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February 12, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A member of Canada’s refugee board rejected a mother’s application to stay in the country after the mother revealed that she had been raped and decided to keep her child. The adjudicator doubted the mother’s story, saying that no woman who was truly raped would “keep a child of rape.”

Canada’s Global News revealed yesterday that Sarwanjit Randhawa, an adjudicator for the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), had rejected the mother’s bid to stay in Canada. That decision has now been overturned. 

Randhawa wrote in her April 2019 decision that she could not believe a woman who conceived a baby as a result of rape would not have an abortion. 

“(I am) sensitive to the subject of rape, but the claimant’s explanation does not make sense as to why she would keep a child who would remind her of being raped, unless that is not the case,” she wrote.

During the women’s hearing, which had taken place around a fortnight before, Randhawa asked her if she had considered having an abortion when she discovered she was pregnant. 

The woman replied that the girl was her first child and that she opposes abortion. She added that she knew what it is like to grow up without parents and argued that the rape wasn’t the baby’s fault.

These arguments could not penetrate Randhawa’s pro-abortion mentality. 

“If you’re raped, why would you keep a child of rape?” she asked.

Fiorella Nash, a British pro-life campaigner for women’s rights, told LifeSiteNews that the IRB adjudicator’s attitude was “absolutely ludicrous.” 

Nash has both helped refugees and written about their struggles with a “corrupt” immigration system.

“An awful lot seems to depend on the preferences of the judge,” she said. 

Even pro-abortion Canadian feminists have expressed horror at Randhawa’s attitude toward the refugee, but Nash blames the abortion lobby for the adjudicator’s ingrained ideas. 

“The abortion lobby has to take responsibility for the fact that it has created a situation like this with its intense rape rhetoric,” Nash said. 

“The arrogance of secular society is shown in that they assume abortion is some sort of solution for rape,” she continued.  

“A woman’s choice here is not being taken seriously. (Randhawa) can’t process that she made the decision.”

Nash believes the outrageous idea that a rape victim must necessarily abort a child conceived in the attack resembles the judicial victim-shaming of the past. 

“We’ve gone from ‘Did you wear a short skirt?’ to ‘Did you get rid of it?’” she said.

Global News cited a 1996 study published in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that showed that “on average” 32 percent of women who conceive children as a result of rape decide to keep their babies. Only half choose abortion.  

Randhawa’s attitude toward rape victims who keep their babies may not be her only prejudice. A 2008 study published in the Osgoode Law Review showed that Randhawa had rejected an unusually large number of refugee claimants in 2006, with a grant rate of 19.05 percent. According to the author, Randhawa’s grant rate should have been between 51.34 percent and 57.9 percent.