In fact Durham wonders if ARCC is really anti-choice:
How can any reasonable person who claims to advocate for the choice of a woman call a law that would make it so that the choice was only hers “anti-choice”?
What is your true agenda? How can you put forth no effort to defend the choice of one woman when it is violated? Or the choice of all of the women who were murdered when they were carrying a child?
How can you conscionably tell people that to protect what a woman has chosen would take away their right to make a choice?
If it is not the choice of women that you defend, who’s choice exactly is it?
Are you even conscious of your contradiction?
Canada is waking up to your double talk.
Molly was Cassie’s choice and Molly matters."
Calling the pro-abortions anti-choice makes complete sense. Because the only choice they ever advocate for is the choice to dismember, decapitate and disembowel pre-born babies. The pro-abortions almost never advocate for adoption or, for women to keep their baby heaven forbid.
I also got a good chuckle out of Fake Person's indignant tweets to Jeff Durham about his blog post which she clearly didn't like--she tweeted him at least five times with the very same link to some bill the pro-abortions would support. As if Durham was an imbecile and one tweet wasn't enough.
When Ken Epp first introduced his Unborn Victims of Crime Bill Joyce Arthur wrote a lot of nonsensical stuff on the bill. Ken Epp provided some excellent rebuttals to Arthur. It's funny how often pro-life people have to always spend time correcting Arthur. Well it's not really funny, but you know what I mean.
I tweeted him the link twice -- I just checked -- because he didn't respond, and as spokesperson for what he wants to be a movement, he has a responsibility to inform himself about alternatives, instead of smearing people and organizations. But hey, lying is what you guys do.
ReplyDeletelove,
Fake Person (who has been blogging pseudonymously about reproductive rights for nine years)
Did it ever occur to you that maybe there are people in the world who would prefer NOT to respond to you?
DeleteI never meant to be a spokes person, I only meant to be a father - just as Cassie meant to be a mother.
DeleteI am doing my best and I have read your link. The bill falls far short of considering or represent A-restorative justice B- a woman's choice, and most importantly, C - the life of our daughter.
For any kind of reasonable resolution to be possible it will take voices from both sides to find it. From what I have read, Joyce Arthur is a very extreme voice from only one side. To exclude her opinions entirely would only serve to subtract from the integrity of a solution. Just the same, it would be unfair to exclude those who oppose abortion.
My position remains that the need for a law in these circumstances exists completely independently of either side of abortion politics.
There is a way to do this so you all can continue YOUR war unhindered by the TRUE JUSTICE that should be available to families in our situation, and for Cassie's choice and Molly's life. -JD
But I HAVE suggested a reasonable resolution to achieve justice: Increased penalties for assaults on pregnant women. The problem is not me, or abortion politics. The problem is that Canada has mandatory sentencing guidelines for first-degree murder, which don't allow any wiggle room for judges. Also, I've tried to make very clear but you still don't get it - it's not just about abortion rights - it's about the rights of all pregnant women. Your desired law would compromise and endanger the rights of ALL pregnant women. The evidence of the harms and unconstitutionality of such a law is even stronger today than in 2008. Women are increasingly being arrested and jailed under fetal homicide laws in the U.S. So I've been proved right, and Ken Epp was wrong. As of Nov 2014, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women have identified 793 cases of arrests or equivalent actions depriving pregnant women of their physical liberty since 1973. 380 of those cases occurred since 2005. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/opinion/pregnant-and-no-civil-rights.html?_r=0) Many more cases have been added to the list over 2015.
DeleteIn Canada, there's a mountain of constitutional and other obstacles to overcome before you could pass a law treating a fetus as a murder victim in Canada. These issues are all detailed in the many articles on our C-484 page. (http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/c484.htm)
I'm really sorry you've been taken in and exploited by the anti-choice movement on this issue. The movement's Achilles heel is that it consistently fails to recognize that women have established constitutional rights, including equality rights. You can’t expect Canadian courts to just ignore or strike down women’s rights in order to award new rights to fetuses, which are not even legal persons in Canada (the motion to challenge that failed in 2012, and would fail again if re-introduced.) The legal precedent in Canada is that a pregnant woman and her fetus cannot be treated as separate under the law. That means there can be no balance or compromise of rights because if fetuses have rights, then women have none.
I can sympathize with your frustration and what happened was a terrible tragedy. I'm sorry for your loss. But unfortunately, you're chasing a pipe dream. The law you want is just not going to happen. Since you're the person apparently running this campaign, you should have done some proper legal research to back it up, and/or consulted a lawyer (not a biased anti-choice lawyer). Under the current system, I believe the only thing you or her family could do is file civil charges against the killer in relation to losing the pregnancy - although that wouldn't help if he has no resources. The only other option I can think of is passing something like Bill C-543 so that it might be possible to file an additional charge of "aggravated assault" because of the loss of her pregnancy. I.e, adding 14 years on top of the life sentence for murder. I'm not a lawyer though, so encourage you to get some good legal advice.
Joyce Arthur
With respect, Joyce, you seem to misunderstand Bill C-543 (http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Docid=3499710&file=4 ). That bill did not allow an additional charge to be laid for the loss of a woman's pregnancy. Rather, it simply made a woman's pregnancy (whether lost or not) an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes (sentencing with respect to the charge for attacking the woman.) So there would still be just one charge laid, and that would be for the attack on the pregnant woman. In fact, what you seem to be advocating, i.e. an additional charge for the loss of the pregnancy, sounds an awful lot like bill C-484, because what is the loss of a pregnancy if not the death of the fetus? And causing that death (which amounts to causing the loss of that pregnancy) would mean an additional charge under C-484, precisely what you seem to be suggesting.
DeleteI never said that Bill C-543 allowed an additional charge to be laid. Reread my last few sentences.
DeleteThe type of additional charge I'm suggesting would be for a crime against a pregnant woman, not her fetus. So it's nothing like C-484 as that made the fetus a separate victim.
It was just that you were talking about "something like Bill C-543" and you also said "so that it might be possible to file an additional charge of 'aggravated assault' because of the loss of her pregnancy." So a reasonable interpretation of that sentence when you connect those two ideas is that C-543 allows for an "additional charge." And I was simply saying that bill C-543 did not allow for that.
DeleteBe that as it may, whether you call it a crime "against" the woman or a crime "against" the fetus, amounts to the same thing in terms of this additional charge which I think you and I both agree makes sense. For example, if the woman is murdered, then one charge is the murder charge for killing the woman, and the additional charge is for causing the death of the fetus/loss of the pregnancy. So there are two charges altogether.
And here's a link to what ARCC and pro-choice people would support, if you have the honesty to show your readers. http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/action/bill-c543.htm
ReplyDeleteI just took a screen-cap of the above comment.
From Joyce Arthur's link:
Delete"Whether or not Bill C-543 ever makes it to 2nd reading, no MP has any excuse to continue supporting Bill C-484. In fact, C-543 is a useful test of the hypocrisy of the religious right: The bill protects women, which was the stated goal of C-484, but it does not grant personhood to fetuses, which was the true goal of C-484. Anyone who supports C-484 instead of C-543 needs to acknowledge that they are not, and have never been, primarily interested in protecting pregnant women from abuse."
So Arthur knows that the "The bill protects women, which was the stated goal of C-484, but it does not grant personhood to fetuses, which was the true goal of C-484. Anyone who supports C-484 instead of C-543 needs to acknowledge that they are not, and have never been, primarily interested in protecting pregnant women from abuse."
Wow, must be nice to be psychic and KNOW what was in the minds of all the many people who supported C-484 and that all those people were definitely NOT concerned for woman and ONLY wanted to grant personhood to the preborn child. What a gift Arthur has for knowing all this.
It doesn't take a psychic, it takes a close reading, comparison to other such legislation, and a consultation with a lawyer. As to what its supporters think, who knows?
ReplyDeleteCongratulations for publishing the link. I'm surprised.
Joyce Arthur says that the supporters of Bill C-484 "have never been, primarily interested in protecting pregnant women from abuse." and that "personhood to fetuses was the true goal of C-484". Therefore Joyce Arthur must be psychic to know the motives of the supporters of C-484. So yes, it does take a psychic to read the minds of so many people and to know their motives as to why they supported C-484.
ReplyDeleteIf I recall, Ken Epp refuted every argument Joyce Arthur ever made against C-484, including that the bill granted personhood to the fetus--it did not. It turned out that Joyce eventually revealed to the National Post what appeared to be her real reason for opposing C-484: because if fetuses were recognized in a bill it could "bleed into people's consciousness" and make them "change their minds about abortion."
ReplyDeleteFern, is that your motive for opposing C-484 as well? You don't want people to change their minds about abortion?
Good call Jeannie and great article & writing Patricia & Jeff.
DeleteYour logic and integrity is a slippery slope Joyce.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mollymatters.org/index.php/2016/02/18/response-to-choice-joyce-arthur/