Abortion law campaigners in flag protest

Some 80 volunteers blanketed a 400-metre stretch of Parliament Hill, Ottawa, last week, with 100,000 tiny flags, half of them blue, half pink.

We Need A Law, the pro-life group behind the event, said each flag represented one of the more than 100,000 abortions that take place in Canada every year. Spokesman Mike Schouten described the protest as “sending a message to parliamentarians to enact a law to protect pre-born babies and stop treating them as a political liability”.

We Need A Law came into existence in response to Canada’s complete absence of any legal restrictions on abortion, though in some parts of the country an abortion is difficult to obtain because of a lack of facilities where abortions can be carried out or because of provincial restrictions on what forms of abortion will be covered by public health insurance. The Canadian Medical Association also has guidelines on not performing abortions once the point of viability has been reached. 

Abortion laws were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1988, and with one unsuccessful exception in the early 1990s, no government since has attempted to regulate abortions. The action last week received almost no mainstream media attention and no political parties in the House of Commons indicate they intend to address the question.

n The Catholic bishops of California have filed a civil rights complaint arguing that a new state requirement that all health insurance plans cover elective abortions, including late-term abortions, is a violation of federal law, writes Michael Sean Winters.