OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — Outgoing Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall gave an excellent pro-life speech on her last day in the House of Commons, reminding her fellow MPs of the importance of putting faith and family first and speaking out in defense of life.
On June 17, Wagantall noted that Canada still has no abortion laws, reminding MPs of this fact.
“I then did one (a private member’s bill) on sex-selective abortion. One has to ask why,” she said.
“Did we know that Canada has nothing? We have no laws. We are the only democratic country in the world that has nothing. Our only friend in that field, other than democratic countries, is North Korea. This is appalling,” she told MPs.
Wagantall said that the Canadian Supreme Court’s Morgentaler decision was handed down because it was allegedly “too onerous for women to seek an abortion. They struck down what was there, but the Supreme Court said that there must be new legislation and that it must come with a determination of when that fetus is considered viable. None of that has ever happened.”
While the Conservative Party under its leader Pierre Poilievre has said it will not reopen the abortion debate, many MPs in the party are pro-life, and some, such as Wagantall, have introduced pro-life bills in the House of Commons, including the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act.
This, along with her private members’ bill on sex-selective abortion, never went far, but she reiterated the importance of raising the issue nonetheless.
Wagantall noted that when she put forward the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act, even “Joyce Arthur, who is the queen of the pro-abortion movement, said she could vote for it if it did these things, and it did them.”
“I then had one more opportunity under our leader, and I brought forward the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act, regarding, again, a situation where a third party attacks a woman, knowing that she is pregnant, causing physical or mental harm. The only thing it was calling for was that it would be considered an aggravating factor,” she noted.
Wagantall said, however, that as “soon as it was tabled, the previous prime minister (Justin Trudeau) and all of the women on the other side of the floor did a Twitter attack on me.”
“When I had presented it in the House, in the first minute, when one just describes it, three colleagues from that side of the floor, women, clapped for it,” she said.
Wagantall did not back down from using her last day in the House of Commons to stand up for life.
“It is tough to stand here today and say this on the day that I am leaving,” she said to MPs.
“I know it is divisive in some ways, but this place needs to represent Canadians and Canadians’ views.”
Wagantall announced on June 17 that she was stepping down as an MP at the end of August.
Besides standing up for life, Wagantall stood up for Canadians’ freedoms as well. She made headlines in 2022 after being forcibly removed from the House of Commons after she refused to abide by the rule mandating all MPs have two COVID shots or medical exemptions.
The sad reality is that abortion has become more common in Canada. There were 368,928 babies born in Canada from 2024 to 2025, a number that would be much greater if not for abortion. In 2022, 97,211 Canadian babies were killed by abortion.