The official press corps recently dusted off the narrative that COVID-19 justifies the re-imposition of public control measures like mandatory masking, penalties for refusal of vaccine booster shots, and lockdowns of public assembly, albeit in the face of confused and conflicting evidence of the effectiveness and cost-benefit balance of such measures.
Perhaps its time for Canadians to think about the systemic consequences when officials ignore clear and unequivocal evidence and science to make laws based instead on their personal policy preferences. The tenth anniversary this year of the defeat of Motion 312 offers a stark illustration for such an analysis.
Imagine pretending a living individual isn’t a human being. But it could never happen in 21st-century Canada, right? This year marked the 10th anniversary of Parliament refusing my proposal to study perhaps the only Canadian law still based on 17th-century science. In 1642, Lord Coke wrote that a child should only be considered to be “a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, when it is born alive.” Our existing Canadian law puts it this way: “A child becomes a human being … when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not (a) it has breathed, (b) it has an independent circulation, or (c) the navel string is severed.”
It’s especially odd since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “Recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of every member of the human family is the foundation for freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” Note it covers “every member of the human family.” This legal principle was adopted internationally, including by Canada, to end the horrors flowing from 20th-century legal denials of the humanity of some people adopted by some countries. And laws denying the humanity of other individuals or groups still hurt us all.
First of all, denying someone’s humanity is a lie. Such denials contradict objective evidence discovered by science, medical and otherwise. And while any lie is objectionable, a lie dressed up as a statute is a kind of perjury since it goes into courtrooms to testify to falsehood.
Also, while those with power such as Parliament possesses might get away with denying someone’s humanity, it’s simply an exercise of sheer power. And if someone can get away with denying the humanity of others, there is no lesser oppression at which they will stop. Certainly, governments in Canada have not become any less willing to wield arbitrary power since my proposal was turned down.
Opposition to my proposal came primarily from abortion rights supporters. They argued that abortion rights can only be justified if they could insist that a living human child is not a “human being” until completely separated from the mother’s body.
This argument is disingenuous. It would be possible to argue that a mother’s interests in avoiding the continuation of pregnancy outweighs her child’s interests in surviving until birth without denying that her child is rather obviously a human being. Laws constantly weigh and limit competing interests, one over another, without denying the humanity of either party. Examples include allowing killing to protect one’s own life and killing enemy soldiers in combat, but we don’t pretend the beings we justify killing aren’t human beings. Indeed, we bend over backwards to treat such individuals humanely if we can.
Some opponents of recognizing the humanity of every member of the human family also argued that it is impossible to recognize who is human, and who is not, prior to complete separation from the mother since human development occurs over a period of months and years. But the existence of twilight does not mean that there is no day or night. And my proposal made only one firm point about this, namely, that undisputed 21st-century science allows us to recognize a child as a human being well before the complete separation of the child from the mother’s body.
Motion 312 specifically instructed Parliament not to make any recommendations, not even to recommend when or how to recognize someone as human. I only asked Parliament to investigate and report the evidence and options. Motion 312’s modest goal was to promote dialogue and consensus-building.
Dialogue and consensus-building were rejected by party leaders and the majority of their party members in favour of legitimizing the sheer power to deny humanity without any basis in evidence or legal principle.
Isn’t it obvious why the power to ignore relevant evidence when making laws should be feared by every Canadian? No policy goal, including protecting abortion rights, justifies giving anyone the power to falsely deny the humanity of any member of the human family.
Noted human rights advocate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once observed, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And on that principle, any law based on “might makes right” rather than sound, publicly debated evidence and objective standards of logic and justice dangerously undercuts the rule of law.
With pandemic-induced control measures, it’s time to insist on evidence-based law. It’s also time Motion 312 was reintroduced, passed, and its proposed study carried through, in the name of democratic government and our common humanity.
