Closer and closer we are to the debate, again
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/796025--tory-mp-introduces-coerced-abortion-bill
OTTAWA — A Conservative backbencher has come forward with a new bill on abortion, despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s insistence in recent weeks that the hot-button debate wouldn’t be reopened in the Commons.
Rod Bruinooge, chair of the all-party pro-life caucus in Parliament, has introduced a bill that would penalize anyone who “coerces” a woman into ending her pregnancy against her will.
Bruinooge insists he’s not trying to push the Commons into a debate the Prime Minister has specifically banned, arguing that nothing in his bill would make it illegal to obtain an abortion.
“This bill doesn’t affect gestational limits or access to abortion in Canada,” Bruinooge told reporters Thursday morning. “It’s something that in fact doesn’t reopen the abortion debate but it does make it a crime to threaten or intimidate a woman into abortion.”
But opposition critics say Harper is playing games.
“The Prime Minister said in the House of Commons very clearly and directly that he did not want to reopen the question of abortion in Canada and yet we have one of his members of Parliament bringing that question to the floor,” said New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton. “So you have got to wonder what is really going on here.”
“How is an abortion bill not an abortion bill?” said Liberal MP Anita Neville. “This certainly introduces discussion into the House of Commons and it is a rather sneaky way of doing it. The government hasn't got the courage of bringing it forward in a straightforward way to appeal to their base, so they are doing it in a back-door way and I think it is deplorable.”
By “coercion,” Bruinooge said he is not talking about counseling services for abortion, but he is talking about cases in which parents, for instance, might withhold financial support from daughters who have abortions.
The Prime Minister’s Office, meanwhile, is not saying how it views Bruinooge’s legislation, though it is rare for Conservative backbenchers to hold news conferences and introduce legislation without the PMO’s consent.
“Our Conservative Government will not initiate or support any legislation that reopens the abortion debate,” Andrew MacDougall, a spokesperson for Harper, said in reply to a request for the PMO’s view on the legislation.
Last month, as the Commons was embroiled in a debate over whether abortion was included in the government’s foreign-aid focus on maternal health, the Prime Minister and other cabinet members said repeatedly that no one wanted the controversial debate reopened in Canada. Harper has been in fact sticking to this line since January, when Liberals began asking questions about abortion and maternal health.
“I don’t want this Parliament to have an abortion debate,” Harper said.
MacDougall stressed on Thursday that Bruinooge’s legislation is a private member’s bill, but it isn’t unusual for the PMO to wade into that territory when it’s controversial or a hot-button Conservative issue. The government threw its support, for instance, behind a Conservative backbenchers’ bill last fall to dismantle the long-gun registry.
And in 2008, on the eve of the federal election, another Conservative backbencher’s attempt to make an abortion-related law – the “unborn victims of violence” bill—was explicitly withdrawn by the Conservatives because of similar PMO fears of stirring up the abortion debate in Canada.
“My suspicion is that he has had push back from his base on the maternal-health issue. This is a way of satisfying the base,” Neville said. “I was struck by the fact that he allowed the long gun registry bill… and lo and behold, it appealed—it appeared in the speech of the Throne. Are we to expect this piece of legislation to appear in the next speech of the Throne?”
Bruinooge, who hopes that debate on his “coerced abortion” bill will start in the Commons in coming months, said he was moved to draw up this legislation because of the 2007 murder of a young woman in his riding, Roxanne Fernando.
Fernando was killed after her boyfriend attempted to force her into having an abortion and she backed away from the decision. Bruinooge says he’s satisfied that Fernando’s killers have been punished severely, but he’s hoping that a more specific law against coerced abortions would deter similar crimes in the future.