s the way they’re used for a political cause that’s the problem.

To report a typo, email: edit@kelownacapnews.com.

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@carliberry_
carli.berry@kelownacapnews.com

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