EDMONTON—Pro-choice advocates are urging Alberta voters to grill candidates on access to women’s health services after two anti-abortion groups have come out celebrating the nomination of a slate of aspiring, like-minded politicians poised to run in the 2019 provincial election under the United Conservative Party banner.

In recent months, a pair of anti-abortion groups, RightNow and The Wilberforce Project, have quietly emerged as a significant political force, successfully backing contenders whose names could soon appear on the ballot. But what remains murky is which candidates they’re supporting — and whether the candidates would hold sway over UCP Leader Jason Kenney, who is openly anti-abortion, but has said he will not legislate abortion if elected.

“Alberta voters have a right to know what a candidate’s views are,” said Kathy Dawson, a board member with the Alberta Pro-Choice Coalition and the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

Alissa Golob, co-founder and executive director of RightNow, said her advocacy group is solely focused on nominating and electing anti-abortion candidates provincially and federally.

The Ottawa-based organization has historically focused its efforts on federal politics, but appears to be increasingly inserting itself at the provincial level. Golob moved to Alberta in 2018 to “help pro-lifers” win nomination races for the upcoming election and, in turn, secure seats in the legislature.

According to RightNow’s December newsletter, the group has been targeting ridings where UCP candidates are most likely to win, helping “nominate over 25 pro-life candidates thus far” and promising to work with another 10 possible nominees in early 2019.

In an interview, Golob would not reveal which RightNow-supported candidates received the party’s nomination, but said the group has been successful in securing their chosen candidates’ nomination about half the time.

“If constituents want to know where they stand, they can ask them themselves,” she said.

A second group, The Wilberforce Project, has also been quietly laying the groundwork to get more anti-abortion candidates in office. The registered non-profit has advocated for legislation restricting abortion in Alberta for decades.

In a recent blog post, Wilberforce political co-ordinator Cameron Wilson wrote: “... if the UCP wins the upcoming election, then we will have the most pro-life legislature in decades, and maybe ever.”

Stephanie Fennelly, executive director of The Wilberforce Project, said Wilson would not be made available for comment.

While their platform is clear — to pass legislation that will restrict access to abortions — both The Wilberforce Project and RightNow have remained tight-lipped about exactly who, or how, they are supporting their preferred candidates. They also have not declared publicly which candidates they are supporting.

Fennelly refused to elaborate on the group’s efforts to support nominees and candidates or what policies they wish to see enacted.

Fennelly said their political participation is merely a matter of “honouring the democratic process.”

The apparent veil of secrecy from both groups should be concerning, says Dawson. “Why aren’t they being upfront with who they are running?”

What isn’t a secret is why these campaigns have focused on the United Conservative Party.

Golob maintains RightNow would support any anti-abortion candidate with a legitimate chance of winning, regardless of party affiliation. It just so happens all the candidates they have backed for the 2019 election have been members of the UCP, she said.

Despite the reluctance to openly name candidates, Star Edmonton has identified at least three candidates with apparent ties to the anti-abortion movement.

Michaela Glasgo, the UCP candidate for Brooks-Medicine Hat, was photographed door-knocking with Golob, and wrote in a 2017 blog post, “I know that my faith plays a large role in the way that I interpret the world around me and influences my perspective on things like abortion.”

During the 2016 federal byelection in Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner, Conservative Party nominee Joseph Schow was quoted by Golob in a post saying, “My job as your MP is to fight for incremental changes, such as (restriction on) sex-selective abortions, then on late-term abortions. It’s called a foot-in-the-door tactic.” Schow lost that nomination race, but is now running for the UCP in Cardston-Siksika.

A third UCP candidate, Olatunde Obasan, who is running in Edmonton-South, signed a Wilberforce Project petition opposing Ottawa’s push to restrict anti-abortion groups from receiving federal funding through the Canada Summer Jobs program. He has also shared RightNow posts on his Facebook page and saw Golob solicit support for his campaign on social media.

Star Edmonton sought comment from each of the three UCP candidates, but did not receive a response. UCP spokesperson Matt Solberg later said the three candidates and the party would not comment for the story.

Exactly where the UCP stands on legislating access on abortion remains unclear, as there appears to be conflicting messages coming from party faithful and the UCP caucus.

As a federal MP, Kenney openly declared his anti-abortion beliefs, but also acknowledged Parliament has repeatedly upheld the 1988 Morgentaler decision, where the Supreme Court of Canada struck abortion from the Criminal Code and blocked the development of criminal laws regulating the procedure in Canada.

During the UCP’s first annual general meeting in 2018, party members voted in favour of a policy resolution requiring minors to get parental consent before any “invasive medical procedures.”

Critics decried the resolution as a thinly-veiled attack on the rights of young Albertans to access abortion procedures, and said such a resolution would violate a teen’s charter rights.

At the time, Kenney reaffirmed he wouldn’t introduce any legislative measures on abortion, effectively throwing out the party’s “grassroots guarantee,” saying that he ultimately “holds the pen on the platform.”

The UCP caucus’s stance on abortion issues was put to the test during debates in May over Bill 9, which ultimately secured a 50-metre buffer zone around abortion clinics to keep harassing protesters at bay.

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Rather than engaging in debates, UCP MLAs walked out.

Dawson said keeping their stance on abortion issues ambiguous is deliberate, as it allows politicians to solicit donations from socially conservative Albertans under the guise of supporting anti-abortion legislation without suffering a backlash from the majority of Canadians who do support access to abortion.

“It’s like a dog whistle for money,” Dawson said.

Peddling anti-abortion rhetoric too openly in Alberta has tripped up at least one major political campaign in the past.

Former Alberta Liberal Party leader Laurence Decore arguably lost the 1993 provincial election for his party after musing he would consider closing abortion clinics if elected premier as a cost-saving measure. Tory Ralph Klein capitalized on the blunder by quashing the idea of de-funding the service and famously declared abortion should be a decision between a woman, her doctor, and her God.

Bruce Foster, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, said Kenney has adopted a similar position as former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper in that he is willing to “provide a sympathetic ‘ear’” to anti-abortion activist groups to garner their support, while understanding that taking any real action isn’t worth the more considerable political risk.

“These activists may well expect that something should come of their attachment to and support of a party, but in the world of Realpolitik, this will take a back seat to political and electoral pragmatism,” Foster said.

Abortion access isn’t the only thing at risk, Dawson warned, saying there is significant overlap between those advocating for restricting abortion access and those opposed to Gay-Straight Alliances in schools, assisted dying in hospitals, contraception and in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research.

“We are people. We have the right to our bodily autonomy. We have the right to have medical treatment without the insertion of somebody else’s religious beliefs between us and our doctors,” Dawson said.

Golob said RightNow has also engaged in advocacy trying to restrict medically assisted dying.

While a woman’s right to have an abortion in Canada has been affirmed and reaffirmed, Dawson said there is room for legislators to inhibit access to those services.

“Our right to have an abortion is pretty secure, but the access is precarious,” Dawson said, adding, “there are barriers that will prevent people from accessing it.”

However, Celia Posyniak, executive director of the Kensington Clinic in Calgary, a free-standing clinic providing surgical abortion, medical abortion and care for those who have miscarried, was less concerned.

“Abortion within the health-care service in Canada is pretty well cemented,” Posyniak said. “It’s not going to go away. Certainly, the laws in Canada are not going to change. There is never going to be a law prohibiting abortion.”

She said she would be surprised if, despite receiving back-end support from anti-abortion groups, any conservative politician would work to restrict access to abortion services “knowing the history of this and how futile it is.”

“What they are asking these politicians to do will never pass a charter test,” she said.

“I don’t know how many times it takes for them to lose that battle, for them to finally relax and realize that there’s choice in this country,” Posyniak said, adding any future attempts at pushing anti-choice policy in Alberta will only serve to “waste taxpayers’ money.”

But Dawson warns it is important that Albertans, whether they support a woman’s right to have an abortion or not, know where their candidates stand on these issues.

“People need to know there is a wide range of rights that are impacted by this,” she said.

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