February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Get the latest from the Liberals? “Single issue” pro-life candidates are trying to “hijack” their already “weakened” party. Or that is how an “objective” news story described the concern. Not to be hoodwinked by these nefarious foes of abortion, the Liberal membership in Toronto-Danforth Riding Association were quick to defeat the nomination of one, Trifon Haitas, a Greek-Canadian journalist who describes himself as pro-life and whose candidacy was backed by “Liberals for Life,” an organization that must feel, given the pro-abortion stance of the Grits, like “New Democrats for Free Trade.”
Lest, there be any further confusion over the issue, perpetually interim Liberal leader Bob Rae reminded all assembled Liberals that the party was “pro-choice” and that everyone had better remember that.
What Rae and others really mean is that we must all remember that there is no room to debate abortion in Canada. It is fascinating to observe the sheer, unbridled fear that overtakes liberals when faced with the possibility of just allowing the abortion issue the respectability of being discussed openly, democratically. Not only are all pro-lifers necessarily single-issue candidates but candidates with a single issue whose proponents dare not speak its name. We couldn’t discuss homosexuality in Victorian polite society; we cannot debate abortion in the public square of today.
It is a silence shared by liberals who rejoice in unrestricted abortion and by some exclusively fiscal conservatives who fear the media and expected public backlash if the abortion issue is raised, if even in a moment of weakness.
But events are moving to overwhelm this suffocating political censorship, despite the monotonous efforts of both Bob Rae and Stephen Harper to force the abortion debate to the back of the bus.
First there was the editorial from the Canadian Medical Association and the ensuing debate about ethnic fetal cleansing, or abortion-based gender selection, when parents choose to allow a male child to live and a female to die. The issue shocked some Canadians: would some really choose to abort a fetus over the child’s sex? But the more the issue was debated, the more it continued to disturb, because isn’t all abortion about one kind of selection or another? Pro-abortionists like to call themselves pro-choice but isn’t that what gender selection is, a choice?
The reason that gender-selective abortion has upset and yes, disgusted, so many is not just because it is a “woman’s issue” that illustrates how some perceive women to be of lower status than men. This issue has hit the guts of many Canadians because it has forced us to examine abortion as more than a clinical procedure. It has asked us to identify what a selection or a choice entails. It has, for a brief moment, highlighted the life of the child that is so utterly affected by the choice that is made when the abort button is pushed. Instead of being told by radical feminists that the abortion debate has been decided forever, or being cautioned by Stephen Harper that the abortion debate will not be reopened during his watch, gender selection reminds us of just who is the real loser, and what is the real loss, every time an abortion is performed in Canada.
Then there was the insistence of Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth, who is demanding that we review a 400-year-old common law that says children “are not human beings until the moment of complete birth.” Stephen Harper was in China when Woodworth announced his intention of following through with a private member’s motion on the issue. The prime minister must have been in a rage over the backbencher’s temerity but even the Leader can’t prevent people from thinking about issues and bringing up uncomfortable facts. That is supposed to be why people become involved in the political process. That’s why Stephen Harper did at one time.
If one believes that abortion is a great moral issue of the ages and one shares a conviction that God moves in the affairs of men, then He will continue to use men and women to raise this issue despite the most concerted efforts of liberals, feminists and some conservatives to bury it.
David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.
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