Guest on radio 98.5 Montreal on Wednesday to comment on the candidacy for the provincial elections of Dr Roy Eappen, an anti-abortion doctor, Conservative Party leader Eric Duhaime went one step further. According to him, the position of his candidate does not represent any danger for the rights of women and Quebec solidaire (QS) would have done the same in 2018, by presenting the candidacy of a veiled woman.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), who openly calls himself “pro-choice”, said that because she wears the veil, the former candidate of Quebec solidaire Eve Torres would be against abortion. What the latter replied on Twitter.
On the waves of @le985fm @E_Duhaime claims that I would be against abortion because I wear a headscarf!?
Note this: I am a woman, certainly Muslim, but feminist and pro choice as far as I can remember.
That’s it !
@Ant_Robitaille @kick1972—Eve Torres (@EveTorresLVDF) May 5, 2022
“My desire was to position myself, to affirm what I think. Not to convince other people, but maybe to reassure people to whom it [les propos d’Éric Duhaime] could sow doubt, because I have experienced it several times, ”she explained in an interview with The duty.
On the air with Patrick Lagacé, Mr. Duhaime took advantage of his platform to denounce “an anti-democratic drift” which worries him as a citizen. “All Quebecers, all voters, have the right to be candidates in a general election and it is not true that we are going to exclude people, because they have faith and believe in God,” he said. he said, recalling that the Dr Eappen is opposed to abortion because of his religious beliefs.
His remarks follow Premier François Legault’s recent outing that anti-abortion candidates have no place in Quebec and are more broadly in line with the possible reversal of the ruling. Roe v. wadein the USA.
“I find it very hypocritical when I hear guys like Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois lecture me and that we shouldn’t choose a candidate because he has religious convictions, when he himself, in his party, in the last election, had a veiled candidate, continued the conservative leader. Do you really think that Eve Torres, who wears the veil, is a woman who is pro-choice? »
Invited the next day at the same microphone, Mme Torres reiterated that she was indeed pro-choice, condemning at the same time the amalgam that a veiled woman is necessarily anti-abortion.
“I would have appreciated being asked the question before coming to any conclusions,” she told the To have to. This kind of talk is “dangerous” and “continues to fuel the prejudices that are already present [au Québec et ailleurs en Occident] “, she wanted to add.
An air of deja vu
Responding to these accusations was not an easy task for Eve Torres. “There is a fine line between wanting to calm things down and making a mistake in your words that could stir things up and have the opposite effect. No one is immune to making mistakes, but mistakes do not have the same cost – physical or psychological – for everyone,” she added.
For the activist, the comments made by the Conservative leader are not surprising and are not foreign to him, after 22 years in Quebec. “The use of such amalgams in politics is not the first time. We saw it with Bill 21, in particular. We shamelessly touched on fundamental freedoms in the name of a secularism that already existed in Quebec, “said the woman who has been campaigning for women’s rights for several years.
“The Muslim woman in Quebec is a woman like all other women,” she argued.
And if she condemns the arrow shot sent to her by Mr. Duhaime, she denounces more broadly the political instrumentalization of issues such as religion in the context of the electoral campaign.
“Just having this discussion in 2022 is quite a setback for women in general, she denounces. In the fight for women’s rights, there is no hierarchy. »