The Big Story: Canada’s anti-abortion movement is back, with a rebrand

You may have noticed more anti-abortion protesters with their infamous graphic signs on Canadian streets recently. You may also have noticed that a vote on the issue at a recent conservative convention was… a lot closer than most people thought it would be.

Despite polls showing a majority of Canadians support legal abortions and a woman’s right to choose, today’s pro-life movement has a new message and a new strategy. Those behind it are framing the debate as one of female empowerment, and surgically looking for ridings and candidates who are vulnerable and might be converted to the cause.

The truth is, while the United States screams about a new justice potentially overturning Roe v Wade, Canada has its own reinvigorated pro-life movement to contend with. If Doug Ford’s election in Ontario was a crack in the bedrock, upcoming votes in Alberta and Nova Scotia could signal a major tectonic shift. And of course, the 2019 federal election looms.

Anne Kingston of Maclean’s joins “The Big Story” podcast and digs into the movement’s long-term plans to put laws restricting abortion back in the conservative crosshairs.

“We shouldn’t assume that progress always moves in a certain direction,” says Kingston.

She looked at the rise of anti-abortion groups within the political process. “I looked specifically at a flurry of groups that are re-purposing and re-focusing their efforts, in terms of strategic involvement in elections, in leadership votes.”

“Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, is indebted to these groups — anti-abortion groups — for his very election. Also, during these negotiations, Ford promised to defund abortion in Ontario. Whether that will come to pass, we don’t know. But certainly, Ford is an example of how this abortion debate — which has been pretty silent in Canada for decades, with a few erruptions here and there — is entering political discourse again.”

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You can also hear it online at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

Kingston points out the majority of Canadians are in favour of legalized abortion. “They see it as a conversation between a woman and her doctor, not to be legislated by the state.”

But she says anti-abortion groups, specifically those in Ontario and Alberta, are using new vocabulary.

“They’re framing it within the convention of social advocacy. The language of the left, in fact. We’re talking about ‘freedom of speech.’ We’re talking about ‘fetal genocide.’ We’re talking about ‘gendercide.’ We’re talking, in terms of the messaging, ‘pro-women’ — that, in fact, abortion takes away a woman’s choice within a pro-culture.”

Kingston says anti-abortion groups argue women are being pressured into abortion.

“I’m voicing discussions I’ve had with advocates on the anti-abortion side… [they say] we live in such a ‘pro-abortion’ culture that women feel pressured to have abortions, that they don’t feel they have a choice to raise a child, that there are not enough supports in place to nurture that kind of thinking.”

“We’re seeing the re-purposing of the language of the left. It’s been written about — academics are beginning to study it, it’s so overt,” she adds.

Kingston believes the pro-life movement today is different from that from the past because there is a “strategic political involvement.”

“We’re looking at these groups trying to find out where they can get pro-life candidates elected at every level. We’re not just talking about the federal level. We’re talking right down to school boards, municipal elections, provincial, et cetera.”

She adds the groups are targeting ridings that are winnable by pro-life politicians.

“Specifically, there is a campaign… What they’ve done is gone across the country and seen vulnerable ridings. One is in Edmonton Mills, currently held by a cabinet minister… won by a very slim margin. They’ve targeted that. It’s very focused, very strategic. We’re talking about hard-core political strategizing happening here. It’s a numbers game.”

She notes the faces of the movement are young and often female.

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The more Kingston researched the subject, the more apparent one thing became. “We cannot take a status quo for granted.”

“What I saw was the way certain arguments are having velocity, even among the left. One of the interesting things I discovered, talking to anti-abortion groups, was that the politician they look at and thank the most for giving this airtime is not Jason Kenney. It’s Justin Trudeau. Trudeau, of course, has brought abortion — a topic that really wasn’t in the Canadian political landscape — into the forefront, when he discussed his edict, in terms of no member of his party can vote against pro-choice.”

“He takes a hard line, then it’s given oxygen. Then it becomes an issue,” says Kingston, who tells us the group feels its freedom of speech is being encroached upon.

“That’s a subject that Canadians care a lot about. They may not want to talk about abortion, but they want to talk about freedom of speech.”

The conversation in Canada vs the U.S.

When it comes to links between anti-abortion groups in Canada and the U.S., Kingston says she hasn’t seen a clear connection between them. “But it’s very clear that there is a communication between the groups north of the border and south — not necessarily in terms of funding or anything like that, but in terms of just communicating messaging, training, that sort of thing.”

But she says there is a cultural divide, in terms of how Canadians and Americans talk about abortion.

“For instance, the religious arguments don’t have traction here when we talk about abortion — that’s not going anywhere. But a few other areas, we do have a bit of traction — freedom of speech, freedom of expression is something that Canadians will talk about it.”

She adds the idea that we don’t have an abortion law in Canada raises concerns of late-term abortion. “We’re hearing that a lot more, which statistically, is not a concern — if you actually look at the numbers. But it’s something that strikes people, emotionally. They hate the thought of a child being aborted in the eighth or ninth month. It doesn’t happen, but it’s something that people will get behind, in terms of thinking, ‘Maybe we do need a law.'”

“Currently, access to abortion across the country is not equal,” says Kingston, who explains the overturn of the abortion law in 1998 has meant there are essentially no restrictions on a woman getting an abortion in Canada.

“It’s between her and her doctor, theoretically. But practically, provinces — because they control access to healthcare — have a lot to say about what’s funded, what’s not funded, where abortions can take place… We only have to look at P.E.I., which didn’t have access to abortion for women in that province, for 35 years.”

A clinic in that province opened last year.