Deborah Rankin

Deborah Rankin is a journalist living in Montreal.

Bio last updated June 17th, 2021.

Deborah Rankin

Articles by Deborah Rankin

  • Fighting the World’s Oldest Oppression

    In the second of two parts, Convivum contributor Deborah Rankin talks with front line warriors against human sex trafficking. Despite tough laws passed by Canada in recent years, the battle in the street is far from over. 

    Stella, an organization run by and for sex workers has long argued against the prohibition of prostitution and disputes claims about exploitation of young women and girls by men in the sex trade According to Ronald Lepage, director of The Way Out, a Montreal organization that provides counselling, s...

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  • Beating the Traffick

    During the last years of the Harper era, parliamentarians of all stripes worked in non-partisanship to combat human trafficking. Yet as Montreal writer Deborah Rankin learns from experts, and writes in this two-part Convivium series, all that political energy produced depressingly few benefits for young women trapped in the sex trade. 

    Parliament accepted these research findings when former Bloc Québécois MP and criminologist Maria Mourani sponsored a private member's bill (C-452) that recognized sexual exploitation as a category of human trafficking Over the years they have hosted conferences bringing educators, women's groups, a...

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  • Parenting, Interrupted

    Just when society has settled in to the reality and implications of surrogate parenthood, the adult children of medical conception are speaking out against it, Deborah Rankin writes

    The whole issue of genetic identity rights turns on a profound yet unstated contradiction: although the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race and other inherited characteristics that constitute a person's genetic identity, donor-conceived people a...

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  • Beyond the "A" Word

    Looking at two models of maternal health care being developed in Montreal, Deborah Rankin discovers a path beyond the morass of moral debate – and a way to do what’s best for mom and baby, too.

    Yet people who are acting out of a genuine concern for expectant mothers ought to be able to agree on certain things, such as that it makes sense to provide optimal health care, as well as access to the necessities of life, for women who are expecting and that the maternal rights of pregnant women m...

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  • On the Table

    Deborah Rankin reports on two Christian MPs leading the fight against the sex trade

    Julia Beazley, a policy analyst for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), which has supported the anti-human-trafficking bills of Mourani and Smith, says that Canadian laws are often contradictory, especially in controversial areas such as prostitution Mourani has asked her colleagues in Parli...

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  • Guy Rex Rodgers: Faith in the Art of Faith

    An Aussie ex-hippie playwright finds spiritual welcome at a Montreal United Church.

    Rodgers sees parallels between the marginalization of the anglophone community in a nationalist Quebec and the isolation that many Christians and other people of faith feel in the hypersecularist culture of a province where identity politics are the order of the day, leaving very little room for cul...

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