Sample Letter to Your MP Opposing
Motion 312: “The Handmaid's Tale"
Below is a sample letter
you can email to your Member of Parliament to oppose
Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth’s Motion 312: “The Handmaid's
Tale”. If successful, the motion would
convene a special Parliamentary committee made up mostly of
Conservative MPs to review the definition of
“human being” in Subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code of
Canada, which states that “A
child becomes a human being … when it has completely
proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.” The
motion is an attempt to extend legal rights and personhood to
fetuses. The motion had one hour of debate in Parliament on
April 26, and will have another hour of debate on Sept. 21 with
a vote on Sept. 26 (subject to change).
You can copy and paste the following sample
letter into an email or your word processing program. Feel free
to edit the letter or write your own. You can use our Counter
Arguments document to help. Alternatively, there is
another sample letter here (longer) that an
ARCC Board member has posted on her blog.
Find your MP here: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx?Menu=HOC
Also,
please visit your MP to register your opposition to the motion.
You can give them a copy of our Counter
Arguments against the motion.
To send a letter to any anti-choice MP who is not
your own MP, see this
sample letter.
Dear _______
I’m very
disturbed that once again, women’s fundamental human rights are
up for debate in Parliament. Motion 312, which women have
nicknamed the “The Handmaid's Tale” calls for a special
parliamentary committee to examine whether the Criminal Code
definition of when a child becomes a “human being” should be
changed to extend legal personhood to fetuses. But if that were
to happen, it would ironically remove women’s rights as full
human beings, and possibly even criminalize their
decision-making during pregnancy.
The sole
intent of this motion is to make it legally possible to
re-criminalize abortion. But this is a settled legal issue in
Canada. M-312 is a waste of time and taxpayer money because the
issues it raises have already been answered by Canada’s Supreme
Court (including in Tremblay
v. Daigle, Dobson v. Dobson, Winnipeg Child & Family
Services v. Ms.G.D.F., Borowski v. Attorney General of Canada,
and R. v. Morgentaler.)
The law has always treated a pregnant woman and her fetus as one
person. The courts have stated that the intimate connection
between a woman and her fetus cannot be considered in isolation,
and that giving rights to fetuses would impose a duty of
care on a pregnant woman that would result in extensive and
unacceptable intrusions into her bodily integrity, privacy, and
autonomy.
Not only
would fetal personhood seriously undermine the constitutional
rights of women who need abortions, but also the rights of any
pregnant woman. That’s because it would invite the prosecution
of pregnant women for any perceived harm to fetuses by creating
confusion around how child welfare laws and policies apply to
fetuses as legal persons. In the U.S., hundreds of women have
been prosecuted because of so-called “fetal homicide” laws and
thousands more have been subjected to punitive and
counterproductive child welfare interventions that treat what
women do or experience during pregnancy as evidence of child
neglect or abuse.
Please
don’t let Canada start down the same vindictive road as the
U.S. Canadian women must not lose their rights when they
become pregnant!
Thank you
very much,
Sincerely,