The 2021 Canadian election has begun, and that means that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is talking about abortion. This isn’t primarily a tactic to rake in new votes; Trudeau’s team knows that solidly pro-abortion voters are already voting Liberal, and the ambivalent majority doesn’t make it a ballot issue.
But pushing abortion at home and abroad does make Erin O’Toole and the Conservative Party’s strategists deeply uncomfortable because endorsing abortion turns off a key segment of the base. Opposing abortion in any way, on the other hand, allows Trudeau to prophesy about the Hidden Agenda that Stephen Harper never used and thus is presumably stored safely somewhere in bubble-wrap.
Thus, Trudeau’s baiting has begun. He even brought up abortion during the announcement on his national childcare plan, perhaps simply to be provocative. (Jagmeet Singh, not to be outdone, introduced NDP candidate Clare Hacksel, the executive director of an abortion clinic and an advocate for more late-term terminations.)
Despite being staunch opponents of privately funded healthcare, the Liberals have been pushing New Brunswick to fund a private abortion clinic, even withholding healthcare transfers to make this happen. Trudeau’s Health Minister Patty Hajdu also announced a $366,000 grant to the University of New Brunswick to, as the CBC noted, “research challenges women face accessing surgical abortions in the province.”
Have you ever noticed that pro-abortion politicians simply assume there are many unwanted babies, but no unwanted abortions? The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada—run by Joyce Arthur, who could not be more extreme on the issue if she tried — published a paper in 2018 titled “Why Women Have Abortions.” One line, in particular, jumps out: “Many women state they ‘have no real choice’ as they do not have the financial resources to support themselves and a child.”
Consider that for a moment. Abortion is an awful and final choice. Honest pro-choice people once admitted that abortion is an incredibly significant and often difficult decision. Yet, according to Canada’s most radical abortion rights group, many women getting abortions in Canada are not doing so because they do not want their babies, as Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, and their progressive friends assume. They are getting abortions because they believe women “have no real choice.”
