Unborn Victims of Crime Act passes a second vote
March 7, 2008
It’s hardly enough, but any law which recognizes that the unborn are living, human beings worthy of some manner of protection from harm is a good thing. And with the Liberals paralyzed for fear of triggering an election, and the NDP and Bloc Quebecois to weakened at the moment to present serious opposition to the bill, now is the perfect time for the Conservative government to be passing it.
A controversial federal justice bill that would make it a separate crime if a fetus dies when its mother is attacked passed through the second stage of proceedings in Parliament on Wednesday.
But MPs opposed to the bill — who say it’s a back-door attempt to attack abortion rights — say they will try to make sure the bill never makes it out of committee.
“I think the NDP, the Bloc and about half the Liberals will mobilize at committee stage to try and nip this in the bud,” said New Democrat MP Pat Martin.
The Unborn Victims of Crime Act passed second reading Wednesday evening by seven votes, splitting support among the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP.
Martin and other critics — including pro-choice groups — fear that, by giving the fetus a right through this legislation, it opens the door for anti-abortion groups to go back to court and argue against abortion.
I like how the newspaper reporter didn’t bother to seek out the opinion of pro-life groups or supporters of the bill, preferring to stay safely on the pro-choice side of the issue and only quoting those who oppose the bill. Media bias aside, though, there’s good news here.
It’s beyond all reasonable debate that the fetus is human, and that it is alive, and that it is a unique being set apart from either of its parents; it is, genetically speaking, different from both the mother and the father. Observations of that nature tend to do away with most of the pro-abortion arguments one tends to encounter, including the notion that the only issue is a woman’s right to “control her own body” (because it’s not just her body, is it?).
Indeed, the only recourse that the pro-abortion lobby has, in the face of the facts, is to argue that the unborn are not “persons” under the law, and to oppose any and all attempts to grant them some or all of the rights enjoyed by those who, under the law, are considered “persons.” If that sort of reasoning sounds familiar, it ought to — notions of personhood have been used to justify the bigotry and murderous excesses of many a dictator, and even a few racist groups, throughout history. Marching in lockstep with the notion of personhood is the notion of “wantedness,” and the suggestion that it is legal and morally acceptable to kill those unborn children which are not “wanted” by the mother. Apparently, though, that reasoning is only valid up until the moment of the child being born — if the mother should decide a couple of years later that she no longer “wants” the child, she’s out of luck.
Not that one could ever accuse the pro-choice side of having the most consistent arguments, logically speaking.
And yet, the plain fact of the matter is that if someone does kill a pregnant woman, two lives are ended; if a pregnant woman is attacked and loses her baby, a human being has still died. Any reasonable person ought to be able to see that in that circumstance, a punishable offence has occurred, and that Canadian law should include provisions to prosecute those who commit such crimes. If nothing else, this bill — Bill C-484 is its technical name — is a breath of fresh air and fresh thinking from a government that, two years on, continues to impress.
And it should pass, not only because it will throw pro-choicers everywhere into hysterics, but because it reflects a biological reality.
Bill C-10 hypocrisy
March 6, 2008
It would appear that the Conservative Party’s current proposed text of Bill C-10, alterations to tax law that would also see the guidelines for which Canadian productions will or will not be granted federal funding, is in fact almost exactly the same as a proposed amendment to the same act put forth by the Liberal Party in 2003.
Strangely, there were no warnings of “chill winds” back then, and no fears of “censorship.” But I guess that was when the Liberals were in power, wasn’t it? Now that et. al. are in power, the very same words have a vastly different meaning, and I expect we’re only a few more steps away from becoming a theocracy.
Pffft…yeah, right. Progressives are such a twitchy lot, aren’t they?
Dion is all talk and no game
February 27, 2008
After threatening to force an election over the federal budget, Stephane Dion’s Liberal Party decided today that the Opposition would not actually try and defeat the government on the issue.
See, the problem with making threats is…well, really, one should never really make threats. If one is going to imply that a certain action will have a certain consequence, one had better be ready to administer the consequence specified if the action is taken; to do otherwise, to back down in the heat of the moment, is nothing short of a failure, and communicates both a lack of resolve and an inability to stick to one’s professed principles.
The Liberal Party doesn’t want an election right now; I get that. It makes sense, given that the Liberals are currently polling somewhere in the vicinity of 10% less than the Conservatives in terms of national approval at present. But if that is in fact the case, the last thing that will work to the Liberal Party’s advantage is meaningless bluster by its leader. People will look at the Liberal threat to force an election, and then will look at the way that the Liberals backed down from the threat when the budget was tabled, and will see a party with a lack of resolve and poor commitment to its principles. And all the talk about this budget being a “watered down Liberal budget” does little to deflect that image — it’s like the scrawny kid calling out “yeah, you’d better be afraid!” to the bully whilst standing in the shadow of the teacher that has just shown up on the scene.
It must be a Wednesday
February 20, 2008
I’m dead tired this morning, so this will kind of just be a list of things that I noticed on my morning browse through a few parts of the internet. Regular posting will resume tomorrow, ideally.
Apparently, the Milky Way is twice as thick as was previously thought — 12,000 light years, instead of 6,000. That’s kind of interesting, admittedly, although also rather “ho hum” — given the massive distances we’re talking about here, what’s a factor of two? Apparently, the researchers at the University of Sydney were just doing some basic fact-checking on internet-available data and realized the error after a few hours of computation. Guess it just goes to show: science is never 100%.
Moving on to more terrestrial matters, it appears that Danish “youths” — “mainly with immigrant backgrounds” — are burning things again, mainly cars, but also schools and trash bins. Officially, it’s not clear what caused the riots to trigger. Personally, I’m thinking that this is another case where we can strike out the words “immigrant youths” and replace them with “Muslims.” Probable cause? Here’s one guess:
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(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: RightGirl)
Speaking of Terrorism (since really, what else can we call it when Muslims are rioting and burning things?), the possibility is emerging that those undersea cables that got cut, thereby denying Internet access to millions of users across the Middle East and Africa, may have been destroyed in an act of sabotage, not in an accident as previously thought.
I hope nobody is too surprised by that.
In a follow-up to yesterday’s post about demographic winter, I see that Vox Day has added his own thoughts on the phenomenon to the virtual din.
You can’t completely grasp the extent of Europe’s post-Christian decline until you walk through the ghost towns of Italy, populated by no more a dozen elderly women and one old man sleeping in the sun. It’s not something that any tourist is going to see in Florence, Venice or Rome, much less Milano, but go outside the tourist tombs and the desolation of demographic winter is impossible to miss. And the imported African hookers scattered along the truck routes in the countryside are hardly adequate compensation for what were once famously vibrant family units.
There’s a large and spectacular church on the outskirts of a town near which we like to wander. Its doors are only unlocked for an hour or so every month, because despite its gorgeous interior architecture and painted ceilings, there’s not only no one around to attend it, there’s not even anyone left to visit it.
There is no cause of the demographic decline that is now afflicting much of the West that has done more to exacerbate the problem than secular progressivism and related ideologies. Put plainly, the societies we have built for ourselves (and, indeed, most human societies in general) are predicated on the expectation of a populace that maintains an almost “Catholic” birthrate — an average of 2 to 3 kids per woman. Our present fad of 0 to 1 kids per woman, and then usually one “designer” baby at age 35 (I shamelessly crib Mark Steyn’s phrasing here) is, quite frankly, insufficient to sustain Western society. To keep up our end, we need immigration.
That will, I think, be our untimely end.
Should Canada require its immigrants to “earn” their citizenship?
In the past, simply having lived in Britain for a sufficient length of time was enough to qualify a person for citizenship there. Now, a move is afoot to have immigrants “move on” through a system that encourages citizenship by encouraging the adoption of national traditions and values (possibly at the expense of the traditions and values those immigrants have brought with them from the “old country”), at the end of which they may achieve citizenship…or may be asked to leave, if in fact they do not integrate satisfactorily.
Methinks we need something like that in Canada.
According to the Associated Press, pro-lifers and other ‘domestic’ extremists account for “most of the damage” from terror-type attacks committed on American soil, to a larger degree than even Islamic terror.
As a pro-lifer, I’m pretty accustomed to having all manner of lies told about me and my beliefs — it comes with the territory. But the above assertion is pretty egregious, if somewhat easily refuted. Just for context, Muslim terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people in one day back in 2001, and destroyed two of the tallest skyscrapers in America in the process. Since 1973 (the year of Roe vs. Wade), misguided pro-lifers have killed just seven people in the U.S.
But clearly, those pro-lifers account for “most of the damage” done in acts of terror on American soil. The newsman says so!
Ezra Levant remarks that since it’s clear that Stephen Harper is gunning for an election, the Conservative government might as well try passing a few different pieces of increasingly more ambitious legislation, all via confidence motions, until Stephane Dion finally slips up and stops trying to avoid bringing the government down.
Gun control, the Wheat Board, tax cuts — and how about a gentle amendment to Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act?
The irony is that last bill wouldn’t be controversial at all. Other than a lone Liberal lobbyist who hasn’t been in the party’s good graces for four years, and a fringe ethno-political special interest group, I don’t think anyone in the country would even consider such an amendment controversial.
As they say in the funnies…”it’s just crazy enough to work!”
And speaking of pro-life issues, the ladies of ProWomanProLife are suggesting contacting the Governor General directly to let her know that Henry Morgentaler does not deserve the Order of Canada. Fully 85% of online respondents to the Globe & Mail’s poll on the issue said “no,” and while that can hardly be called a truly “representative” number, I think it does indicate rather clearly that a majority of Canadians think that giving Morgentaler this sort of official recognition is a very bad thing.
The PWPL ladies also provide the names of the various people who sit on the “independent” advisory council that considers nominations for the Order of Canada.
Update: Suzanne Fortin sends in the following additional information by email. Here’s the process one can follow to contact the Governor General’s office:
It’s easy.
First call the Governor-General’s Office. Phone numbers:
Ottawa: 613-993-8200
Rest of Canada: 1-800-465-6890
You will get a receptionist.Ask to speak to Madeleine Proulx (pronounced “Prew”). She deals with the Order of Canada. When I phoned today, I got a voicemail and I have been told by another pro-life caller that calls about Henry Morgentaler are being re-directed to her voicemail. State your name. Tell her that you want to register your objection to Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada. State the reason why. Please try to be neutral in your tone– calling him a bloodthirsty murderer probably won’t gain us a lot of credibility. I stated that he’s a symbol of inequality as he is the reason that unborn children have no legal status today and that I believe in the equality of all human beings, and that he fought this struggle in my name as a woman, and I resent that.
And that was it.
If you’re a pro-lifer, O Reader, or even if you aren’t but nevertheless think that Henry Morgentaler doesn’t deserve the Order of Canada, I encourage you to follow the steps above. Be civil and be articulate, and choose your words carefully. Calling him a murderer with blood on his hands might seem like a reasonable objection to raise, but it’s also a very good way to ensure that your phone message gets ignored. Present your case fairly and without appeal to emotion or horror, and it will be listened to.
The Liberals walk out on a confidence vote
February 13, 2008
The government motion was intended to force the Senate to vote on the omnibus crime bill. The motion easily passed, 172 to 27, after the Liberals basically walked out on the proceedings.
The government had previously stated that this vote would be considered a confidence motion.
Which, I think, is interesting. Okay, obviously, Harper and co. were doing a bit of political grandstanding, but I’m wondering why the heck the Liberals walked out. At best, it makes them look soft on crime by choosing not to vote for or against this motion, which pertained (again) to the passage of new, and tougher, crime legislation. At worst, it makes them look afraid — afraid, that is, to face the possibility of an election. That’s measurably worse than being soft on crime; politically, that’s blood in the water.
Kathy Shaidle wonders what the heck Harper is thinking
February 13, 2008
After all, even Liberals have begun to understand what a threat to Canada the HRCs are. Why is Harper’s government being so tight-lipped about same?
The Conservative government waffles on Section 13 reform
February 12, 2008
At least, that’s what the list of talking points they’ve been circulating would suggest. They remain firm in their commitment to overhaul Section 67 — that’s the part of the Canadian Human Rights Act that excludes Natives — but seem to be answering inquiries about Section 13 with dodges and some kind of pablum about how the government supports human rights.
All well and good, but what about the human right called freedom of expression?
The Reader might do well to contact the Prime Minister directly and ask him what the heck is going on. Politely, of course.
(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Mark Steyn)