Does this make any sense? Are the rights of women eroded through government cutbacks? Do regular non-political Canadian women know what Status of Women Canada actually does? And on the “schizophrenia” of Bill C-484… well, have a read. It’s a very, um, interesting take on it.

Mrs. Carole Lavallée (Saint-Bruno-Saint-Hubert, BQ):
…In the days following International Women’s Day, I must say that it worries me deeply to sit in this Parliament under a Conservative government. I was elected almost four years ago and I have never had to make so many speeches to promote the status of women. This is unusual. I feel like the rug is being pulled out from under us.

It seems to me that this Conservative government is attacking the promotion of the status of women. Some attacks are obvious. The most obvious, of course, are the cuts made to Status of Women Canada, so that the organization would stop promoting the status of women. There have been many other attacks. The most recent is Bill C-484, introduced by a Conservative member, a legislative measure that greatly concerns me. The bill has to do with unborn victims of crime. Under the pretense of protecting fetuses and protecting women, it would give a legal status to the fetus. This could mean sending women to prison for having an abortion. It would turn back the clock on women’s rights by decades.

I am surprised that, as I speak here today in 2008, I am forced to defend women’s equality, to defend women’s bodies and to tell men they must stop trying to legislate on women’s bodies. They cannot simultaneously be a legal entity and have another legal entity inside them. That is schizophrenia. I say this jokingly, but I am really very worried.

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Brigitte adds: Yeah, and women cannot simultaneously be a human being and have another human being inside them. That is schizophrenia… (If that‘s what the opposition manages to come up with, I say we’re winning.)

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Tanya points out the obvious: Bill C-484 states: “For greater certainty, this section does not apply in respect of conduct relating to the lawful termination of the pregnancy of the mother of the child to which the mother has consented.”

Carole Lavallée says: “This could mean sending women to prison for having an abortion.”

She may be on to something with this “schizophrenia” concept… there’s definitely some paranoia going on. Elevating the rights of fetuses to a little lower than those of a house-cat has the pro-abortion side “really very worried”? In her place, I’d be more worried about how out of touch with Canadian women I am, since 74% of them are in favour of the bill.

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Véronique adds: You can go to prison for hurting a house cat. I’m just saying this to preempt comments about Tanya’s comment.  http://cfhs.ca/news/humane_societies_applaud_criminal_code_changes/Anyway… I have a dear friend who suffers from schizophrenia. We go back many years — before she was diagnosed — and she is one of the most courageous person I know. All this to say that for vocabulary’s sake, there is nothing “legal” about whatever lives in my friend’s head. I’m not even sure it’s an entity.And at the risk of sounding like a lawyer, I am a legal entity who lives in a legal entity. That would be my house. Seriously. I’ll spare your intelligence and stop here rather than explain how many legal entities we technically live in. As I’m writing this, I am humming “the head bone’s connected to the, neck bone. The neck bone’s connected to the backbone …”

Otherwise how could they come up with these poll results on Bill C-484?

Furthermore, more women support the legislation than men.  

Women (74%) are slightly more in favour of the proposed legislation than men (66%). Female respondents (19%) are also less likely than male respondents (29%) to perceive the Unborn Victims of Crime Act as an attempt to recriminalize abortion in Canada

Interesting.

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Tanya adds: Boy-oh-boy, that 19 per cent sure is making alot of noise. In public forums, you can barely get two words out about Bill C-484 without someone calling it a “foothold in the door” for anti-abortionists, or a “very dangerous precedent.”

Apparently, the only way pro-abortionists feel safe is if fetuses are accorded less rights than cattle.

Vicki Saporta and the National Abortion Federation will not support Bill C-484. That’s the unborn victims of violence bill before Parliament right now. How could they? They point out in the release that the bill’s sponsor, Ken Epp is a known public enemy, er sorry, “a known opponent of legal abortion.” For the National Abortion Federation, it’s all sweetness and decency, hands across the water and teaching the world to sing: Until a pro-lifer enters the room.

Their reasoning? The bill will apparently conflict with “well-established Canadian laws.”

NAF fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term. Because this bill does nothing to protect women and because its possible consequences include casting doubt over well-established Canadian law, NAF opposes C-484.

That’s funny, because Parliament deemed the bill votable. And then there’s the fact that Canada has no abortion law. So where might the conflict be?

On the plus side, NAF will not be mandating death–they felt it necessary to state their support for a woman’s right to keep her baby in the same press release.

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Brigitte adds: I always like to ask people why they say the things they say. Here I would like to know why the NAF insists that they “fully supports a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term.” I’m glad they do, and I don’t mean to question their motives (well, you know, not unduly), but I wonder why they felt the need to add this sentence.  It’s like this other bit I noticed a while back, from Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, who suggested that:

… a more appropriate way of dealing with such a serious crime is for the courts to impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant.

Why do people who insist the fetus has no rights because it is not a person also insist that a crime against a woman who is carrying one of those non-person things in her body should be punished more severely than a crime against a woman who’s not carrying a non-person fetus thing in her body?