We at Birth Pangs generally don’t have much nice to say about the Catholic Church, given its implacable misogyny and obsession with our reproductive systems. (In fact, our deBeauxOs has a small sideline speciality in Rome-bashing. Here are a couple of recent gems: Poached Eggs on Research Menu, Hold the Eggs and This is what religious intolerance looks like.)

But last week we ran across a Catholic priest we definitely approve of. That we ran across him at
LifeShite seems a little odd, but no matter.

The private member’s bill we reported on here was up for debate. Here’s what LifeShite had to say:

The Unborn Victims of Crime bill submitted by Conservative MP Ken Epp received its first hour of debate in the House of Commons today. The bill, that would allow criminal charges to be laid in the death or injury of an unborn child when the child’s mother is the victim of a crime, faced heated opposition however from Bloc MP Raymond Gravel, a Catholic priest who was given permission to enter politics by his Bishop – Gilles Lussier of the diocese of Joliette.

“I’m a Catholic priest,” said Gravel as he began his remarks on the proposed legislation.

Gravel said he was “uncomfortable” with the bill “because the member putting it forward is part of a pro-life group, the Campaign Life Coalition, which in my view is a rather extreme fanatical group, when it comes to life.”  Gravel continued, “I’m pro-life but I’m not part of the pro-life movement in Canada.”

The priest who had promised his Bishop before entering politics that he would not take positions that went against the doctrines of the Church, added, “I also think this bill will open the door to a re-criminalization of women who have abortions, and that’s not to be desired.
 
“I’m against abortion, but this is no way to solve the problem of abortion.  It’s through education, through outreach, through helping women who have undesired pregnancies I think that’s how to solve the problem of abortion.  But not recriminalizing abortion, I don’t ever want to see that happen.”

Speaking in French, Gravel acknowledged that the murder of a pregnant woman is abominable.  “But,” he added, “at the same time when the fetus is still in the mother they’re just one being. Its only when the fetus is born is when it becomes another being, when it becomes a human being.”

Raymond Gravel is an interesting person.

Not that we think LifeShite makes shite up or anything, we decided to check Hansard and found some other interesting comments.

Meili Faille, BQ, spoke about the typical sneakiness of the fetus fetishists:

I am sure you will agree that the government is making a surreptitious attempt to deprive women of their freedom of choice regarding abortion.

After attacking the right to abortion by questioning the medical necessity of that procedure, the government is now attacking that right by attempting to recognize the rights of the fetus. It seems that this bill was devised to set a precedent for recognizing the fetus’ right to life and thereby restrict the right to abortion and perhaps even abolish it completely.

Ken Epp, whose bill this is, spoke at length about families of pregnant women who had been murdered. They support this bill.

Alexa McDonough, NDP, pointed out that we don’t let conniving crackpots like Ken Epp who is crassly using the grieving families make law.

There was the expected glurge from Conservative clones and some Liberal jerks.

But surprising as a pro-choice Catholic priest is, we at Birth Pangs were even more surprised by the thoughtfulness and sense with which many MPs spoke. Whooda thunk?