{"id":31543,"date":"2022-07-01T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=31543"},"modified":"2022-07-09T12:33:57","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T16:33:57","slug":"u-s-ruling-a-reminder-the-work-is-not-done-in-canada-yellow-brick-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/u-s-ruling-a-reminder-the-work-is-not-done-in-canada-yellow-brick-house\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. ruling a reminder \u201cthe work is not done\u201d in Canada: Yellow Brick House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Supreme Court of the United States\u2019 5 \u2013 4 decision last week to overturn Roe v. Wade, upending abortion rights in the U.S., is a reminder that \u201cthe work is not done\u201d on our side of the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the view of Lorris Herenda, Executive Director of the Aurora-based Yellow Brick House, a shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women looking for help at Yellow Brick House seek their services for a variety of reasons, says Ms. Herenda, and unwanted pregnancies, although not a sole reason, can be \u201cpart of the mesh of issues\u201d that a family can be dealing with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a whole combination of methods and controls that her perpetrator uses to control her,\u201d says Ms. Herenda. \u201cSometimes unwanted pregnancies [are part of that]. Sometimes it\u2019s a tool that can be used to control the women, ensuring that there is a vast number of children that are in the family that are above and beyond their physical ability to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Supreme Court of the United States\u2019 (SCOTUS) decision was released last week, Ms. Herenda says it was a \u201cdevastating setback for American women\u201d and a setback to all advances on women\u2019s rights made over the last half-century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman losing the right to make a decision that affects her own body \u201cis an attack on our freedoms and rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want other people to make a decision about what I\u2019m going to do with my body. It\u2019s degrading,\u201d she says. \u201cWe know it is going to impact marginalized women exponentially as they may not have access to certain privileges and benefits that other women might have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there is always a concern that [it] might have an impact on future laws in Canada. We know right now that women do have access to making that choice, although in some rural communities that access is definitely more difficult for women. This is a struggle we have had for centuries now, although we do know that at the Federal level we have the support of our Prime Minister who is continuing to advocate for abortion rights for women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe bottom line is\u2026if, as a society, we go in the direction of making decisions for women you\u2019re treating us as less of a human being than the male counterpart. We will not stand for that because it\u2019s her choice. It\u2019s a woman\u2019s choice to make a choice about her body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to ask any man: would you like to have anybody make a choice about what to do with your body?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving forward, Ms. Herenda says the issue needs to be on the agenda for all political parties as it is a non-partisan human rights issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will continue to advocate at both the Federal and Provincial level for maintaining \u201ccurrent rights and increasing [the opportunities] for women to have access to make decisions about what happens with their bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s far from a \u201cdone deal,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a reminder that the work is not done,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re not at a stage where we have equitable treatment without counterparts and we have to continue having our voices heard and engaged in the community. The community needs to be able to engage and have conversations about this and request from their elected politicians to represent women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith respect to women\u2019s rights, what\u2019s on our continuous agenda is to have sustainable support from our Provincial and Federal government to be able to provide sustainable services to women and children who are impacted by violence. We\u2019re not there yet. There are wait lists, there\u2019s lack of accessible services that women who are in a position to leave an abusive relationship are often stuck because they can\u2019t have access to services, especially in rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to see bigger investments from our governments into ensuring that women and children have access to services. There has to be an investment in prevention programs so that we can start changing the numbers of devastating statistics we\u2019re hearing about to make or break the cycle of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is not going to happen overnight. That requires commitment to prevention and investment in education programs\u2026that educates young people about healthy relationships and how to identify risk factors and how to potentially avoid being in an abusive relationships \u2013 and educating men about the consequences of their behaviour and actions on women, children and society as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Report<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court of the United States\u2019 5 \u2013 4 decision last week to overturn Roe v. Wade, upending abortion rights in the U.S., is a reminder that \u201cthe work is not done\u201d on our side of the border. This is the view of Lorris Herenda, Executive Director of the Aurora-based Yellow Brick House, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8cL","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 02:33:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}