The murder of a 31-year-old pregnant woman in Windsor, Ontario is leading some people to question why Canada’s laws don’t defend unborn victims of crime. Cassandra Kaake’s body was found by firefighters on Dec. 11 in a house on Benjamin Avenue in the southwestern Ontario city during a call to extinguish a fire. Kaake was seven months pregnant. The cause of her death was blood loss due to severe trauma.

In a press conference on Dec. 12, Staff Sgt. Mark Denonville from the major crime unit said it was one of “the most disturbing crime scenes” he had seen in his work as a police officer.

If found, however, the criminal would not face additional charges for causing the death of Kaake’s unborn child. “We’re bound by the Criminal Code,” said Windsor police spokesman Sgt. Matthew D’Asti to the Windsor Star. “By the definition, the child (in this case) has not yet become human, according to the Criminal Code.”

“It is to Canada’s shame that we have no such law, while in the U.S., it’s possible to treat an unborn baby as a crime victim in the courts of 38 states,” wrote Natalie Sonnen, executive director of LifeCanada, on the blog ProWomanProLife.

In 2007, Conservative MP Ken Epp introduced bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, which would have recognized the unborn child as a victim in a violent crime committed against a pregnant woman.  Abortion advocates falsely alleged that the bill was a backdoor attempt to ban abortion even though Epp added a clause specifically exempting legal abortions from the bill. It passed second reading in March 2008.

In August of that year, the Canadian Medical Association spoke out against the bill, purporting that it “constitute(d) a significant step towards subjecting those who perform abortions to criminal sanctions.” This prompted the justice minister at the time, Rob Nicholson, to announce that the Conservative government would introduce an alternate bill that would only make pregnancy an aggravating factor during sentencing.

C-484 ended up dying in committee when a federal election was called.

At the time, Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, said it was less a pro-life bill than a common-sense criminal justice measure. In the February 2014 CLC National News, the organization called for legislation protecting preborn victims of crime to be enacted.