Shades of a blog post from after the defeat of the Bruinooge bill to outlaw coercive abortion in our January editorial, “Time for something bolder.” We call upon pro-life politicians to address the abortion issue directly, for example, by putting forth a bill to ban dilatation and evacuation abortions. It is not that we think it would be more likely to pass, but it would begin a discussion about abortion and experience shows that when information about abortion itself is presented to the public (details of the procedure, the raw numbers of abortion carried out) people recoil from their support for abortion-on-demand. Just imagine discussion in Parliament about what an abortion procedure actually entails or a presentation to the health or justice committee that graphically depicts the procedure. What effect can that have on support for the abortion status quo — and what would it say about those politicians who continue to defend a wide-open abortion license? I am all for political expediency when political expediency is called for, but in light of the two-to-one margin of defeat of Bruinooge’s C-510, a marginal abortion issue debated on our opponents’ terms, it is time for bold action, not timidity and compromise, or worse, silence and retreat.
