Well that’s it, Canadians are pro-choice when it comes to abortion. That’s what Ekos is telling me from their poll released last Thursday. Ekos released its poll on the issue in response to two different issues, the ongoing maternal health debate on abortion as part of Canada’s foreign aid program and the competing poll for the Manning Centre, which finds that Canadians view abortion morally wrong.
The implication that Canadians are pro-choice is that the general population would agree with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her call for Canada to include abortion as part of the program to save the lives of mothers and children in the third world. Not necessarily. Another poll by Harris-Decima shows Canadians are split on this issue with 46% saying yes but 48% saying no.
Does this mean Canadians are more pro-life than pro-choice?
It is hard to make firm a judgement of where Canadians stand on this issue because 1.) we don’t normally have discussions about it in our national politics or national media and 2.) from examining several polls, asking different questions about abortion, it is safe to say Canadians have mixed views.
The Manning Centre, a conservative group, asked the question is abortion morally wrong and 74% said yes (60% strongly agree, 14% somewhat). What Ekos asked is “Thinking about your general views on abortion, would you say you are more pro-life or pro-choice?” The result, 52% said pro-choice and 27% said pro-life. Neither of these polls negates the other especially when you think of how many people would say, “Well, I find abortion wrong but I would not want to impose my view on others.”
Let’s add another poll to the mix.
Environics Research has been conducting a poll for the last 7 years on behalf of Life Canada. The questions have been fairly consistent and a representative from Environics assures me, with quite a bit of indignation, that they do not “throw the poll” in favour of the client paying for it. In October 2009, the latest telephone survey of 2002 Canadians found that only 34% of Canadians agree with the status quo on abortions in Canada.
The exact question asked was “In your opinion, at what point in human development should the law protect human life? Should it be …? The option of “From the point of birth” was selected by 34% while 30% said “From conception on.” In the middle of the pack 17% said, that the law should protect human life, “After three months of pregnancy” and 8% chose “After six months of pregnancy” and 11% did not know or refused to answer. The poll also finds that, with the exception of cases of rare cases, abortion should be paid for with private tax dollars, not by the public health care system as it is now.
Like the Ekos survey comparing the pro-choice/pro-life answer over the course of 10 years, the responses to Evironics surveys since 2002 have been quite consistent.
So if we put all four polls together what we find is that Canadians likely find abortion to be morally wrong, something they think should be restricted at some point before birth, something that should receive limited public financing, something that should remain legal and a true hot button issue as to whether Canada should fund abortions overseas.
What we currently have in Canada or have had is a policy that is completely different. Abortion is legal right up until the point that the baby takes its own breath, independent of the mother, the best estimates are that of the nearly 100,000 abortions in Canada each year, 5,000 or so are in the last trimester. In all provinces but New Brunswick, abortion is funded entirely by the public health system even when performed in private clinics like the one that sits a block and a half from Parliament Hill. Canadians, as Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has been reminding us lately, have been funding abortions overseas for 25 years or more through foreign aid grants.
The reason our domestic and foreign policies surrounding the issue are so out of line with the views of Canadians on abortion is that until recently we have refused to speak of the issue. When the issue of restrictions has been raised, normally by a pro-life lobby group or MP, the reaction from the pro-choice lobby groups has been swift and effective leaving politicians from both sides to scurry.
Media reports often portray those opposed to abortion as angry old men and women clutching rosaries and citing religious opposition while those supporting abortion are bright young women fighting for women’s rights. Neither stereotype shows the full and complex picture on the issue. It is time for Canadians to have an adult conversation about this issue, perhaps the first in more than 20 years.
Brian Lilley is the Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal. Follow Brian on Twitter to get the latest as it happens.
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Comments
Excellent article. Nice to see someone bring this up.
Wow, an interesting and even informative article on abortion, well done! Especially the part about how opponents are characterized, this part seems to escape most reporters.
Yah but ... Saint Donolo--the saviour of the LPC--says that abortion is a winning "wedge" issue for the Liberals. So everything else is irrelevant. All that matters is whether Iggy et al can stir the pot enough so that the "horserace" polling numbers move in the Liberal direction. Come on guys, get your priorities straight.
Very well researched and written. Hoping for an adult conversation, that is a pipe dream. To many screaming loonies on both sides, and the politicians in the middle are too afraid to actually discuss it. As mentioned in your article, the pro-choice lobby is very effective, and so it seems the pro-life is not so effective.
Your analysis would have been more believable had you not chosen to bring in your personal opinion. A pro-life person choosing to interpret polls to suggest that Canadians do not support abortion gives me pause. Also, the wording of the poll for Life Canada clearly skews the answers toward a pro-life response, anyone can see that.
I too thank the writer for this well-researched and well-written article. However, what good will a debate do? If it involves political parties it will only be decided based on how the issue serves their electoral interests. But if it does not involve the political parties it will be of no effect.
We need to debate the broader, more relevant issue of how political / legal decisions get made. I am no longer content to play the part of dutiful citizen participating in the charade of electoral politics so our leaders can rob us blind, control our lives, and fatten their pensions.
You have been told that you have a duty to vote. I am telling you that you have a duty NOT to vote unless you are convinced that the one you are voting for is right and will do as s/he says if elected. Settling for the lesser evil is not good enough.
Deny the scoundrels what they want most - your vote.
It's ridiculous that there's no law governing abortion in Canada. Since we (as a society) seem to have agreed that it's okay to "pull the plug" on an accident victim if there's no brain activity, why not apply the same standard to abortion? The brain is formed and starts to function after about 12 weeks (the end of the first trimester). Anyone who wanted an abortion could get one up to that point, but after that, the law should protect the life of the unborn child. After all, if you were six months pregnant and someone restrained you and aborted your child, that person should be tried for murder. So by what logic should that very same child be permissibly "terminated" simply because the mother decides she doesn't want it anymore? Presumably, the 30% who want no abortion would go for my suggestion (they'd view it as an improvement on the current situation) and so would the 17% who think the first trimester should be the limit. That's more than half of Canadians who expressed an opinion.
Allison says "A pro-life person choosing to interpret polls to suggest that Canadians do not support abortion gives me pause."
And what if it were a radical pro-abortion person like yourself that was interpreting polls, Allison?
What are "private tax dollars" (last sentence, paragraph 8)?
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