Today is the day apparently. Canada's parliament is set to debate the creation of a committee to determine at what point a fetus should be considered a human being.
Extremists exist on both sides of this debate, and when extremists have the floor democracy often suffers. Into the fray stepped Huffington Post Canada with an on-line debate between the motion's author Stephen Woodworth and Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) co-founder Joyce Arthur.
The question being debated is this:
Currently Canadian law deprives a child of recognition as a human being until the moment of complete birth. Therefore Parliament should study what modern medical information tells us about when a child should be considered a human being.
Regardless of one's view I think we can all agree that democratic values should trump any one view, either for or against. At least thats this blogger's opinion. Obviously on-line polls aren't the best barometer of public opinion, but in the absence of any conflicting data I don't think they're totally without merit.
As things currently stand the numbers are 58% agreeing with Mr. Woodworth and 41% siding with Ms. Arthur, 1% are undecided. Ms. Arthur is winning the debate however, given that she has swung most opinion her way, it seems most of the undecided agree with her arguments after reading the opinion pieces.
You can read and take part in the poll here:
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