Canada needs a national debate on abortion

Contrary to popular belief (at least beliefs held by the elites of the country) there is no consensus on abortion. Margaret Somerville writes a great article on Mercatornet:

Margaret Wente, writing recently in the Globe and Mail, articulates both myths in one succinct sentence. She states that “a broad social consensus shapes actual (abortion) practice … (and) there are virtually no late-term abortions.” But to the extent one can obtain the facts, the evidence is otherwise.

She then goes on to describe situations in which information on late term abortion has been hidden or forced not to be made public.

Such blocking is not neutral, but a strategy to help to maintain the status quo of the complete void regarding abortion law. The unavailability of this information makes the pro-choice lobby’s claims that late-term abortion is rare and that there is a consensus on abortion in Canada, much less likely to be challenged, and, therefore, bolsters its case that we do not need any law on abortion.

Pro-choicers do say that late term abortions are rare but there are no reliable statistics to back up this claim. Why all the silence? Maybe because there actually is no consensus on abortion in this country:

But between the two poles of a spectrum from unrestricted availability of abortion throughout pregnancy – the present situation – to prohibiting it entirely, there is a wide variety of opinion and certainly no overall consensus on any given approach.

If you can’t lie about things I guess you can try to suppress information. I hope there is an honest debate on abortion in this country. It will bring these myths and other myths of the pro-choicers to light and reveal them as empty logic.