Although MP Bill Blair admits the law would have no effect on abortion, he says he won’t support Cassie and Molly’s law which would allow for additional charges in cases when pregnant women are murdered.
In a video clip from May 2nd in parliament he seems to believe that there is already a law that protects pregnant women – one that holds a killer accountable for the life of a murdered woman’s baby. He says it’s already punishable by life in prison. You can read the section he is talking about. It very clearly has no bearing for women like Cassie and baby’s like Molly.
For it to be applied in law, Molly would have to have been extracted from her mother alive, and then died. But, as was the case in Cassie and Molly’s death, most murderers of pregnant woman don’t leave that as a possibility. Maybe they understand the law better than Mr. Blair.
Was this a deliberate effort to skew facts on Mr. Blair’s part or does he simply not understand the criminal code where it concerns murdered pregnant women?
Bill Blair is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
He goes on to cite the case of Anne Grandine – a woman whose choice to have a baby was considered by the judge in the sentencing of the man convicted of killing her.
In her case, the judge apparently approved the woman’s choice and added another 5 years to the sentence of her killer.
Out of all of the cases of murdered pregnant women in Canada this was the strongest example of their pregnancy being an aggravating factor that MP Bill Blair could find. The sentence added up to a total of 15 years in jail.
But Mr. Blair failed to mention that the man convicted was actually not in prison.
He was free on bail pending an appeal. Still is.
For MP’s like Bill Blair the perception that they are protecting a woman’s right to choose is far more important than actually doing something that makes it so. Because of this – families like mine are without justice – not because of woman’s rights, as Bill Blair would have you believe, but in spite of them.
Murdering a pregnant woman is not an abortion Mr. Blair – you should not insist on treating it as such.
