Shock: No jail time for woman who strangled newborn because Canada accepts abortion, says judge
EDMONTON, Alberta, September 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An Alberta judge has let a woman who strangled her newborn son walk free by arguing that Canada’s absence of a law on abortion signals that Canadians “sympathize” with the mother.
“We live in a country where there is no protection for children in the womb right up until birth and now this judge has extended the protection for the perpetrator rather than the victim, even though the child is born and as such should be protected by the court,” said Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition.
Katrina Effert of Wetaskiwin, Alberta gave birth secretly in her parents’ downstairs bathroom on April 13, 2005, and then later strangled the newborn and threw his body over a fence. She was 19 at the time.
She has been found guilty of second-degree murder by two juries, but both times the judgment was thrown out by the appeals court. In May, the Alberta Court of Appeal overturned her 2009 murder conviction and replaced it with the lesser charge of infanticide.
On Friday, Effert got a three-year suspended sentence from Justice Joanne Veit of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. As a result, she was able to walk out of court, though she will have to abide by certain conditions.
Loading ...
This is what calling a human in the womb something other than human (see: blastocyst, potential human, clump of cells, parasite) leads to.
All those who have used the above terms for a human in the womb, I know most of you are appalled by this story too (I’m sure NG that you are appalled). But your line of reasoning, at its fulfillment, leads to this conclusion.
Legally protect all humans.
Do Canadians “sympathize” with the judge? Does this represent the new Canadian values?
The comments following the article indicate a movement to remove the judge.
Bravo!
@Deb
Uh…….No? I have firmly stated that I do not support abortion after the point of viability (except for medical reasons). Suggesting that my reasoning leads to this would be like saying your reasoning leads to people killing abortion doctors. Surely you would disagree with that. Do not put the actions of an obviously mentally disturbed woman in my logic.
I will say I find the woman in question insane, and should be sentenced to a mental health institute.
I’m honestly curious why she didn’t get an abortion.
Reread my post, I said I knew you would think this woman wrong. I said you would be appalled by her, too.
But it is exactly your reasoning that if the child in the womb isn’t breathing air than it can be aborted which leads to this decision. I know you won’t see this, but it is true.
So you have decided that a human life is not of value until it is “viable”? What about an adult on life support – are they viable? Not without their life support, so why not just kill them the same way? A human life is a human life from conception. Making an arbitrary decision as to when it is of value leads to all sorts of bad outcomes.
Why is everyone so surprised? Canadians are already killing 300 pre-born children a day by abortion.
Sadly, this is natural progression. Canada has no abortion laws and if you can legally kill your child on your due date, it is not a far reach to legally kill your child after delivery.
Personally, I am disgusted that our country views children as less than human. This has to stop.
If you live in the Calgary area, check out http://www.life2011.ca, a great conference coming up this October address these issues head on. Instead of just complaining, we need to put pressure on the legal system to stop downplaying murder.
See you in Calgary.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
There’s a difference between an adult who WAS living being on life support and a fetus who has yet to live.
@Deb
How do you make the jump from not viable in the womb to strangling a newborn? Because I’m not seeing it.
And thanks for not reading my point about not making false connections based on others difference in logic.
What is the difference in their intrinsic humanity? One is older than the other, one is located outside the womb while one is not? What difference does location of a person make; i.e, what makes murder okay in some locations and not others? The “fetus,” by the way, is a child and is indeed living from the time of conception.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
” is a child and is indeed living from the time of conception.”
Except maybe not? It’s not written in stone, there’s scientific evidence on both sides and scripture on both sides of the debate.
UM NO, all science and medical evidence says life begins at conception. And all biblical evidence is the same.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
What biblical evidence says life begins at conception? And do you mean “fertilization?” They are not the same thing: conception is conceptual, fertilization is biological. Lots of Biblical evidence says life is in the blood.
As for medical evidence, doctors go by heartbeat. A person is pronounced dead when the heartbeat stops. Yes, now they also have a term “brain-dead” for people in comas, because now it’s possible to keep the blood flowing and a person technically alive indefinitely – but it’s still pretty much true that medical death happens when the heart stops. So wouldn’t medical life begin when the heart starts? Yes it would.
We certainly could say that the egg and sperm are alive, as much as we could say that the zygote is alive. The difference is that the egg and sperm have not yet joined together. But in their separate cells, they possess the full unique genome of a human being, and they are as “alive” as a zygote is, or as “alive” as any individual cell is, like a muscle cell or skin cell. But they aren’t alive like a living person is, with a consciousness and soul.
John, conception is a medical term for when a baby is conceived. It’s not conceptual. It’s actual.
No it’s conceptual. The term for an actual sperm entering an actual egg is fertilization. The term for believing that a new life is on its way is conception. No doubt most people use them interchangeably, but they are making a mistake. They should ask themselves why there are two words, and what the distinction could be. Actually it’s not hard to see, since the words are common words that are used in other contexts with the same distinction that they should be used here.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
Pull some links without the word “christ” in it then. There’s evidence on both sides, ignoring the other side doesn’t make it go away, it merely makes your position look unsubstantiated and uneducated.
Medicinenet.com: “Conception: The union of the sperm and the ovum. Synonymous with fertilization.”
medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com: “The formation of a viable zygote by the union of a spermatozoon and an ovum; fertilization.”
WEbMD: “Fertilization of oocyte by a sperm.”
Dictionary.reference.com: “1. the act of conceiving; the state of being conceived. 2. fertilization; inception of pregnancy.”
And, for what it’s worth: religioustolerance.com (next reference on the google search): During the process of conception: One very lucky spermatozoon out of hundreds of millions ejaculated by the man may penetrate the outside layer of the ovum and fertilize it.
Yeah, I know people use the synonymously, but like most synonyms, there are two different words for a reason, to mean two different things. It’s true that we believe, conceptually, that a new person starts with a sperm fertilizing an egg. But they aren’t the same thing: Conception happens even if there is no fertilization, if someone just thinks it is conceivable that an egg was fertilized by a sperm. It doesn’t require a pregnancy to begin, lots of conceptions don’t result in pregnancy or even embryos. And sometimes conception happens after a missed period, and hadn’t happened until then, though we realize that the fertilization happened a few weeks ago.
John, all I can say at this point is, “whatever.” Also, there is a reason thesauruses exist. Lots of words have the same meaning.
There is NO evidence by bonafide science and medical people that life does not exist at conception. It is a biological fact that life does indeed begin at conception. It is a life whether you want to regard it as such or not.
Well, it matters in the case of “conception” and “fertilization” or I wouldn’t bring it up. I’ll accept “whatever” but a “huh, interesting” would be less rude.
And as to synonyms, check out Do Synonyms Exist on DailyWritingTips.com. Thesauruses exist to help people find the right word to use, when the word they are thinking of is not quite right. They don’t provide true synonyms, only similar words.
Glenn, you are such a good debater! You are like a black belt debater, a master debater. Watch out, purveyors of falsehood, Glenn E. Chatfield is on the case. If only more people on our side had your knack for persuasion.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
OK, I apologize for my sarcasm. I’ll start over. I think a medical examiner would not find a heartbeat in an embryo (which I think is what you mean by “at conception”) and therefore would be hard pressed to say that a life exists. Indeed, he could keep that embryo on his examination table for months and never find a heartbeat. It’d be as dead as the cadavers in the drawers.
Sorry, John. It wasn’t my intent to be rude. It was more of a “I’m growing tired of this discussion now. Think whatever you’d like.” sort of “whatever.”
@Glenn E. Chatfield
Yeah, John sassed you better then I could right now and honestly the more you type on this subject the more you prove my second point. I’m going to second Betsy’s whatever.
@John Howard So you resort to sarcasm for YOUR debating skills?
Heartbeat is not what is necessary for human life to exist. The heart has not developed in the immediate conception, but if it isn’t life, then why abort it?
@Glenn E. Chatfield
The heartbeat develops just around the time a woman realizes she’s pregnant, and so if she aborts a pregnancy, she ends a life. But if she never gets pregnant, if the fertilized egg does not implant and she gets her normal period, no life is lost, we do not consider it an abortion, even if she took steps such as exercising to prevent pregnancy.
@John Howard The point is that life does indeed begin at conception. That is a scientific and medical fact.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
A life is certainly conceived of at conception, but it certainly isn’t a scientific and medical fact. It’s a belief, it’s conceptual, whether there is any egg fertilized by a sperm or not. It often does not last long, most conceptions do not result in an actual child being born.
If you are referring to scientific and medical facts, the word you want to use is “fertilization” which is the scientific term for when a factual sperm in fact fertilizes a factual egg. Even then, only about half of fertilized eggs implant and become ensouled and conscious and alive, which happens when a woman becomes pregnant. She doesn’t become pregnant at the moment of intercourse, or even at fertilization, but at implantation. But they do conceive a life at the moment of intercourse. Even if the life doesn’t actually begin until a couple weeks later.
@John Howard I’m with Betsy now because you have no regard for reason. “WHATEVER!”
@Glenn E. Chatfield
The word you want is “fertilization” and you and Betsy should stop using the wrong word and consider the difference.
There are two issues here, two reasons it is important.
One issue is when does life begin. It begins when the heartbeat starts, just as it ends when the heartbeat stops. This is important because we don’t want to have to implant embryos that labs create outside the womb or face murder charges if we discard them, and let them go where 50% of all naturally fertilized embryos go – back to dust. Also we don’t want to have to rescue all those embryos that don’t implant or grieve for them, there is no life lost when a pregnancy doesn’t begin. When a pregnancy begins, life begins at about the exact same time.
The second issue is the difference between conception and fertilization. This is important because marriage approves of the conception of children, not the actual fertilization. In other words, we prohibit siblings from marrying and conceiving of children, not just from actually creating children. And we bestow the full benefits of marriage on couples that we just believe might have kids, whether they actually do or not. It is important to have these two different concepts, these two different words, and to use them correctly.
Please don’t keep submersing yourself in putrid ignorance, there is nothing useful or good about it, no matter how much you believe it is righteous or valiant or whatever.
@John Howard As Betsy has stated, fertilization and conception are used synonymously. You pick an arbitrary point – heartbeat – to determine when life begins. You try to split hairs and use an absurd idea of murder charges for destroying embryos.
You also like to do a lot of insulting, as if you are the only one with any intelligence and that YOUR ideas on the whole issue are the only correct ideas. Talk about rank arrogance!
@Glenn E. Chatfield
Well, they are not synonymous and shouldn’t be used synonymously. There are times when it doesn’t matter, when either one would suffice. But there are times when it does matter, and that’s why we need to keep them distinct in peoples minds.
It’s not an arbitrary point. Life ends when heartbeat ends, that’s been the standard used socially and medically forever. And the Bible also says the life is in the blood, numerous times. Those are not arbitrary facts, those are the controlling facts. How is it absurd that discarding an embryo would be murder, if the embryo is said to be legally alive? How do you get around that?
@John Howard Life does NOT end when heartbeat ends. Thousands of people have been resuscitated after their heart stops. So there goes your claim. Again, life is there in the womb prior to a heartbeat – that is a fact. The heart of the conceived child does not start until it has been alive for 22 days, so according to you, that 22 days is not life. Life does begin on day one of conception/fertilization (you have no conception if you have no fertilization)
You are twisting the Bible by taking out of context to “prove” a point. That passage has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
I have my own beliefs about embryos stored which do not bear on this subject.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
People can be kept alive for a short period, because the life is in the blood and the blood is still there, but it’s not being pumped around by the heart. They can be put on life support that pumps the blood and fills the lungs with air, and kept alive this way, and sometimes the person is resuscitated, and “brought back to life” as they say. People who have had heart attacks often say they were dead for five minutes while the paramedics were trying to restart their heart. They even sometimes report out of body experiences. So my claim stands: the heartbeat is life. The living soul beats the heart of the body. No heartbeat is death, and the soul leaving the body. Dead bodies become alive when the heart starts beating.
The life in the womb prior to the heart beat is similar to the life of a brain cell or skin cell. You’ve heard how “a million brain cells die when you watch television” and how HIV kills white blood cells, and how portions of the intestines can die and things like that? The life of a cell or organ, a tissue or a blood cell or egg cell or sperm cell, is different from a human life, which is conscious and ensouled in a body that is living with cells and chemistry all carrying out their chemical processes, but not alive the way the heart and soul is alive, and a person.
Yes, I am trying to use the Bible to prove that we shouldn’t feel that embryos are alive until they have implanted and come to life with a heartbeat. It’s not murder to turn off the freezers and we don’t have to find women to bring all the embryos to life, and I haven’t twisted the bible out of context.
And what are your beliefs on embryos stored in freezers? Why do you think they don’t bear on the subject of strangling newborns? Are you agreeing it’s not the same thing to turn off the freezers?
What do you consider the subject at hand anyhow?
Right, that
@Glenn E. Chatfield
“you have no conception if you have no fertilization”
This is false. Every time a couple has sex and thinks that maybe a baby is on the way, that thought is conception of children. Conception is the CONCEPT of children. When a couple applies for a marriage license, it is the CONCEPT of children that is under scrutiny and approved or prohibited, if the relationship is unethical to create children.
See, fertilization hasn’t entered into it yet. But if we don’t approve of the concept of children, of course we don’t approve of fertilization or sexual intercourse either. And if we approve of the concept of children, then we approve of intercourse and fertilization. They aren’t independent things, obviously. But they aren’t the same things either.
What the heck, why not just agree?
Is it because you want to claim that the morning after pill is murder? It’s not murder, it prevents pregnancy. There are good reasons it shouldn’t be allowed, but it being abortion isn’t one of them.
John, why don’t you just site us a medical source that defines conception as an abstract thought, separate from fertilization? I sited you 5 or 6 reputable sources saying otherwise, but you refuse to accept them.
I didn’t refuse to accept them, I said they were all making the same common mistake and using the word carelessly.
I did some googling and found this article which helped my understand what’s going on in pro-life circles, why they are so insistent on using “conception” to mean the creation of an embryo and the start of life. http://www.calright2life.org/difference.htm
I agree with them that “conception” should not be used as a synonym for implantation, like Planned Parenthood seems to be doing. That is just as wrong as using it as a synonym for fertilization. Conception is a conceptual thing. It means thinking of a new person who is the offspring of the two people who conceive it. It’s the concept of offspring. It happens generally every time a couple has sex, unless they are fools who don’t consider that they might have begun a new life. It doesn’t require fertilization or implantation, all it requires is thought.
Note how cavalier these prolife people are about cloning and genetic engineering, and how they state that they must protect cloned embryos and insist that they be implanted and brought to life. They recognize that it is an immoral way to make a child, but they would insist on it, because they have erroneously been told that embryos are alive just like fetuses are. Their dilemma can be avoided by recognizing that life doesn’t begin until the heartbeat, and pregnancy doesn’t begin until implantation, and those things happen at about the same time.
If they are worried about contraception causing fertilized eggs to fail to implant, they should know that that happens to about half of all fertilized eggs even without contraception. And there are ways to prohibit morning after pills without calling it murder, it violates equal reproductive rights to give one person control of another person’s reproduction. Reproduction should be 100% equally consensual, and morning after pills, like all abortion, mean that women don’t have to consent at the same time men have to consent. If the consent isn’t mutual, it isn’t consent.
“I didn’t refuse to accept them, I said they were all making the same common mistake and using the word carelessly.”
John Howard vs. the medical profession. Hmmm…. Whose side to choose?
@John Howard Stored embryos are not the subject. The subject is conception/fertilization and heart beat. You go back to saying the heartbeat is death and make assertions about when the soul leaves, etc. Putting someone on life support with a machine beating is NOT the heart beating. But my point was someone whose heart stopped completely and was resuscitated. In that short interval the heart stopped and yet to you the person is dead when in reality he is only “mostly dead.” The point is that the baby is alive for the 22 days you claim it is not life because the heartbeat doesn’t start until day 22. Yet you play the abortionist’s game of claiming it is not life but only a “cell” or a “blob of tissue” which justifies abortion at that time. So do you think abortion is okay before day 22 then?
Your other problem is your equivocation with the word conception. You take one meaning – that is to conceptualize something in one’s thoughts – and make that into the meaning used for fertilization. David in Ps. 51 says he was conceived in sin – did his mother and father just conceptualize his possible fertilization?
You have NO argument from Scripture because even Scripture says “conceived.”
Consider this, Betsy: Is the morning after pill wrong even if there is no embryo that is kept from implanting? I think it is just as wrong, and for the same reason – it ends a conceived life, even if it does not end an actual embryo’s life (and I mean that in the same sense that a brain cell dies or a sperm cell dies – not in the sense of a human life with a soul and consciousness dieing, which happens after a pregnancy has begun, when a beating heart is stopped).
Doctors are not known for their philosophical sophistication or their mastery of language. They often use words incorrectly. I’ve found a link that shows that the words are chosen both sides of the abortion debaters for their political power, not for their accuracy. I think we should use them accurately.
I am appalled that people are being manipulated to believe that embryos are people that must be implanted in someone or else it’s murder. I’m appalled that well-meaning people are being told that we have to implant a cloned embryo or a genetically engineered embryo or else it is murder. That is evil and twisted and hopefully this site is not doing it on purpose.
The morning after pill is wrong because it is decidedly not open to life, whether a baby was conceived or not.
I don’t think anyone on here is advocating implanting embryos. I think Deb summed it up best when she said that a Pandora’s Box has been opened. No solution yet, but in the meantime, the freezers stay plugged in.
Glenn, nice work.
@Glenn E. Chatfield
Yes, when the heart stops, the person is dead, legally dead and figuratively dead. If the heart never restarts, that time would be recorded as the time of death. The soul slowly leaves the body and ascends, it’s in no hurry, and the body is still intact and could be resuscitated. If the body is resuscitated, the soul is still there and it reenters the body. This is pretty universal belief. In that same way, souls slowly enter the body, descending like angels into wombs, about two weeks after sexual intercourse.
The next 8 days, before the 22 days when the heart is beating, I would venture to say is how long it takes for a soul to ensoul a body in the womb and bring it to life. It could start ensouling soul right at the moment implantation, the beginning of pregnancy, when a new life is on the way. And that soul could be committed to this embryo right at this point, even though it hasn’t fully entered it, but it would still be ending it’s life as much as if it lived in that body for months or years.
“Yet you play the abortionist’s game of claiming it is not life but only a “cell” or a “blob of tissue” which justifies abortion at that time. So do you think abortion is okay before day 22 then?”
I don’t think abortion is OK ever. I just don’t think embryos are alive, and embryos that don’t implant do not die and are not murdered. I think we should turn off the freezers, because it would be wrong to implant them and force a soul to inhabit bodies conceived in such unethical circumstances, and we would not be killing anyone or damning any souls, because souls don’t enter a body until it 14-22 days later, when it becomes alive. I think that souls begin to enter a body at about 14 days, at the start of pregnancy (implantation), when the blood and heart are forming, and fully enter a body at the start of the heart pumping the body’s own blood.
Betsy, you don’t get it, a baby is always conceived, that’s why they take the morning after pill! Yes it is wrong to end a conceived life, that’s my point! It ends a conceived life whether an embryo was created or not, you see?
Why do you and Deb think the freezers should stay plugged in in the meantime? What kind of solution are you waiting for????!!!!!!???? Artificial wombs? The Abolition of Men? There is no problem here, because those embryos are not alive and are not ensouled and the freezers should be turned off immediately, none of them should be implanted, and no more embryos should be created.
@John Howard Would you please demonstrate to me from Scripture where you get your information on when souls arrive and depart from the human body? Oh, Not there? Your assertions have nothing to do with reality. Your belief in this area have nothing to base them on except personal conjecture.
And your definition of “conceived” and “conception” also have no basis in reality.