Like It or Not, Unborn Victims Of Crime Are Victims

Mary Talbot offers even more reason to support Bill C-484

If one were to believe the pro-abortion lobby, Bill C-484 is simply a "back-door" attempt to re-criminalize abortion.

They've gone to protracted lengths to try and argue this, including arguing that, because an unborn child (or fetus, as they prefer) is not legally a person, it cannot be considered a victim. Yet, they seem to ignore the fact that, in the course of a crime, a fetus an be targeted quite deliberately.

Take, for example, the case of Olivia Talbot, an Edmonton-area woman who was murdered by a friend of hers who not only murdered her, but also deliberately targeted Lane Talbot Jr, her already-named-yet-unborn child, "to get the baby," as he testified at his trial.

Yet, despite the fact that one of the intended targets of the murder was the unborn child, the pro-abortion lobby wants to insist that it can't possibly be the victim.

Mary Talbot, Olivia's mother and Lane's grandmother, knows differently -- and she wants to help the criminal justice system recognize that victimizations of the unborn should be addressed. "[Ken Epp] is an MP who is doing something to fight criminal violence, to help protect women and babies, to change the law so that no other grandmother in the future has to go through the grief and insult of being told that the murder of her grandson - that the murder of my darling Olivia's beloved baby, Lane Jr. -- doesn't even register a blip in our criminal justice system."

Mary Talbot isn't alone, either. Consider the case of Gary Bourgeois, a 46-year-old man who slipped his girlfriend a toxic drug through her vagina.

She miscarried her child.

Bourgeois admitted in court that the woman was never his target. His crime was directed at his girlfriend's unborn child. "Many men face an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, and the message must be clear that they can't take into their hands the destiny of their girlfriends or their babies," said prosecutor Anne Gauvin.

While Gauvin argued that the sentence fit the crime -- many would disagree -- the Bourgeois case, in particular, was a case in which the offender may have known he was going to go to jail, but knew that he wouldn't go to jail for murder.

If it had, he may have considered his premeditated act.

Bourgeois murdered his unborn child. But he was merely charged with aggravated assault and administering a toxic substance and sentenced to a grand total of one year in prison.

The punishment does not fit the crime. While the law may not permit this charge to be laid, the crime was murder.

The pro-abortion lobby argues that the proper way to address situations like this would be to toughen penalties for domestic assault. But if individuals like Bourgeois had to worry about facing charges related to crimes against two victims, the deterrent would be that much stronger.

What, after all, would make a stronger deterrent: a few extra years in jail for crimes against a single victim? Or (providing that consecutive sentencing is instituted) 26 years for crimes against two victims?

This isn't rocket surgery.

Preventing an assault against an unborn child would, by definition, also deter crimes from being perpetrated against the mother.

So for the pro-abortion lobby to argue that Bill C-484 provides no protection to women is nothing more or less than a pure logical fallacy. This is another one of their arguments, and yet another one that they can't support with any evidence.

"It’s bad enough that people would attack a woman, or anybody, but a pregnant woman? They’re so vulnerable," Mary Talbot said. "If it’s known out there that this is even worse, then maybe people will stop and think before they do such stupid, insane things."

So long as it prevents the murder of even a single unborn child, Bill C-484 will have been a success.

As for the pro-abortion lobby? Let them keep forgetting who the victims of these crimes are. 72% of Canadians know better.