Act Now> Unborn Victims of Crime Private Member’s Bill
Now is the time to show your support for Bill C-484. Here are some options:
1) Contact your MP, the Justice Minister, and the Prime Minister. For talking points, check out Ken Epp’s fact sheets available on his personal website here.
2) Click here for a PDF of a petition that you can use to collect signatures in support of this legislation. Simply print it off, collect at least 25 signatures, and give it to your MP or to Ken Epp, the MP who introduced this bill. Do this as soon as possible because it takes a while for the petition to get tabled in Parliament.
Your MP’s address can be found here. Ken Epps’ address is:
Ken Epp, MP
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
3) A simple way to email MP’s in support of this legislation is to use the 1 click lobbyist technology from United Mothers. This allows you to email your own MP as well as other MP’s that should be aware. It also allows you to customize your own email or use a form email that has already been written. To make us of this, click here. Remember, the most effective thing to do is to pray!
4) Also, drum up support in your community by submitting a letter to the editor. See below for a sample letter to the editor that was printed in the Lethbridge Herald on Dec 20, 2007.
Bill would protect unborn babies
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
Dec 20, 2007
Editor:
On Dec. 13, something rare happened in Parliament. Unfortunately, given all of the newspaper coverage about Mulroney and Schreiber, it is not receiving much attention. I am referring to the first hour of Parliamentary debate of a private member’s bill that proposes to make it a separate crime when an unborn child is injured or killed as a result of a crime against the mother.
This legislation is a long time coming. It is absurd there is absolutely no justice in Canada for assaults on unborn children. My wife and I are expecting our first child in the next couple of weeks. Our child is not a “potential” human. It is already a person. There is no difference in value between our child and one that is born two weeks before its due date. So why do children who are born get the full protection of the law when unborn children get absolutely no protection? Why doesn’t our justice system care if my child was assaulted and died as a result?
The pro-choice lobby will try to shut this bill down by escalating their rhetoric about “choice.” This is hypocritical because this legislation is about protecting the choice of the mother and family who want to keep their child. Furthermore, a recent Environics poll found that 75 per cent of women, and 72 per cent of Canadians in general, would support “legislation making it a separate crime to injure or kill a fetus during an attack on the mother.” Also, contrary to pro-choice claims about a right to abortion, the Supreme Court (in the Morgentaler decision) encouraged Parliament to come up with new abortion legislation. Although Parliament has tried once almost 20 years ago, since then, they have been unwilling to do this, and consequently we are one of the few countries in the world without any legislation protecting the unborn.
I applaud MP Ken Epp for introducing this bill and I encourage everybody who supports it to show their support publicly.
MARK PENNINGA
Lethbridge
