Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-484. I will start by saying that, as a woman, I would have never believed that I would still be here fighting for the rights of women. It has been a fierce battle, waged by so many women before me.
The Conservatives, with this bill, are implicitly trying to achieve an objective, that is, restrict the right to abortion. I will explain.
With this bill, the Conservatives hope to add a new offence to the Criminal Code. This bill proposes that an individual who directly or indirectly, causes the death of a child during birth or at any stage of development before birth while committing or attempting to commit an offence against the mother of the child, who the person knows or ought to know is pregnant—is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of 10 years if the person means to cause the child’s death...
Basically, a person who assaults a pregnant woman and causes the death of the fetus could be charged with murder. As the member said, this bill would introduce a new offence. The text of the bill provides that the pregnant woman herself can be charged with causing the death of the fetus inside her. Clearly, the battle for women's rights is not yet won. The bill clearly states that in cases of a crime committed against an unborn child, a fetus, a person cannot use the defence that the child was not a human being.
Gestation of the unborn child begins with conception and ends with birth. Case law has confirmed that an unborn child is not a legal person. I understand that such a clause can apply at the moment of birth, when the fetus becomes a human being. It is something else entirely to grant these rights to an unborn child, a fetus, when it is not a separate entity from its mother.
The Conservatives are trying to make substantial changes to the Criminal Code's definition of a child, which is quite specific. Section 223 of the Criminal Code states that:
223.(1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not
(a) it has breathed;
(b) it has an independent circulation; or
(c) the navel string is severed.
I am sure you will agree that the government is making a surreptitious attempt to deprive women of their freedom of choice regarding abortion.
After attacking the right to abortion by questioning the medical necessity of that procedure, the government is now attacking that right by attempting to recognize the rights of the fetus. It seems that this bill was devised to set a precedent for recognizing the fetus' right to life and thereby restrict the right to abortion and perhaps even abolish it completely.
It is up to women to decide. They have their own reasons for their choices. This is a pro-life bill that is trying to hide behind the concept of the unborn child. This bill opens the door to limiting women's power to be free and to make the choices they have the right to make.
I was recently reading some surveys and responses to surveys. We learned that the Conservative member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park, who describes himself as pro-life, had said in response to a survey conducted by the Campaign Life Coalition for the 2006 federal election that he considered that human life began at conception. In 1997, he responded that if he was elected, he would work to remove abortion from the services covered by the Canada Health Act. He is not the first Conservative member to have said that. There are also rumours going around about a committee being formed here in the House with both Conservative and Liberal members.
The previous bill the Conservatives introduced was similar, but was deemed unconstitutional. A few changes have been made to it, but the objective is the same. The Conservatives' determination is an indirect threat to women's rights, and that threat is evident in the member's remarks.
He is trying to do indirectly what he would like to do directly.
No one is happy about an abortion. It is not something anyone wishes for. But women must be able to make that choice, for any number of reasons. Women are entitled to have their decision honoured. It is a difficult decision they do not take lightly. Women fought long and hard to win the right to abortion.
With this bill, the Conservatives are trying, in a roundabout way, to attack those rights by making dangerous statements or by attempting to give legal personality to the fetus. They are separating the fetus from the mother and rewriting the legal definition of the child. That is what they are trying to do with this bill.
Women have a fundamental right to interrupt a pregnancy. It is a way of exerting control over their lives and their living conditions. This bill challenges women's rights. The courts have repeatedly had to rule on the right of the fetus and the possibility of restraining the conduct of the mother in order to protect the child's right to be born. In every case, the Supreme Court has refused to invade the privacy of pregnant women and limit their right to freedom and independence.
This was the case in Tremblay v. Daigle, in which a father sought an injunction to prevent the mother from having an abortion, claiming that the fetus had a right to life. The Supreme Court once again ruled that only human beings have constitutional rights and that these rights start at the time of live birth. The Court also rejected the father's claim that he had rights over the fetus as a father. The Court determined that the father could not obtain an injunction to prevent the pregnant mother from exercising her constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.
With all due respect to the members, the consensus in society is clear and was evident during the last election campaign. The Leader of the Conservative Party himself made a commitment not to reopen the abortion debate. The measure proposed in Bill C-484 goes against that commitment. The House will obviously have to look at this issue and women will have a decision to make come election time. It is clear that the lobbies who subscribe to moral and social conservatism are hard at work in the back rooms of Ottawa. We need to be vigilant. Putting an initial restriction on abortion opens the door to a whole series of other restrictions.
With respect to the rights of the fetus, there is already a large body of case law arguing that the fetus is not a human being. I think that the mistake in this bill is to try to change the definition of a child. The law is clear on the definition of a human being.
I urge the House not to support this bill, which opens the door to the criminalization of abortion. There is a hidden objective in this bill to prevent a woman from choosing whether or not to have a child.