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Life sentence for killing autistic daughter

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Update on a sad case:

“Life sentence for woman who killed autistic child”

The actions of Xuan “Linda” Peng that caused the death of her daughter Scarlett were “reprehensible” said Superior Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto during the sentencing hearing.

“Scarlett was particularly vulnerable,” said Judge Benotto, who ruled that Peng must spend at least 10 years in prison before she can apply for parole after being convicted of second-degree murder this month.

I can’t help but note that if Scarlett had been killed while in the womb, nobody would have cared.

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Tanya shakes her head: I can’t help but add that this woman, who maintains her innocence, is likely already in a prison far worse than the iron bars she’ll stare through for at least 10 years. With a history of mental illness, and apparently heavily medicated during her trial, 10 years in prison will do little to “reform” her. Are we not failing to meet the needs of yet another woman in this country?

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Andrea adds: Hate to be the heavy, but a life sentence for killing your child sounds about right to me. This is precisely what Robert Latimer did, and I advocated for him to remain behind bars for the statement it makes. I am not saying I think their situations are exactly the same: I just don’t know, because I know few details about Linda Peng. But on the face of it–the punishment fits the crime.

The perfect family, the perfect country

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This U.S. bill will prove controversial, no doubt. In the understatement of the century, abortion-related bills typically are.

I have to ask whether national registries work for anything. (Recall the gun registry debacle here in Canada.) Then there’s the fact that I recently learned that offers of adoption do not, apparently, help abortion-minded women change their mind.

So any praise for this bill would be quite limited without knowing more. But one good thing it does is this: It raises consciousness that we are practicing eugenics when we kill babies because they have Downs, or cystic fibrosis. And nobody likes eugenics–which our abortion-on-demand-culture allows us to so readily and easily practice.

When we privately seek the “perfect” family, it has implications for our country. Maybe a national registry of adoptive families might go some distance to showing people that. And maybe there might be a call to help families with children with special needs. Wishful thinking? Possibly, even probably. But when bills like this are raised, people remember that the issue of selective abortions goes on around them every day. And they might just be prompted to do something about it.

And the verdict is?

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A man was jailed Thursday on charges he forced his 7-year-old daughter to kill the family cat by holding a knife in her hand and making her stab the pet.

Read the full story here.

It’s disturbing, to say the least. The man certainly deserves to be held accountable for this heinous act. But no matter what the final verdict and sentencing is on this case, I will be distraught to hear it.

Here is some old news about another father forcing his daughter to kill; this time to have an abortion.

…police found a .22-caliber rifle, duct tape and rope in the parents’ car.

Under the agreement, the couple will avoid jail time and the assault charge will be dropped once they complete counseling…

So, you see, if the sentencing on the new case is light, justice isn’t served. And if it’s heavy, the verdict is out on the value of human life.  But that message might just be loud and clear already.

Going ape

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You can accuse me of seeing abortion parallels everywhere. In all seriousness, I get Goodall’s point. However, I couldn’t help but think “Frivolous subhumans… where have I heard that before?” When abortion defenders tag human fetuses with labels of similar substance, it doesn’t cause righteous indignation. Or does it?

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Andrea adds: At first I wasn’t really sure what the issue here was. Were my pro-life spidey senses failing me? But now I see–we pull ads where they might offend chimps. But no such indignation for the unborn.

In any event, let me use this opportunity to post a very funny ad. It might be demeaning to chimps–or people–I’m not sure–but it’s been a long winter and we all need a good laugh.  

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRrMu7B1L2I&feature=related]

The fight over our young

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march14young.jpg

No, not the young you may be thinking. (After all, when we talk about young ones in these parts, we’re usually referring to the unborn.)

These statistics caught my eye again recently:

Looking specifically at teens … 72 percent call abortion morally wrong, and 32 percent believe it should be illegal in all circumstances. Among adults … 17 percent backed a total ban.”

While some dismiss this statistic, choosing to focus on the lack of life-experience a teenager possesses, I am reminded of my own pre-teen self, already well anchored into my opinion on many important issues.

There must be a few people who see it as I do on the pro-abortion side.

They [major abortion-rights groups] hope to win over young people by focusing on issues less controversial (and to many students, more pressing) than abortion, such as the rising price of birth control on college campuses.”

To the pro-abortion side I say, “College campuses are a great place to start. After all, they seem to be gagging one side of the debate; silencing the unfavorable point of view.”

When choice doesn’t involve choosing

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I have issues with “a woman’s right to choose.” Particularly when the said “right to choose” becomes the only yardstick of morality, that is, the standard against which we measure whether things are right or wrong. As we wave “the right to choose” furiously nobody seems too concerned about what the choice is about. As a result, we – that would be the royal “we” – become righteously indignant when our “right to choose” is threatened rather than when the options that substantiate that right are threatened.  

Don’t understand what I am referring to? Go and read the Ottawa Citizen’s ongoing coverage of Catholic Archbishop Terrence Prendergast’s statement that pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied communion in the Catholic Church. Today’s front page article present reactions from Catholic politicians although to what extent these politicians are “in communion with church’s teaching” is highly questionable. Regardless, reactions fall into two categories: those who recognize that the Archbishop is giving Catholic politicians a choice and those who think he is attacking choice, be it in their political careers or in women’s lives.

Members of Parliament who accuse the Archbishop of blackmail and bullying don’t realize that they do have choices. Plenty of them. They can support abortion laws – or lack thereof – on the Hill. They can also walk from their offices to the nearest abortion clinic if they want to. They can get four selective abortions if they need to. In fact, they have more choices than pro-life activists in just about any setting . To that long list of choices, Archbishop Pendergast has added one more: they can receive Catholic communion or not. What these self-proclaimed pro-choice Catholics want is not so much choice as choice without strings attached. But that can hardly be called choice, can it?

Conscience in politics

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Reactions from readers and columnists to Ottawa’s Archbishop’s stance on pro-abortion politicians are causing me to pause and reflect on the place of moral principles in a politician’s public life.

Most of all, I am trying to find a way out of saying “I want politicians to follow their conscience when in accordance with mine but not otherwise.” Because let’s be honest with ourselves here: as much as I want pro-life politicians to “vote their conscience,” I would as soon withhold that opportunity to Francine Lalonde and her ilk.

I have to come to terms, somehow, with the inescapable fact that Members of Parliament are voted into office to represent their constituents, not themselves. This is the cornerstone of our system of democratic representation and the only way we can argue, with a straight face, that we all have a hand in the legislative process. Accordingly, there are two ways in which my MP can adequately represent my conscience on Parliament Hill. The first one is for me to elect a candidate whose moral compass more or less matches mine. Failing that, it is also my MP’s duty to make an honest effort at finding out where his or her constituents’ moral views lie. And I am not talking about sending a few emails to trusted supporters.

Either way, the ability to represent one’s constituents in a morally-charged vote demands that moral issues be brought to the forefront of electoral campaigning. In these days of religious, cultural and social pluralism, I want my moral interests represented as well as my political and economic ones.

Where does that leave Catholic politicians who want to be in communion with their church’s teachings while sitting in Parliament? They should be elected as such.

Knowing exactly who and what we are voting for? There’s an idea.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

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It’s like Christmas in March. The state of Virginia voted this week to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding.

This amendment is not intended to save money,” complained an opinion piece in the Commonwealth Times. “It is a way for lawmakers to get around Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortions legal in the United States, without directly confronting the constitutionality of the decision. 

Bingo.  And we could all learn from that.

(In Canada, Planned Parenthood receives government funding too. Read about their profit margin in the States, here. They make enough money without government grants.)

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Update, March 19: No Christmas in March after all. The Senate overturned the legislature’s removal of funding for Planned Parenthood. Read about it here.

Feminists like myself

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Bill C-484 continues to stir things up on the pro-abortion front. Joyce Hancock of the Newfoundland and Labrador Feminist Coalition makes her opinion known here.

You can’t separate violence against women from violence against the fetus.

I’m with her so far. Any violent act against the fetus hurts the woman. (I wonder if she mentions that when advising women on abortion.)

If you’re going to say a person can be prosecuted for killing a fetus you’re giving the fetus the same right as a living person, and feminists like myself, would maintain that the fetus does not have (separate) rights … Rights come when you are born.

Well, a feminist like myself is aware that the upholding of all human rights ensures that our own rights are upheld. Currently in Canada, one is recognized as having rights only after leaving the mother’s womb. God forbid we should question the law!

“Of equality – As if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself – As if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.”

– Walt Whitman

A view into life in the Czech Republic

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A young mother in the Czech Republic goes for an abortion, and gets it. The doctors discover too late she is pregnant with twins and must carry the second to term. That baby is now eight years old.

She sued for medical malpractice, and received about one third of the damages she asked for.

I am reminded of Emma Beck in the UK, who killed herself after aborting her twins successfully.

She won’t get the chance to sue.

Katerina Novakova, on the other hand, has a healthy eight-year-old, two additional children, and now damages to boot.

Read about it in Czech, here (’cause don’t we all speak a little Czech? “Pivo, prosim!“) or in English, below. Thank you, reader, for this translation.

The story’s protagonists are Katerina Novakova (26) from southern Moravia, and her little daughter. It all started in December 2000, when Katerina Novakova found out that she was pregnant. She was about to sit her final examinations in high school. The child’s father was a man two years her junior. Thus, she decided to abort. Some time later, she discovered that although doctors removed the fetus, another one was left behind in the uterus. Because the risks of undergoing second abortion were too great, the young woman remained pregnant.

It was an unpleasant time Katerina Novakova was living through. She was expecting an unwanted child, her future prospects appeared dim, and above all she was afraid that the incomplete gynecological procedure might have damaged the remaining fetus. Such, at any rate, was her testimony in the civil suit she launched against her doctors promptly in 2001. She sued for 240,000 Czk (ca $12,000) for mental suffering.

The case dragged on until the end of February 2008. Eventually, the court awarded damages “for a life,” in an amount one third of what Novakova sued for, with an explanation that it was her own irresponsible behavior that brought about her pregnancy.

Paradoxes abound in this case. The child, a daughter, born in effect as a result of medical bungling, is now eight years old. For that reason, the court pressured Mrs. Novakova into abandoning her civil action, advising her to rejoice in her healthy daughter (she has two more children by now) – to no avail. The young woman stood her ground.

For journalists with conservative leanings she is thus a poster case serving to point out the wrongfulness of abortion. Her 8-year old child is a living example of how great it is when abortion does not succeed – or is forbidden, a conservative might add.

Therefore, demanding compensation for something that has ended well may seem misguided. The problem is, however, that this happy ending became possible only as a result of the malady of our legal system – its slowness in rendering verdicts. Mrs. Novakova acted quite reasonably. No one can imagine what she has endured, as a very young woman, after a bungled abortion and what kind of life she would have, if the child were born defective. From this angle, her legal action for damages is very legitimate, as well as being very private. It was the lengthy legal proceedings that transformed the dispute into a case of damages recovery for the misdeed of “preserving life” – the life of a happy eight-year old.

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