by
Barbara Maloney
Bill
C-225 would have allowed charges to be laid for harming or causing
the death of a preborn child while committing a criminal offence
against a pregnant woman. Such a law would act as a strong deterrent
to committing violent acts against pregnant women, increasing the
chances she and her baby could make it safely through her pregnancy.
It was a compassionate and common sense response to an all too common
problem.
Not
a single MP from any party other than the Conservatives voted for the
bill. This suggests the vote may have been whipped by leaders of the
Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc, which is odd since Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau and the other party leaders have repeatedly argued in
favour of women’s reproductive choice. Bill C-225 would have
strengthened
reproductive choice for women by making it a criminal offence for a
third party to intentionally kill a pregnant woman’s fetus (thus
terminating her pregnancy) while committing a criminal offence
against her – a pregnancy termination to which she clearly did not
consent. We are talking here about someone who attacks a woman and
takes away
her choice by ending the life of the child who otherwise would have
been born alive. Nothing could undermine women’s reproductive
choice more than that.
My
MP, Chandra Arya (Liberal) wrote to me last month saying that he
would not be supporting the bill. I had seen comments from other
Liberal MPs as well. No doubt, the Liberal MPs were given a set of
talking points to use to try to defend their opposition to C-225.
But their arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny, which suggests
something else was behind their opposition to the bill, as I explain
below.
Criticism:
C-225 doesn’t address the broader issue of gender-based violence
The
Liberal government criticized the bill for failing “to address the
broader issue of violence against women.” But why would any MP not
support a law that at least partially addresses the problem? No bill
ever completely addresses an issue, and so why should C-225 be held
to a higher standard than any other bill?
Mr.
Arya also told me that “Our government believes that gender-based
violence has no place in our society, and we are committed to
developing and implementing a comprehensive federal strategy against
gender-based violence.” That’s great, and bill C-225 could have
been one important part of such a comprehensive strategy. Voting for
this bill in no way would have precluded the government from enacting
further laws and policies that address gender-based violence.
Pregnant women are sometimes attacked precisely because
they are pregnant. Cassie
and Molly’s Law
would act to deter such violence, given the stiff penalties in the
bill for purposely causing the death of the woman’s unborn child.
Criticism:
C-225 might be challenged under the Charter
My
MP also told me the bill “would likely be challenged under the
Charter.” Yet, as far as I’m aware, there has been no credible
legal opinion by any reputable lawyer arguing that the bill violates
the Charter.
On the contrary, renowned constitutional expert Eugene Meehan has
provided a legal opinion, posted on Cathay Wagantall’s website, defending the constitutionality of the new
offences created in the bill.
Most
Liberal MPs voted in favour of the government’s bill C-14, Medical
Assistance in Dying,
even though several lawyers were of the opinion it was
unconstitutional. So if the Liberal MPs were not deterred by the
constitutional concerns regarding C-14, it is incredible that
constitutional concerns were behind their opposition to Cassie
and Molly’s Law.
What
was the real
reason for opposing C-225?
Given
C-225 respects the constitution, including the Charter;
given it is one concrete way that MPs can help tackle gender-based
violence which they claim they want to do; and given it is supported
by amajority of Canadians, it seems that MPs’ opposition to this
bill stemmed from something else – something they may not have been
even consciously aware of.
Which
brings us to the issue of abortion.
Fear
that C-225 could reopen the abortion debate
My
MP told me that this bill could “reopen the abortion debate.”
This bill and the abortion issue do
have
something in common – they both deal with pregnant women and
preborn children. But anyone who is truly pro-choice ought to
recognize the difference between an abortion which a woman freely
chooses,
and a situation where a woman has not
chosen abortion and is violently attacked by a third-party who wants
to kill her and/or her baby and unilaterally takes away
her choice to bring her child safely to term.
So
how do we account for supposedly pro-choice MPs voting against a bill
that would have made it a crime to forcefully end a woman’s
pregnancy against her will? Why did these MPs ignore the significant
role that the woman’s free choice plays in differentiating C-225
from abortion? Are these MPs not pro-choice
after all, but rather pro-abortion,
even pro-forced
abortion?
I
don’t believe so – I don’t believe a majority of our MPs voted
against C-225 because they actually believe that a dead fetus is
better
than a live fetus.
The
only remaining explanation is that they voted against C-225 out of
fear of what it would mean for abortion if we recognized in law that
it can sometimes be wrong to kill a preborn child. They would have
been asking themselves, even if only at an unconscious level: if it
is wrong to kill a fetus during a brutal attack on a woman against
her will, how can we justify abortion, which also kills a fetus?
But
as MikeSchouten writing in the National Post points out, there would be
no reason for anyone who is pro-choice to fear that C-225 would
endanger abortion if they actually believed in their own pro-choice
rhetoric: that a woman’s freedom
to choose
is enough to justify abortion (that is, that the choice of the woman
trumps the life of the fetus.)
The
defeat of C-225 was in essence, then, a sign that a majority of our
MPs do not believe that freedom
of
choice,
in and of itself, can justify abortion. A majority of our MPs could
not get past focusing on how C-225 and abortion are alike (preborn
child’s death), rather than how they differ (woman’s choice). It
was apparently easier for our MPs to deny that it can ever be wrong
to kill a fetus – and vote against C-225 – than to be put into
the uncomfortable position of having to justify why abortion is not
wrong. They are apparently only able to defend abortion if they deny
there is any inherent value in the life of a preborn child. They
would have had the confidence to defend abortion if they truly
believed deep down that the choice of the woman trumps the life of
the fetus.
Thus
in defeating C-225 for fear it could endanger abortion, our Members
of Parliament ended up revealing a lack of confidence in their own
ability to defend abortion. If even our supposedly staunch
“pro-choice” MPs feel so ill-quipped to defend abortion, then
what kind of message does that send about the acceptability of
abortion? C-225 itself could never have endangered abortion. The
irony is the MPs who opposed the bill might end up doing just that.
