Stephen Wordworth:
Motion 312 proposed a parliamentary study of Criminal Code subsection 223(1), Canada’s 400-year-old statutory definition of human being, which actually states that a child is not a human being until “fully proceeded, in a living state, from the body of the mother.”
This law was developed when medical knowledge about the development and nature of a child before birth was quite primitive. By the light of 21st-century medical knowledge, it is patently false.
What are the implications of a statute by which a state falsely condemns as non-human someone who is, in fact, a human being?
In 1948, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world …”
That principle is the enlightened, progressive basis for any civilized democracy. A law which falsely condemns someone as non-human — and there have been many laws in the past which shared that feature with subsection 223(1) — is a throwback to a barbarous age.
Pro-lifers should campaign politicians to answer one question:
When does human life begin?
They do not want to face that question, and they should be made to face it.
We know that human life does not begin at birth. Any woman who's been pregnant knows that. The baby who kicks her is not an inanimate object.
