Generally, it is assumed that this means they are carefully scrutinizing each leadership hopeful for whether they are “pro-life” or “pro-choice”, but the time has come for the pro-life movement to view things a bit differently.

What do we mean by that?

It means that we don’t necessarily need a leadership candidate to champion the issue, or even be identified as pro-life. Pro-lifers who are involved in the Conservative Party shouldn’t automatically dismiss a candidate who isn’t personally pro-life. Pro-life Conservatives should be less concerned about whether a future leader looks like them and more concerned about whether he or she realizes that pro-life conservatives make up an integral part of the party’s base.

The pro-life movement was instrumental in Andrew Scheer’s successful leadership bid, and has the potential to play a large part in the upcoming race. We are motivated, organized, and politically engaged. Through the work of organizations such as RightNow and Campaign Life Coalition the pro-life movement has become very efficient at nominating and electing candidates. A successful leadership candidate needs support from the pro-life movement. Pulling out tired lines like ‘not re-opening the debate’ or claiming that abortion is a ‘settled issue’ in Canada could be detrimental to a leadership campaign.

With Canada’s brokerage party system, the likelihood of a leader in a mainstream party who is willing to introduce abortion legislation is not very high. It’s understandable that a potential Prime Minister is not going to run on this issue. What we as the pro-life movement should be looking for is a leader who understands that the abortion debate is ongoing and who will allow individual MPs to introduce bills or motions that address the current legal void around abortion.

The Conservative Party of Canada has pro-life MPs, pro-life staffers, pro-life volunteers, pro-life members, and pro-life donors. Leadership hopefuls cannot ignore them if they want to unite the party or win the next election.

But abortion does need to be talked about.

Since 2012, We Need a Law has existed with a mission to build support for legislation to protect pre-born children in Canada. Canada is the only country in the world without abortion legislation. The increased attention on pre-born children has raised awareness that our lack of a legal framework protecting pre-born children is largely the result of inaction by our political leaders.

Abortion should absolutely be a key topic of debate in every election cycle – and in the intervening four years. But the focus should be on measures that will be implemented by each party to protect these smallest members of the human family. Most Canadians agree that it is discriminatory to abort a healthy girl because you wanted a boy. Most Canadians are also disgusted at the idea that a child can be killed even when he is developed enough to survive outside of the womb.

But unfortunately, these were not the topics our leaders discussed. Instead, they viewed pre-born children as a political tool, either to scare people away from voting for one party or to reach out to an assumed support group with vague assurances. All parties seem to view pre-born children as merely part of a political strategy, not as human beings being denied their most basic human right.

What can we do differently?

As we analyze the results of this election, we must be wary of falling into the same trap. We need to avoid the polarizing drama or the partisan games when they cause the focus to move away from the pre-born child and the need to have legal protection for the child. We Need a Law is non-partisan. One of the reasons for this is because we understand abortion to be a human rights issue, not a partisan issue. We focus on getting Canadians to start the conversation with their representative regardless of the party. We want you to develop a relationship and influence your leaders to start honestly seeing the human victim of abortion – the pre-born child.

This isn’t merely a numbers game of getting the most MPs from a particular party. There is a culture that needs to change. A culture in Ottawa in the way they discuss this issue, and a culture across Canada. One change that needs to happen is a shift to talking about actual legislation rather than focusing on whether someone personally holds a correct opinion. Pro-abortion Parliamentarians have had it easy, never having had to counter actual abortion legislation; abortion legislation like what the rest of the world has managed to implement, abortion legislation that most Canadians would support.

For too long, we’ve allowed the political conversation to be about personal opinions and vague ideas. This needs to change. We need to see real abortion legislation on the table, and MPs need to have a real conversation about what it would look like here in Canada.

Canadians are already having very real, serious, nuanced conversations about pre-born human rights. Our politicians do us and pre-born children an inexcusable disservice by refusing to engage in the debate in the same way. It’s time for our politicians to engage in a serious conversation about legislation that would, at the very least, bring our country into line with other Western democracies. We need a framework around late-term abortion, sex-selective abortion, and pre-born victims of crime. We need to recognize the humanity of our own children before they exit the womb.

Abortion provides a bandage solution for problems like intimate partner violence, sexual abuse, lack of social supports, poverty, and myriad other issues our leaders should be focused on. If we advocate for life, we can also call on our leaders to address these related issues. If we call for death as a solution in any area, we can have no basis for an expectation that they will improve standards of living across our nation.

Yes, I agree with Prasad’s premise that health care services should be accessible to all, not just those lucky enough to live in the right place. But abortion is not healthcare. Healthcare seeks to heal, treat or prevent disease. Pregnancy is not a disease, and when serious complications arise there are always options that care for both mother and child. Delivering a baby alive to save a mother’s life, even if it may not survive, is inherently different than killing that pre-born child before removing it from the womb.

Yes, abortion access is spotty across Canada. But so is actual healthcare. If your appendix bursts in Northern Ontario, or you suffer a stroke in rural Saskatchewan, your medical care access is not going to be the same as it would in a major city centre. Abortion should be the least of our concerns – barring labour, pregnancy is about the safest medical condition one can have if you’re worried about getting to the doctor while the symptoms are still present. Framing abortion as a healthcare issue is an attempt to mask the fact that this is a human rights issue.

Prasad states that “abortion remains one of, if not the most stigmatized essential health service in Canada. While the 1988 Supreme Court ruling should have settled that abortion be treated like any other medical procedure, our lack of progress shows how thorny of an issue it still is.” But the Supreme Court ruling never intended to settle the issue. Rather, even the most liberal of the judges wrote that the pre-born child should be given protection at some stage. It left the law-making to Parliament, as is the Court’s place. It is only Parliament’s inaction and cowardice that has left us the only democracy in the world without restrictions on abortion.

The abortion debate is open, it always has been. The majority of Canadians support limits on abortion, and always have. But the status quo brought about by fearful lawmakers means the womb is a uniquely dangerous place to be in Canada. In the womb, we have human beings not considered persons under the law. It is the only place a human being has no legal protection, but is left completely at the mercy of someone bigger and stronger than themselves. We want leaders who will advocate tirelessly for the vulnerable and voiceless, not throw them under the political bus.

This weekend, we had the honour of planting 100,000 flags on the lawn of the Supreme Court of Canada to draw attention to the ongoing injustice of abortion in Canada. The sea of pink and blue flags is a humbling and sobering experience, as we consider that each flag represents one pre-born child whose life was taken, unprotected by our law. It is also a valuable opportunity to make visible those our society would like to forget.

We chose the Supreme Court location for the display because this is the court that struck down Canada’s abortion law in the 1988 Morgentaler ruling. This is also the Court that looked to Parliament to create a new law protecting “fetal interests,” or pre-born human rights. Parliament has failed to do that. This display and location gave a wonderful starting point for conversations, as we explained to people what happened at the Court and could then literally point to Parliament, within view, as we talked about the laws we would like to see enacted.

The far-reaching and devasting impact of abortion was evident on Saturday, as those going by somberly considered this ongoing injustice in Canada. This included one young couple who asked to plant their own flags. It also included one young woman who talked about being the daughter of a sexual assault survivor.

It was a beautiful opportunity to see hearts and minds changed about the status quo on abortion. So many people we talked to were unaware that Canada has no law restricting abortion, and our conversations affirmed polls, which say the majority of Canadians support some restrictions on abortion.

More than 60 volunteers joined us from various parts of Ontario to plant the pink and blue flags (truth be told, we didn’t fit the full 100,000 flags on that lawn and had to keep some in the boxes – that alone is a sad testimony to just how many lives have been taken). Many stayed all day to engage with their fellow Canadians on the issue of abortion, and help with clean up at the end of the day.

In Canada, we consistently see our leaders try to shut down debate about abortion and the humanity of the pre-born. But our experience continues to be that most Canadians are open to the discussion in a way our leaders are not. Our lack of laws is not reflective of Canadians, but is due to Parliament’s inaction. For this reason, we continue to talk to Canadians and to visibly display the massive number of lives lost to abortion each year.

Canada’s early laws used “persons” when referring to more than one person and “he” when referring to one person. It was treated as though these statutes were referring only to men, even when they used the term “persons”. This included the statute requiring senators to be “qualified persons”, which prevented women from being appointed to the Senate.

In 1927, five women launched a legal challenge that the Supreme Court rejected, deciding that women were not included as “persons” under that law. The women did not give up. They took their case to what was then Canada’s highest court of appeal, in Great Britain. The appeal was accepted and resulted in women being officially eligible for Senate appointments in 1929. This was a significant shift in the involvement of women in public and political life in Canada.

It resulted in the famous headline “Women are persons”:

Throughout history, the idea of a human being not being counted as person under the law has been used to deny basic human rights to groups such as slaves, Jews, and other minority groups. Today this argument is used to justify abortion and deny pre-born children the right to life.

Person’s Day is worth noting and celebrating for the gain it made for women. It is also proof that a country can recognize and right an injustice, and gives us hope for a future Person’s Day when pre-born children will be recognized as persons deserving of legal rights.

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Story #1: More than we bargained for

Catherine showed Andrew the pregnancy test. There was a glow in her cheeks that showed only a fraction of the joy that was coursing through her. After being together for ten years, countless doctors appointments, various medications, and still being disappointed every month, Catherine and Andrew had finally decided to try IVF. The doctor had explained the process in a friendly but serious manner, going over the success rates.

“We will transfer three embryos into your uterus,” he had explained. “That way we improve the likelihood that at least one will implant itself there.” Catherine nodded, determined. She wanted a child.

The joy Andrew felt was only surpassed by his relief. Relief that it had succeeded. Catherine’s joy was all encompassing. Even that first day she began to speak to her child, despite knowing that the child couldn’t hear yet. This child was going to complete their family, going to complete her life. Nothing could lessen her joy.

The unabated joy, however, was sidelined by shock as Catherine lay on the table staring at the ultrasound screen. As she looked at her child, a mixture of emotions that she couldn’t even begin to describe took hold of heart. It was not just her child that she saw, it was her children. Three children to be precise. Every single one of the embryos had successfully implanted in her uterus. She looked over at Andrew, but he just stared at the screen.

When the doctor began to talk to them the shock had still not worn off. Catherine had wanted a child, but triplets? How could she possibly manage that?

“Each of the fetuses is healthy,” the doctor explained. “Of course, a multi-fetal pregnancy always comes with risks, for both you and the fetuses.” He gestured at Catherine. “We should discuss your options.”

“Options?” asked Andrew.

“Yes. We can, of course, reduce the pregnancy.”

“Reduce the pregnancy?” Andrew asked, uncomprehending.

“Yes, terminate one or two of the fetuses. You can also choose not to do so, in which case we will have to discuss how to monitor the pregnancy. With triplets come an increased risk of serious complications, including preterm labour and premature birth, which can have lasting consequences for the children.”

Andrew suddenly understood what was being implied and he looked at Catherine. “Reducing the pregnancy makes sense to me,” he said. “We aren’t ready for three anyway. It might make sense to keep two – who knows if we will ever get pregnant again, but three is just too much. Don’t you agree?”

Catherine didn’t respond right away. Shock still gripped her. She looked down at her stomach – not that there was anything to see there yet. But there would be soon. Triplets. Three babies. Inside her. And then she would have to give birth to them. And then she would have to care for them for the rest of her life. Fear was slowly replacing the shock.

“If we just reduce the pregnancy,” Andrew was saying, repeating the phrase he had only just learned. “We could see if we can have a boy and a girl. A perfect little family of four.”

Twins I can do, she thought. “Yeah, a boy and a girl would be perfect. What a gift that we can get two children instead of the one we were hoping for. That would be perfect.”

Andrew and Catherine went home to sleep on it, and decided to find out the sex of the babies she carried. Two girls and one boy. They talked, they cried, and then they agreed – a boy and a girl would be perfect. When they returned to the doctor, they were sure.

“Let’s reduce the pregnancy.”

And a girl lost her life because she was a girl.

Story #2: Plenty of girls

Janine was putting together the finishing touches on her middle daughter’s costume. Just that morning, Annaliese had announced that she wanted to go trick-or-treating as an octopus. Despite searching every costume and thrift store in their small town, there was no octopus costume to be found. The look of disappointment on Annaliese’s face grew as they went to store after store, finding a princess dress for Sarah and a Batgirl outfit for Ellie. “What about a turtle?” Janine had asked her 6-year-old. Annaliese hadn’t said anything, but tears filled her eyes. Janine was not one to spoil her three girls, but her hearts strings were pulled. She loved her daughters dearly and wanted them to see the world for all the possibilities it had for women.

“Maybe we can be resourceful.” Janine said. “Let’s see if we can figure out how to make an octopus costume.” Annaliese was enthralled and they spent the rest of the day looking up patterns and finding the material they needed. Janine was proud of her daughter. She had worked hard and carefully all day. All that was left for Janine to do after her daughters were in bed was the finishing touches.

As she looked with satisfaction at the 8-legged costume, she heard the front door open as her husband Spencer arrived home from work. He was up for a promotion that kept him at the office longer these days. The costume was laid aside as another more serious topic took over her mind. Janine was unsure whether the wave of nausea she felt was the morning sickness or the dread of the conversation she intended to have.

Spencer was pulling food out of the fridge when she walked into the kitchen. She sat at the island as he turned to her.

“I found out today that it’s a girl,” Janine said. Spencer didn’t react right away, but Janine knew he must be feeling disappointment. He loved his daughters, she knew, but he had wanted a son. He had wanted someone to play catch with, to take fishing, and to carry on his name. Spencer would never have voiced this, but Janine knew. She knew, because she had wanted that to.

“So, a family of four girls,” he finally said.

“Well,” Janine said. “I was thinking about it. This isn’t a great time to have another child anyway. With you up for the promotion and working so much, maybe it would work better to wait. Three children is already a lot – wouldn’t it be better if we are going to have a fourth that we try again for a boy?”

Spencer pondered this for a moment. “It’s not too late?” he asked.

“I can still have it done at the clinic,” she responded. “And we haven’t told the girls yet so there won’t be any questions from them. The only people who know are our parents and we can just say it was miscarriage.”

Spencer nodded. “Ok. And when the timing’s better, we can try again for a boy.”

And a girl lost her life because she was a girl.

The stories themselves do not always overtly show the misogyny in sex selection – the stories are not all filled with women-hating men coercing their wives into abortions every time they’re pregnant with a girl. Yet, in a country that claims to to value equality of the sexes, evidence has been found that a cultural valuing of males in some communities means girls are overwhelmingly targeted for abortion, especially if the family already has girls. Countries like China and India are dealing with this problem on wide-spread scale, but this is also a Canadian problem.

New assisted reproductive technologies have also made multiple pregnancies more likely, and those who practice these types of medicine look for ways to build a designer family and reduce potential risk. Sadly, “risk” in these case is too often a pre-born child.

If we say that equality of the sexes is important to us as Canadians, we need to back that up with laws that recognize their equal value from the earliest stages. Life is meant to be lived, not controlled. When we focus on designing our families to perfection, we will target those who do not fit our mold, be it based on sex, potential disability, or anything else. If we allow this kind of selection in the womb, that kind of thinking will impact our treatment of born human beings as well. We need a law that bans sex selection abortion, and everything it stands for.