The federal Liberals have put abortion back on the agenda.
WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED THE LIBERALS WOULD REOPEN THE ABORTION DEBATE?
Recognition is in order for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who have succeeded in taking an important but slumbering national issue and bringing it to the fore.
Problem is, they didn’t mean to. At least, I don’t think they meant to, since nowhere in their long and varied list of election promises did they pledge to divert the country into a debate over abortion.
Far from it. The Liberals’ usual approach to abortion is to use it as a cudgel against any and all Conservatives they feel are in line for a smearing. Stephen Harper was a regular target. Remember how he was going to put troops in the streets and take away “a woman’s right to choose?” The “hidden agenda” was a regular feature of Liberal attacks, for all nine years that it remained hidden (and remains hidden to this day, now that you mention it).
Ontario’s Liberals are even now attempting to convince voters that Doug Ford is scheming to rob women of control of their bodies, all because he suggested it might be an idea for parents to be informed if their underaged daughter was planning on ending a pregnancy. Hysteria has become a vital Liberal campaign tool.
In Trudeau’s case, the means of reviving the abortion debate seemed innocuous enough. A program whereby Ottawa shovels money into summer jobs — helping young people raise cash for tuition and other expenses — was turned into part of the prime minister’s crusade to eradicate any and all opposition to his views on women and unborn children. His personal stand was already well known — you couldn’t hold a different opinion from the prime minister and be welcomed into the Liberal caucus. If you did somehow manage to sneak in, and made public your concerns, you would be punished.
So the baseline was drawn, and it must have seemed natural to extend it to cover other areas of activity, including summer jobs. Why not make applicants for summer grants bow down to Liberal beliefs? Force them to attest in writing that they didn’t hold an opinion contrary to the approved Liberal credo, even if they were seeking help for activities that lacked even the remotest link to procreation?
Such is the case with Rhea Lynne Anderson and William Anderson, a couple from Brooks, Alta., who run a small irrigation company, A-1 Irrigation & Technical Services, which employs nine people and provides “ecologically responsible” services to agriculture operations. The Andersons applied to Canada Summer Jobs, hoping to hire a student interested in water conservation. The response was a letter from Ottawa insisting they check off a box on the application demanding their adherence to the government’s abortion stand.
As Rhea Anderson notes in an affidavit challenging the decision, guidelines for the summer jobs program “specifically includes within its definition of ‘reproductive rights’ ‘the right to access safe and legal abortions.’ ”
I have no idea of Rhea Andersons’ personal values, but she doesn’t feel the government has the right to tell her what to believe. As she states: “I could not, without violating my conscience, attest to the (Liberal demand) as it compels me to agree with the federal government’s ideological conception of the ‘values’ that ‘underlie’ the Charter; to agree to be bound by the legal obligations of the Charter as though our business were government, and to engage in speech that is not my own, or freely chosen by me.”
She continues: “I believe it violates my fundamental freedoms, protected by section 2 of the Charter, to be required by government to attest to any opinion, belief, perspective or ideology to benefit from a government program for which I am otherwise eligible.”
A week ago the Andersons filed a Charter case challenging the Liberal program. Their statement says it all: Trudeau’s party is using public funding for summer jobs to dictate the morality of Canadians, using access to a jobs program as a way to force people to deny personal beliefs, even if those beliefs are themselves fully compliant with the law and are protected by the Charter of Rights.
Their complaint underlines the rank dishonesty of Ottawa’s stand: the Charter does not ban abortion. There is, in fact, no law on abortion in Canada. The Trudeau government’s claim that respecting abortion rights is necessary to comply with the Charter is wholly invented to serve its own needs. What the Charter does protect is the right to hold personal viewpoints without being persecuted by the government or anyone else. In essence, Ottawa is using a made-up Charter value to deny an actual Charter right. And for all its posturing, it seems not to grasp this.
The gaping hole in the Liberals’ stand has resulted in a growing mound of legal challenges to its ruling. The usual response of abortion rights groups is to shrug off all such efforts as the work of church groups acting in concert against the interests of women. But in this case the challengers include the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and such individuals as the Andersons, who are sponsored by Alberta’s Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. As with the prime minister, abortion-rights supporters appear determinedly blind to the possibility Canadians may question the existing lack of protection for the unborn without having to be a religious nut or raging misogynist. They are deaf to the fact people may just care about the rights of children, and their own right to hold personal beliefs.
As the cases proliferate, the debate grows. David Adams Richard, a Trudeau-appointed senator, denounced the Liberals’ stand as “arrogant and disastrous,” noting “it is couched in terms of liberty, but there is not a totalitarian government in the world who wouldn’t agree with it.” Scott Simms, a Newfoundland Liberal MP, voted for a Conservative motion opposing the abortion stipulation and was removed as chair of the Fisheries and Oceans committee as punishment. When the jobs program recently approved funding for an activist group seeking to hire someone to help block the Liberal-supported Kinder Morgan pipeline, Trudeau cited it as evidence of the government’s devotion to free speech. Free speech, yes — just not when it comes to abortion.
So give credit to the Liberals. Many Canadians of different creeds and values have chafed at the unspoken injunction against public discussion of a fundamental aspect of human life. All parties have feared to raise the matter at risk of unleashing intense public emotions. Now the prime minister has put abortion on the agenda. He may have stumbled into it blindly, bound up with his own unshakable faith in the absolute rightness of his personal beliefs, but there it is. A discussion that needs to be held, brought to you by government ineptitude.
OTTAWA IS USING A MADE-UP CHARTER VALUE TO DENY AN ACTUAL CHARTER RIGHT.