Canadian Abortion Rights

"Without a doubt the issue of pregnancy termination is a subject matter that makes some members of Parliament uneasy and some leaders nervous."
Conservative Member of Parliament Brent Rathgeber

The issue of abortion rights, which is to say the human right to obtain an abortion within Canada is as loaded a political hot potato now as it has ever been. The governing Conservative leadership is uninterested in re-visiting the topic of abortion, much less enacting laws revolving around it. The New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party of Canada both subscribe to the popular belief that abortion should be a matter of a woman's conscience and her doctor's acquiescence.

The argument that a woman who by her very nature has been designed to carry a pregnancy for nine months until birth delivers a child, should have the right to decide for herself whether or not she wishes to commit to the completion of an unplanned pregnancy is widely accepted in Canada. That most people view with distaste the issue of sex-selection abortions, and most certainly in particular late-term abortions represent issues that should be addressed seems fraught with the possibility that anti-abortion groups might gain traction.

This is a topic that is so sensitive that people would simply prefer not to discuss any of its details and the ramifications of unrestrained availability as opposed to setting reasonable and humanely acceptable guidelines. It is an issue that could be addressed and should be addressed, but one that is consumed with such polarizing influences that to bring it out into the open risks creating a public imbroglio that will heighten social tensions rather than solve them.

Although the current Conservative-led Government of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made it clear on a number of occasions that it has no intention of re-opening the debate, nor seeking to enact a law that would clearly set out parameters of reason for fear of risking socially unstable backlashes, there are individual Conservative Members of Parliament who have attempted to introduce private member's bills skirting the topic of abortion per se, but focusing on elements within it.

The debate over cultural-derived sex-selection where foetuses identified as female are aborted because of a preference for male-gender babies is one such issue. Again, to raise the issue in any guise raises the fear that the matter will become extended to the discussion of the legality of abortion and its availability. A few Conservative MPs were outraged when a motion was made to disallow the introduction of a discussion in Parliament on sex-selected abortions.

Placing in jeopardy the cohesion of the party along ideological lines, as a reflection of the reality that this government has chosen to represent as a small 'c' Conservative government, rather than represent itself as hard-line conservative in its view of this particular social more, maintaining itself aligned with Canadian popular opinion on most social-contract topics. As a result, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is slammed as a rigidly controlling party leader.

Reality is, all party leaders 'whip' their caucuses into line to present a united front on issues of national import. The Leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament, Thomas Mulcair of the NDP imposed discipline on his NDP caucus, in so doing consolidating himself just as Stephen Harper has done, as leader of his party.

As a demonstration of how the issue can get carried away when a legislature is comprised of leaders whose right-wing and obviously patriarchal agenda rules the day, there is the new legislation signed into law in North Dakota by Republican Governor Jack Dalrymple to give the state the strictest abortion law in the country. The procedure is banned if a fetal heartbeat can be detected; as early as 6 weeks in a pregnancy.

The American landmark Supreme Court 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion is available until the time a foetus is considered viable -- 22 to 24 weeks -- is now being challenged. North Dakota has only one abortion clinic and it is now in danger of being closed. A resolution defining life as beginning with conception would ban abortion in the state and it looks as though that's next on the agenda there.