Liberals are wrong about abortion rights

Canada doesn't need a law to protect them

SINGH ... HOLDS THE FATE OF A WHOLE GOVERNMENT IN HIS HANDS. — MURPHY

Some Liberals want to bring abortion out of the doctor's office and into Parliament. They shouldn't.

Talk of an abortion rights law in Canada was reignited after Politico's leak of a draft opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court. The opinion turns out to be the decision of the court, it would overturn Roe v. Wade and place the question of abortion access entirely into state legislatures. That is, it wouldn't outright ban abortions, but it would allow states to ban abortions.

In response to a foreign court's interpretation of their country's constitution, our government might table a law to enshrine access to abortion — access we already have.

Nearly three-quarters of Canadians — 72 per cent — think the government should leave abortion rules as they are, according to a Maru Blue poll conducted last weekend. This is the case across all gender and age groups. Our status quo — arising from medical policies and Supreme Court rulings, rather than legislatures — is that abortion is not limited by law. The poll also found, in an apparent contradiction, that 78 per cent favoured enshrining abortion rights in law, but the point remains that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo.

After the 1988 Morgentaler decision by the Supreme Court that struck down Canada's existing abortion law, Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government tabled a new law to ban abortions where pregnancy didn't threaten the life or health of a woman, but it died in the Senate

Restricting abortions just doesn't work out well in Canadian politics. More recently, a 2021 private member's bill restricting abortion on the sex of a fetus died in the House of Commons. Political appetite isn't there — the Maru Blue poll found that only 20 per cent of Canadians would vote for politicians who want to criminalize abortions.

The Canadian approach leaves the question of abortion to doctors. The Canadian Medical Association defines abortion as a procedure that occurs up to the 20th week of pregnancy — there is no published hard limit. Depending on the province, the procedure is capped between 12 and 24 weeks (the typical pregnancy is 40). Doctors in Canada aren't mandated to provide or give referrals for abortions, but they should be able to indicate where woman can get referrals. In short, Canada isn't completely pro-choice, nor is it intensely pro-life — it's pro-doctor.

The Liberals' 2021 election platform includes a commitment to make a regulation under the Canada Health Act that would mandate access to sexual and reproductive health services “no matter where someone lives.” Unlike federal acts, federal regulations are passed by the Liberal Cabinet rather than Parliament itself, which means the Liberals could have mandated abortion access in Canada already. Now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has hinted at amending the Canada Health Act itself, which would have to go through Parliament — and generate more press.

If most Canadians like the state of things as they are now, why not write it in as a law? Well-intentioned laws can lead to unintended consequences. Some who favour enshrining abortion rights in law, advocate requiring all doctors to be willing to perform an abortion at any time for any woman.

In 2019, a bioethicist told Global News that medical schools should deny entry to students who would refuse to perform procedures like abortions for their personal beliefs — despite this being completely acceptable by Canadian Medical Association guidelines. The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada also calls for conscientious objection to be phased out of medical policies, along with other measures for refusers like lower priority for hiring, lower pay, prohibitions on practising alone, mandatory registration, and liability for refusing.

Such rules would be needlessly strict and just plain unnecessary. It wouldn't be practical to turn away a full-time psychiatrist for refusing to perform abortions because they wouldn't perform one anyway; the same goes for the cardiologist, the neurologist, and the oncologist.

Mandating abortion access can simply mean requiring all communities to provide abortions, but that isn't so easy either. Funding for specialized procedures could have gone to the basics: emergency rooms, general hospitals, walk-in clinics and lab capacity. Where a province provides public services, it could now be required to fund private clinics (a question before the courts in New Brunswick). Spreading resources thin and guaranteeing funding for private clinics both take up pieces of a limited pie.

Reinforcing the status quo means improving medical capacity. Like cancer care, blood transfusions, screenings, pandemic responses, and anything else, we don't mandate health care systems to conjure up better access — we hire more doctors and improve service. We currently have a critical shortage of family doctors, according to the Canadian Medical Association. Family doctors tend to be the first point of contact if someone suspects they're pregnant, regardless of how they choose to proceed — simply hiring more would improve abortion access.

The Liberal government could table amendments to the Canada Health Act to mandate abortion access, but it would be bait. Common-sense objections to the problems that come with this kind of mandate will be cast as evil, pro-life, antifeminist and everything else. And yet, the no-abortion-law status quo is perfectly fine to most Canadians.