I'm going to poke holes in this. A thread.
First up, as @JulieSLalonde said, we don't have laws that guide any other medical procedure, with the exception of assisted dying, which is another medical intervention that is fraught with moralizing and false choices.
But in reality, not having a law on abortion says that it's a medical procedure like any else -- which it is -- and the Campaign Life Coalition has tricked Marty into agreeing that its somehow apart from other procedures and therefore requires a law. It's not and it doesn't.
Abortion doesn't divide Quebec and the ROC to the extent suggested here. Canadians in general are overwhelmingly in favour of abortion. Last I checked, it was like 3/4s. Check for me if you'd like.
But the rub in this piece is that we need to protect the fetus in late-term abortions. Except - there is no way to do this through legislation that wont put parents at risk in some way.
We cannot talk about late-term abortions without talking about facts, of which there are none in this article. So I need to look them up, which I will do in a second. But the argument is that a law will finally put the debate to bed. Except ...
... the debate isn't real. It's manufactured by groups like the Campaign Life Coalition. They will only be satisfied when it's illegal. Why would we listen to their opinions on this medical procedure? It's like listening to jovies on legislating blood transfusions
(aside -- not sure if jovies is something that everyone uses. It's what you use when you grow up in the JW capital of Canada)
Anyway. The Gay Marriage debate wasn't ended because the law permitted gay marriage (and also, it didn't restrict it like an abortion law would -- it made it legal like all marriage). It ended because social consensus ended it ...
... and because we don't listen to fringe voices that want to make gay marriage illegal. If we treated abortion the way we treated gay marriage, the Coalition Life Campaign would never make national news.
(also, you could argue that gay men have more pull in the Conservative party than people who would have an abortion).
Anyway, here is a soul-crushing stat from the same paper -- less than 1% of abortions happen in the 3rd trimester and they are near certainly always heart breaking montrealgazette.com/news/local-new…
Now imagine that 1. you're discovering the worst news possible, that either you or your baby (or both) will die, and you must make a choice and then 2. you have to convince whoever is the legal arbiter of how bad everything is? No merci.
Aside: my third trimester was full of the worst medical news and an "abortion" was one of the options i had to be prepared for because if one twin was genetically unviable (ribcage couldn't grow to accommodate his organs), it would be critical for the other's survival
We thankfully didn't end up having a genetic issue. Anyway. If those of us with actual childbearing experience lead this discussion, you'd see the narrative quickly change.
