Amy Hamm: The Liberals’ anti-reality abortion discourse

Conservatives are not going to create anti-abortion legislation in Canada. I repeat: abortions are not going anywhere under a future Pierre Poilievre Conservative government.

You wouldn’t know it, though, based on the frantic pearl clutching of the prime minister and his Liberals lately.

Justin Trudeau and his MPs are lying. It has become a Liberal pastime to use the abortion “issue” (read: non-issue) to distract and divide Canadians when things aren’t going their way. With the Liberal caucus currently on the verge of revolt, it only made sense that the issue was rehashed. One can practically envision Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland taking their eleventh coffee break of the day to scheme about how to take the heat off his failing leadership. “I’ve got it!” shouts Trudeau, “Let’s fear monger about abortion again!” And Freeland, twitching with a latte in hand: “It’s perfect!”

It started with Chrystia Freeland’s bizarre announcement that the Liberals would strip charitable tax status from Christian pregnancy counselling centres that don’t offer abortion referrals as one of their many services, or advertise that they don’t. The government’s backgrounder referred to such services as “anti-choice.” Not “pro-life,” just “anti-choice.” I suppose that’s the diet soda version of being an alleged anti-woman bigot.

Then came Ya’ara Saks. Canada’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions claimed on X this week that: “Without a doubt the leader of the Conservatives will use the Notwithstanding clause to take away women’s rights. Just look at his record… He’s voted to restrict women’s abortion rights time and time again. Actions speak louder than words.”

There is no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to Saks. She knows what she has said is a flat out lie. Poilievre has told the public that he is pro-choice. He has said that his government will not introduce abortion legislation. When Saks refers to Poilievre’s “voting record,” we can only surmise she means that Poilievre voted in favour of bills such as C-311, the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act, which would have made it an “aggravating circumstance” under the criminal code to assault a pregnant woman. It did not pass second reading. What does this have to do with abortion, you might ask? Well, pro-choice groups such as the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) consider such bills to be “anti-choice.” They claim that Conservative politicians want such bills to pass so that they can start to legislate fetal rights — which would allegedly pave the way for anti-abortion legislation. According to the ARCC, the “anti-choice movement is hijacking (this) bill to push for fetal rights.”

The same group notes on their website that, since 1987, nearly 50 private member bills — allegedly all of them anti-choice — were brought forward, but each and every single one failed to pass. Canada currently has no abortion legislation.

Living in a democracy, as we do, we are going to have to tolerate the fact that people, including politicians, can and do hold differing opinions. There will be private member bills. Perhaps from Conservatives, and perhaps from Liberals. Nearly half of the private bills denounced by the ARCC were brought forth by Liberal politicians.

It would be nothing short of political suicide for Poilievre or any future Conservative leader to legislate abortion. The latest Leger polling, from May 2024, shows that 80 per cent of us support abortion rights, while only 11 percent are opposed. And that is exactly the game the Liberals are playing: they know that if Canadians could be convinced that the Conservatives would legislate away access to abortion, they’d have a shot at tanking Poilievre as badly as Trudeau has tanked over the past two years.

The Conservatives are not coming for abortion. If you hear Trudeau or his Liberals, or even New Democrat members of parliament, who are currently invested in propping up our failing Liberal government at all costs (or at least the cost of Jagmeet Singh’s pension), ask yourself what they’re trying to distract you from.

The Liberal Party cannot even define what a woman is.

Perhaps they should sort that out before spouting off about women’s reproductive freedoms.

National Post