A vote on a controversial bill meant to expand “fetal rights” in Canada has left the country without a single pro-choice Conservative MP, according to an abortion watchdog organization.
This week, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) placed the last remaining 15 Conservatives on its list of anti-choice MPs after they voted in support of Bill C-311, dubbed the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act.
The bill sought to allow the courts to consider a victim’s pregnancy as an aggravating circumstance in sentencing for violent crimes.
ARCC’s executive director, Joyce Arthur, said the private member’s bill was a thinly veiled attempt to encroach on Canada’s longstanding view that fetuses do not have personhood status.
“[The bill] is basically singling out pregnant people for special protection. In an ideal world maybe that would be OK, but the bill was actually introduced by Cathay Wagantall, who’s got a reputation for introducing anti-abortion bills,” said Arthur, who added that the key criterion for the ARCC list was MPs’ voting records on issues related to abortion.
Canada is the only country in the world where abortion is free of legal restrictions and designated as a medical service. But that does not automatically mean it is easy to access the procedure, especially in remote, religious or conservative parts of the country. Meanwhile anti-choice politicians at federal, provincial and local levels have sought to restrict access.
ARCC contends the bill was part of the Conservatives’ longstanding campaign to surreptitiously slip anti-choice rhetoric into bills unrelated to abortion – such as those attempting to address gender-based violence.
Kirsten Mercer, a lawyer at Goldblatt Partners LLP and advocate to end gender-based violence, said that pregnant people were not the only vulnerable ones at heightened risk of violence.
Indigenous women, older women and women with disabilities also faced higher risks of violence. “There are lots of intersectional factors that contribute to risk, and they all need to be considered,” she said.
“They’re important to understand if we want to prevent and eliminate intimate partner violence and gender-based violence.”
Previous bills – the latest of which were also sponsored by Wagantall – have tried to ban sex-selective abortion (which is not widely practised in Canada) and to criminally punish people who injure a fetus while committing a crime against a pregnant person.
Both were struck down, the former in 2021 with 248 nays, and the latter in 2016 – not long after Wagantall was first elected to parliament.
However, the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US has sparked new interest in Canada’s legislative grey zone over abortion, with some calling for an abortion law since last year.
All 113 members of the Conservative party voted in favour of Bill C-311. All other parties unanimously voted against at the bill’s second reading, on 14 June.
This latest attempt comes less than a year after Pierre Poilievre won the Conservative leadership. During his campaign, he said that he would continue to allow Conservative MPs to introduce anti-abortion private member’s bills, but that he would not pass any legislation restricting abortion.
The Conservatives have long allowed free, unwhipped votes on issues related to abortion, euthanasia, conversion therapy and other “matters of conscience”.
But the unanimity of the vote suggests that policy may have changed. “It looks like a whipped vote,” she said.
The spokesperson for the Conservatives did not answer requests for comment.
