The Baby It's Cold Outside song controversy illustrates the growing tension over freedom of speech, with many people asserting their own freedoms while trampling over others’ rights, says Paul Schratz. (Max Pixel photo)
Which side of the Baby It’s Cold
Outside debate do you come down on?
Are you alarmed by the song’s sexist messaging and support calls to ban it? Or do you see it as an innocuous musical flirtation?
It’s women’s rights and the #MeToo movement versus freedom of speech. The argument over the holiday classic offers a trivial, but timely, illustration of the ongoing tension between rights and freedoms that has existed since time immemorial but is now reaching new heights of aggrievement.
I’m reminded of Alan Borovoy’s book from back in the 1980s whose title, When Freedoms Collide, nicely sums up today’s ongoing conflicts.
In his book Borovoy, then general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, explored controversies of the time – some of them still ongoing – and the tension between competing rights in Canada.
He tackled issues like society’s need for public safety versus police powers of surveillance. He looked at the use of anti-hate laws to restrict freedom of speech.
Thirty years after Borovoy’s book, freedoms are still colliding in Canada, with an unsettlingly large segment of the population seemingly untroubled about asserting their freedoms, even if it means trampling over others’ rights.
A perfect example is found in this week’s news reports that Dying With Dignity is upset because some Fraser Valley hospices don’t want assisted suicide carried out on premises. As a result, patients who want a doctor to put them to death have to be transferred to another facility where the deed can be done.
For Dying With Dignity, and media who promote its cause, patients’ freedom to die peacefully wherever they want is sacrosanct. For groups like the Delta Hospice Society, for whom killing patients conflicts with its principles, Fraser Health’s order to allow on-site killing amounts to bullying.
It’s a bit disturbing that in Canada the idea is now pervasive that any time a person’s freedom is limited or restricted to any extent it amounts to an unconstitutional infringement on their personal rights and freedoms.
Providentially, Canadian courts and tribunals have historically tried to strike a balance between competing rights claims that come before them, rejecting the concept that some rights are more important and should trump other rights.
The concept of balancing rights and freedoms comes down to a simple concept. One person’s freedom should not impose an unwarranted burden or obligation on someone else. In the case of euthanasia, for example, a patient’s freedom to have a doctor kill them does not constitute a duty for someone else to assist or provide a location for it.
A similar line of thinking is being made in impressive fashion in P.E.I. by a candidate running for the provincial PC leadership. Kevin Arsenault, a pro-life farmer and blogger, has publicly taken a position on abortion that asserts both his desire to do something for the unborn, while pragmatically recognizing the existing federal and provincial legal reality.
When a newspaper reported that Arsenault was willing to take a hands-off approach to abortion since it was a federal matter, he issued a prompt and thorough clarification on his actual position. He would remove funding for any abortion that is not deemed “medically necessary” by a doctor, and implement policies “to improve the overall circumstance of women with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies so they would have a real choice.”
In short, Arsenault is making the case that a woman’s freedom to have an abortion does not impose a duty on taxpayers to pay for it or to continue making it the default option for too many women facing unplanned pregnancies.
By supporting some commonsense restrictions and supports to help women keep their babies, Arsenault stands a chance at altering the current one-sided reality in Canada that lets abortion advocates set the terms of debate.
Arsenault’s balanced position should be one both sides of the abortion debate can get behind.