By Gudrun Schultz
EDMONTON, Alberta, December 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A woman who went to a Conservative rally to seek support for a petition after her pregnant daughter was murdered last month was harassed, manhandled, and threatened with removal.
Mary Talbot has been circulating a petition asking for legislation to bring criminal charges against anyone who causes the death of an unborn child by killing the child’s mother. Talbot lost her 19-year-old daughter, Olivia, and her daughter’s unborn son last month when her daughter was shot to death in her Edmonton home. (See earlier LifeSiteNews coverage: https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/dec/05121408.html)
Peter Goldring, Conservative MP for Edmonton East, told Talbot to go to the rally, and provided tickets for the event, she said. At the rally, Talbot and several supporters were handing around copies of the petition when Conservative supporters descended on them, saying it was illegal for candidates to sign petitions, and blocking a picture of Talbot’s daughter with party signs.
“I was physically backed into a corner, separated from the rest of our group,” Talbot said. “One person kept hitting my arm with a party sign, trying to get me to lower my daughter’s picture—it was humiliating and uncalled-for.”
Talbot says she was grabbed by a security guard who threatened to throw her out.
“Is Canada becoming a communist country? Was I waiting to see Hitler? We were just there to talk with Stephen Harper and ask him to support the petition.”
Harper apologized, said Talbot, once he arrived on the scene and she was able to speak with him privately.
“I really felt I’d been stripped of my dignity.”
He stated that he was only recently aware of her petition, and did not yet have an official position on it. Talbot says she has faith in the people of Canada and believes that eventually the law will be changed.
“There were two bodies in that coffin. My daughter was cradling her baby in her arms. It’s beyond me how anyone can say this wasn’t two murders. Don’t you know how to count?”
Under current federal law the unborn child is not considered a person until it has been born alive. There is no legal judgment against causing the death of the child through the murder of its mother.