Grading Joyce

As YMFR (you, my faithful reader) know, I'm a lifelong academic. I've taught at Cambrian College, Trinity Western University, the Univ. of British Columbia, King's University College and Regent College, as well as the odd course at other august learning institutions such as Simon Fraser University and Niagara College. I was nominated for recognition for teaching excellence at UBC. My first book won several writing awards. I think I know my business.

Once in a while I take articles written by alleged spokespeople and grade them the way I would an undergrad's paper were it submitted to me as an assignment. Regrettably, I often find these articles wanting even at a second-year (what you Americans would call sophomore) level.

It's rather dismaying to think that those to whom many people look for guidance on important issues provide such low-level leadership. Even worse, these badly-written thoughts show up in places like the Canadian Parliament where they are considered sufficiently persuasive to shape important legislation.

Today I am going to give pro-abortion advocate Joyce Arthur the old Sutherland scrutiny. I won't use a red pen (I'm told that red is seen as judgmental and punitive rather than caring and rehabilitating). I certainly won't employ dismissive language, however tempted. But for Ms Arthur's sake, I will try to provide her with the kind of critique that apparently was missing when she was scribbling away at wherever she went to school (she gives no personal information along those lines on her blog).

The article in question was published in today's edition of the National Post. It appears under the following headline:

Joyce Arthur: Bill C-484 isn't about protecting pregnant women, it's about recriminalizing abortion
Posted: March 31, 2008, 9:24 PM.

I'll highlight Ms Arthur's comments in italics, and then provide my professorial responses.

1. Suzanne Fortin engages in a distortion of facts in her article “Canadian women need a fetal homicide law” (March 10). Bill C-484, which passed second reading in Parliament before the Easter break, would create a separate offence for the death of a fetus when a pregnant woman is attacked.

Now I may be picky here (I'm often accused of such), but Arthur does not identify Suzanne Fortin. If she is important enough to rate a response, she must have some bona fides to which a quick referral would be helpful for the less informed reader.

2. When pregnant women miscarry due to a violent attack, they’ve suffered a loss and had their rights violated. That hardly needs stating, but Ms. Fortin bizarrely thinks the pro-choice movement denies it. Everyone, including pro-choice advocates, wants to protect pregnant women from violence. We simply disagree on the best way to do it.

Of course, I read Ms Fortin's article to which Ms Arthur refers. I'm not sure that Arthur has quoted Fortin accurately. Arthur seems to be saying that Fortin accuses pro-choice advocates such as herself of not wanting to protect pregnant women against violence. But what Fortin in fact wrote was:

If I were the subject of an attack in which my unborn child was hurt or killed, I would be devastated and would want the perpetrator to be brought to justice for both the injury to me and to my unborn child. When women grieve for a miscarried child, they are not grieving for a mere body part. Whether they treat the fetus as a potential life or as a full-fledged member of the family, they are not grieving the loss of themselves, but of something other than themselves. And when they are violently deprived of him, it can only be said to be a violation of their rights, separate from the actual injury that they incur.

But the abortion lobby doesn't see it that way. The most vocal opponent of Bill C-484, Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), has yet to acknowledge that losing a fetus is in itself an injustice.

Now it could be that Ms Arthur disagrees with what I have quoted from Ms Fortin's article, but she doesn't reproduce it accurately nor answer to it directly. This seems to be a case of misdirection.

3. Our justice system already allows for harsher penalties for aggravated crimes. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada supports such remedies, and we’ve also called for better measures to reduce violence against pregnant women, who are at increased risk of domestic violence. Further, we’ve advocated the use of Canada’s hate crime legislation (which has a gender clause) and even suggested passing a specific law to mandate increased penalties for attackers of pregnant women.

No serious argument with the logic here, except for the reference to hate crime legislation having a gender clause. It seems to me that murder is pretty hateful of both genders. But let that pass. I wish that she had given an example of what she means by "harsher penalties for aggravated crimes" and demonstrate that it has been used by the courts in dealing with the murder of a pregnant woman and her fetus. After all, we are dealing with a specific type of murder here. She should establish that the harsher penalties that exist on the books are seen to contemplate such murders.

4. Giving separate legal status to a fetus is an unnecessary approach that could endanger not only abortion rights, but the rights of all pregnant women. Fetal homicide laws are prevalent in the U.S., but have done nothing to reduce violence against pregnant women. Instead, they have been used to arrest and prosecute pregnant women for their behaviour, and to justify restrictions on abortion — even when such laws exclude abortion and pregnant women from criminal liability. Our fear that this bill will be used in a similar way in Canada is not unjustified.

This brief paragraph is packed with allegations without a whiff of substantiation. Consider the following:

a. Fetal homicide laws are prevalent in the U.S. - What does prevalent mean in this case? Are they worded in the same away as Ken Epp's bill? As each other?

b. ...but have done nothing to reduce violence against pregnant women - These kind of statements cannot be made without some kind of legitimate study done by competent researchers. Are there such studies (Arthur certainly did not refer to one)? Were they done in a jurisdiction with a law the same or similar to Bill C-484? If the studies in fact exist, did they show that there was no statistically significant difference as a result of the legislation?

c. They have been used to arrest and prosecute pregnant women - Examples please? Are we supposed to read what we want into these statements?

d. ...for their behaviour - What possible behaviour could be indicated here? This paragraph represents Joyce Arthur's key rebuttal of the Epp bill, and she gives us nothing of substance--in fact, nothing at all--to help us come to any conclusion.

5. Ms. Fortin repeats the word “fetus” numerous times and claims that Bill C-484 “does not in any way confer personhood or rights upon the fetus.” That is false. The bill never even uses the word fetus! Instead, “child” and “unborn child” are used to refer to even very early pregnancies, as soon as the woman suspects she might be pregnant. This is an unprecedented extension of such language in the Criminal Code and clearly, it confers personhood on the fetus. The bill makes the penalty for killing a fetus the same as for homicide, and includes it as an offence “Against the Person and Reputation” (even though that part of the code already defines fetuses as non-persons). Just by making it a separate crime to kill or injure an “unborn child,” the bill creates at least some degree of fetal personhood.

Ms Arthur is quite right that the term "child" rather than "fetus" is employed in the bill. It would easy enough to change the term to fetus, although I doubt that this would change Ms Arthur's opinion of the need for the legislation. I do note, however, this line in the bill:

It is not a defence to a charge under this section that the child is not a human being.

This line recognizes that an unborn child does not have legal personhood as a human being, but that this legal reality is something that could be used to plead innocent in the case of the willful murder of that fetus.

6. The bill’s proponents, including Ms. Fortin, are fond of citing a survey from last October that found 72% of Canadians support a bill like C-484. What they never say is that the poll was commissioned by anti-abortion group LifeCanada to measure “Canadians’ attitudes towards abortion issues.” The poll’s question on a fetal homicide law was grouped with other questions on abortion restrictions, with biased wording to elicit a positive answer.

Arthur is leading with her chin on this one. She refers to the poll done by the respected Canadian research firm Environics as employing biased wording, without actually giving us a single example. She also tries to discredit the poll not by exposing the methodology, or even the interpretation of the findings, as faulty, but by noting that she disapproves of the organization that paid for the survey. This is unfair to Environics unless she can substantiate her claims of bias.

But even worse, Arthur completely ignores a second poll, done independently by an equally respected research organization, Angus Reid, that came to the identical conclusions. Such an omission can only be deliberate and completely undermines her slagging of the first poll.

7. Ms. Fortin pulled a couple of phrases from an unrelated essay I once wrote about women and fetuses, but she ignored the context. Other quotes from the same essay contradict Ms. Fortin’s thesis that I discount the importance of a fetus to a pregnant woman: “She has full authority and rights to consider her own personal fetus to be the most important and valuable thing in the world.” “A pregnant woman wants a good outcome for her baby far more than anybody else, so all we have to do is give her the means to make it happen.” That essay argued that it’s up to the pregnant woman to decide how she views her fetus, and that it’s society’s job to support her decision — whether that means providing access to legal and safe abortion, or helping ensure a healthy pregnancy and baby.

I have no comment on these accusations. They may be true or not, but do nothing to advance Ms Arthur's argument.

8. It’s not the place of the law to decide the legal status or worth of the fetus, because that interferes with women’s privacy and freedom of conscience — and ultimately their right to life and bodily security. We need to protect pregnant women first — because when a pregnant woman is safe, so is her fetus.

This statement is simply silly. It was a legal decision, made by male legislators, that gave previously disenfranchised women the legal rights to vote, hold public office, enter into legal transactions on their own merit, and to enjoy privacy and freedom of conscience. Women were once in virtually the same legal situation as fetuses are today. To say that the same kind of legal decision-making that once liberated women could not be used to confer some kind of different status on fetuses is a strange kind of reasoning.

Sorry Joyce. I have no option but to give you a D on this assignment. That you have done a small amount of research keeps me from simply assigning an F. But I expect to see a much better job next time. I wish that were true of all your readers.