Don't mention the a-word
As the Conservatives prepare for this month’s national convention, efforts are being made to suppress any mention of abortion -- the issue that dare not speak its name, again. It can’t be debated during an election, and it can’t be debated in Parliament. Now it seems it can’t even be debated within the party.
This is a remarkable and perplexing state of affairs: a mature democracy that cannot bring itself even to discuss an issue of fundamental importance. Elite orthodoxy on abortion is that absolute, and its enforcers in the media that ferocious.
It cannot last. You cannot suppress debate forever, even in Canada. Yet as “divisive” as abortion may be, all sides ought to be able to agree on a few points beforehand -- the ground rules, if you like. Here, then, are six propositions about abortion that aren’t about abortion, starting with:
1. It is a legitimate subject for debate. There are people of goodwill on all sides of the question. So what are we afraid of? Granted, any issue that involves so profound a conflict as the unborn child’s right to life versus the mother’s right to control her body is bound to be emotional. It puts a special premium on all sides to choose their words carefully. But that’s a far cry from being told they can’t say anything at all.
2. The status quo was not the result of any democratic decision. I don’t have any quarrel with the original 1988 Morgentaler decision that tossed out the old abortion law. But the Supreme Court did not rule that any abortion law was unconstitutional: just the one in front of it. So Parliament went to work drafting a new one. After several attempts, a compromise bill passed the Commons in a free vote. It was a messy process, and the results pleased no one fully. It was also democracy at its finest: the nation’s elected representatives working to bridge deep-seated divisions on a difficult question.
So it is doubly disgraceful that the bill should have died in the Senate -- and on a tie vote. No matter what your position is on abortion, that is no way for a democratic country to decide things.
3. There is no consensus. Much though defenders of the status quo like to claim the matter has been settled, the polls are clear and consistent in this regard. Roughly speaking, there is a three-way split: one-third favour abortion on demand, one third favour outlawing it in all circumstances, and one-third are somewhere in the middle -- for example, preferring a ban on third-trimester abortions.
In any event, since we are also told we can’t debate it because the issue is so “divisive,” that suggests even the status quoters know there’s no consensus. The issue isn’t settled. It just isn’t being debated.
4. The status quo is, objectively, extreme. I don’t mean it’s unreasonable. It may even be right. But it is a truism that, of the range of possible legal resolutions of the abortion question, the status quo -- no abortion law of any kind -- is at one extreme end, the polar opposite of a comprehensive ban.
So it’s absurd for defenders of the status quo to announce that everyone else -- anyone whose position deviates in even the slightest degree from theirs -- is extreme. That is unreasonable.
5. There are divisions in every party on abortion, and extremists on both sides. In the Authorized Version of the issue, there is only one party that is divided, the Conservatives, and their divisions are wholly one-sided, the result of anti-abortion “extremists.”
But the Liberals are if anything more divided, and the blinkered dogmatism of some of the party’s anti-abortion caucus is matched only by the papal infallibility of its pro-choice wing.
6. The legal status of the foetus raises issues far beyond abortion. Perhaps, after a debate, we might decide that, when it comes to abortion, the rights of the mother trump those of the child in utero. Fine: that’s a different matter than saying the foetus has no rights at all. Which is more or less where we’re at.
The current legal vacuum -- not a law but the absence of one -- has forced the courts to tie themselves up in ever more complicated knots to avoid granting the foetus legal standing. Example: the “glue-sniffer” case -- a Manitoba woman who had already given birth to two severely deformed children and was pregnant with a third. But the courts ruled she could not be compelled to stay off the solvents, even for the remainder of her pregnancy.
Example: the pregnant New Brunswick woman whose family could not sue her for reckless driving on behalf of the child she was carrying (in order to claim from her insurance). Had she injured someone else’s child, she could have been found liable. Or had some other driver injured the child in her womb, so could he. The one party for whom she could not be held responsible was her own unborn child.
There’s much more: the whole issue of reproductive technologies, for example. Because of our unwillingness to debate abortion, we are unable to discuss these other questions sensibly. This has to stop. The debate has to start.
This is a remarkable and perplexing state of affairs: a mature democracy that cannot bring itself even to discuss an issue of fundamental importance. Elite orthodoxy on abortion is that absolute, and its enforcers in the media that ferocious.
It cannot last. You cannot suppress debate forever, even in Canada. Yet as “divisive” as abortion may be, all sides ought to be able to agree on a few points beforehand -- the ground rules, if you like. Here, then, are six propositions about abortion that aren’t about abortion, starting with:
1. It is a legitimate subject for debate. There are people of goodwill on all sides of the question. So what are we afraid of? Granted, any issue that involves so profound a conflict as the unborn child’s right to life versus the mother’s right to control her body is bound to be emotional. It puts a special premium on all sides to choose their words carefully. But that’s a far cry from being told they can’t say anything at all.
2. The status quo was not the result of any democratic decision. I don’t have any quarrel with the original 1988 Morgentaler decision that tossed out the old abortion law. But the Supreme Court did not rule that any abortion law was unconstitutional: just the one in front of it. So Parliament went to work drafting a new one. After several attempts, a compromise bill passed the Commons in a free vote. It was a messy process, and the results pleased no one fully. It was also democracy at its finest: the nation’s elected representatives working to bridge deep-seated divisions on a difficult question.
So it is doubly disgraceful that the bill should have died in the Senate -- and on a tie vote. No matter what your position is on abortion, that is no way for a democratic country to decide things.
3. There is no consensus. Much though defenders of the status quo like to claim the matter has been settled, the polls are clear and consistent in this regard. Roughly speaking, there is a three-way split: one-third favour abortion on demand, one third favour outlawing it in all circumstances, and one-third are somewhere in the middle -- for example, preferring a ban on third-trimester abortions.
In any event, since we are also told we can’t debate it because the issue is so “divisive,” that suggests even the status quoters know there’s no consensus. The issue isn’t settled. It just isn’t being debated.
4. The status quo is, objectively, extreme. I don’t mean it’s unreasonable. It may even be right. But it is a truism that, of the range of possible legal resolutions of the abortion question, the status quo -- no abortion law of any kind -- is at one extreme end, the polar opposite of a comprehensive ban.
So it’s absurd for defenders of the status quo to announce that everyone else -- anyone whose position deviates in even the slightest degree from theirs -- is extreme. That is unreasonable.
5. There are divisions in every party on abortion, and extremists on both sides. In the Authorized Version of the issue, there is only one party that is divided, the Conservatives, and their divisions are wholly one-sided, the result of anti-abortion “extremists.”
But the Liberals are if anything more divided, and the blinkered dogmatism of some of the party’s anti-abortion caucus is matched only by the papal infallibility of its pro-choice wing.
6. The legal status of the foetus raises issues far beyond abortion. Perhaps, after a debate, we might decide that, when it comes to abortion, the rights of the mother trump those of the child in utero. Fine: that’s a different matter than saying the foetus has no rights at all. Which is more or less where we’re at.
The current legal vacuum -- not a law but the absence of one -- has forced the courts to tie themselves up in ever more complicated knots to avoid granting the foetus legal standing. Example: the “glue-sniffer” case -- a Manitoba woman who had already given birth to two severely deformed children and was pregnant with a third. But the courts ruled she could not be compelled to stay off the solvents, even for the remainder of her pregnancy.
Example: the pregnant New Brunswick woman whose family could not sue her for reckless driving on behalf of the child she was carrying (in order to claim from her insurance). Had she injured someone else’s child, she could have been found liable. Or had some other driver injured the child in her womb, so could he. The one party for whom she could not be held responsible was her own unborn child.
There’s much more: the whole issue of reproductive technologies, for example. Because of our unwillingness to debate abortion, we are unable to discuss these other questions sensibly. This has to stop. The debate has to start.
3/09/2005
