Connect with us

Bruce Dowbiggin

Choice Cuts: The Crisis For Absolutist Abortion

Published

9 minute read

Well, that’s a relief. British Columbia’s finance minister Selina Robinson says she will fight to ensure abortion access rights are never denied in the province— no matter what may happen in the United States.

Ontario NDP Andrea Howarth leader also chimed in. “People are scared, sad and furious that the U.S. may again deny women and non-binary folks their reproductive rights. We have a right to control our own bodies, and to make our own choices about our health. This is not negotiable. Not now, not ever..” (Andrea has no trouble, however,  forcing fellow Ontarians to inject an experimental vaccine into their bodies. Or else be denied their civl rights. But we digress.)

And our fearless PM offered his usual word salad: “The right to choose is a woman’s right and a woman’s right alone. Every woman in Canada has a right to a safe and legal abortion. We’ll never back down from protecting and promoting.. blah-blah-blah.”

Well, certain women’s rights anyhow. Children? Not so much.

Funny, we thought this was a debate happening in the United States. But no, the Canadian pro-choice movement wants you to think that it’s happening here. And that they’re the only bulwark against The Handmaid’s Tale in Canada. And they don’t mind muddying the waters a little by suggesting this may lead to revoking interracial marriage, gay marriage, men swimming against women, etc.

Why is the Left so desperate to protect its sacred Roe v. Wade decision or Canada’s seminal 1987 Supreme Court decriminalization of abortion law? After all, the decision on Roe v. Wade does not mean an end to abortion in the U.S. or Canada. It means that all 50 U.S. states will once again regulate the process. Voters in deep blue states can keep their standards. And deep red state voters can keep their standards. Canada shows no sign of ever addressing the issue.

And yet Whoopi Goldberg— proud of her own seven abortions— is apoplectic. The protests are not really about conception or motherhood. Roe in 1973 instead signals the progressive Left’s triumph over capitalism– just as its 1960s Flower Power era was collapsing. Roe allowed the Left to rebound from the defeat of its violent radicalism. It gave radicals— particularly feminists— a rallying point, a hammer to use against the conservative right.

For decades a liberal SCOTUS upheld this advantage, allowing liberals to win decisions they couldn’t win at the voting booth. Until Donald Trump’s’ inductees swung the balance away from them. Losing  Roe would be a foundational loss to Trudeau, Biden, academia and the antifa left. Leaving decisions at the hands of… gasp… regular people instead of The View.

Until this rude intrusion, fogging the lens was easy to do in Canada, Thanks to the Media Party, Canadians think they have a legal right to unlimited abortion. And that their views are in keeping with other nations. Fact: There is no legal right to abortion in Canada since 1987. The Supremes decriminalized the procedure but told Canada’s politicians to solve the issue. Since then they’ve done nothing.

Fact: The United States and Canada are reportedly two of only seven nations that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Yeah, Trudeau and Kim Jong-Un, soul brothers.

To placate his base, Trudeau pretends he has a right to force anyone wanting to run for the Liberals or receive federal funds to be absolutist pro-choice. With his pillow mates, the NDP, he reflects not the general population but the refined attitudes of the Media Party (which Trudeau has paid off to make this point).

Fact: In a 2020 DART Poll 70 percent of Canadians think abortion should be illegal in the last trimester; 84 percent support a law against sex-selective abortion. How does the absolutist creed represent the nation?

Pro choice advocate Joyce Arthur admits, ‘if specific questions are asked about exactly when fetal life should be protected, women’s so-called ‘complete freedom’ to have abortions appears to take a sudden nosedive.” Which is why the media have sequestered their target audience of fanatical college professors and gender-studies acolytes from the realities of abortion. The young Pro-Choice zealots who share cute kittens and puppies on TikTok couldn’t watch 10 seconds of a 30-week abortion procedure without barfing.

As journalist John Steigerwald, writes, this is all media fog. “You’re’ either OK with killing an unborn human or you’re not. Your reason for being OK with it doesn’t change the fact that you’re OK with it. Your reason doesn’t make the baby any less dead.”

The foofaraw has had one saving grace. This debate about a woman’s rights takes place just as the same radicals couldn’t even define a “woman”.  Suddenly “birthing persons” are women again. And President Joe Autocue gave away the grift about zygotes versus child in the womb, saying, “To say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard.” So we have that going for us. It’s a child.

To further obfuscate on an issue they wish were settled law, pro choice advocates like Planned Parenthood paint the picture of heartless adoption as no option for mothers. But the heartbreak of losing your child forever at birth is an outdated nightmare.

With so many families desperately wanting adoption, mothers can now negotiate access to their child, and even visitation rights. (At a recent wedding, both the adoptive parents and natural mother were happily in the congregation for their daughter’s big day.)

In desperation, the purchased Canadian media insist the issue is a loser at the polls. But as we wrote here in 2018 public sentiment is changing. “… medical innovation has shifted the issue since Canada’s pols ran like Brave Sir Robin away from the fight. In today’s world, 50 to 70 percent of babies born at 24 to 25 weeks— and more than 90 percent born at 26 to 27 weeks— can survive. Conditions such as Down Syndrome are no longer seen as socially acceptable reasons to terminate a pregnancy. There is a real need for children for adoption.

In short, the 1980s feminist all-or-nothing standard on abortion feared by politicians has been trumped by a more nuanced reality. All these factors have lurked in the background as the public debate was stilled.

Hence the alacrity from Canada’s elite liberals and their media chuckleheads at the news that the U.S. may return birth rights to voters in the states. Any compromise brings down their house. Expect a long, bitter fight through the midterm elections in November.

 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

 

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

Follow Author

Bruce Dowbiggin

CHL Vs NCAA: Finally Some Sanity For Hockey Families

Published on

In forty-years-plus of covering sports you develop hobby horses. Issues that re-appear continuously over time. In our case, one of those issues has been pro hockey’s development model and the NCAA’s draconian rules for its participants. Which was better, and why couldn’t the sides reach a more reasonable model?

In the case of hockey the NCAA’s ban on any player who played a single game in the Canadian Hockey League created a harsh dilemma for hockey prodigies in Canada and the U.S. Throw your lot in with the CHL, hoping to be drafted by the NHL, or play in a secondary league like the USHL till you were eligible for the NCAA.  Prospects in the CHL’s three leagues — the OHL, QMJHL and WHL —were classified as professional by the NCAA because they get $600 a month for living expenses, losing Division I eligibility after 48 hours of training camp. The stipend isn’t considered income for personal tax purposes.”

Over the decades we’ve spoken with many parents and players trying to parse this equation. It was a heartbreaking scene when they gambled on a CHL career that gave them no life skills or education. Or the promised NCAA golden goose never appeared after playing in a lower league for prime development years.

There were tradeoffs. NCAA teams played fewer games, CHL teams played a pro-like schedule. The NCAA awarded scholarships (which could be withdrawn) while the CHL created scholarships for after a career in the league (rules that players getting NHL contracts lost those scholarships has been withdrawn). There were more contrasts.

As we wrote here in 2021, it might have stayed this way but for a tsunami created by the antitrust issue of Name Image Likeness for NCAA players who were not paid for the use of their NIL. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the issue in 2015 it warned the NCAA that its shamateurism scheme had to change. That created revolution in the NCAA. Athletes now receive healthy compensation for their image in video and digital products. They can also take million-dollar compensation from sponsors and boosters.

Portals allow them to skip from team to team to find millions in compensation. One of the many changes in the new NCAA was its prohibition against CHL players. To forestall future lawsuits costing millions, it recently made hockey players eligible for the same revenues as football and basketball players. Now the NCAA has voted to open up college hockey eligibility to CHL players effective Aug. 1, 2025, paving the way for major junior players to participate in the 2025-26 men’s college hockey season.

Which, we wrote in 2022, would leave hockey’s development model vulnerable. “As one insider told us, “The CHL model should be disrupted. Archaic and abusive.” NIL won’t kill the CHL but it could strip away a significant portion of its older stars who choose guaranteed money over long bus rides and billeting with other players. It’s early days, of course, but be prepared for an NHL No. 1 draft pick being a millionaire before his name is even called in the draft.” 

As we wrote in May of 2022 “A Connor McDavid could sign an NIL styled contract at 16 years old, play in the NCAA and— rich already— still be drafted No. 1 overall. Yes, college hockey has a lower profile and fewer opportunities for endorsements. Some will want the CHL’s experience. But a McDavid-type player would be a prize catch for an equipment company or a video game manufacturer. Or even as an influencer. All things currently not allowed in the CHL.” 

Effectively the CHL will get all or most of the top prospects at ages 16-19. After that age prospects drafted or undrafted can migrate to the NCAA model. Whether they can sign NHL contracts upon drafting and still play in the NCAA is unclear at this moment. (“On the positive side, we will get all the top young players coming to the CHL because we’re the best development option at that age,” one WHL general manager told The Athleltic’s Scott Wheeler.

One OHL GM told the Athletic “As the trend increases with American players looking for guarantees to sign, does a CHL player turn down an opportunity to sign at the end of their 19-year-old year with the hopes that a year at 20 in NCAA as a free agent gives them a better route to the NHL?”

The permutations are endless at the moment. But, at least, players and their families have a choice between hockey and education that was forbidden in the past. Plus, they can make money via NIL to allow them to stay for an extra year of development or education. The CHL will take a hit, but most young Canadian players will still see it as the logical launching pad to the NHL.

Now, for once, families can come first on the cold, nasty climb to the top hockey’s greasy pole.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Bruce Dowbiggin

The Pathetic, Predictable Demise of Echo Journalism

Published on

It can be safely said that the 2024 U.S. presidential election couldn’t have gone much worse for legacy media in that country. Their biases, conceits and outright falsehoods throughout the arduous years-long slog toward Nov. 5 were exposed that night. Resulting in the simultaneous disaster (for them) of Donald Trump winning a thunderous re-election and their predictive polling being shown to be Democratic propaganda.

Only a handful of non-establishment pollsters (Rasmussen, AtlasIntel) got Trump’s electoral college and overall vote correct. Example: One poll by Ann Selzer in Iowa—a highly-rated pollster with a supposedly strong record—showed a huge swing towards Harris in the final week of the election race, putting her three points up over Trump. He ended up winning Iowa by 13.2 points (Selzer now says she’s retiring.)

Throughout, these experts seemed incapable of finding half the voter pool. By putting their thumb on the scale during debates, the representatives of the so-called Tiffany networks and newspapers signalled abdication of their professional code. Their reliance on scandal-sheet stories was particularly glaring.

Just a few lowlights: “the brouhaha over a shock comedian at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”. Unhinged outgoing POTUS Biden then called GOP voters “garbage”. So Trump made an appearance as a garbage man, to the snarky disapproval of CBS News chief anchor Nora O’Donnell.

Then there was Whoopi Goldberg on The View predicting Trump will “break up interracial marriages and redistribute the white spouses: “He’s going to deport and you, put the white guy with someone else… The man is out there!” Media ran with this one, too.

Worse, disinformation and lying reached such a proportion that Team Trump turned its campaign away from the networks and legacy papers down the stretch, creating a new information pathway of podcasts and social media sites (such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Adin Ross) that promise to be the preferred route for future candidates looking for non-traditional voters. A few prominent media owners sought to save themselves by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate, but the resulting tantrum by their Kamala-loving staff negated the effort.

In the past, poor performances by the Media Party might be dismissed or ignored. But the cataclysmic ratings drops for CNN and MSNBC paired with collapse in sales for blue-blood rags such as the New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times spoke to the public’s disgust with people they’ve always trusted to play it straight.

(Now Comcast has announced it’s spinning off MSNBC and its news bundle to save their profitable businesses. Staff members in these places are now panicking. As such the new administration promises to be indifferent to the former media powers-that-be as Trump mounts radical plans to recast the U.S. government. )

As noted here the disgraceful exercise in journalism was cheered on by their compatriots here in Canada. “In the hermetically sealed media world of Canada, natives take their cues from CNN and MSNBC talking points both of which employ Canadians in highly visible roles. (Here’s expat Ali Velshi famously describing on NBC that the 2020 George Floyd riots that burned for weeks— destroying billions in damages while resulting in multipole deaths— as “generally peaceful”.) 

The narratives of Russiagate, drinking bleach, “fine people” to Hunter Biden’s laptop— long ago debunked down south— are still approved wisdom in Canada’s chattering class. Especially if America’s conflagration election can be used to demonstrate the good sense and judgment of Canada’s managerial and media class.

The clincher for star-struck Canadians was the overwhelming Kamala love from the Hollywood crowd. Virtually every high-profile actor/ singer/ writer embraced the woman who was parachuted into the nomination in a coup— even as the same glitterati raved about anti-democratic Trump.  From Beyoncé to Bilie Eilish to Bruce Springsteen, their support was been a winner in Canada’s fangirl/ fanboy culture.”

Talk about backing a loser. Which leaves us asking what to expect from formerly respected media in the upcoming (it will come, won’t it?) defenestration of Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, probably in spring of 2025. One Toronto Star piece might provide a clue to the bunkered approach of Canada’s globalists. “Europe is leaving Donald Trump’s America behind. Should Canada do the same? As American democracy dives into darkness, Canada is facing difficult choices.”

CPC leader Pierre Poilievre has made it abundantly clear his thoughts on the bias of media. To save billions, he is making a major overhaul— even closure of CBC (not Radio Canada)— as a campaign pledge. He’s also said he will remove the slush fund now propping up failed establishment news organizations that employ unionized workers bent of crushing the Conservatives.

His scorn is obvious after watching media’s reverential treatment of Trudeau’s fake “murdered” Rez children stunt or the silence accompanying PMJT’s sacking of his indigenous Justice minister Jodie Wilson Raybould. Lately, a deadpan Poilievre humiliated a callow CBC reporter quoting “experts” by asking her “what experts?” Her unpreparedness leaves her floundering as Poilievre calls her question another “CBC smear job”.

Perhaps the classic Poilievre humbling of a reporter occurred in 2023 in a Kelowna apple orchard when a reporter seeking to score points with his Woke colleagues saw the bushwhack rebound on him. After numerous failed attempts at belling the cat, the local reporter played his ace card.

Question: Why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given … y’know … not, not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page out of Donald Trump’s book, but, also —

Poilievre: (incredulous) What are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you gimme a page? Gimme the page. You keep saying that … “

No page was produced and the cringeworthy interview collapsed.

Needless to say, the reporter was absolved by his water-carrying colleagues. Here was Shannon Proudfoot of the Toronto Star: “Kicking a journalist in the shins over and over then turning the exchange into a social-media flex is telling on yourself…”  Venerable CBC panelist/ Star columnist Chantal Hébert  echoed the pauvre p’tit  take. “Agreed”.

For these press box placeholders it’s all too reminiscent of the acid-drenched style of former PM Stephen Harper, a stance that turned them to Trudeau cheerleaders in 2015. Which is to say we shouldn’t have high hopes for balance when the writ is finally dropped.

Poilievre has several more ministers (Melissa Lantsman, Garrett Genuis) skilled in exposing media imbalance, so we can expect full-blown pushback from the paid-for media from the usual suspects when Trudeau finally succumbs to reality. One drawback for the Conservatives could be the absence of national podcasters such as Rogan or Von to which they can pivot.

But make no mistake, However much Canada’s press corps denies it, the public has turned away from Mr Blackface and the politics of privilege. They’d best anticipate a rough ride ahead.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Trending

X