Scheer backtracks on abortion promise
CONSERVATIVE BILL
OTTAWA • Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer appears to be backtracking on a campaign commitment to stop efforts to reopen the abortion debate, with a Conservative MP allowed to introduce a bill seeking to ban abortions for the purpose of choosing a child’s sex.
Saskatchewan MP Cathay Wagantall put forward the proposed law Wednesday, saying it reflects Canada’s commitment to gender equality.
“It is true that the majority of Canadians agree with having access to abortions,” she said. “It is also true that 84 per cent of Canadians stand against sex-selection abortions.”
There is evidence suggesting women in Canada are sometimes choosing to terminate pregnancies based on the fetus’s sex.
A 2016 paper in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found in some communities, women who became pregnant after having an abortion were more likely to give birth to a boy, odds that rose even higher if the woman already had daughters. Using data from Ontario, the researchers found the correlation pronounced in women who had been born in India.
Similar findings have been reported elsewhere, with researchers noting while the data doesn’t prove women terminated their pregnancies because of the sex of the fetus, it is a reasonable conclusion.
Past efforts to debate the issue in Parliament have failed.
In 2013, a Conservative motion condemning the practice was blocked and the Conservative prime minister of the day, Stephen Harper, barred the MP sponsoring it from discussing the matter in the Commons. Harper’s move was linked to his repeated declarations that he wouldn’t allow the abortion debate to be reopened.
How Scheer would handle similar issues was a persistent question put to him during the election campaign.
It took weeks before he acknowledged his own anti-abortion view, which he qualified by saying:
“I’ve also made the commitment that as leader of this party it is my responsibility to ensure that we do not reopen this debate, that we focus on issues that unite our party and unite Canadians. And that’s exactly what I’ll do and that’s why I’ll vote against measures that attempt to reopen this debate.”
Asked Thursday how that statement squares with Wagantall’s bill, a spokesman for Scheer said parliamentarians are free to bring forward business of their own choosing.