The June 27th, 2012, Canada Newswire
(newswire.ca) article, “Pro-Choice Counter Protest to Anti-Abortion ‘Caravan,’” repeats a number of common
falsehoods.
It says that Canada has a strong pro-choice
majority. This is not borne out by the polls. The opinion polls of the last
decade, Leger, Gallup, Environics, Angus Reid, and EKOS all demonstrate that
Canadian opinion is split, and that the pro-choice side holds a slim, not a
strong, majority. In fact, when informed that Canada has no law or
restriction on abortion whatsoever, a strong majority of Canadians oppose the
status quo.
The article quotes Carolyn Egan of the
Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) who says, "The issue of
woman's legal right to safe and accessible abortion services has been settled
in 1988 by the Supreme Court of Canada."
This is not true. In 1988 the Supreme Court
of Canada (SCC) struck down the prohibition of abortions because of the
unfortunate patchwork of laws on abortion. Laws varied from province to
province, regulations differed from hospital to hospital, and wealthy women,
who had access to private clinics, had options that other women did not. The
majority of the SCC held that “the structure of the system regulating access to
therapeutic abortions is manifestly unfair.” The provisions were held to
violate the principles of fundamental justice and were struck down because of
their inconsistency, leaving Canada with a legislative vacuum to this day. All
seven judges stated that Parliament has a legitimate interest in protecting the
unborn child and that Parliament ought to rewrite the law. Several
attempts were made by Mulroney governments; however, they failed, and since
then the statutory void has continued to exist. At present, women do not have a
constitutional right to an abortion; there simply is no law on abortion, for or
against.
Jordana Greenblatt, of OCAC, says: "The
debate is over; safe legal abortion is here to stay in Canada." Ms.
Greenblatt is wrong: the debate is just getting started again. Stay tuned! Ms.
Greenblatt opines that all people should “…have equal access to safe, legal,
free, and local abortion services.” Abortions are never free. On average, an
abortion costs $800 (AbortionInCanada.ca), and taxpayers foot the bill.
Ms. Greenblatt is revolted that some parts
of the pro-life movement use placards and billboards of graphic images of aborted
fetuses alongside images of genocides such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan massacres.
She writes, “As a Jewish woman, I am appalled that they would exploit the
historical genocide of my people to try to challenge my rights as a human
being, guaranteed under the Charter."
Ms. Greenblatt does not seem to appreciate that
the world needed to see the appalling images of the Holocaust before it said,
“Never again.” As Canadians see the disturbing images of dismembered babies, they
will more and more be disgusted by the procedure itself and not just the
photographs, and soon they will say, “Never again.”
George van Popta
Ottawa
