The debate politicians are afraid to reopen
National Post – May 01, 2010
By Kevin Libin

It was, above all, the one issue the Conservative government had been scrupulously trying to avoid: abortion. It has, instead, turned into one of the louder political controversies on a Parliament Hill full of them.

Opposition MPs denounced as "extreme" International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda's announcement that the government would promote its plan to get the G8 behind maternal – and child-health initiatives in the developing world, but would not include abortion funding. It was imposing an "ideological pro-life agenda" on the world, Liberal critic Glen Pearson said. The Tories were, according to a Montreal columnist, "reigniting the abortion debate," as if that were, by definition, a bad thing.

In reality, for 20 years, there has been no meaningful debate over abortion law in this country, and this tempest over the Tories' decision not to add new funding for foreign abortions seems unlikely to change that. Canada is the only democratic country on Earth with nothing to say, legislatively, about abortion, and all major federal parties have vowed to leave it that way.

In a country with no rules, and a political class evidently terrified of even considering any, the status quo silence seems bound to persist, even if a large number of voters preferred it didn't. If Canadians, at least publicly, are incapable of even tolerating an edifying discussion about something like Mr. Harper's maternal health initiative, so loosely connected to Canadian abortion rights, without falling into predictably paralyzing positions and rhetoric, there seems little hope of us ever seriously confronting it at all.

Abortion debates elsewhere aren't always considered bad. However arduous the exercise, other democracies have somehow braved the struggle of reviewing their balance between the rights of women against the ethics of abortion. The Spanish government last fall unveiled amendments to its abortion laws; this month the Mexican government announced new rules governing how doctors discuss abortion; and at any given time you'll find several American states experimenting with legislative fiddles to Roe v. Wade.

Every European country, even those considered most secular and progressive, puts some limits on the timing and justifications allowable for abortions. But for 20 years, since the Mulroney government tried and failed to restrict abortions to only cases where a mother's health was at risk, federal and provincial governments have done their best to steer clear of it.

But Ottawa's wishing away difficult questions about reproductive rights can only get more difficult, says Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.

"It's an extraordinarily important debate," she says. The abortion issue merely belongs to the first wave of what will be many morally fraught crossroads between reproduction and medical technology. In coming years, we'll see parents able to design their children's genes or lesbians able to reproduce with artificial sperm. We already have parents selectively aborting by sex. All tread heavily on the same difficult turf as abortion: the rights of the mother against those of the state's interests.

"But the politicians don't want to hear about these controversial issues and they don't want to stand up for their values, even their own personal values, and I think that's enormously dangerous," Ms. Somerville says. "All of these questions, we're going to have to decide what we want to do about them and ducking for cover is not a very reassuring way for politicians to go."

These are not issues that are easily legislated. Prior controls on abortion, passed by the Trudeau government - requiring they be performed in hospitals, only if approved by a hospital committee - were found by the Supreme Court in the 1988 Morgentaler case to violate the Charter for being too intrusive. But the ruling held that there was room for limits that could pass the Charter test - requiring a "higher degree of danger to health in the latter months of pregnancy, as opposed to the early months" - if a Parliament wanted to try. Since 1990, no Parliament has.

Going by the public debate, compromises would not seem to lend themselves well to this issue. Just ask Rod Bruinooge, the Winnipeg Conservative MP and chair of Parliament's bipartisan pro-life caucus, who recently tabled a private members bill related to abortion that doesn't seem quite crazy. It would make it a crime for someone "coercing" a woman to have an abortion against her will - by threatening ostracism, violence or withholding support. The bill seems destined to fail. Mr. Bruinooge says no party, including his own, will back it; pro-choice groups have said the ban still counts as restricting access to abortion.

On the other side, for those who consider abortion immoral, no boundaries are absolute enough.

"If I ever found myself on the Hill advocating for a reduction in abortion time limits from 24 weeks to 22 or whatever, that I can't stomach, [and] that's where the debate is at in so many places in this world," says Andrea Mrozek. It's why she founded Ottawa-based ProWomanProLife, an advocacy group that seeks to end abortion without relying on laws that are, she believes, always problematic.

But polling of average Canadians reveals beliefs far subtler and that might even lend themselves to popular support for certain limits. A 2008 Angus Reid poll found that a majority, albeit a slim one of 51%, weren't comfortable with the current state of affairs in Canada where we allow abortion for any reason at all, under any circumstances. A majority (53%) thought guardians should be informed when a minor requests an abortion.

While Canadian views tend, over time, to follow their leaders on difficult social questions, gradually, though very slowly, warming to progressivist legal moves, like eliminating the death penalty, or legalizing same sex marriage, we haven't shifted toward Ottawa's laissez-faire abortion approach, says Michael Adams, founder of Environics Research Group and author of the 1997 book Sex in the Snow, documenting social evolutions in Canada. "In the case of abortion, opinion has not moved very much at all," he says. "Many would like to believe that the abortion issue is settled in this country and that we have a pro-choice consensus, but this is not so. Canadians are still divided and those on the extremes are deeply involved emotionally in the issue, although happily in a non-violent Canadian way."

Perhaps a more instructive poll, however, was Angus Reid's last year, which found 92% of Canadians unaware that the country had no laws at all regulating the roughly 90,000 abortions that occur annually. With only paralysis and ignorance to go by, it's impossible to know how certain policies might resonate were our governments to consider them.

In Germany, and the majority of American states, for instance, policies require that women receive counseling before an abortion; Turkey, and 34 U.S. states require some parental involvement for minors having an abortion, unless the mother was raped or her health is at risk; and virtually every western European country and 38 American states put restrictions on late-term abortions except under extenuating circumstances. The German government only pays for abortions in cases of financial need, while several U.S. states are right now determining whether they'll extend newly passed universal health coverage to abortions.

At the very least, Ms. Somerville says, having any legislation, even one that does little to actually limit abortion access or popularity, sets a cultural tone about how a nation feels about something. Currently, she thinks Canada's message is that abortions are an inconsequential matter.

That may not change for some time, predicts Faron Ellis, the Lethbridge College political scientist who authored a book on the rise of Canada's Reform Party. For one thing, the Western spirit of today's conservative movement, and its social conservative rump, has allowed other parties to successfully whip up, for partisan gain, phantom fears the right would curtail women rights (the Reform party and Canadian Alliance, like the Tories, never supported abortion laws). That makes it too dangerous for the Conservatives to discuss abortion and, for the Liberals, too compromising for their credibility - at least until the hidden agenda shtick is long gone. But more to the point, he says, there is simply no pressing reason for any government to try tackling this thorniest of issues.

"When governments tend to seize on issues, especially those with huge potential political consequences, there typically is some pressing situation or need in society that they can say they are addressing and that's why they're going down this road," he says. It might be new medical evidence about fetuses, or the sudden appearance of more morally troubling reproductive breakthroughs like those Ms. Somerville mentioned. Or it could even just mean growing and vocal unease over the status quo. But as long as voters seem either unprepared to, or uneasy with discussing abortion ourselves, it shouldn't surprise us when our politicians choose, wisely, to focus their attention elsewhere.