OTTAWA, Ontario, December 13, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien is warning that Stephen Harper’s Conservative government will end Canadians’ ‘cherished’ rights to abortion and same-sex “marriage,” in a new fundraising appeal issued as the ailing party fights to recover after its historic collapse in the May federal election.
The rehashing of the “hidden agenda” charge against Harper, who is now seven months into a majority, has both pundits and pro-lifers scratching their heads.
In Chretien’s appeal, sent out Monday as part of the Liberals’ Million Conversations Campaign, he warns that Harper’s government threatens to dismantle all of the gains the formerly-dominant Liberals achieved since Chretien was first elected to the House of Commons in 1963.
“The Conservatives already ended gun control and Kyoto. Next may be a woman’s right to choose, or gay marriage. Then might come capital punishment,” Chretien writes. “And one by one, the values we cherish as Canadians will be gone.”
“Today, it’s 1963 all over again. Except this time, the future looks very different,” he adds. “Unless we are bold. Unless we seize the moment. Everything we built will start being chipped away.”
“If the only thing that we have to cherish is the murder of unborn children, we are a sicker society than I thought we were,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, national organizer of Campaign Life Coalition, in response.
Though Chretien was famous for declaring as prime minister that the abortion debate is “settled,” polls consistently show that a significant majority of Canadians want legal protections for children in the womb and do not support the current status quo of government-funded abortion-on-demand.
In May 2011, Abacus Data found that 59% of Canadians want some form of restrictions on abortion, with 27% saying that they want protection for the unborn from conception onwards. In October 2011, Environics found strikingly stronger pro-life views, with 72% saying they wanted legal protection for children in the womb, and 28% supporting protections from conception.
Since becoming prime minister in 2006, Stephen Harper has actively opposed all attempts to enact protections for the unborn, even showing up in December 2010 to vote against a proposed ban on coerced abortions and urging his caucus to follow suit.
During the election campaign in April he insisted that he had “no intention” of opening up debate on abortion or same-sex “marriage” even if he won a majority.
“How many times do we have to say that Stephen Harper is pro-abortion?” asked Douglas. “This is a desperate move on the part of the Liberals and it’s not going to gain them any support.”