Conservative MPs kept a low profile at the annual anti-abortion march on Parliament Hill. Usually more numerous, only one of them showed up on Thursday, while the bill of his colleague, Cathay Wagantall, who also opposes abortion, was still debated within the walls of the Commons.
Year after year, a few elected Conservatives take part in the “march for life”. They were seven last year, gathered in front of the crowd, near the stage. This time, Albertan Arnold Viersen went there alone to thank the thousands of anti-abortion protesters on the microphone for having gathered to “mourn […] babies who lose their lives” as well as Canadians who “lose their lives to euthanasia and assisted death,” denounced the chairman of the Conservative pro-life caucus.
MP Cathay Wagantall, whose Bill C-311 was under consideration this week, was to accompany him. Mme Wagantall ultimately did not show up. Even the elected Leslyn Lewis, who ran for the leadership in 2020 and 2022 by presenting herself resolutely anti-abortion, did not move. Regulars of the demonstration claimed a scheduling conflict to the organizers of the Campaign Life Coalition.
This year’s protest was the first under Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. The latter, himself pro-choice, would not have instructed his elected officials to avoid the event, according to his office. But the Conservatives do not appreciate that their colleague’s Bill C-311 has been associated with the debate surrounding the right to abortion. A dissatisfaction, shared by the chief according to our information, which would have made his troops understand that it would perhaps be better to avoid this year’s march.
A legal risk for the future
Saskatchewan MP Cathay Wagantall’s C-311 seeks to make an offense committed against a woman known to be pregnant and causing her “bodily or mental harm” an aggravating factor in sentencing.
However, judges already have the latitude to take into account the vulnerability of the victim or a context of domestic violence, of which pregnant women are often victims, notes the professor of law at Laval University Julie Desrosiers.
“There is no issue in codifying something that already exists in case law,” she explains in an interview. But Bill C-311 would run the risk, by codifying the aggravating factor of being pregnant in the Criminal Code, of later allowing an amendment that would grant legal status to the fetus. “That’s what makes me suspicious with this proposal,” she commented after consulting her.
Mme Wagantall is on his fourth bill in the Commons. Two aimed to ban sex-selective abortions. The fourth was an earlier version of the C-311 that went further, seeking to criminalize the act of killing or injuring “an unborn child” — a roundabout way of granting legal status to the fetus, critics say. pro-abortion groups.
On Parliament Hill, there were about 3,000 people calling for a ban on abortion, according to police estimates. A few dozen counter-demonstrators held up their own placards defending access to abortion.
Lee Clark, 29, has been coming to Parliament every year for 12 years. “If I’m not here, I keep silent. I’m an accomplice. And I refuse to be, ”she hammered at the Duty.