The abortion debate comes to Alberta

Today we will know the fate of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party. Regardless of the result of the vote of confidence, there is a pre-election smell in the air of the province. Elections aren’t scheduled until May 2023, but in the event of a narrow victory for Kenney, some believe he should rush the election to test his support in the electorate and regain the confidence of his heavily divided troops.

Indeed, nothing better than a victory against the New Democrats to heal deep wounds, caused both by the Prime Minister’s leadership style and by distinct conceptions of the management of the health crisis. Symptoms of the division, political formations have emerged, such as the Buffalo party or the extreme right party, the Wildrose Independence Party, to welcome the disillusioned if Kenney ever receives the confidence of the members.

For her part, the Leader of the Opposition, New Democrat Rachel Notley, has the wind in her sails. Faced with the Conservative fiasco, the New Democrats can only rejoice. The more the United Conservatives tear their shirts open in the public square, the more the NDP becomes the option of reason, able to lead the province’s boat through troubled economic and climatic waters.

The effect Roe v. wade in Alberta

In this overheated atmosphere, the American debate on the right to abortion was invited in the province, bringing to the surface the militant past of Jason Kenney in the anti-abortion camp.

The media took the opportunity to bring out the excerpt from an interview given by Kenney in 1990 on CNN where he argued that pro-choice groups were destroying the mission of the University of San Francisco where he was studying.

During his academic career at this Catholic establishment in the late 1980s, Kenney became the president of the anti-abortion group. He got into an open war with feminist activists who wanted to distribute information about abortion on campus. When the University wanted to muzzle the activists, arguing that their action went against the institution’s Catholic mission, they threatened to sue for obstructing freedom of expression. The University has therefore adopted a regulation governing freedom of expression within the establishment. Furious, Jason Kenney took to the pen in the student newspaper, arguing that allowing pro-choice activists to express themselves paved the way for the free expression of the KKK or pedophiles. At the same time, he also orchestrated, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, a campaign to overturn a regulation that gave those in same-sex couples rights similar to heterosexual couples, particularly with regard to visitation rights in hospitals.

Kenney has since attempted to distance himself from his past as an anti-abortion activist, but his stances on the issue constantly catch up with him. In the face of the outcry raised by a possible cancellation of Roe v. wade in the United States, Rachel Notley took the opportunity to recall the fragility of women’s rights and reaffirm loud and clear the pro-choice positions of her party.

In an open letter published in theEdmonton Journal on May 13, she recalls the work done during her years at the head of the province, where her government passed a law to prohibit harassment at the entrance to abortion clinics and covered the costs associated with the abortion pill . She accuses Kenney of having slowed down this momentum.

For his part, Jason Kenney remained nebulous about his positions and he preferred to dodge the debate. Meanwhile, access to abortion remains an issue in the province, where there are only three clinics practicing voluntary termination of pregnancy, all concentrated in urban centers. Women in rural areas most often face a clear lack of services and the difficulty of finding a health professional willing to prescribe the abortion pill.

Memory of past struggles

More than 50 years ago, the voice of Canadian women was released before the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Across the country, women have sent letters to the Commission or met with commissioners to explain their trauma at being stripped of control over their bodies.

In May 1970, the Abortion Caravan set out from British Columbia to cross the country to Parliament Hill. The activists wanted to reverse the criminalization of abortion. They traveled with a coffin, recalling the memory of these women who died due to illegal abortions, performed in dangerous conditions.

If Kenney’s activism against women’s right to choose comes back to haunt him, this history of bitter struggles also comes back to haunt women who know how fundamental this hard-won right is and what it would cost to lose it. Even if the Prime Minister successfully passed the test of the vote of confidence, his silence further alienates him from an electorate who no longer wants him. Because the Alberta electorate, like the Canadian electorate, remains very largely in favor of the choice of women.