A rchive Date
[ 31-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Meet abortion's new poster boys
By MARIANNE MEED WARD
Toronto Sun
January 31, 2000
By all accounts, Jean-Guy Tremblay is a nasty piece of work. He has pretended to be, at various times, a hockey player, lawyer and musician in order to attract women. Once he does, the abuse starts: choking, punching, breaking bones, threatening to kill.
One woman testified that in three months of living with Tremblay, the longest she went without a beating was six days. A police officer in Calgary, where Tremblay now lives, said on a 1-10 scale of abusers, Tremblay is a 20.
In 10 years Tremblay has been convicted of assaulting six women, most recently last month.
Last week, the attorney general gave permission for a dangerous offender application against Tremblay. If granted, he could be jailed indefinitely.
He's Exhibit A.
Exhibit B is James Charles Kopp. He's a nasty piece of work, too. He is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and is the subject of a Canada-wide arrest warrant issued last week. Kopp is wanted for a shooting in Hamilton that shattered a man's elbow, and a shooting death in Buffalo. He's also a suspect in three other shootings, two in Canada, none fatal. A Winnipeg police officer involved in the case described Kopp as "a very dangerous individual."
Say hello to the poster boys in the abortion wars.
Tremblay, some of you will remember, is the man who convinced a Quebec judge in 1989 to grant an injunction preventing his then-fiancee, Chantale Daigle, from having an abortion. She had one anyway, but the injunction was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court in a landmark ruling that decided the fetus has no rights under Canadian law.
At the time, Daigle said she ended her seven-month relationship with Tremblay, and the resulting pregnancy, because he physically abused her.
As for Kopp, the people he is suspected of shooting are all abortion doctors.
With these two guys making headlines, it will be hard to have a sensible conversation about abortion, but such a conversation is desperately needed.
Women can abort at any time for any reason and, thanks to prenatal technology, the list has grown far beyond "I was raped," or "I'm only 13," or "Now isn't really a good time."
Wrong sex? Out it goes. Potential disability? Hey, better luck next time.
Fertility drugs working a little too well? "Reduce" the extra fetus or two.
Kid has the "gay" gene (if scientists ever identify one)? Or the recently discovered "rape" gene? Problem solved as fast as you can say D&C.
And we fancy ourselves an enlightened, compassionate and tolerant society.
It's long past time to restrict the whys and the whens of abortion. But if any government tries, you can be sure our two poster boys will be trotted out to justify leaving things as they are.
I can hear it now. "Any law that criminalizes abortion will give ammunition to vigilantes." I don't think legislation will either pacify people who want to kill abortion doctors (if we ban abortion, they'll hunt the ban-breakers) or provoke them (they don't seem to need legal justification as it is). In any case, we should not craft an abortion law - or fail to do so - to protect ourselves from such people; we would do it to protect a fetus from us.
"Any law restricting abortion will just give men, like Tremblay, another way to control women." Yes, apparently he did use pregnancy as a means to control and keep his female companions (mind you, in the history of the universe there's probably at least one woman who's done the same).
Nevertheless, to say that no fetus should have rights because their fathers might abuse those rights is to build social policy on the basis of anecdotes. It's like arguing that because some parents beat their kids no parents should be allowed to raise children. They should all be shipped off to day care (don't get me started on that).
Social policy should be built on shared values, with appropriate care taken to avoid potential abuses. Do we value human life? If we do, we need a law that says so, and never mind the poster boys.
Marianne Meed Ward, a freelance writer with an interest in social and ethical issues, appears Mondays. Her e-mail is:pward@interlog.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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