The Conservatives have outflanked Liberal attempts to portray them as the anti-abortion party, showing how partisanism stands in the way of reasonable attempts to legislate on anything that conjures up the "A-word."
On Monday, Rob Nicholson, the Minister of Justice, pre-empted a private member's bill from Ken Epp of Edmonton-Sherwood Park, which passed second reading in March, with the help of 25 Liberal MPs; four Conservatives had voted against.
Mr. Epp's bill would make it a crime to injure or kill a fetus in the course of an attack on a pregnant woman, if the assailant knows she is pregnant. The bill makes clear that it would not criminalize abortion.
Mr. Nicholson has trumped Mr. Epp, with a not yet published bill, for the fall session of a Parliament now likely to be dissolved. His idea is, however, already found in the private member's bill of a Liberal, Brent St. Denis of Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing, which would add an offender's knowledge of a victim's pregnancy to a list of factors to be considered on sentencing.
Thanks to the Criminal Code, only Parliament can criminalize conduct. Judges cannot declare crimes, by reasoning or analogizing from this or that legal principle.
That is why Mr. Epp's bill was no danger to freedom of choice. It would have been a shield for unborn, wanted children; it would not have been a sword to threaten women who choose to terminate pregnancies, or their physicians. It should have been fully considered on its own merits.
The leaders of the Conservatives and the Liberals have coalesced to make that impossible.
