The proposed Bill C-484, known as the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act,” is currently receiving a great deal of media attention.

Supporters of the bill suggest that it is “simply” a strategic attempt to protect vulnerable pregnant women from violence âe” both at the hands of strangers, and more often than not by their intimate partners.

This argument presumes two things: (1) that we can implement new laws and policies in a simplistic and direct fashion and without the possibility of generating unintended consequences; and (2) that harsher penal sanctions effectively reduce harms and violent crime.

Both of these presumptions are inherently false. In practice, Bill C-484 is a law that opens the door for future legal challenges against women’s right to choose whether to have an abortion. In effect, this new bill could create legal rights for foetuses, marking them as human and thus as protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms while still in the womb. Given the fact that the foetus and the woman share one body, offering human rights to the foetus intrinsically means we are encroaching upon the woman’s rights.

We too often shy away from discussing abortion because it engenders debates relating to morality and religion. However, passing a new law that provides legal grounds on which to challenge the legality of abortion is not the way to re-enter the debate about this issue. On the contrary, this approach to challenging current abortion laws is backhanded and legally suspicious.

Criminalization of pregnant women who use drugs

One of the most dangerous consequences of Bill C-484 is not only that it may create legal rights for foetuses, but also that it muddies the water regarding the potential for prosecuting pregnant women who use drugs. Pregnant women who use drugs already face tremendous stigma and marginalization; many such women fail to access medical services in fear of having their children removed from their care. If Bill C-484 passes into law, these women will face even greater harm when they are incarcerated.

For example, in many U.S. States pregnant women who use drugs are criminally charged with child abuse before the child is born and are incarcerated on the basis of protecting the foetus. With funding priorities being prison expansion rather than treatment, large numbers of women have been criminally charged for using drugs while pregnant without an opportunity to access treatment services. South Carolina has the highest rate of prosecuting and incarcerating pregnant women who use drugs due to a 1997 court decision that ruled a foetus is included in the definition of a âeoechild.âe Consequentially, women are criminally prosecuted for behaviours that are understood to “harm” the foetus. Moreover, some pregnant women do not access health services because doctors are required by law to inform the police that their pregnant patient is using substances.

Prosecuting pregnant women drug users is more about punishing women who live in poverty than it is about protecting foetuses. C-484 would open the door to a loss of rights for, and the opportunity to prosecute, all pregnant women. And history informs us that pregnant women who use drugs would be the first women arrested and jailed.

Implications of “get tough on crime” policies

Of course, we can place Bill C-484 on a laundry list of a number of bills that reflect the broader conservative political agenda on getting tough(er) on crime. Get tough on crime laws usually take the shape of criminalising new behaviours, increasing the length of a prison sanction and/or mandatory minimum sentences for certain offences, or the restriction of the rights for some (often times marginalised) groups. Most criminologists and legal scholars accept the fact that prison is not a deterrent to crime. Despite this fact, we continue to find politicians following the American trend of expanding the prison industrial complex with longer sentences.

One of the most contentious issues about Bill C-484 is that it not only expands the prison industrial complex by increasing the length of potential sanctions, but that it does so all on the back of “feminism.” Supporters of the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act” claim that the legislation is required in order to increase the available protection for vulnerable (pregnant) women. We highlight the word protection because it suggests that in some way this law can prevent violence against pregnant women. Yet, prison sentences do not deter crime âe” whether it is a property offence or a more serious violent crime. Ultimately, if someone decides (consciously with forethought or in the heat of the moment) to inflict harm on a pregnant woman, this law will not prevent them from doing so. Therefore, let us not have any further discussion about this law providing protection for pregnant women. Rather, the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act” is an attempt by the Conservatives to expand the prison industrial complex.

We doubt that any feminist would refute some form of intervention for an individual who committed violence against a woman, pregnant or not. However, we must remember that the Canadian judicial system already allows the courts to consider aggravating factors when sentencing an individual for a violent offence. Meaning, we currently allow judges and juries to consider as an aggravating factor the fact that a female victim of homicide was pregnant at the time of the attack in the sentencing of a guilty party. If we already have such provisions within our judicial system, we must question the underlying reasons for the government to attempt to secure a secondary sanction for killing a pregnant woman.

In light of the issues just discussed and within this murky legal debate, the reason should become crystal clear. Our current government has a specific political agenda, and couched within its stance of “getting tough on crime” it is creating a back door to re-open the abortion issue in this country.