A woman finds out she is pregnant. She makes the choice to be a mother. In the ensuing months she changes. Her body, her plans, her outlook, and the world as she knows it – everyone’s world around her for that matter – it all changes and it changes fast.
She is overjoyed. She is transformed. She is vulnerable. And it all started with her choice.
That’s where we say it begins in Canada – it’s a woman’s choice – right?
We say things like, “she is expecting” but in all reality there is a baby growing right there. It gets to the point that the baby inside of her can see and feel and hear. Her baby is alive and the woman quite literally feels that fact every day.
Would you ever not wish a fully rounded pregnant woman a happy mother’s day? Would you correct someone who did and say, “Oh no, that thing has to take a breath on the outside before you get a happy mother’s day out of me?”
No, she is a mother. Motherhood has begun.
So why don’t our laws reflect that reality? How can it be that women who have chosen motherhood, who are statistically more susceptible to violence, and who have more than just their own life to protect, have no more protection of law than a woman who is not pregnant? How can it be that when the child she is a mother to is harmed or killed that the ‘Canadian’ response is to treat it the same way as if it was her choice for this to happen?
Without a law that acknowledges motherhood in this capacity what exactly are we protecting?
There are people that don’t want us to see any difference between choosing motherhood and choosing an abortion. Or that any perceivable difference must be ignored for their vision of a “greater good”. Not surprisingly, the most ardent of these voices are women who have never experienced motherhood for themselves. And their message is amplified by lawmakers willing to exploit the utility of it for personal gain, rather than to invest in correcting the obvious problem.
In turn, this vision of a “greater good” that excludes motherhood is upheld as the standard in Canada.
But the truth is – there is no real reason to ignore the reality of these crimes.
To protect mothers where motherhood begins is not irreducibly complex. And those who insist otherwise are determined to miss the point regardless of the cost. It is not choice they are valuing, it is very clearly something else.
The sad truth is that these crimes against pregnant women and their unborn children are most often perpetrated by domestic partners. Who then is left to stand up for these women who chose motherhood when they are no longer here to do it themselves?
To Arianna Goberdhan, Cassandra Kaake, Olivia Talbot… Happy Mother’s day.
Happy Mother’s day to every woman that ever made the choice to be a mother – to the ones that had that choice violated only to be misrepresented by a system that doesn’t recognize the offence – and to the ones who are willing to stand up and demand that violent criminals be held accountable for the reality of their crimes against motherhood.
Protect your mother. Protect every mother. If we’re not doing that then what are we doing?
