Members of Parliament, Maurice Vellacott, Leon Benoit, and Wladyslaw Lizon released a letter they had sent to the RCMP commissioner asking him to launch a national investigation into the deaths of 491 babies who had been born alive and left to die after botched abortions. The media completely misreported the story and suggested the MP’s were trying to re-open the abortion debate. Here follows a press release issued this morning by MP Vellacott whereby he corrects this erroneous reporting.
OTTAWA –Contrary to what some of the media have been reporting, my colleagues, Leon Benoit and Wladyslaw Lizon, and I did not ask the RCMP to investigate any/all abortions after 19 weeks as possible homicides.
We are fully aware that preborn children throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy receive no protection whatsoever in Canadian law. This means that causing their death through abortion is legal in this country.
Our request to the RCMP was not about the deaths of preborn children, but rather the deaths of children who had already been BORN ALIVE and who are, therefore, recognized as “human beings” in Canadian law.
Section 223 (2) of our Criminal Code makes it a crime to cause injury to a child before or during birth as a result of which the child dies AFTER being BORN ALIVE. The Criminal Code calls it homicide. That is not our opinion; that is the law today.
Statistics Canada reports that 491 children died due to “termination of pregnancy” after being BORN ALIVE.
We have asked the RCMP to investigate these 491 deaths reported by Statistics Canada, as it appears they fall under section 223 (2) of the Criminal Code.
We obviously would not have asked the RCMP to investigate something that is no longer a Criminal Code offence, such as killing a preborn child (i.e. fetus) through abortion.
Our request has to do with enforcement of existing Canadian law — a viable baby BORN ALIVE, who then subsequently dies due to injuries caused prior to or during birth. If that is what happened in these 491 cases, then that breaks Canadian law.
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