In this position paper the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada tries to respond to the calls for a fetal homicide law.
"Tries" being the operative word.
According to the ARCC, the issue is really domestic violence, and fetal homicide laws do not address these issues.
Domestic violence is certainly a concern.
But that is not the issue.
The families of the women and unborn children lost two family members.
The loss of a fetus is an injustice in and of itself. That is what the law fails to address. That is the issue that the ARCC fails to address, and does not want to address, showing once again that the pro-abortion side does not want to confront the issue of the fetus.
Fetal homicide can come about in any number of ways that do not include domestic violence. It could involve an innocent by-stander in a shoot-out, a drunk driving accident, a violent act of robbery, and so forth.
That fetal loss is separate from the loss of the life of the mother. The mother and the fetus may be one under the law, but that is a legal fiction. The mother and the fetus are not entirely one. They are two separate entities, and it time the law acknowledge this objective reality. Any obfuscation of that fact leads to a lack of logic. The Mother may live after an assault and the fetus dies; and in rare cases, the mother may die and the fetus live. We know therefore that there are two lives at stake, whatever status we wish to attribute to the fetus.
These distinctions are not concocted abstractions. They are realities. If we do not deal with realities, we cannot deal with justice.
Because if a fetus has the right not to be "murdered" in the womb by a third party, why doesn't it have the right not to be "murdered" by its own mother?
I thought the pro-choice movement had already answered that question: based on the fact that the woman is supreme, and she has to the right to do whatever she wants to her own body, regardless of the loss of life.
It says so in the ARCC pamphlet:
Abortion rights override fetal “rights,” even if the fetus is deemed a full human being with legal rights.
Or is the pro-choice movement going back on its argument?
Carolyn Egan asks:
How can we achieve justice in these cases?
In Canada, the judicial system routinely takes aggravating circumstances into account. In the case of an assault or murder of a pregnant woman, even though a third party cannot be charged separately with harm to the fetus, prosecutors may recommend more serious charges (such as first degree murder or aggravated assault), judges may impose harsher penalties, and parole boards may deny parole to convicted perpetrators.
Perhaps we want a new law that codifies such practices. Thirteen U.S. states have laws that simply apply stiffer punishments for murdering a pregnant woman, but do not make the death of the fetus a separate crime. Such a solution would avoid the controversy about giving rights to fetuses or interfering with abortion rights, and would ensure that women do not lose their rights while they are pregnant.
Is she kidding? I lose my fetus, and that's not a crime in itself? That's justice?
When you lose something that is yours through a crime, your have are entitled to have the state punish the offender. If you lose a cat, a car, your name or anything else of value, you are entitled to seeing some form of punishment.
But no one is punished for someone taking away your fetus?
How is that justice?
People may say that the pro-life movement is behind the fetal homicide law. Naturally we are. But equally, they are against justice for the loss of the fetus precisely because they are afraid of losing that sacrosanct right to abortion, and admitting any value of the fetus whatsoever, so that if a woman wants to abort at 36 or 37 weeks, she can.
That's what they're afraid of.
