A federal election looms, and the fortunes of the ruling Liberals aren’t looking good. Battered by a series of scandals that have shown the sinister side of a leader associated with “sunny ways,” the party is widely expected to lose its majority. If Justin Trudeau does lead his party to defeat, pro-life Canadians should celebrate.
In stating this fact, we do not denigrate, in the least, those pro-life Liberals who remain faithful to their party despite its current leader’s unconcealed contempt for them and their convictions. It is impossible, though, not to recognize the ignominious distinction that this Liberal Prime Minster has worked so diligently to achieve: Justin Trudeau is, bar none, the most pro-abortion politician to lead our country, and he should be ousted from office for this reason alone.
When taking stock of a leader’s signature policies – especially foreign policies –historians and political scientists frequently distill his or her essential stance into some kind of unstated position. The “Bush Doctrine,” for example, describes the former American president’s preference for preemption against the abettors of terrorism. Likewise, the current U.S. leader is associated with the attitude of “America First.” Although Trudeau’s time as prime minister may yet be measured in years instead of months, his own signature policy is already clear. His, sadly, is a preference for a very different form of preemption – not of terrorism but of full-term births, at home and abroad. Indeed, stated in its most stark and scandalous form, the Trudeau Doctrine is “Abortion First.”
Three decades ago, politicians still needed to signal their disdain for abortion – it was evil, unpleasant, but “necessary.” As the reality of life in the womb becomes harder either to deny or to ignore, the arguments for the perpetuation of legalized prenatal infanticide become less cogent yet more strident. Indeed, the cupboards are bare but for two emotional states: frenzied enthusiasm and perpetual fear.
Trudeau is a leader for the “Shout your abortion” age who trades in both forms of emotional manipulation. A photogenic “male feminist” who offers frequent, disquieting praise for the ending of unborn life, he has held up abortion as the Canadian value par excellence, the distinctive and defining practice of our country. Paradoxically enough, he has also cited legalized abortion as the justification for Quebec’s possible secession from Canada when he fear-mongered against then-prime minister Stephen Harper. Trudeau’s devotion to abortion, in other words, exceeds his commitment to the very country of which he is presently the leader.
Under Trudeau’s leadership, abortion has become Canada’s main ideological export, as well as a domestic litmus test for everything from candidacy as a Liberal MP to eligibility for summer job subsidies. For Trudeau, Canada has no future without abortion, and he has been willing to strain our international relations as well as our country’s social fabric to promote it. When imagining a Canada without abortion, Trudeau evidently accepts the same cartoonish caricature of those who tout stylized silhouettes of hangers at rallies or whose rhetoric conjures ludicrous images from A Handmaid’s Tale. Both of these preposterous specters are invoked by abortion advocates in support of their faint, plaintive defense: we can’t turn back the clock.
This line of argument has an ugly and revealing lineage: an American governor once defended the racist policies of the state of Alabama in strikingly similar terms. Indeed, it is hard to miss, in George Wallace’s defense of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” Trudeau’s own toxic mix of fearful enthusiasm. Indeed, what Wallace was for Southern whites, Trudeau aspires to be for Canadian women: a champion drawing a line in the sand, throwing down a gauntlet in defense of abortion now, abortion tomorrow, and abortion forever.
It is hard to say how far Trudeau will go in his defense of the peculiar institution of abortion. The lengths to which he has already gone are outrageous and alarming, and we are hopeful that the Canadian electorate will prevent our country from discovering the extent of Trudeau’s commitment to prenatal infanticide. The damage he has already done both to his party and his country is enormous. He has imposed tests for ideological purity reminiscent of totalitarian governments and foisted a Marshall Plan of depopulation abroad on nations most in need of real aid. As difficult it is to imagine, if he returns to office for another term, he may well do worse.
Yet, no matter how radically Trudeau reshapes our country, the truth of unborn life endures. Indeed, the very desperation of politicians like Trudeau illustrates the same kind of intellectual bankruptcy that characterized the Southern Democrats in the waning days of segregation. In both cases, extreme policies were advocated to buttress immoral ideas that were in the process of being definitively discredited. Someday, Canada, too, will come to its senses, and a generation yet unborn will wonder at the popularity of a leader like Trudeau who was so unembarrassed by the evil which he promoted with such passion. We hope that generation can look back on the federal election of 2019 as a small but significant turning point, the beginning of the eventual repudiation of the repugnant Trudeau Doctrine of “Abortion First.”
