Jeff Durham feels 'abandoned' by government
Jeff Durham was in the House of Commons when Cassie and Molly's Law was voted down October 19.
The bill was named after Cassandra Kaake, who was seven months pregnant when she was found dead at the scene of an arson in Windsor, Ont., in 2014.
Kaake had planned to name her child Molly.
Matthew Brush was charged with first-degree murder. That case is now before the courts.
The House of Commons voted down a private member's bill calling to amend the Criminal Code to charge someone for harm caused to a "pre-born child" when they are accused of harming a pregnant woman.
CBC's Rima Hamadi spoke with Jeff Durham at his home in Windsor.
1) You were in Ottawa for the vote on Wednesday. How were you feeling leading up to that?
We were very anxious and nervous but aware of the political surroundings. It was very stressful.
2) What went through your mind when the bill was voted down?
When the bill was voted down, we felt very ignored. We had done everything we possibly could to try and get them to engage in a discussion about this. And to see them vote this down, we felt completely abandoned by our government essentially, by our country.
3) Now that this process is done, what now?
The way we see this, there's a reality here that it can't be ignored. Somehow we need to get them to do something. They can't just pretend it doesn't exist. The problem doesn't go away. All we can do is try and find another way to get them to pay attention to what is happening here, to what happened to us. To what happened to Cassie and Molly. We're not sure what we're going to do next, but we'll find something.
4) What's the latest with the case? What are you hoping to get out of it?
We're hoping for some sense of justice at some point. Some sense of acknowledgement of the reality. We have absolutely no idea, to what degree that will take place. Two of our family members were killed. And all we know right now is only one of them will be represented by the criminal justice system. So, it's pretty hard. This has been a complete torturous thing for our families. The only possibility of that coming to any type of conclusion is at sentencing. So from the moment charges are laid until sentencing, we're being tortured.
5) We talked to some political analysts about this bill. The reason they said it might have failed was because it opened up the abortion debate. How much of a role did that play?
We think that that superficial notion definitely played a role. The underlining facts are that if you read the bill, if you looked at the independent analysis, you would see that there's no affect on abortion rights, whether it be a woman choosing the abortion or the doctor performing it. That legal analysis that was in the hands of every one of these MPs, they completely ignored that, and continued to say this will open the abortion debate, therefore we can't talk about it. They used that as a reason to ignore us. And we think that's incredibly unfair.
