Starting Points In Fetal Rights Debate

I agree with Rob Bruinooge (and many other pro-lifers) that fetal rights debate is ongoing; that it had been "closed" only in the minds of radical pro-aborts. But when it comes to reviving the debate in the House of Commons - the starting points are obvious. One of them is - whether or not abortion should be legal right up until the moment of birth.

That was the focus of the last year's campaign by Life Canada. A poster, issued to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the ill-famous Supreme Court ruling, exposed the very same fact: 9 months - the length of time an abortion is allowed in Canada. And the question is obvious: Abortion - have we gone too far?

Let's not forget a private member bill C-338, that would have disallowed abortions after 20 weeks (which is more or less when a baby becomes "viable"). The bill didn't go anywhere beyond the first reading and Paul Steckle, a Liberal MP who introduced the bill, is now retired. But thanks to the new pro-life caucus we can expect the bill to be reintroduced; preferably - by an MP who is among the first in line for the order of precedence.

Another starting point is the Unborn Victims Of Crime Act. The bill, which wasn't meant to be about abortions until the pro-abortion lobby made it so. While the bill would only go as far as offering wanted unborn babies the kind of protection our laws offer to pets or wildlife animals, the pro-aborts got scared with section 5 of the bill, which stated that "It is not a defence to a charge under this section that the child is not a human being".

They feared that this section might effectively establish legal grounds to grant full personhood to unborn babies. Not sure why they're being so scared with that section (animals too aren't human beings, yet poaching and cruelty to animals are illegal,) but if they are - reintroducing and debating the bill would become yet another starting point for fetal rights debate.

But what if the next Parliamentary session doesn't last longer than it takes to defeat the government on a budget vote? Well, with the pathetic Bonhomme Carnival no longer the leader of the opposition, we're likely to have an election campaign. Which is a great opportunity to get the debate going. And it would be a great opportunity to get some anti-life Conservatives (primarily — Rob Nicholson, Gordon O’Connor, Lawrence Cannon, Sylvie Boucher and Josée Verner) defeated.