A recent court ruling here in Canada has me thinking. Alberta woman Katrina Effert was convicted of infanticide for strangling her newborn son when she was 19 and was given a 3 year suspended sentence and while I am not surprised by the sentence itself I am puzzled by the logic.

In her judgement Justice Joanne Veit wrote:

“while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,”

I am not surprised by what she says, I am surprised that she makes the broad, sweeping assumption that Canadians “generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers…”

Every time I have this conversation with someone I am told exactly the opposite…that people do not understand. That only a mother can understand. That only a woman can understand. I am not necessarily disagreeing here but I do wonder if the people who have been saying these things to me and others have been wrong all these years and Justice Veit in fact has her hand on the true Canadian pulse.

The other thing that concerns me is that her judgement impacts future judgement – such is the law. It suggests that the “onerous demands” of pregnancy and childbirth are a reasonable mitigating factor in determining sentencing for infanticide. How about the onerous demands of parenting? Should a parent guilty of killing their 5 year old because he or she has been dealt a bad social hand have their sentence impacted because of this?

Ironically the mother may receive a harsher punishment in the form of 16 days of jail time for throwing the dead body of her son over the fence into her neighbour’s yard. The idea that improper disposal of a dead body is more wrong (based on the punishment) than the killing of the person seems a little backward.

At any rate to the point of the question – is Justice Veit correct in assuming that the law is a mirror of Canadian values and morality? Is she perhaps being provocative and suggesting that it is and if Canadian’s do not like it than they should seek to change it?

There are many people in the blogosphere who would rush to judge the judge and they should be careful. Justice Veit is not the raging eugenics proponent some have made her out to be. In an article about the University of Alberta’s ceasing to hand out honours in the name of former professor and Board of Eugenics chair John M. MacEachran Justice Veit is cited as stating:

“Dr. Thompson’s [a former chair holder of the Alberta Eugenics Board] evidence demonstrates that the operations of the Board initiated on a purported scientific rationale, degenerated into unscientific practices. The decisions of the Board were not made according to the standards imposed on them by the legislation, but because the members of the Board… thought that it was socially appropriate to control reproduction of “these people”.

Scholarships and awards were handed out in MacEachran’s name as a way of honouring his work. This ceased in 1998 after a University of Alberta panel asked for these awards to stop after reading a ruling in the case of Leilani MuirV. Prov of Alberta (which Veit oversaw) wherein they learned that many of the sterilizations performed by MacEachran were deemed unlawful. If not for Veit’s ruling the eugenics work of MacEachran would likely still be honoured today.

As a judge Veit has to work within the law but her appeal to the fact that Canada has no laws against abortion seems a little thin in a case of infanticide. Of course we’re talking about sentencing and not the ruling – people are losing sight of the fact that the mother was judged to be guilty…it is the punishment they are having a hard time with and the logic behind it.

Another factor people seem to be failing to take into account is that Justice Veit was ruling in a case that was sent to her by the Alberta Court of Appeals which had decided a jury had wrongly convicted Effert as guilty of 2nd degree murder by failing to take into account psychiatric evidence. No doubt Veit’s determination of punishment was being guided by the previous decision of the court of appeal – again – such is the law.

Lots of food for thought I think but I would caution people to do a little research before they throw Justice Veit under the metaphorical bus.