Jeffrey Baldwin's right to life

The sadistic low-life killers of little Jeffrey Baldwin have now received their sentences: it's 20 years for Norman Kidman and 22 years for Elva Bottineau before they are eligible for parole.

These two didn't merely kill a child. They starved him to death over several years, until he died, at the age of six, weighing all of 21 pounds--less than he did when he was one. They kept him, and his sister, locked in an unheated room, forced him to drink from the toilet, and to find scraps of food in the garbage. The kids were a great source of government money, which was the only reason the two grandparents took them in.

How, we might ask, did these two monsters acquire this child?

Ask the Catholic Children's Aid Society, as a public inquiry will shortly be doing. That was the agency that sent the kid to his death. An agency whose duty is was to protect children. An agency that stubbornly refused to cooperate with the homicide investigation, as reported by CTV:

Homicide investigator Mike Davis expressed frustration with the CCAS outside the courthouse Friday. He said the agency provided "little - if any - cooperation" during the investigation of Jeffrey's death.

Davis said there are "policies and procedures" for organizations such as police and the CCAS, "and at no time did I see any cooperation whatsoever with the Catholic Children's Aid Society."

"This is something that only a public inquiry can look into and look into the systemic issues that are underlying with [sic] the Catholic Children's Aid Society," Davis said.

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After last month's guilty verdict, Ontario's chief coroner announced an inquest will be held, which will look into how the system failed to protect Jeffrey and the involvement of the CCAS.

It is alleged the CCAS did not do a background check on the grandparents prior to the placement. Each of them has previous child abuse convictions.

The matter of the background check is more, in fact, than an allegation. The information about the grandparents' prior record of child abuse was in the CCAS files all along, but somehow no one connected the dots, and so the kids were sent off to their own hell on earth.

Various so-called "pro-life" organizations have been vocal over the past few years on the matter of the right to life. So I thought I'd look for what was certain to be their outraged comments over the slow torturing to death of a little boy. I was wrong.

I checked Lifesite.ca.

103,000 hits on "abortion." 0 for "Jeffrey Baldwin."

The Catholic Civil Rights League?

20 results for "abortion"; 0 for "Jeffrey Baldwin."

REAL Women of Canada?

111 results for "abortion." 0 for "Jeffrey Baldwin."

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops?

26 hits on "abortion." 0 for "Jeffrey Baldwin."

And so I find myself asking, and others should, too: precisely what "life" are these people "pro?" Why does life suddenly become so much less important after birth? Where is the outrage, the moral concern, the thundering of bishops?

The public inquiry into the workings of CCAS is long overdue. But, in the meantime, it would be nice if the "pro-life" crowd were to break their unaccountable silence.