This argument is patently absurd. The logical extension of the first scenario, as Mr Preston would have it, is that, since we're all gonna die eventually anyway, anything goes. That is a nonsensical position and does not apply in our legal system.

The point of the criminal charge is that the offender committed an act in violation of the wishes of the victim(s), regardless of what the victim's wishes might have been. That's been an underlying principal of our justice system for time immemorial. Had a husband consented to the rape of a woman he'd be (arguably) an accomplice to the crime, not a defence.

The second point that this article glosses over is the assumption that children should be treated the same as adults. Ignoring the considerable debate about the point at which a zygote becomes human, this is a "double standard" that we have long observed on a range of issues: drinking, voting, driving, consenting to sex, and so on. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have double standards at that point. The devil is in the detail.

There are plenty of good reasons to try to to lower the rate of abortions and plenty of ways to do so. This tripe is none of them.

Because the woman's life and the baby's are irrevocably connected and the woman should decide, nobody else.

I wonder if Hughie could explain in clearer language why he thinks Mr. Preston's argument is absurd. It seems to me to be totally irrefutable. You could in fact go further and argue that if the mother approached her next door neighbour and asked to be punched in the stomach in order to kill her unborn child could both the neighbour and the mother be charged under section 313(2) of the Criminal Code?

If yes, then only the commission of the act by a Doctor decides whether or not the unborn child is a person or not. This situation is patently absurd!

A fundamental principal of our justice system is that no one can give consent to the killing of another, or order another to kill. Hughie is quite right when he says that had a husband consented to the rape of his wife he perhaps would be guilty of rape as well. Why should not this also apply to the case of a mother consenting to the death of her unborn child?

In relation to Hughie's point about "double standards", surely he's not likening the right to voting, drinking or having sex to the right to be born and live! Now that is tripe!

The lives of a woman and her unborn baby are only irrevocably entwined up to a certain point. There have been many cases of healthy babies being born to mothers killed in accidents etc. If you accept that an unborn baby is a human being with a right to live, then the mother has no more right to kill this life than anyone else.

I am not against abortion up to a point. But surely we have to acknowledge that at some stage this bunch of cells does become life and is able to survive outside the womb. At this stage it should be protected, if not by the mother, then by society.

Actually, if you ask an embryologist, the zygote is a human being. At the point of conception, immediately after the ovum is fertilized by the sperm cell, the result is a human being, simply because it has the same number of chromosomes as you and me (46). Prior to that, both the ovum and the sperm cell had half the number each (23).

Reference (which cites more medical references):
http://www.l4l.org/library/mythfact.html

Next, the basis for criminal culpability for the fictional attacker in the article was not the fact that the mother had no choice, but that a human person was destroyed. That is why it is a homicide, and note that the text refers to the victim as a *child*:

"and destroys the life of, or does grievous bodily harm to, or transmits a serious disease to, the child before its birth, commits a crime."

The double standards mentioned by Hughie is correct. We have always had different standards for children as for adults. Children have been the most protected in modern western laws since they are recognized as the most vulnerable of all human beings and the ill-effects on them are the most far-reaching because they are the next generation.

Mr. Preston's point was valid. His arguments were about the life of the child in the womb, and there are no complex standards here. Either it is alive or it is not. Particularly in the case of the presented scenarios, it isn't even a question of what sort of life, e.g., incapacitated, results from the attack or the abortion. It was simply a matter of life or death.

This kind of argument is currently being used in the US, and it not only shows a complete disregard for women's rights, it also shows a complete disregard for logical argument.

The argument is simple:
The mother is human and has a right to life, right to make decisions concerning her body, right to self-defence...
The foetus is human, and has the same rights as the mother, but cannot sustain its life independant of its mother.

We do not make laws that force people to donate blood or organs, or make any such sacrifice to save another life. Likewise, we cannot make laws that force women to carry pregnancies through to full term, and anyone who thinks this is less of a burden than giving blood is showing his true opinion.

The man on the street who attacks the mother, and kills or harms the foetus, can invoke no such right to self-defence or self-determination, hence he should be thrown in gaol.

This article is a not very clever attempt to blur the issue, and confuse people into doubting the right to have an abortion, and I have not once heard it argued by a woman. Some women are anti-choice for other reasons, but not one of them would ever so underestimate the huge responsibilty of pregnancy in this way.

I am pro-choice because pregnancy and motherhood is far too great a thing to force on a woman. It is the greatest gift a mother can give, and it is the pro-choicers who recognise this fact. Not the anti-choicers from whom there would be an outcry if we made blood donation compulsory, yet think it's OK to make abortion illegal.

A life sentence to a person whose assault causes a woman's unborn child to die is clearly excessive. It's all of us who'll have to pay for the incarceration of the accused offender. This doesn't mean that such an offender should get away with it, but simply that such an offence should be treated for what it is....assault occasioning bodily harm.