Blue Like You

Archive for October 4th, 2007

(Update at end of post)

Howard Hampton seems to be getting somewhat tired of jumping up and down and shouting, “Hey, I’m here too!”

Today he blew a fuse and started blaming reporters and John Tory for diverting attention from the really important issues such as the abysmal state of neglect in many Ontario nursing homes (CNews) - H/T National Newswatch:

With the election less than a week away, Hampton pleaded with voters of all stripes to elect more NDP candidates to the legislature so the Liberals don’t end up with another majority government and a “blank cheque” to run the province.

He accused Progressive Conservative John Tory of letting down the province by ignoring the real issues and allowing the controversial debate over whether to provide public funding for faith-based schools dominate the campaign.

While I agree with Hampton that MSM has been guilty of stoking the fires of this emotional Faith-Based funding debate, the last person I would blame is John Tory. He had the idea - yes.

But Dalton McGuinty knew all he had to do was keep pounding at this issue and creating a firestorm of fear, and then it would be an easy slide to victory.

The media, ever hungry for whatever sells papers, hopped on board the bandwagon without a second thought.

Even Conservative bloggers were drawn into the debate, and expressed frustration and anger. I know. I bought into it briefly as well, until I realized how I was being manipulated.

John Tory has been clearly trying to bring forward other issues, but the media seems to want to dwell on just one (Globe):

He (Tory) said he tried to talk about other things but reporters wouldn’t play along. “What am I going to say?” he argued. ” ‘I refuse to answer questions on that today?’ How long do you think that strategy would work?”

So Howard, blame the media; blame the spin-masters; blame the electorate for giving into the fear-mongering; heck you can even blame me right now.

But don’t blame John Tory for the media’s insatiable appetite for the scent of blood.

Very well said. I love that line “opportunistically exploited Tory’s proposal…by fanning the flames of anti-religious bigotry…”

Excellent. And true.

Obviously not too well for these folks - Cancer patients taking Ontario Liberal government to Supreme Court to sue for Cancer Treatment.

Memories of autism.

So, not only are we getting lousy health care, but we’ll have to fund law suits against ourselves for enabling the McGuinty government to give us another kick in the butt by voting them in again.

We here in Ontario are in serious denial!

Update - Jeff Allan is covering this issue right now! (9 a.m.)

Jeff says that the mother is #64 on the list of murders - He asks why doesn’t the unborn child even qualify as a statistic???

I might add, why are we even referring to her as a ‘mother’ if the baby doesn’t exist?

Brian Rushfeldt of Canada Family Action Coalition mentioned that had the baby who was delivered by Cesarean section drawn a single breath before passing away, then the baby would have been a person. Remember, the baby did have a faint heartbeat after the stabbing.

This is crazy.

Quick break from Ontario Election news to discuss front page article in the Post - Murder renews debate on life of fetus.

Reporter Karon Lui reminds us of the Tuesday’s tragic details:

Turan Cocelli, 29, was charged on Tuesday with killing his 25-year-old wife, Aysun Sesen, but no charges were laid in the death of the seven-month-old fetus.

Under the Criminal Code, a child is only considered a human being when it has emerged from the mother’s body alive.

Alberta Conservative MP Leon Benoit introduced a private member’s bill last year that would make it a separate criminal offence to harm a fetus when the mother is assaulted or murdered, but the bill was defeated in the House of Commons.

This is a highly-charged subject because the situation inevitably evokes the fact that there is currently no restriction of any kind on abortion in Canada. You can see from the comments in my recent post on the Sesen tragedy, that it brings out a great deal of hostility when the subject is even mentioned.

Lui tells us that:

Thirty-five U.S. states recognize the fetus as a crime victim in homicide or feticide instances.

In Canada, however, the issue from the perspective of both sides is whether a fetus can be given personhood status in homicides without touching on abortion issues.

So, I would assume that the American fetus in many states is somewhat more human than any in Canada?

“If we take the position that the fetus is a separate person at viability, then we open up all sorts of issues. All of a sudden, the woman is two separate persons,” said Martha Shaffer, an associate law professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in family and criminal law. “Her liberty and autonomy can be greatly curtailed in the interests of the fetus within her.

“If she’s doing something that somebody decides to be contrary to the fetus’s interests — which could be eating too much sugar, exercising too hard, smoking or drinking — it’s very dangerous to go down that route to say a woman is no longer a separate, independent person at a certain stage of pregnancy.

Yes, indeed. Because being able to drink and smoke during pregnancy is a right that should not be denied. It certainly trumps anything else.

“…On the other hand, viewing this pregnant woman as two separate persons is potentially more dangerous than saying he can be prosecuted with the murder of the woman here, and that will be a sufficient punishment for what he has done.”

Good grief! Does everyone buy into this? We’re not just a province of lemmings - We’re a country of lemmings!

Very selfish, self-serving lemmings.

Margaret Sommerville sums up this conundrum:

“I’d change the law, not so much that I think these cases are frequent, I’d change it because we’re being ostriches with our head in the sand, pretending that the baby doesn’t exist,” she said.

“It’s a separate question in terms of what we’ll do in protecting it, where we’ll draw the lines in terms of protection as opposed to a woman’s right to what she wants to do. Not to draw any lines, which is the case at the moment, or to draw the lines pretending we’re not dealing with a human life, warps our moral intuitions.”

There now. Get to bashing the ‘fetus-fetishists’. I’m waiting for you.