Isn’t it funny how a government that has dismantled several programs providing direct or indirect support for the right of all women to safety and security, has chosen to become the champion of the “unborn victims” of criminal violence?
The stock answer from the Conservatives, when questioned about the slashing of funds to organizations such as the National Association of Women and the Law (whose members with all the power of their feminist acumen, legal knowledge and political skills, lobbied for changes to the Criminal Code and monitored how police dealt with domestic violence against women and children) was to shrug and say that their New™ Government would be doing things their way.
So now we can plainly see what way that is.
It’s the way that their New™ Government values the sentimental show of caring for women and children when it actually has made their lives more difficult.
It’s the way that their New™ Government gives abortion criminalizers a blunt weapon to start terrorizing the health care professionals who have ensured that pregnant women get the medical assistance they need.
It’s the way that their New™ Government gives the religious fanatics the rough instruments to start controlling what happens inside a pregnant woman’s body.
It’s the way that their New™ Government is dictating to women what our dwindling choices are.
The way that the Conservatives’ New™ Government supports the “unborn victims” demonstrates all too clearly their contempt for the living, breathing survivors of criminal violence.
The Bill will not redress the heartbreak caused by the involuntary termination of an intended pregnancy, nor will it be a deterrent to those who brutalize women, pregnant or not. Please make sure you contact your member of Parliament and express your views.
Thought interrupted by typos, and Rational Reasons have highlighted other aspects of the proposed legislation and reasons why it should not pass. Go read them, and check out this website too; it presents cogent arguments against the “Unborn Victims of Criminal Violence” Bill.
Aw shucks, thanks deBeauxOs. I’m flattered. I’m just a Dad of a little girl, doing my best to make sure she grows up in a world where she is free and able to control her body, something I do unconsciously.
BTW, its Rational Reasons, not Rational Thought
Bien sur…clearly your thought was interrupted by typos….
There are several things about this bill (besides coming from an anti-choice MP) that indicate what Epp really is aiming for and the difficulties pro-choice will have defending the right to choose when the CONs do come out with a bill criminalizing abortion.
1. Use of the word “child” linked to “before birth” and “or at any stage of development before birth.” Hard to argue that the foetus is only a child when the woman is attacked. Unnecessary for Epp to have put it that way if his sole intent was to charge the criminal for causing an abortion.
2. “means to cause the child’s death” – child, again, rather than means to cause a miscarriage, in which case this could still be a crime against the woman, an added injury to the woman
3. “An offence…may be reduced to an offence under paragraph (1)(b) if the person who committed the offence did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation within the meaning of section 232.” what the hell? If a man beats his wife in a moment of passion, no biggie? Gotta protect a man’s right to put his woman in her place!
and the heart of the problems with this bill:
4. “It is not a defence to a charge under this section that the child is not a human being” – that pretty much declares the foetus/zygote a human being and lays out the case against abortion.
This Bill must not pass.
Thanks for being so on top of this and for organizing a protest.
Thanks for laying out those points so clearly! Damned scary stuff.
900ft Jesus, thanks for pointing out that exception of a “person who committed the offence did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation within the meaning of section 232″. As Birth Pangs wrote here, most pregnant women die as a result of violence at the hands of husbands and partners. Which makes a Bill containing this exception quite revelatory about whose interests are being protected.
Ah, the fertilized egg is to be given all this protection, is it? Well, what about the UNfertilized egg? No protection for it? Just because the damned sperm were too lazy, too weak, or too gormless to swim the entire distance and do the fertilizing? WHY should the unfertilized egg be punished, neglected, or ignored because the sperm didn’t do it’s job?
Full rights for all eggs!!
After all is said and done there is the “potential” for human life in every egg.
It is appalling that sperm are being so frivolous. After all, there are thousands of the squirmy little fuckers in every ejaculation, and you want me to believe there isn’t a single one of them with the gumption to do what it’s supposed to do? I want a law, or an extension to this law, which will require all sperm to do their duty, stop slacking off, fertilize the eggs so we can give protection where it is so obviously needed.
We’ll put cameras at the till of every supermarket, mini-mart, grocery and corner store and women will have to produce Identification when they buy maxi pads, mini pads, tampons or Midol. Then our blackshirts, brownshirts, grayshirts, and pin striped shirts will head out, on duty 24/7 and round up these unpregnant women with these poor unprotected and now lost for all time eggs, and we’ll keep them in solitary for three weeks then start taking their temperatures every hour on the hour and the half hour and when their temperature rises, be it ovulation or be it Asian Flu we will flood, positively flood them with properly vibrant and patriotic sperm so that the ripening egg will be fertilized and thus eligible for protection.
No egg left behind!
You wanna talk entitlement? Every egg is entitled to protection.
Yes, it is BLANCHE, she who writes her name in capitals, and BLANCHE is gobstopped again. BLANCHE wonders if the compulsory pregnancy types have lost sight of their original gripe and are now busy with that grade-three thing of nitter-natter. We’ve all played it, “I know I am but what are you?”, “that’s for me to know and you to find out”, “aaaah, yer mudda wears loggin boots”… “nyah nyah”. Look at the careful twisting and writhing of word and phrase…they don’t seem to care what their words mean as long as they can look smarty-arty and wiseacre.
Argue the ears off a field of corn, that lot. But take their blether to it’s logical conclusion and you wind up with a basket of illogic.
The fetus fetishist zygote zealots have made it all the way to the follicle worshippers. They’ll want a ban on menstruation next.
Bad enough they have their heads up their own asses, next thing we know they’ll try to shove their heads up our most precious portions.