Friday 21 March 2014

The Best Argument For Comprehensive SexEd In Canadian Schools

Once upon a time in the Dominion of Canada, there were abortion bans and criminal restrictions, imposed by legislation and enforced by police.

Some effects of these laws were as follows:

They ignored utero-human needs and were done without consultation of the populace affected.
They showed utero-humans, by law, the only real life value of a utero-human was expressed in their fertility and that fertility must be controlled by the state.
They killed utero-humans who desperately resorted to unsafe abortion methods.
They criminalized utero-humans whose only crime was being pregnant
They caused humiliation, scorn and shunning of utero-humans forced to continue pregnancy but not owning a wedding ring.
They caused harmful medical conditions and killed utero-humans whose forced pregnancies went biologically crippling and literally toxic
They caused utero-humans forced to continue unwanted pregnancy to drop out of education and/or employment.
They targeted utero-humans and their families who were financially disadvantaged, because evidence abounds that economically-advantaged people simply ignored the laws and had safe abortions by means of money and complicit medical staff.
They forced babies onto families already stressed by economics and other factors, closing options for betterment of the already living.
They caused utero-humans to wedlock with penile-humans they really didn't want to life partner with, but couldn't afford societal shunning; resulting in familial misery that washed over onto children in the situation.
They forced utero-humans to continue pregnancies started by rape.
They forced utero-humans whose *wanted* pregnancies had turned biologically lethal/non-viable to continue pregnancy, no matter the wasteful, costly threat to their lives and families.
They forced utero-humans to continue pregnancy, survive childbirth and then surrender the resulting baby to adoption, where, if it wasn't immediately adopted, became a ward of the foster system or orphanages, with all the hazards attached thereto.
They granted legal control over pregnant utero-humans to everyone but the utero-humans themselves. Often, 'everyone' meant 'penile-human'.

The overall effect of these laws is as follows:

THEY.DIDN'T.STOP.ABORTION. They only took away the right of utero-humans to legally and safely control their own bodies, lives and decisions.

Once upon a more recent time in Canada, those laws were finally and totally struck down, returning legal, safe control over their own bodies to utero-humans inside Canada's boundaries.

Look around at the amazingly unremarkable nation that survives in the wake of that. The quiet has maddened some.  But these Retroactors realize they're getting little traction with the adults who remember the 'When There Were Laws' bloody times, so, naturally, they're now going after the young and uninformed.

Unlike Catholic schools (mostly, but check the '6th to last' paragraph), where class credits can be gained from voluntold staffing of forced-pregnancy protests, and evangelical Protestant schools; students in Canadian public schools must have their public sidewalks turned into a target of freeze peaches in hopes of finding teenagers to plump forced pregnancy promoters' ranks.

Mostly, public school students roll their eyes and walk past the Usual Suspects, but this is an In-Your-Face vector of misinformation and oft-debunked lies.

The easiest way to innoculate young people against Arguing From Feelings and Faith is evidenced-based sexuality and reproductive education, with age-appropriate levels of actual sexual reality from elementary to high school.  (emphasis mine)

Don't wait until secondary education, it's not always an option for teenagers. Walking in to college and work environments without a grounding in sexuality and reproduction leaves teenagers and young adults having to ascend the Mt. Everest of sexuality learning curve without informing oxygen, when they could be focused on fearless learning and doing.

Sexually developing kids are under primal physical and psychological stress while shifting to adult.  It makes them vulnerable to exploiters and 'caretaker' claims about the world. Fall down on arming kids with reality and facts and critical thinking and you leave them swinging in the wind, unsafe, able to be harmed by the accusations mounted by the Just-So Feelings brigades.

Those accusations, touted by adults, inform school bullying of many stripes, escalating into the greater community, up to and including laws that deny rights to the humans and society we *have*, while praising Dystopian Up Is Down Fantasy Islands of those invested in fear and servitude.

Canada's 26 years without forced pregnancy laws is an evidenced signpost that abortion is a practical, private choice between a utero-human and medical support.  For those that weren't born before those years and don't understand the consequences of the aggressive push to return to laws as in the past, look South of the Medicine Line and gaze your fill.

Gaze upon those American laws Pro-Liferating (puns for Namos) to restrict the lives of utero-humans,  those desperate utero-humans and their allies fighting to keep the criminalizing nets from tightening, those growing underground networks to defy high sounding but bad law to support utero-humans' control of their lives.

Make no mistake, the same forced-pregnancy groups in the US are inside our borders, sharing funding. Canada's law-free quiet is the beacon that shines on their lies.  We're not perfect. Canadian access to safe abortion must still be improved, but the US pregnancy panic is the fate that awaits Canada the moment we forget how blackly despair can settle onto a utero-human's psyche when pregnancy is proved and they are now a disposable being in the eyes of their society's laws.

That is reality. Teach your children well.

PS: For those wondering at my choice of 'utero-human', remember, not all women have a uterus and fertile ova and not all men don't.  I also think sometimes, the mere use of the word 'woman' in a conversation flips some switch inside people's internalizations to marginalize associated concepts, so let's see if it makes any difference to mindsets.

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