Hansard is the transcript of Parlimentary Proceedings
Mr.Garnet M.Bloomfield ( London Middlesex):
Mr.Speaker, I am speaking today in support of the private member’s bill presented by the hon. Member for Kindersley-Lyodminister (Mr.McKnight). The hon. member for Vancouver East ( Mrs.Mitchell) said that male chauvinistic views were being expounded. I would like her to know that there is one member on our side who is female and who does not really agree with that attitude, and she would like that view to be on record.
We are dealing with a very controversial and emotional subject which goes right to the root of our very being. There are several questions to which we should address ourselves. What rights does the unborn child have? Are those rights subject to any qualifications? Is the unborn child entitled to full human rights? If so, does he or she receive those rights at conception or at some subsequent point in his or her pre-natal development? Does the mother have the right, for whatever reason, to end the life that is within her?
The question of abortion is one of the most widely disputed topics in recent years. The supporters of strict abortion laws express deep concern over the abolition of the intrinsic and absolute right of life which has always been recognized as fundamental in Canadian society. Pro-life people see abortion as the destruction of innocent children. Those who are pro-abortion tend to blur the issue by citing abstract philosophical arguments about personal freedom and privacy or talk in terms or generalizations such as ” social good” or “the quality of life”.
The courts of our land can make a wrong legal, but they cannot make a wrong right. Pro-abortionists like to refer to the unborn as a fetus instead of a child, and I am convinced that they are using certain words to depersonalize the unborn baby. If we accept that there is no difference between having an abortion and the removal of a gallbladder or an appendix operation, it will affect our attitude toward the rights of those seeking abortions.
However, if we believe that this is a human-rights issue, that we are more than two-legged animals and that man was made in the image of God, formed from His hand, then for those reasons human life is very precious and not to be dealt with lightly.
I wish to quote from the declaration of the rights of a child made by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 20, 1959, as follows:
The Child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.
In our society there is no person more weak, defenseless or vulnerable that the unborn. It is the function of the law to protect innocent human life. When the mother, who should be the natural protector of her unborn child, becomes its adversary, then it is the function, the duty and the responsibility of the government to intervene to protect that innocent human life.
Governments pass such laws as seatbelt laws to preserve life, yet we stand idly by while the pro-abortionists brainwash our society into believing there is nothing wrong with artificially ending the lives of thousands and thousands of children.
First, if we believe that life begins at conception, we must accept that there is a new being entirely separate from its father and mother because it has a different chromosomal makeup. Second, at conception the unborn is alive because it has the capacity to replace its own dying cells. Third, at conception, the unborn is alive, needing only food and time to grow into an adult human. Fourth, the unborn is just as much alive and human before birth as it is after birth. It is not a different life. Fifth, the body of the unborn child belongs to the child, just as the body of the mother belongs to the mother. The mother is not aborting a part of her anatomy, as suggested by the NDP member for Vancouver East; she is aborting the result of the union of two people placed within her. Sixth, since we have not given the right to a mother to terminate her child’s life after birth, why should she have the right to terminate the child’s life before birth?
We know that the entire genetic package which determines one’s personality and physical characteristics is totally present at conception. It is just like a tape recorder, our total being programmed at that instant.
The tiny humans we once were have developed into the adults we now are; but we were there totally at conception. All we needed to become the adults we are now was nutrition, oxygen and time. A being who has never before existed in the history of time, a being not at the end of the line but at the dawn, a being completely intact and containing within himself or herself the totality of everything that being will ever be, a being moving forward in an orderly process of growth, a being destined to live within the mother for about nine months and for as many as 90 or more years without: this living being is dependent upon his or her mother for shelter and food but in all other respects is a totally new, different, unique and independent creation.
Some people say that by granting an abortion, in many cases we are preventing the creation of candidates for our relief roles, our prison population and our growing list of unwanted and battered children. I am sure we would all agree that every child should be wanted. A world with wanted children only would be a very ideal place in which to live. On the other hand, it would also be a wonderful world if there were no wives unwanted by husbands, no aging parents unwanted by their children and no unwanted Jews, black people, white people, protestants or Catholics. The truth of the matter is that we must remember that people have feet of clay and the unwanted will always be with us.
To use being wanted by someone as a measure of whether a human life is allowed to live suggests the frightening concept that the unwanted can be eliminated. Abortion is not just another method of birth control. Contraception prevents the creation of new life: abortion destroys life after it has begun. The question of contraception is a personal decision for a couple to make. Abortion, on the other hand, involves society’s responsibility to safeguard the life of another person. A women has both the right and the ability to determine whether she will not conceive. Once she has become pregnant, however, it is no longer a question of her body alone. The life of another human individual is present, on who is distinct and separate from the mother. If we accept that the unborn child is human, it is obvious that the issue is not the right of the mother to control her body but whether she has the right to end the life of another human being who shares her body.
I am sure I could go on citing figures and statistics to support my presentation with regard to the almost 6,000 per cent increase in abortions during the last ten years. I believe the crux of the matter is whether we as a parliamentarians wish to do something about the problem of whether we should turn our heads, ignore the situation and hope it goes away.
It will not go away, and it will haunt our society in the years to some. No country can allow such flagrant disregard for human life and not pay a heavy price.
Mr.David Kilgour ( Edmonton- Strathcona):
Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. Department of Justice counsel in the Regina abortion case has taken the position on national television that the new Chart of Rights gives no rights whatsoever to the unborn child. Will the Minister tell the House if he agrees and if that was his instruction? Does he agree that an unborn child, until the time it comes out of the mother, has no more rights, than, for example, a blade of grass?
Hon.Mark MacGuigan ( Minister of Justice):
Madam Speaker, the counsel in the case in Regina to which my hon. Fiend refers is taking the position that the law becomes relevant at the time of birth, and the evidence as to the state of life before that time is not relevant to the particular issue which is on trial in that case. This is based on a great deal of precedent and it is, of course, for the court to weigh that case My Hon. Friend may wish to weigh it, but right now it is being argued before a court. I would not want to pronounce on it and I do not believe my hon. friend should be pronouncing on it while it is under consideration.
Mr. Stanley Hudecki ( parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):
Madam Speaker, it is a continuing concern to me as a pro-life physician that the most vulnerable and voiceless in our society, the unborn child, is not given the fullest constitutional protection. The only protection afforded is the Criminal Code, Section 251, which makes abortion an indictable offence if not carried out in an accredited hospital, by qualified physicians, with consultation by three doctors, and only where the health or the life of the mother is at risk by continuing the pregnancy.
Even this protection is compromised by the interpretation attached to the word “health” of the mother. Should the definition of health be a medical or a legal one? Parliament did not define the word health. The definition commonly used is the very broad one given by the World Health Organization, namely, “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Therapeutic abortion committees were never legally empowered to use this extremely wide definition or similar concepts of health, in interpreting Section 251 of the Criminal Code. A narrower concept of “health” is more appropriate. The law should only accept abortions as a medically indicated treatment when a majority of the members of a therapeutic abortion committee are of the personal, informed, and the independent medical pinion that the life or physical of mental health of the mother is, or is likely to be, seriously and directly endangered by the continuation of the pregnancy itself. Furthermore, the committees should be held legally accountable for their decisions.
