By Brian Dryden, Canadian Catholic News
[Ottawa – CCN] – A final vote in the House of Commons on a Conservative MP’s effort to get support across party lines to ban female babies from being targeted for an abortion just because of their sex is expected to be held on June 2.
The vote in the House of Commons will come after the final hour allocated for debate surrounding Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall’s proposed private members Bill C-233 is held in the House on Friday, May 28.
“That is what we are expecting at this time, the final hour of the two hours allocated for private members bills will be on May 28 and then the vote being held on June 2,” Wagantall’s legislative assistant Tristan McLaughlin told the Canadian Catholic News.
While Wagantall’s proposed bill has garnered vocal supported from pro-life organizations across Canada, when the proposed bill was debated during second reading in the House of Commons on April 14 it came under attack by MPs from the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois parties as an alleged Trojan Horse effort to reopen the debate about abortion in Canada.
While Wagantall was free to put her proposed bill forward in the House of Commons, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has said he will vote against the bill.
Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, who said that she herself supports a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion, does take issue with the tone of debate in the House of Commons whenever issues surrounding abortion in Canada are raised in Parliament.
“Debate is characterized by a great deal of animosity from all sides with no resolutions,” Vecchio said.
“This is a topic that people are very vocal on, with people being labelled as either absolutely right or completely wrong. Everyone has a label forced on them, but is that really what we want when it comes to such a complex issue?” she said.
“This should not be about how we feel on the right to choose to have an abortion. This is whether sex-selection abortion is happening in Canada and what is ethical in this situation,” Vecchio said.
According to Wagantall, sex selection is indeed occurring in Canada.
“Sex-selection abortion is wrong, it is a discriminatory practice on the basis of sex and it takes place in our country because we have no law against it,” Wagantall said in the House of Commons.
“It is really important that we recognize that the Canadian Medical Association did major studies in 2012 and 2016 with ethnic researchers involved and with the ethnic community involved, and they indicated that this is a growing problem in Canada that needs to be addressed,” argues Wagantall.
“The truth of the matter is that this is a scenario where the majority of Canadians are saying they are not polarized the way certain groups would like them to think they are. This is an issue where Canadians come together and want a law that restricts sex selection as an option for abortion,” she said.
In an interview after Wagantall first introduced her proposed bill, she told the Canadian Catholic News that she believes most Canadians support the restrictions on abortion that she proposes.
“If just one girl is aborted simply because of her sex, parliamentarians must act,” Wagantall told the Canadian Catholic News at the time.
“Thankfully, Canadians of nearly all beliefs are united on this issue, with eighty-four per cent stating that sex-selective abortion should be illegal. This is reasonable common ground that every member of parliament must thoughtfully consider,” she said, after citing a poll that ran in the National Postnewspaper as indicative of Canadians being in favour of some form of legal regulations surrounding abortion in the country as opposed to the situation as it is now in which Canada has, in essence, no laws at all when it comes to abortion.
According to the summary of Wagantall’s proposed Bill C-233 “this enactment amends the Criminal Code to make it an offence for a medical practitioner to perform an abortion knowing that the abortion is sought solely on the grounds of the child’s genetic sex. It also requires the Minister of Health, after consultation with representatives of the provincial governments responsible for health, to establish guidelines respecting information provided by a medical practitioner in relation to a request for an abortion.”
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