Another pre-born victim of crime goes unrecognized as a victim.
An Ontario man has been convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his pregnant girlfriend, Christina Yadram. CTV News reports that, “Prosecutors said Gafoor wanted the pregnancy terminated, but Yadram refused, eager to bring her unborn son into the world.” The accused, Wazhir Gafoor, was a married man who was having an affair with Yadram, with whom he already shared another child. The Crown presented evidence that “Yadram was asphyxiated and that Gafoor viciously attacked her in an attempt to cause a miscarriage.”
The Defence argued for a lesser charge of manslaughter, arguing that the accused had not intended to kill Yadram – ignoring the fact that he had certainly at least intended to kill his pre-born son. Thankfully, the jury rejected that argument and found Gafoor guilty of first-degree murder. Justice in cases like these is always messy, as families are torn apart and lives destroyed, but Canada’s law also makes it worse by preventing justice for the pre-born victim. By failing to count pre-born children as victims of violent crime, our law dishonours the choice of the mother who wanted to love and protect the life within her.
In Canada, children are not considered human beings under the Criminal Code (Section 223(1)) until they have “completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother”. This means pre-born victims of crime, children killed as a result of violent crime against their mothers, are not legally seen as human beings and so cannot be counted as victims when charging and sentencing their murderers.
We have written before about the research showing that pregnant women are uniquely vulnerable, facing the highest rate of Intimate Partner Violence of all women. See for example See, for example, the World Health Organization’s Information Sheet on Intimate Partner Violence During Pregnancy, the Domestic Violence Fact Sheet from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and Pregnancy and Violence Against Women: An Analysis of Longitudinal Data in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 16 (7). There have been dozens of cases in recent years where Canadian women and their pre-born children were murdered, and none of those cases saw real justice happen.
Because of cases like these, we advocate for a pre-born victims of crime law and run our There Were Two campaign. In every murder of a pregnant woman, there are two victims. Our law needs to see them both.
