Friday, May 07, 2010

Retired Canadian Lawyer...Conceived in Rape

Here is the fascinating testimony of retired lawyer and blogger Dahn Batchelor:

My mother was raped in January 1933 and as a result, I was born in October of that year. I wasn’t aborted and I didn’t end up dead on a rubbish heap and my mother didn’t abandon me. Had I been disposed of as a dead infant like thousands of infants who had mothers around the world who had unwanted pregnancies, certain events in history would not have occurred. For example, it was I that proposed in a UN crime conference in 1980 that a bill of rights for young offenders be created. That bill of rights was adopted by the UN five years later and has an effect on the lives of millions of children world-wide. It was I that suggested at a crime conference in Canada that Legal Aid should have 24-hour duty counsel on call so that anyone arrested in Canada at any time of the day or night has access to free legal advice while in the police station. I am mentioning these two events to point out that all human beings have some role to play in our society and shouldn’t be killed as infants simply because they are unwanted.

It’s ironic when you think about it. Many years ago I was driving home on a motor scooter early in the morning. I was on a highway heading south towards Toronto and the moon was out so I turned off my headlight as the moon lit up the countryside. Up ahead, I saw about a mile away, a turn in the highway. I remembered that turn when I was heading northward days earlier. There was a cliff at the beginning of the turn. Suddenly I saw a bright light in my face and heard the blaring of a loud horn. I stopped my motor scooter and much to my horror, I discovered that I had driven the mile towards the cliff while I was asleep. My eyes were open while I was driving towards the cliff but I was totally unconscious as to where I was or what I was doing. It was no different than sleepwalking.

A truck driver stopped his rig and he called out and asked me if I was alright. I told him I was so he climbed back into his rig and drove away. I realized that it was his headlights that flashed before me and his horn that I heard. He obviously saw me heading towards the cliff rather than continuing on the turn. If he hadn’t been at that location at that precise moment and warned me of what I was doing, I would have driven off the cliff and been killed. If that had happened, none of what I had accomplished after that would have come about. What is ironic about this event is that the truck driver has no idea that his actions had an effect on the lives of millions of children around the world who are protected by the UN bill of rights for young offenders. Had he been aborted or killed as an unwanted baby and discarded onto a garbage heap, I would have been killed that fateful night and nothing I did after that would have occurred.

I have said it before and I will continue saying. Everyone’s life has an effect on the lives of other people. If you doubt that, then ask yourself this rhetorical question; “Would I exist today if my mother or my father were killed as an infant because they were unwanted?”

But you know, if he had died...so what? He would have been unconscious. Isn't that the way many argue...as if the morality of an action depends solely on whether or not the target knows about it?