Abortion poll reveals ignorance of legal vacuum concerning the unborn
By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian Catholic News
OTTAWA (CCN) — An Angus Reid Public Opinion poll that reveals
widespread ignorance of Canada’s legal void concerning abortion
is no surprise to pro-life activists.
The poll, released Aug. 3, showed only 21 per cent of Canadians know
abortions are not restricted at any stage of pregnancy.
After being made aware there
are no laws restricting abortion in Canada, only 27 per cent supported
the status quo. Yet 55 per cent of respondents then said they “saw
no point in re-opening a debate about abortion.”
“People who are familiar
with pro-life politics are very cognizant of what this poll reveals,”
said Winnipeg South MP Rod Bruinooge, who chairs the Parliamentary Pro-Life
Caucus. “It was nice to see a national poll has asked some of
these questions.”
“It highlighted what
many in the profile community have known for some time,” the MP
said.
“This poll shows the
lack of factual knowledge in Canada which has led to the deaths of more
than 3.5 million babies in the mothers’ wombs, approximately 100,000
per year,” said Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) president Jim Hughes
in a statement. “Some were unaware that a child in the womb can
be killed by abortion right up until birth.”
CLC national organizer Mary
Ellen Douglas said people in the pro-life movement have been presenting
the truth about Canada’s abortion vacuum for 30 years but the
news media does not cover what they say.
“We’re living
in a country that has a complete denial of the reality of the baby in
the womb, and keeps fuelling the abortion industry,” she said.
“It’s not getting in the national news, so people don’t
believe it or even hear about it.”
Even ad campaigns, like Life
Canada’s 2009 bus shelter ads that said “Nine Months, the
length of time abortion is allowed in Canada” was ruled “deceptive”
by the Advertising Standards Canada and banned the educational pro-life
organization from using the ad.
At the time, Bruinooge issued
a statement noting how pro-life organizations and campus clubs were
subjected to violations of their freedom of speech.
Though CLC seized on the
fact the fact that only 27 per cent of Canadians support the status
quo, politicians like Bruinooge face the insistence by the Harper Conservative
government that it will not “re-open the abortion debate.”
The poll shows that idea has traction with 55 per cent of Canadians.
Bruinooge said the phrase
has been “packed with negative energy and negative feelings”
so that even matters that are peripheral to abortion get sucked into
it. “The other side has done a good job at that,” he said.
While the phrase is “loaded,” it means something different
to everyone.
He used his private member’s
bill C-510, Roxanne’s Law, as an example of how this phrase is
used. This bill, which memorializes a young woman who was murdered after
she refused to have an abortion, would make it illegal to use threats
or other means to coerce someone to terminate a pregnancy. Though not
an anti-abortion bill, opponents have attacked it as an attempt to re-open
the debate.
“That’s the challenge
pro-life politicians have in unpacking what that phrase means and what
the context is,” he said.
A private member’s
bill to recognize the unborn as victims of crime when a violent crime
is committed against the mother also ran afoul of this phrase even though
its author explicitly indicated it had nothing to do with abortion.
The Justice Minister distanced his government from the bill before the
last election.
Harper and Tory cabinet ministers repeatedly said they would not “re-open the abortion debate” when the government was attacked for excluding abortion in its overseas maternal and child health initiative leading up to the G8 and G20.
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