The typical militant poor-choicer thinks that fighting for fetal rights amounts to fighting for a theocracy. In their minds, if fetal rights ever came to pass in this country, it would turn Canada (or the US as the case may be) into a virtual copy of Iran.
To fight fetal rights, they hysterically scream "we must have separation of Church and State!!!!!!!"
Now it is true that most pro-lifers are Christians of some sort. And it is true that their pro-life beliefs are religiously based.
But not all pro-lifers are Christians or even religious.
When pro-lifers try to present their arguments for fetal rights based solely on reason, I get the feeling that poor-choicers put their fingers in their ears and say "LA LA LA! We're not listening! We're not listening! We're not listening! THEOCRACY! THEOCRACY! THEOCRACY! Criminalizing abortion is theocracy!"
When a person, religious or not, has a belief that can be defended purely on rational, non-religious grounds, and they persuade the public of the validity of that belief and then gets elected officials to act on that belief, that's not theocracy.
That's democracy.
In democracies, values are imposed. That's a fact. An individual does not have a choice as to what laws or values govern public conduct. However, groups do have a choice. Whether it's feminists or Christians or another group, they will manage to persuade the people what values should guide legislation and public policy.
So the issue is not about imposing values.
What poor-choicers really object to is that people who disagree with them are trying to show the rational basis of their beliefs.
They simply do not want pro-lifers to have a public airing. So they stir up emotion by making pro-lifers look like the next Christian Mullahs of Canada.
To test this theory, note how poor-choicers have zero objections about clergy advancing legalized abortion based on religious belief. Or any other issue they happen to agree with. Religious groups that are left-leaning and advance their cause based on their religious conviction are "enlightened".
You will never see a poor-choicer tell a religious group to stop imposing their poor-choice religious values on society in the name of Separation of Church and State.
How come these left-wing devotees are not the next Mullahs of Canada? They act in the name of their religion.
The answer is simple: they agree with the left-wing agenda.
The double-standard shows that the issue is not the separation of Church and State. The issue is that left-wingers don't like what pro-lifers are promoting, and instead of addressing the REAL issue-- which is fetal rights-- they simply cloud it in Church-and-State rhetoric. After all, no one wants any one religion to dominate a country, so conventional wisdom says. Brand pro-lifers as the Taliban, and problem solved: no one will listen to them, even if they have a rational basis for their beliefs.
Christians and pro-lifers of all stripes must stop kowtowing to this mentality in Canada. You have a right to your beliefs. Any beliefs that can be justified based on reason alone should be eligible for public consideration. If an atheist can believe it on reason alone, that belief does not have to be religiously based.
Otherwise, the alternative is to disenfranchise millions of conservative Christians from acting on their beliefs. Note how the left upholds "conscience'-- except when they disagree with it. It wouldn't be very democratic, but for the left, it's the RESULT that matters, not the process. If a few people happen to lose their right to voice their input and elect people along the way, well too bad.
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