3.3 million lives lost - that is the ugly toll since May, 1969, when babies in the womb began, by act of Parliament, to lose their legal protection.

“42 years and 3.3 million lives lost” is the bold statement on a poster developed by Kelowna Right to Life to protest on behalf of those “non-persons” who, on January 28, 1988, lost all their legal protection by action of the Supreme Court of Canada that struck down the 1969 law as unconstitutional.

Non-persons? Unless anyone had any doubts, in 1997 the Supreme Court spoke again, confirming and clarifying, in the Winnipeg Child and Family Services Case: “The law of Canada does not recognize the unborn child as a legal person possessing rights.”

It was to mark and publicize the anniversary of that icy and calamitous day in January, 1988, that Kelowna Right to Life issued its poster, in which it pays tribute to other “non-persons”:

• Slaves in Virginia, 1858;
• “Indians” in the U.S.A., 1881 (when the Native Peoples of the Americas were not even given the dignity of their own names);
• Women in Britain, 1909;
• Jews in Nazi Germany, 1936.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision

Since 1988, the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the law has been misinterpreted, misconstrued and misrepresented as giving women the right to choose when and how to end their pregnancies. That is not what the Court said. The Court held that the protection of the life of the child in the womb (referred by the Court to as the fetus) was a “perfectly valid legislative objective.” Only one of the Justices wrote in support of a woman’s right to abortion, restricted to the first trimester.

The Court invited Parliament to draft a law on abortion that would meet the criteria of constitutionality. Parliament has repeatedly declined the invitation.

The original law allowed abortion only when a committee of three doctors deemed a woman’s health to be seriously at risk. The reason why the Justices struck it down was not because they held that protection of the child in the womb was unconstitutional. They struck it down because the law was not being applied consistently across provinces and territories. This inconsistency  violated Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees security of the person.

MPs ‘blinded’

All the many attempts in Parliament to develop a law that would restrict abortion to any degree have foundered on the insistence by a majority of MPs to the right of a woman to choose to have the life of the child in her womb taken away. That insistence — ‘obsession’ might be a better word — has blinded MPs to considerations even of the health and rights of women. The most recent case is the Roxanne’s Law bill, introduced by Winnipeg-South MP Rod Bruinooge, that sought to protect women against coercion to abort. It was defeated on December 15, 2010.

Earlier bills by Garry Breitkreuz, Yorkton-Melville, SK, sought to mandate that women must be advised of all her options and risks when requesting abortions. They were also rejected. (In a recent federal election, one candidate in Hamilton dismissed it as a ploy to restrict women’s rights. Another, thankfully now out of politics, actually laughed at the suggestion.)

Personhood of babies in the womb

The wording any bill has to comply with the Charter. Until children in the womb are deemed to be persons, they will not enjoy the security of the person guaranteed by the Charter.

Once a climate of opinion has been created in which most Canadians recognize the child in the womb as a person with all the rights and privileges a person deserves, pro-lifers will be able to mark a happier anniversary, one to celebrate.