The upstart provincial party, OneBC, and its leader, Dallas Brodie, made a policy announcement on abortion that is surely making the heads of the NDP government and legacy media explode.

Yesterday, OneBC pledged that if it were to form government, it would pass legislation “ending provincial taxpayer funding for elective abortions during the third trimester of pregnancy, from 28 weeks until birth”.

The announcement includes a plan to “increase funding for pregnancy care centres across BC”, and ends with a value statement:

“We believe in a future with fewer abortions, not more”.

How should the pro-life movement receive this announcement to end taxpayer funding of late-term abortions in British Columbia?

Campaign Life Coalition has two reactions…

The Good

First of all, we wish to acknowledge that in our so-called “progressive” political climate, it took a lot of courage for Dallas Brodie and OneBC to include this in the election platform.

Most conservative-leaning political parties run away from the abortion debate as fast as they can.

Right-leaning politicians have always been so terrified of being attacked by the mainstream media that they refuse to make any commitment to restrict or defund abortions in any way whatsoever.

OneBC is accepting those attacks and not backing down.

In fact, OneBC’s willingness to re-open the abortion debate is refreshing when contrasted to NDP leader David Eby’s foaming-at-the-mouth support for preborn child murder, and Conservative Party of BC leader Lorne Doerksen’s recent statement distancing himself from the pro-life views of his own MLA, Heather Mahs.

Therefore, we commend Brodie and OneBC for having the guts to re-open the abortion debate and making it front-and-centre in their election platform.

Getting voters talking about the sanctity of human life as they head to the ballot box is valuable. We wish the federal Conservatives had similar courage, but alas, Pierre Poilievre is no Dallas Brodie!

The Bad

In case you’re not aware, there exists an unfortunate divide within the pro-life movement.

Some people support a “gestational approach” in which they promote legislation to protect babies in the womb starting at some arbitrary or “strategically-chosen” gestational age, and hope to work their way backwards in the future, until they reach conception.

Others, such as Campaign Life Coalition, cannot support legislation that legalizes abortion at any stage. From zygote to embryo to fetus to newborn, every human being deserves legal protection.

Laws that permit the killing of younger unborn children while seeking to protect those further along in development cannot be supported. No exceptions. No compromises.

Human rights begin when human life begins. Laws must mirror this truth.

In our country, where there's no legal protection for children before birth, we cannot support the legalization of abortion up to a specified gestational age, even if restrictions apply beyond that point.

Nor can we support public funding for abortion during the first two trimesters, even if such funding is prohibited in the third trimester.

CLC does not believe it is ethical or strategic to enshrine permission in law to kill babies younger than some arbitrary gestational age.

The law is a teacher, and in our view, that sort of legislation sends a message that it’s morally acceptable to abort those children.

It disciples society to think of those children as having less intrinsic dignity and worth than older ones. We should be discipling society to believe in the sanctity of ALL human life, not that some lives can be discarded.

In terms of political strategy, the experience of the UK’s pro-life movement, which campaigned for a gestational law in the 1980s but today says it only made the situation worse, proves that it’s not a politically viable strategy either. For a more in-depth analysis of the gestational issue, read this article.

Although taxpayer funding of abortion is not exactly the same issue, the same moral principle applies to legislation that countenances taxpayer support when young gestational-age babies are targeted.

To be clear, CLC does support many policies and legislative actions that are incremental in nature without being gestational.

For example, we would be fully supportive of OneBC’s policy if it simply said that NO elective abortions will receive provincial taxpayer funding. For decades, we have campaigned on defunding abortion at the provincial level, as well as defunding it overseas.

We would support informed consent legislation requiring BC abortion providers to offer pregnant mothers the ability to view an ultrasound image of their baby before the procedure. A ban on sex-selective abortions would also have been an option that avoids the gestational trap.

Conclusion

We praise OneBC and Dallas Brodie for their willingness to re-open the abortion debate by challenging the status quo on taxpayer funding for abortion, but we cannot endorse the specifics of their defunding plan.

CLC encourages the party to go the full distance and promise to defund all medically unnecessary, elective abortions.

We also encourage our supporters across BC to talk to their OneBC candidate or MLA in the coming weeks and months about pursuing an incremental policy that is not tinged with the problem of abandoning some babies to abortion violence.