Thousands of protesters are expected on Parliament Hill today for an annual anti-abortion rally, weeks after Conservative backbenchers said they weren't allowed to talk about abortion in the House of Commons.
The protest organizers say the theme will be what they call gendercide, or sex-selective abortion, an issue Canada's political parties have gone out of their way not to deal with.
Conservative MP Mark Warawa tried to spark a debate on sex-selective abortion in March, but found out shortly before he was to make a statement in the House that he'd been removed from a list of MPs selected to speak that day. An all-party committee of MPs declared his motion ineligible and he instead submitted a private member's bill that will limit where sex offenders can live.
Those who support limits on abortion have seized on sex-selective abortion as a way into the broader debate.
Faytene Grasseschi organized a walk from Montreal to Ottawa that saw 25 women spend 10 days making the 200-kilometre trek. Grasseschi wants a law banning sex-selective abortion, a practice that often sees female fetuses aborted in families that favour male children.
"I think there are several pieces of legislation that are moderate, that Canadians on every side of the discussion will agree with. I think one of those pieces of legislation would be about gendercide," she said in an interview with CBC News.
Grasseschi says she'd also like Parliament make it illegal for people to coerce women into abortions and to encourage informed consent before someone undergoes the procedure.
In 2010, MPs voted down Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge's private member's bill, C-510, which would have explicitly made it illegal to coerce a woman to have an abortion, including by badgering or threatening to withdraw financial support.
'Comfortable with those decisions'
Ashley Williams, who made the trip from Montreal to Ottawa, said she walked because she felt pressured by her then boyfriend into having an abortion.
"The emotional side-effects were really damaging and it took me a long time to heal," she said Wednesday as the women set out from Orleans, an Ottawa suburb, on the last day of their walk.
"For me it just wasn't worth it, at all."
Kelly Gordon, a PhD candidate in political studies at the University of Ottawa, says it's important to remember not every woman regrets ending her pregnancy. Gordon and Paul Saurette, a political studies professor at the university, are writing a book about how discussion about abortion is changing.
"That is not most women's experiences with abortion," Gordon said.
"We also need to frame it in the larger context of women seeking abortions for many different reasons and being very comfortable with those decisions."
There isn't a great deal of evidence about the effect of abortion on women, Saurette said.
"The abortion harms women arguments, I think when you look at the medical evidence behind it, it's extremely questionable," he said.
"I think what you're seeing on a lot of the rhetoric right now are a lot of assertions without a lot of evidence."
Saurette said people opposed to abortion are adopting new language to make their case.
"It's much more centred on the argument that abortion harms women and that's why Canadians should support the anti-abortion position."
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