How Canada Is Excluding The Pro-life Agenda

The head of Canada’s Liberal Party has decreed that all new candidates running for parliament in his party–or is it running for any office? that part isn’t clear to me–must be pro-abortion. The socialist New Democratic party has a similar policy. The Conservatives will allow pro-lifers to run for office, but they are not allowed to bring up the issue.

Thus all major Canadian political parties–there are some smaller ones that pro-lifers can presumably join–are working together to exclude the pro-life cause from political consideration. Think something like that could happen in the USA?

From David T. Koyzis, Autonomy’s Triumph in Canada | First Thoughts | First Things:

Were he still alive today, [political theorist George Parkin] Grant would be livid at what his nemesis’ son, the current Liberal leader, has unilaterally decreed to his parliamentary caucus: Anti-abortion candidates need not apply in 2015, Justin Trudeau says.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says all candidates running for nomination to represent the Liberal Party in 2015 will have to support the party’s pro-choice position, but that the same rule does not apply to sitting MPs. “I have made it clear that future candidates need to be completely understanding that they will be expected to vote pro-choice on any bills,” Trudeau said Wednesday following his party’s weekly caucus meeting in Ottawa. . . . “We are steadfast in our belief … it is not for any government to legislate what a woman chooses to do with her body. And that is the bottom line.”

But the Liberals are not alone. Although Grant, as a Red Tory, tended to support the Conservative Party, he would scarcely be enthusiastic about what that party has become today under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who moved two years ago to shut down a backbencher’s effort to reopen the issue of when human life begins. Unlike the Liberals and the socialist New Democrats, the Conservative position seems to be to tolerate pro-lifers as long as they keep their mouths shut on the matter in the House of Commons. This means that all three major federal parties have effectively banished pro-lifers to the political wilderness.