Backing the Bills

Well, that didn't take long.  If one tack doesn't work, turn to another.  This one, at least, has some intelligent legitimacy.  While the private member's bill meant to have a select committee consider changing Canada's criminal law with respect to when human life presents - currently taken to be when a foetus exits the womb to become a baby, failed, another is on its way. 

Conservative backbencher Stephen Woodsworth's bill is now history.  But Campaign Life Coalition and others that nestle in the umbrella of the sacredness of human life from the moment of conception are not entirely dissuaded to their campaign.  "This is the day after and we start moving again.  We certainly have something to build on", said the national organizer of the country's largest anti-abortion organization.

"The lesson that we've learned is that we have to be on guard, we have to protect women's rights in this country.  A third of the prime minister's cabinet voted for the motion.  I think that sends a message that we can expect to see this kind of thing again", warned NDP deputy leader Libby Davies, afire with indignant reaction, blaming the Conservative-led government for yet another secret agenda.

And here is another Conservative MP, Mark Warawa, entering a motion to ask Parliament to weigh in on the immigrant-led cultural proclivity to sex-selected abortions.  Female foetuses need not apply for registration in humanity.  It is a human-rights scandal, no doubt about it, that in certain ethnic communities deliberate attempts to eradicate female foetuses are rampant.  The Canadian Medical Association Journal cited statistics in an editorial, as reason for doctors to withhold disclosure of a baby's gender.

All political parties in Canada - Conservative, Liberal, NDP - are on record as deploring the practise.  And it is this practise of terminating pregnancies when the foetus is identified as female that the new Bill M-408 targets; sex-selection abortion.  Women's rights advocates find it very hard to agree that abortion used as a method to terminate an unwanted gender can be supported. 

The NDP, which supports the right of a woman to make that personal choice unequivocally will have a tough call on this one.