VIOLENCE AGAINST PREGNANT WOMEN:

WE PROTECT ANIMALS BETTER THAN WE PROTECT UNBORN CHILDREN
by Ashley Beaudin
The Standard, St. Catharine's May 2008

As a young woman in Canada, Bill C-484 - due to go to a parliamentary committee - has demanded my attention. Bill C-484 makes it a legal offence for an unborn child to be either killed or injured during the commission of an offence against the child's pregnant mother. To a generation that will quickly emerge onto the forefront as mothers and fathers, I believe this bill is critical.

We have an opportunity to see a bill enacted that will raise the bar in both women's and children's rights. This bill can act as a strong disincentive to violence against pregnant women and attest to the health and safe delivery of every child.

This bill has been opposed in the name of giving women choice. But we find the lack of this legislation is a direct attack on a woman's power to choose. A woman is choosing to receive her baby and if she is attacked, suffers a loss of the baby she is carrying and is unable to see any legal action made, that is a degradation of her choice. Currently and legally, if an attacker kills a pregnant woman's child, no charges can be laid.

Legally, we have given more protection to animals than to an unborn human child. This blatantly says that we value the life of an animal more than a human life. Let's do the same for our children and make protection accessible to the unborn child.

I speak to every father, every mother, every young man and young woman, let's not be known as a society that failed to protect the unborn from crime. Rather, let's be known as a society that sought justice and did not give up until it was found.

Ashley Beaudin
Smithville

Copyrighted 2008