A party simply born to rule?
Liberal smugness on display over abortion
Just a month ago the Liberals were riding high, with a lead in the polls averaging roughly 12 points. Suddenly, things are a lot tighter. A new Ekos Research poll puts them just one point ahead of the Conservatives, 34-33: a statistical tie. Their lead in the latest Nanos and Ipsos surveys is a little better, at seven points, but Forum Research puts the Conservatives four points ahead, while an Angus Reid poll has it 36 to 33 for the Conservatives as the party that “would make the best government.”
What accounts for this who can say. But one part of it may be a growing weariness with a governing party that appears to believe, almost literally in some cases, that it was born to rule. Previous Liberal governments acquired that arrogance only after many years in office. With the current generation of Liberals, on the other hand, the sense of entitlement seems inbred, rooted less in incumbency than in an unvarnished assumption of moral superiority: a belief, not only that their views are superior to those of their opponents, but that theirs are the only views it is possible for a decent person to hold.
As exhibit A, I give you the recent fiasco at the status of women committee. For those just joining us, the fracas was set off by the Conservatives’ nomination as chair of the committee, Rachael Harder, the party’s critic for the Status of Women portfolio. Thirty years old, smart as a whip, with a background in sociology and youth consulting, Harder is a promising up-and-comer, of a type and vocation one would more typically find in the Liberal caucus.
She has, however, one fatal flaw, at least to the Liberals: she is (sensitive readers may wish to avert their eyes) pro-life, or if you prefer, anti-abortion.
Which is to say, she presumably believes there should be some sort of federal law governing abortion, as opposed to the legal void in which it now takes place. It’s not clear how fervently she believes this, or what sorts of limits she would prefer were in place. The Campaign Life Coalition gives her an “amber-light” rating: though she once filled out a questionnaire for the group saying she would work to pass legislation “to protect unborn children” from conception onward, she also reportedly told an all-candidates meeting in 2015 that “she believes every woman should have access to abortion.”
No matter. Any deviation from the status quo on abortion, no matter how slight, is enough to cast one into the pit. Neither does it matter that there would be no chance whatever of Harder using her post as status of women’s committee chair to implement her fiendish plan. The mere knowledge that somewhere within her lurked some small gleam of wrongthink was grounds for disqualification. Or rather, something worse than that: it was not sufficient for the Liberal majority on the committee to defeat her nomination, as eventually they did (later electing another Conservative MP to the chair against her will). No, so intolerable was the very idea that when it was first proposed the Liberals on the committee walked out in protest.
There is, it is true, a lot of posturing at work here. But it is also true that many Liberals (and New Democrats) sincerely believe this: that any woman who does not believe in absolute unrestricted abortion on demand does not truly believe in women’s rights, and as such is unfit for such a post. They are entitled to think that. What marks them apart is their absolute unwillingness to extend the same courtesy to their opponents — or even to recognize that their opponents do not see things that way.
Pro-lifers do not get up in the morning thinking “how can I reduce women’s rights today?” So far as they are prepared to let the state intervene in what would otherwise be entirely a personal matter, it is in the profound belief that another set of rights are engaged: those of the fetus she is carrying. They may be wrong about that. Or they may be right, but not to the point that the mother’s rights can be overridden. But whether they are right or they are wrong, it is not a belief that is so far off the map as to warrant this kind of demonization.
Why not? Is it impossible that it could be, even in principle? I’ve seen people argue that nominating Harder for chair of status of women is like giving a Holocaust denier responsibility for promoting religious tolerance. Well now. What would be the signs that pro-lifers had sunk into a similarly marginal, if not depraved state?
Perhaps it would, if the matter were settled law — though other fights, such as for assisted suicide, persisted in the face of legal defeat. But it isn’t: the Supreme Court, in its famous 1988 Morgentaler decision, did not say that no abortion law could be constitutional — only that the one in front of them was not. Indeed, the court was at pains to suggest the kind of law that would pass scrutiny, notably a “gestational” approach, with restrictions applying only in the later stages of a pregnancy. Justice Bertha Wilson, the feminist icon, led the way.
Or perhaps it would, if Parliament had decided on the matter — though again, that has not always or even usually been the signal for other campaigns to give up. But again, that isn’t the case: the House of Commons passed a new abortion law in 1990. It died, rather, on a tie vote of the Senate.
Or perhaps, if public opinion were overwhelmingly against it. Once again, that isn’t so: polls consistently show, nearly 30 years after Morgentaler, that public opinion remains divided on the issue — a small hardcore opposed to legalizing abortion under any circumstances, a larger hardcore adamant that it should be legal in all circumstances, and a large block, even a majority, somewhere in the middle. Moreover, there is no gender gap: men and women are equally likely to believe there should be some restriction on abortion.
Or maybe if Canada were the only country still debating the issue, while abortion on demand was the norm in the rest of the world. But in fact it’s the other way around: Canada is the only country in the democratic world that imposes no legal limits on abortion. Perfectly respectable, socially liberal countries like Sweden, France, the Netherlands, etc., think it permissible to progressively tighten access after a certain number of weeks.
Maybe they’re all wrong. Maybe we should stay with the status quo. But it is not, I submit, intolerable to take a different view. Yet such is the bubble within which our political and media class operate that we have persuaded ourselves that the rest of the world are the outliers, and Canada, though it is at one logical extreme of the possible approaches, the benchmark of moderatism.
I am explicitly not saying this controversy has anything to do with the Liberals’ recent decline in the polls, which predates it in any event. But the sense of moral entitlement it reveals, the intolerance of differences of opinion, the demonization of opposition, the insufferable smugness? Yeah, it just might.