We’re in a run-up to a federal election in Canada.
The governing Liberals are saying that the Conservatives will re-open the abortion debate if elected, because several Conservative MPs recently participated in a Pro Life march.
The Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, responded by saying that the Conservatives have no intention of re-opening the abortion issue if elected.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/andrew-scheer-trudeau-abortion-alabama-1.5140900
I would slightly qualify Hari Seldon’s summary of the history of the abortion issue in Canada. There were two separate rounds of litigation, followed by failed legislative efforts.
In the first round, in the 1970s, Dr Morgentaler was acquitted by a series of juries in Quebec. That was the basis for the case where the appellate courts imposed a conviction. The Attorney General of Quebec eventually announced that there would be no further prosecutions, as the pattern of jury acquittals showed that there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction.
The second round was in Ontario in the 1980s. Dr Morgentaler opened a clinic in Ontario. He was charged by the Ontario authorities but again acquitted by a jury. That case went on appeal to the Supreme Court, which struck down the Criminal Code abortion law under the Charter. The Court didn’t establish that abortion laws per se were unconstitutional, only that the particular law in issue was in breach of the Charter.
The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney then moved to pass a new abortion law. The first attempt was defeated in the Commons on a free vote. Opponents of abortion thought the proposed law was too permissive, while pro choice MPs thought it was too restrictive. Both groups voted against the bill, and it was defeated.
Mulroney’s government tried again a year later with another bill. This bill passed the Commons in a free vote. It then went to the Senate, which also held a free vote (and party discipline is generally a bit weaker in the Senate anyway).
The Senate vote was a tie, somewhat to everyone’s surprise. Under the rules of the Senate, there’s no tie-breaking procedure. If a matter goes to a tie, that means it has failed to pass. The bill was thus defeated in the Senate.
After that, Mulroney said he was done with the issue. He’d tried twice to pass a bill and failed. He concluded that there simply wasn’t political appetite for it, and moved on to other vote-getters, like instituting a new tax.
That was around 1991. Since then, no federal government has introduced any bills to regulate or prohibit abortion. Abortion is now the same as any other health or medical procedure.
I find this very interesting. AIUI so-called “selective reduction” is done only when aborting one or more fetuses in a multiple pregnancy increases the survival rate of the remaining fetus(es). I don’t understand why anyone would be against this. When is it more desirable to have (say) three stillbirths rather than one aborted fetus and two healthy babies?
Ah, grasshopper, you don’t understand. This is for GOD to decide, not the doctor or the mother. The fact that God presumably gave both the doctor and the mother BRAINS and HEARTS to help them make good decisions is irrelevant.
You see, healthy babies are not the goal of this policy. The goal of the policy is to take control of a woman’s body away from her and to jail (or murder) any doctor who interferes. If the goal were healthy babies, then healthy babies would be valued and cared for, right? There would be adequate medical care for them from birth, social safety net programs, educational opportunities–all the things that turn healthy babies into healthy adults. But this group doesn’t care about babies or children. It only cares about FETUSES and uppity women who dare to think that their bodies are their own.
Ugh. Sorry about the rant… couldn’t help myself.
very well summed up, Thelma Lou
if any “pro lifers” really cared about babies (and about pregnant women and girls!) they would be all about the birth control.
Let us not forget the pro-lifers are just as opposed to Contraception, this is their next target if Roe is overturned.
Nah.
It is just a cynical power play by a political wing to churn up the masses so they vote for them.
Maybe they hate women, maybe they don’t but that is not the point. No one is sitting there, rubbing their hands in an evil overlord sort of way, thinking this will really hurt women…WooHoo!
It is no more or less than politics. Conservatives have manufactured abortion into a wedge issue in order to bolster their votes. That’s it.
We know this because their pious proclamations about the sanctity of life are not upheld anywhere else (witness their zeal for the death penalty). Their concern for the fetus ends the second it is born. Indeed they do not even advocate for health care for the mother.
The bible is mostly silent about abortion but what it does say suggests it is not too fussed about it. So it is not even a religious thing.
Conservatives used to be pro-choice and were fine with abortion.
It is literally a ginned up problem used for political reasons. That’s it.
Gullible = conservative. They should be synonyms.
For the record, 47 percent of American women are pro-life.
(Since there’s this recurrent narrative that “It’s about men who want to suppress women.”)
Is there more nuance to that?
Do those women think abortion is right/wrong in the case of incest or rape?
Do they discern between abortion depending how far along it is?
Do they think they should have the option to abort or were they asked about it as a general idea?
These things make a difference in polls.
Honestly, the better option is to never implant more than 2 eggs at a time. Multiple pregnancies greater than twins are very uncommon outside of IVF and some hormonal fertility treatments. And twins usually both do okay.
It actually makes sense if you think of them as being “in-between laws”. To be in a situation where everybody agrees that “what we have isn’t perfect but it’s acceptable” requires being in a middle ground; in some countries that middle ground has been more stable, in others it moves more, but it’s always a compromise. What looks “fairly restrictive” to a person looks “permissive” to another one. Part of the issue in the US is that abortion politics are presented in b/w terms: it’s either “free abortion” or “no abortion”. That’s not the case in most of Europe: the majority of us talk about it in terms of “when”, not “if”.
Since “selective reduction” was not (much of) a thing when the current Norwegian abortion laws went into effect in 1976 there was no special mention of them in the law.
In 2016 the Justice Department reviewed the status of the law and medical science in that area and stated that “selective reduction” was an option within the “12-weeks no questions asked”-window of the current law as well as the “12th-18th week apply to the abortion “tribunal””-window.
In the period 2002-2015 there were 16 cases of selective reduction, all due to severe fetal developmental anomalies.
From the change in the interpretation of the law until 2018 there were 38 cases of selective reduction, over 60% of them in completely healthy pregnancies.
And God’s busy, so some people have appointed themselves to speak on God’s behalf.
Maybe we should have a registry for the women who are open to having an abortion so men can have a fair choice too. Or maybe an alternative registry of women who pledge to never have an abortion (rape, incest, medical reasons excluded). Personally I am very strongly pro life. I would not have sex with a woman that I knew would abort someone’s life.
As it stands now, men don’t have any control between paying child support for 18 years or having no kid at all in the event of an unexpected pregnancy. Men have been marginalized in the family structure. Their future is at the mercy of what the mother decides. It is wrong that both people decided to have sex but one person decides the fate for everybody.
Just to re-iterate that last point, abortion has been politically a non-issue in Canada for about 30 years. Meaning that the only obstacle to a woman’s preference might be medical ethics affecting late-term abortion, but there is neither legal meddling nor any political interest in reviving an issue that has been long settled by the Supreme Court. There are the inevitable vocal small groups of religious nutters railing against it, but they have pretty much no political clout. I don’t remember the issue ever coming up in political debates.
There is no truth at all to this.
Get a vasectomy and/or avoid vaginal sex. There is tons of sexual pleasure to be had with zero risk of pregnancy and there’s is no guarantee a woman who gives your pledge doesn’t change her mind, so you owe it to that possible life to commit to these immensely smaller sacrifices.