The Campaign Life strategy for the recent May 2 election in Ontario centered first and foremost on strengthening efforts to close down the Morgentaler abortuary. Thus the strategy differed from previous elections by not searching directly for “pro-life” candidates, but for those who, “pro-life” or not, were opposed to Morgentaler-style abortuaries. Campaign Life asked all candidates the following two questions:
A) Are you opposed to the establishment of Morgentaler-style abortion clinics throughout Ontario?
B) If elected will you support government measures to close the existing illegal abortion clinic in Toronto?
Immediately before the election the results of the survey were tabulated. The NDP was excluded from the tabulation because of the formal commitment of that party to abortion on demand and to abortion clinics throughout Ontario. Party policy overruled private conviction in this party as indicated by the return of printed party policy letters in response to the questionnaire (Eventually, out of 125 NDP candidates, only five indicated a position opposed to the party platform on this issue.) The 250 PC and Liberal candidates once surveyed, lined up as follows:
Consequently, the vast majority of Liberal and PC candidates in the provincial election, that is 82.5%, publicly declared themselves to be opposed to abortion clinics in Ontario.
The results were not surprising because they are more or less in harmony with recent polls, both Canadian and American, even though these polls phrase their questions with a built-in acceptance of abortion as a fact of life.
