{"id":14901,"date":"2012-05-04T13:04:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T18:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14901"},"modified":"2012-05-04T13:04:37","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T18:04:37","slug":"gordon-oconnor-on-the-abortion-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/05\/04\/gordon-oconnor-on-the-abortion-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Gordon O’Connor on the abortion debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fascinating moment<\/a> in the House of Commons, as related by the editors at Maclean’s<\/em>:<\/p>\n

And then Gordon O\u2019Connor rose from his seat on the government side, immediately behind the Prime Minister. O\u2019Connor, a retired brigadier-general, is the chief Conservative whip — the living symbol, in other words, of the ministry\u2019s discipline and unity. His words bit with surprising sharpness. \u201cThe House of Commons . . . is not a laboratory,\u201d he admonished Woodworth. \u201cIt is not a house of faith, an academic setting or a hospital. It is a legislature, and a legislature deals with law.\u201d The Criminal Code definition of a human being, he said, is not a medical one; it is a purely legal test defining the moment when personal rights receive protection independent from those of the mother. It is quite reasonable, he added, that this should happen at the moment of their physical separation.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor went further. He denounced the oft-repeated right-wing heckle that abortion is \u201cunregulated\u201d in Canada. It happens to be absent from the criminal law, O\u2019Connor observed, but the provinces regulate their medical professions, and the doctors in turn regulate their own conduct. The provincial governments and the medical colleges have agreed that since abortion cannot be abolished, it ought to be provided safely by, and to those whose private judgment allows for it. \u201cThe decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision,\u201d said the whip, \u201cand in a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual must be paramount and take precedence over that of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor concluded by reaffirming that the Conservative determination not to reopen Canada\u2019s abortion debate is unwavering. \u201cSociety has moved on and I do not believe this proposal should proceed,\u201d he said. \u201cAs well, it is in opposition to our government\u2019s position. Accordingly I will not support [this] motion. I will vote against it and I recommend that others oppose it.\u201d [. . .]<\/p>\n

What is interesting about O\u2019Connor\u2019s brief speech is that it frames reproductive choice as a matter of small-C conservative principles. He appealed not only to libertarian considerations of individual conscience, but to the idea that regulations should be made at the political level closest to the citizen. Viewed in this light, the Harper rule against legislating on abortion is not just a convenient, cynical means to social peace and election success. It suggests the influence within the government caucus of a Charter-friendly breed of conservative, one whose first instinct is not always to \u201cstand athwart history yelling, stop.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating moment in the House of Commons, as related by the editors at Maclean’s: And then Gordon O\u2019Connor rose from his seat on the government side, immediately behind the Prime Minister. O\u2019Connor, a retired brigadier-general, is the chief Conservative whip — the living symbol, in other words, of the ministry\u2019s discipline and unity. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,66,9],"tags":[601,715,424,458,661],"class_list":["post-14901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-health-science","category-law","tag-abortion","tag-constitution","tag-morality","tag-parliament","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Sl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14902,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14901\/revisions\/14902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}