(LifeSiteNews) — Earlier this year, pro-life activists had the opportunity to confront Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the most pro-abortion leader in Canada’s history. In Hamilton, Ontario, pro-lifers with Hamilton Against Abortion and Campaign Life Coalition held signs depicting abortion victims outside a venue where Trudeau was meeting with party bosses for a strategy session. When he emerged, a volunteer asked him: “What are your thoughts on abortion?”
“A woman’s right to choose,” he said, striding past. He soon encountered another team of pro-lifers, who posed him another question: “Prime Minister, do you believe in equal rights for all human beings?”
“I believe in a woman’s right to choose,” he replied. “What about this human who was killed?” the pro-lifer asked him, gesturing to a sign showing an aborted baby. “I will stand up for women’s rights every day,” he said, walking swiftly. His answers, of course, were merely slogans that refused to address the central character in the great moral drama of the abortion debate: the preborn child. Trudeau claimed to believe in “a woman’s right to choose,” but would not engage on what is being chosen: the destruction of a baby in the womb. Trudeau’s position on the issue is an unfinished sentence.
It is very likely that you never heard about the prime minister’s January encounter with two young, pro-life women trained in compelling, compassionate apologetics in defense of the preborn. The optics aren’t great: a male prime minister with a dubious track record with women informing two young women who oppose abortion that his position is pro-woman — which is why the Liberal Party instead decided to publicize Trudeau’s interaction with a teenage boy this month.
READ: Justin Trudeau tells student critical of abortion to do more ‘praying’ on the topic
Trudeau asks the young man why he is a supporter of the People’s Party of Canada, a political party led by former Conservative Maxime Bernier. The young man answers that he is opposed to vaccine mandates and abortion. Trudeau asks: “Okay, do you think women should have the right to choose what happens to their own bodies?”
A trained pro-life activist likely would, at this point, highlight the fact that the child in the womb is not part of the woman’s body. But the young man is caught off guard and instead says no, and then says that if women are “sleeping around they shouldn’t be allowed to abort the baby, personally.” Trudeau senses an opportunity and pushes him further: “You don’t think women should be able to make choices with what they do with their bodies?” The young man confirms his view, and when Trudeau asks him if he supports abortion in the case of rape says that “that’s where it gets complicated.”
When the teen says that he is “split” on the question and that he “honestly” doesn’t know, Trudeau replies: “Well, it sounds like you need to do a little more thinking, and a little more praying on it.” (The prime minister only pulls out his piousness in defense of killing children or the sexual revolution.)
READ: Pro-abortion students throw eggs at pro-lifers hosting campus event on horrors of abortion
If the prime minister had bothered to engage with the young women who were eager to discuss abortion with him, he would have received coherent answers to all of his questions — and he would have been forced to face the victims of abortion, as well. That is why Trudeau chose to walk swiftly past female pro-lifers who were able to defend their worldview with science, ethics, and a coherent philosophy of human rights, but was delighted to engage with a young man who was uncomfortable with abortion but — like many people — unable to articulate why.
Trudeau is an abortion extremist because abortion is a fundamental part of his family’s legacy. His father first decriminalized abortion in Canada; his mother revealed in an interview with a prominent magazine that she’d aborted Trudeau’s half-sibling; Trudeau himself returns to the abortion time and again and frequently attacks pro-life organizations (including the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, where I serve as communications director). He appears to be genuinely passionate about the issue. But if he was willing to speak to the pro-life young women who are as passionate about protecting life as he is about ensuring that babies can be killed in the womb at any point, he might get an education on the issue.
That, of course, is why he was walking so quickly.
