"Bill to protect 'the unborn' is the wrong approach"

[iverglas]

A bill to make "injuring or causing the death of an unborn child while committing an offence" a criminal offence subject to the same punishment as murder was given second reading this week.

Zzzzzz, you say, old news. Where now?

Well, there's the surprise.

Canada. (Where criminal law is federal, so this happened in the House of Commons.)

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/310182

It should not be lost on anybody that the party with the fewest number of women MPs in the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of Bill C-484 on Wednesday.

It passed 147-133, with one lone woman Opposition MP – Liberal member Albina Guarnieri – voting yea. Even the Bloc Québécois' Raymond Gravel, a Roman Catholic priest, rejected it.

The Star doesn't mention that another opposition member, one lone member of my own New Democratic Party, voted for it. My party leader declined to "whip the vote", i.e. require caucus members to vote party line or be expelled. Sad. Appalling.

"This is all about protecting the choice of a woman to give birth to her child," said Epp <the Conservative turd who authored the bill> last fall. "It is about condemning the actions of those who would take it upon themselves to criminally assault a pregnant woman and the child she wants and loves."

So how about a bill protecting all women from abusive partners, with the money and the muscle to back it up, instead? Or is that too much for a government that shut down mechanisms through which women can sue for equality?

Epp says it's "all about choice". Anti-choice organizations say, unhesitatingly and clearly, that it's all about a first step on the road to denying choice.

The Star is referring to the Conservative government's cancellation of the Court Challenges Program, which many individuals and minority groups -- same-sex couples challenging the marriage prohibition, Francophone minorities challenging French-language hospital closings, women challenging all sorts of things -- have used to exercise their constitutional equality rights against discriminatory legislation.

Odd how the two things have coincided. The Prime Minister voted for this bill. Odd how only a tiny, tiny minority of private member's bills ever even make it to the floor of the house, let alone pass first reading (approval in principle allowing it to proceed for study) or pass second reading (referral to committee for debate, possible amendment and referral back to the House), but this one did.

It's unlikely that it would pass third reading, i.e. become law. We hope. Especially since we're pretty much expecting an election to be called in the near future, if the Conservatives manage to goad the Liberals into defeating one of their many obnoxious initiatives so the Conservatives can call an election nobody else wants and aim for a majority government. Then I guess it would come back. And pass.

There's virtually no chance the Supreme Court would uphold that law, if anyone convicted under it challenged it. It's a violation of so much stuff in the constitution it wouldn't have a hope. The right to equality before and under the law, for starters: quite apart from the entire fetuses-have-rights nonsense, you just don't go calling something "murder" and imposing life sentences for it when it isn't murder. Hell, why not call shop-lifting murder?

Anyhow, just thought you'd all like to know what we're up to, up here under 16 feet of snow and the two more feet we're expecting this weekend. ;)

[lightningandsnow]

1. Thanks for posting this!

I was going to, but you got to it before I did.

I know a lot of people support this bill because of its supposed warm fuzzy appeal, but it would have huge legal ramifications if it passed. And not for the better.

[iverglas]

2. and now

I just have to get around to writing Jack and Peter to tell them what quite a few people already have.

Many people hereabouts are familiar with Joyce Arthur ("The only moral abortion is my abortion"). She's had things to say. Of course!

http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/fetal_homicide_law.html
The Case Against a "Fetal Homicide" Law

Epp (what is this Ken Epp, a son of Jake?) openly models his crap on the religious right's efforts in the US. And imagine how the anti-choice brigade is feasting on the Bloc Québécois MP who is an RC priest (also a former prostitute) and who (like all BQ MPs) voted against the bill. The brigade is more RC up here, of course, given the vastly different make-up of the population in terms of fundie protestants.

Someone from one of the abortion rights groups got it a bit mixed up, though. She said that a conviction under this law would open the door for the Supreme Court to find that a fetus is a person. Well, no. A conviction under this law would be quashed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court doesn't use provincial criminal court judgments as precedents, duh.

The research branch of the Parliamentary Library prepares background research papers and suggested questions for MPs on the committees who study bills. They get posted on the net. It will be interesting to read what they say about it. If it doesn't die on the order paper if there's an election.

This is where it should be, when it's available:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISINFO/index.asp?Language=E&query=5336&List=toc&Session=15
under "Legislative Summary". There's a bit of interesting stuff there under "Further Reading" now. Ah yes, "Unborn Victims of Crime Act is Just Plain Common Sense". We effete intellectuals who know things like what the constitution says, we have no common sense.

The "Talking Points Against the 'Unborn Victims of Crime Act'" by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada are quite good.

[iverglas]

3. okay, who dunnit??

Someone has given me a star ... because I'd been too damned lazy to go figure out the whole paypal rigamarole again since I expired about 2 weeks ago.

I have an idea who it might have been (not from this forum), but just in case, I don't want to look ungrateful!



Having hijacked my own thread for that -- here's a quick set of results for anybody interested in reading about the bill (it was referred to committee for study, and Parliament has risen for the summer):

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=c-484+unborn&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryCA

[ismnotwasm]

4. I dunno

But may I complement you on your kick ass work on that atrocious thread in LBN? It's a couple days old now-- I was just reading through it. It was good to see the sanity of pro-choice against all that creepy forced birth spew hidden-as-baby-concern bullshit.

[iverglas]

5. oops

When I ask a question I must remember to check for answers!

Why thank you. Take no prisoners, that's my motto when it comes to somebody trying to take my reproductive rights! And jeez, were there not just a lot of the little crap spewers in that one?

[ismnotwasm]

6. There seems to be quite a few of them lately,

In the main forums. Disgusting. That one was bad though.

What part of it's not about the fetus do they not understand?

[ThomCat]

7. Damn.

x(

So the unborn now have more legal protection than than the born. What happened to the idea of equal protection? Is that idea enshrined in Canadian law somehow?

How about protecting the adults and children that much too?

[iverglas]

8. whoa!

It's still just a bill -- it's gone to committee. Voting second reading to go to committee is a vote to examine the bill in depth, hear witnesses, propose amendments, etc. I still think it should have been voted down at first reading (agreement in principle to let it proceed), but that's actually quite rare.

Although I was in the house back in the late 80s when the first attempt to enact legislation post-Morgentaler was made, and got to see that voted down at first reading.

It isn't likely to pass committee w/o a negative recommendation, and it isn't likely to pass the House. It's a private member's bill, so that will be the end of it.

As far as equal protection in Canada -- now hold on.

Canada is not the place with "fetal homicide" laws with punishments identical to punishments for homicide. Those would be a whole bunch of US states that have those laws.

And I would be the one who has argued at DU for years that those laws violate equal protection laws -- by violating the equal protection rights of anyone charged with the offence.

The Canadian constitution has these:

Equality Rights

Equality before and under law and equal protection and benefit of law

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

We don't just equality before the law, we have equality under the law. We don't just have equal protection of the law, we have equal benefit of the law.

Legal Rights

Life, liberty and security of person

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The principles of fundamental justice include (procedural) due process, but are broader.


The bill would not give fetuses "greater protection" than adults and children. It is a crime to assault, injure or kill an adult or child.

What it does is impose a greater burden on someone who "kills" a fetus in the course of an assault on a woman than it does on someone who "kills" a fetus in the course of a therapeutic abortion, and that's where the unequal protection lies.

It's also where the total incoherency in the legislation lies. It isn't homicide to intentional kill something in one circumstance (without any common law justification like self-defence), but it is in another. It treats something as a little bit human being.

I can't imagine this getting past the Supreme Court. Of course, us having a "liberal" Supreme Court, and polling showing that Canadians trust it way more than governments, the right-wing govt would be happy to see it kill such a fuzzy-puppy bit of legislation.