Contradictions abound

Today, October 17, is Persons Day in Canada. It marks the anniversary of the 1929 British Privy Council decision that declared that women were included in the word "persons" as used in the British North America Act and could therefore be appointed to the Canadian Senate. The decision was made in Britain because the Supreme Court of Canada had earlier ruled that "persons" did not include women.

It seems odd that an entire class of human beings - women - could be excluded from the word persons. It did not mean that women weren't persons, only that the legal definition, as it applied to Senate appointments, excluded them.

Today in Canada we have an equally ludicrous legal contradiction but one with far more dangerous and unjust consequences. I refer of course to the exclusion of unborn babies from the legal definition of "person."

I use the term "unborn babies" and not the term "fetus" so loved by the media, because it is the term almost always used by pregnant people, their friends, their doctors and their families. Couples talk about their "baby's" due date. Stores advertise "Baby Week" specials. Women say their "baby" is kicking or moving. And so on.

And yet, in Canada, our courts do not recognize the humanity, the personhood, of these unborn babies. This semantic, legalistic ruse leads to glaring contradictions in our public attitudes and I can only assume. confusion for many, especially young people, about what we really believe about the value of all human life.

The past few months have been rife with contradictory examples.

Katrina Effert of Westaskiwin was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years for the second-degree murder of her newborn child. The public was horrified.
An Edmonton man was charged with the murder of his pregnant wife, the third such incident in a year in the Edmonton area. People were outraged.
A bill that would allow police to charge with murder persons who kill an unborn baby in the course of inflicting violence on the mom drew criticism and was prevented from being voted on in the House of Commons. The story was ignored.
Alberta taxpayers picked up the tab for over 10,000 abortions during this past 12 months and across Canada over 105,000 babies were killed through abortion most of them paid for using tax dollars. We call this health care.

In the first case, Katrina Effert got pregnant when she was 18 and unmarried. According to testimony her boyfriend was unhappy about the news and dumped her. She hid the pregnancy from her family and when she gave birth in the basement of her dad's house, she strangled the baby with her thong panties, wrapped him in blankets and tossed him into the neighbour's yard where his body was found four days later. She initially denied that the baby was hers and then several days later told her dad that the baby "might" be hers. The Crown prosecutor refused to accept a charge of infanticide, which draws a lesser sentence, and proceeded with the murder charge. The jury of eight women and four men found her guilty and she was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for ten years.

Scarcely a week earlier, John Both was charged with the murder of his pregnant wife, Nyibul Chuol, 27. She was three months pregnant. Her body was found in a ditch, stabbed repeatedly. Last year in Edmonton, two other pregnant women were murdered. Liana White was five months pregnant when she disappeared. Her husband has been charged with her murder. Olivia Talbot was shot when she was six months pregnant last November. A childhood friend has been arrested.

This string of murders prompted Alberta MP Leon Benoit to introduce a Private Member's Bill last May that would have allowed police to lay murder charges against anyone who kills an unborn baby in the course of a violent attack on a pregnant woman. When Mr. White was arrested for the murder of his wife, an Edmonton police spokesman commented that it was unfortunate he could not be charged with two murders but, he noted, that was not allowed under Canadian laws.

Mr. Benoit's bill would not have meant that women having abortions, or for that matter, doctors performing them, would be charged with murder. The bill was very clearly intended to protect women who wanted to be pregnant, and their unborn children. That did not stop the Conservative Justice Minister Vic Toews from informing the committee examining the bill that it was unconstitutional. The committee decided the bill was unvotable and it did not proceed for debate in the House of Commons. That pleased the tiny minority of radical pro-abortion Canadians who said the bill would threaten abortion rights in Canada.

The threat was real, sort of. If Mr. Benoit's bill had passed (a most unlikely event), the contradiction between wanted and unwanted babies becomes ever more ludicrous. Ms. X wants to have her baby and we afford it legal protection. We treat him or her as a "person" under the law. Ms. Y does not want her fetus and we pay a doctor to kill it At least under the current legal definitions, they are all fetuses and can be killed with impunity until birth.

When Katrina Effert's sentence was handed down, an Edmonton TV crew came to my office to ask what I thought about her situation. I pointed out the window to the Morgentaler Clinic. "I work across the street from a place where taxpayers' pay them to kill about 5,000 babies a year. Katrina Effert did the same thing a few weeks later, (without benefit of a doctor, mind you) and she gets a life sentence. Does this make any sense?"

Of course it doesn't. We have spent many years in Canada telling our children that a fetus is not a person, that abortion is health care, that you can take this life and solve your problem.

It seems somehow unfair that Katrina Effert may have absorbed part of that lesson but missed the part about it's only a human being when it proceeds fully from the body of the woman.

Happy Persons Day to those of us who are lucky enough to fit the current definition.