Bill C-225 – 365 Days Later

One year ago this morning, a Bill was introduced in the Parliament of Canada that would hold a criminal accountable for the act of destroying the life of a baby when a violent crime was committed against a woman who was pregnant. The Bill was named “Cassie and Molly’s Law”.

In spite of being crafted in such a way to be unrelated to abortion, the correlation of the subject matter was enough for those opposed to infer that such a law would result in the causation of the option to abort to become illegal, essentially pitting the value of one option of choice against the other.

This Bill was ultimately voted down by the Liberal majority government. They denied that choosing to carry a child safely to term is a choice that holds any considerable difference to women and families than the choosing of an abortion, and that it is not deserved of equitable protection in criminal law.

While the mainstream media contorted the debate to fit it into conventionally held notions of abortion politics, a division of a different kind was revealed. It was the distinction between the literally “pro-choice” vs. mono-option “pro-abortionist”.

The prior would argue for the inclusivity of protection from crimes upon a woman’s choice to keep her pregnancy, and the latter argued for the exclusivity of only the option of abortion to be protected. And because the latter outnumbered the prior, the choice of a woman to become a mother would continue to go unprotected by criminal law from violent crimes.

But what was trampled in the commotion of it all were the rights of the victims of crime. Murdered women are no longer here to defend their choice and the majority of government opted not to do it for them. Such is the tradition of the Canadian politics to inadvertently put the criminal first, and ignore the victims.

And as the confusion of partisan bickering subsided, the ones who kill unborn babies during crimes against pregnant women had again been allowed to sneak away from any accountability for the the crimes against kids like Molly, and the rights of women like Cassie.

365 days later, and it has been undeniably proven that “the value of a fetus” is not something determined by the woman who carries it. Not in Canada. It simply has no value regardless of her choice – and so continues the victimization of those impacted by such horrible circumstance.