LILLEY: Trudeau’s ongoing abortion rhetoric a sign of true desperation

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If we’re talking about abortion, it must be the month of May in Canada.

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Each May, on the Thursday before Mother’s Day, pro-life activists march to call for an end to abortion and at the same time, Liberals go on a rampage about how only they can protect abortion.

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Happy Mother’s Day all.

This year, trailing badly in the polls, Justin Trudeau is keeping up the pro-abortion rhetoric, warning women that voting for Conservatives will put them at risk. He did that Thursday at a campaign-style stop in New Brunswick to push the government’s plan for a national school food program.

“We will keep fighting for women’s rights,” Trudeau said.

He said that as if our Supreme Court had ruled abortion a right, as it once had in the United States. That never happened in Canada, we simply have an absence of a law. But Trudeau loves to import American political issue into Canada while decrying American-style politics.

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But I digress, what really has Trudeau riled up about abortion in New Brunswick is that they stopped funding abortion at a private clinic.

“The shutting down of health and reproductive services offered by Clinic 554 for the unwillingness to engage in allowing women to actually choose what happens to their future, their bodies is a disgrace,” Trudeau said.

Does anyone else find it odd that Liberals are against private health care delivery if it’s for knee replacement surgery or cataracts but are all in favour of private abortion clinics? Once again, if the Trudeau Liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any at all.

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Officials with the Government of New Brunswick say roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the province are carried out with the abortion pill known as Mifegymiso. That has resulted in less demand for surgical abortions, which New Brunswick still funds in hospital settings.

Not good enough for Trudeau, he wants private clinics to provide abortions using public money.

Here’s the thing about this annual fight over abortion that happens around Mother’s Day, it doesn’t matter, nothing is going to change.

Over the years there have been countless polls on the issue of abortion and what it shows, if you read these polls honestly, is that the Canadian public has a complex relationship with this issue. Most don’t want abortion banned, but many are open to restrictions being place on abortion at some point in the pregnancy.

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In Canada, there is no limit on when an abortion can take place. If you can get a doctor to provide an abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy it is perfectly legal and paid for – we have zero restrictions on abortion.

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In Germany there are some limits placed on abortion after 12 weeks, in Italy after 13 weeks and in France after 16 weeks. The United Kingdom imposes some restrictions at 24 weeks and countries like Ireland, Portugal, Japan, Sweden and Spain all have varying levels of restrictions based on weeks of gestation.

We haven’t had a law on abortion in Canada since the Supreme Court struck down the old one in the Morgentaler decision in 1988. We aren’t likely to get one any time soon, despite the overheated rhetoric from the Liberals about electing a Conservative government.

Here’s a dirty little secret of Canadian politics on this issue, a free vote on banning abortion that only took the votes of Conservative Party MPs would not succeed.

Even in the Conservative Party there is no appetite to ban abortion, not among the majority. A free vote held in the Commons on a bill to restrict abortion after the sixth month mark wouldn’t even pass.

All of the posturing, the lecturing, and the social media posts on this issue from the Trudeau Liberals and their allies in the media is simply a sign of their desperation as Liberal poll numbers fall further.

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