Abortion debate could be reopened despite Harper protests

In spite of controlling tendencies, PM has never quashed anti-abortion Caucus members.

by Ish Theilheimer

OTTAWA, January 15, 2009 – a special HarperIndex.ca report: Although Stephen Harper has always strongly denied any interest in reopening the abortion debate, he continues to allow his Caucus members to do so. And considering the dramatic reversals he has made on policies as diverse as Senate appointments, income trusts, and fixed elections, pro-choice advocates worry the issue could come back under a Harper majority.

In December Winnipeg Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, as the chairman of a secretive anti-choice Parliamentary caucus, vowed to reopen the abortion debate in Canada. Aides to Stephen Harper were quick to censure Bruinooge, saying Harper is not interested in reopening the issue. "Throughout his political career, the prime minister has been clear on this issue," said Dimitri Soudas. "We will not introduce or support legislation on abortion."

Harper himself has been consistently taken the same line. "I have been clear throughout my entire political career I don't intend to open the abortion issue," he said last September. "I haven't in the past; I'm not going to in the future."

Harper knows that any suggestion that he supports an abortion ban will alienate the kind of central Canadian urban voters he has spent his political career courting. If he were to achieve the majority government he seeks, however, internal pressure to move on the issue might be overwhelming.

"Although the Prime Minister sent one of his press officers out to slap Bruinooge down," political columnist Geoffrey Stevens comments in StraightGoods.ca, the incident served to reinforce suspicions among the general public that Harper has a secret agenda on certain issues. If he can change his mind on fixed election dates, budget deficits and the appointment of senators, who's to say he cannot or will not change his mind on abortion or same-sex marriage?

"If he means what he says on abortion," asks Stevens,who teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Guelph, "Why does he not gag Bruinooge? Why did he not speak out against Bill C-484 (The Unborn Victims of Crime Act), a Tory private member's bill to enact an Unborn Victims of Crime Act?"

The legislation, which would create a separate offence for killing or injuring a fetus during an attack on a pregnant woman, passed second reading with Harper's tacit support in 2008. It was controversial because many believed that, if passed, it could be have been used as a wedge to re-criminalize abortion, Dennis Gruending reported in StraightGoods.ca in June 2008 in the article See how they pray. The right-wing National House of Prayer blog said, "If the bill is passed then the precedent will be set that Parliament agrees that a fetus is a person with full rights of protection and this has pro-abortion groups worried."

The anti-abortion movement has strong grassroots support in the Conservative Party. In November at the Conservative Party in Winnipeg, Conservatives passed Resolution P-207 called "Protecting Pregnant Women," which "supports legislation to ensure that individuals who commit violence against a pregnant woman would face additional charges if her unborn child was killed or injured during the commission of a crime against the mother."

Links and sources
  Pro-life caucus pushing to reopen abortion debate, Toronto Star, Dec 28, 2008
  Harper stiff-arms Tory talk of reopening abortion debate, Canwest News Service Published, December 29, 2008

Posted: January 14, 2009

Harper Index (HarperIndex.ca) is a project of the Golden Lake Institute and the online publication StraightGoods.ca