(OTTAWA) The House of Commons will debate Conservative Cathay Wagantall’s private member’s bill on “violence against pregnant women” on Tuesday, which the Liberals say aims to reopen the abortion debate “through the door from behind”.
The Saskatchewan elected official, to whom we owe numerous attempts to revisit the right to abortion, held a press conference in parliament in the morning to discuss the bill she tabled last January, the C-311.
He proposes to amend the Criminal Code in order to include there that “knowingly assaulting a pregnant woman” or “causing bodily or moral harm” to her become “aggravating circumstances for the purposes of sentencing”.
“Canada needs this bill,” pleaded Mr.me Wagantall on the microphone, surrounded by people who have lived through such a tragedy, and who, according to her, hope that “Parliament takes this courageous stand for women”.
When C-311 was tabled, Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan saw it as a way to reopen the abortion debate, and argued that after the overthrow of Roe v. wade in the United States, one should not “take that right for granted, even in Canada”.
“It has nothing to do with abortion,” argued MP Wagantall, assuring that “from a legal point of view” it would not lead to recognition of the status of the fetus, while inviting the media to “do their research”.
She also said that Chief Pierre Poilievre was in favor of her bill.
“Yes,” she assured unequivocally.
Shortly after the press conference of Mme Wagantall, across Wellington Street, the Trudeau government is announcing more funding to strengthen access to pregnancy termination services in Canada.
MP Wagantall’s latest attempt to reopen the abortion debate has failed. In June 2021, her sex-based abortion bill C-233 was defeated at second reading, 248 to 82.
The Conservatives overwhelmingly supported it, but all the elected members of the Quebec caucus opposed it.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has sworn, like his predecessors, that the abortion debate would remain closed under his leadership, and that he would let his MPs vote freely in the event that a private member’s bill parliamentarian was put to the vote.