Here’s where the abortion issue stands: Conservative religious right MPs appear flush with recent successes, pro-choice groups are frightened and there is a growing consensus Ottawa is moving inexorably towards a vote on abortion law.

Sooner or later.

If a new law were to be created, it would be the first time since abortion was decriminalized in 1969 and all legislation removed in 1988.

“Is (a vote) inevitable? I would say yes,” says Mississauga South’s Paul Szabo, among a handful of anti-abortion Liberal MPs in a sea of Conservatives. A veteran member of the secretive Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, Szabo joined a crowd estimated at up to 15,000 campaigners at Thursday’s “March of Life” on Parliament Hill.

“We will be back to reconsidering the question in the House . . . We’re taking incremental steps, small steps. It’s just a question of knowing when it’s the right time.”

Pro-choice advocate Joyce Arthur sees the Harper government’s decision to focus on maternal and child health - excluding abortion – at next month’s G8 summit as the “first serious thing they’ve done.” Repercussions include the International Planned Parenthood Federation remaining without its annual funding six months into the year, and appearing to be cut off from government money.

“The next step is to do it to us here in Canada,” Arthur warns.

Women’s groups perceive the parliamentary religious right as stronger, more comfortable and cockier than when Prime Minister Stephen Harper formed his first minority more than four years ago. Analysis by Arthur’s group, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, estimates roughly 40 per cent of the country’s 308 MPs oppose abortion, but that number rises to almost 70 per cent within the Conservative caucus. Their table can be found at www.arcc-cdac.ca/action/list-antichoice-mps-nov08.html.

The percentage has changed little in recent years; however the mood is different in the House. “They’re starting to sow their political oats,” says New Democrat MP Peter Stoffer. “They’ve taken a page from the U.S. Republican (playbook) and realize they have political clout.”

Some see religious right MPs as a tight coalition with no real leader. Several members - Winnipeg’s Rod Bruinooge, who chairs the pro-life caucus; Kitchener’s Harold Albrecht; Saskatoon’s Maurice Vellacott, and; Hamilton’s David Sweet, former president of the men’s evangelical group,. Promise Keepers Canada - declined to be interviewed by the Toronto Star.

However, Saskatchewan Conservative backbencher Brad Trost, who turns 36 Saturday , appears to be punching well above his weight. He blew the whistle last year on $400,000 in federal funding from the stimulus fund for Toronto’s Pride Week and helped power the lobby that resulted in what was seen as a demotion for the junior minister responsible, Diane Ablonczy.

Trost rails against abortion. Last fall, he initiated a petition, signed by 30 MPs, to demand the Canadian International Development Agency end $18 million in annual funding for worldwide programs for Planned Parenthood. Mission apparently accomplished.

Trost declined an interview. His assistant said the petition is last-year’s news. But she stressed: “He said he’s just supporting his Prime Minister on the issue.”

Does that mean the decision on the CIDA cuts came directly from the PM?

That’s unclear and part of the problem, according to critics who say there’s a hidden agenda.

It’s significant Harper staffed his PMO with social conservatives, including the high-ranking Darrel Reid, a founding member of Focus on the Family, an offshoot of a U.S. evangelical group. But the PM’s public stance on abortion is that he doesn’t want to re-open the issue.

“He says he doesn’t want to legislate, but I think that’s just doublespeak,” says Arthur.

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Anita Neville, Winnipeg MP and Liberal women’s critic, says “everything is through the back door. Moreover, she says “discussions around the G8 have galvanized debate. I was on the Hill (for Thursday’s anti-abortion protest) . . . and it’s clear they’re becoming emboldened.”

According to Katherine McDonald, executive director of the Action Centre for Population and Development: “My voice mail box is jammed with individual women phoning to ask what they should do. . . Of course, we’re going to be next. We know that.”

Nova Scotia New Democrat Megan Leslie, a pro-choice MP and her party’s health critic, says individual actions taken by government – such as the cut to Pride Week – might be explained. “But it’s a pattern of events that points to an ideology taking Canadians in a particular direction.”

Such events include:

• Private members’ bills to introduce restrictions on abortion. A motion to make it a double crime to kill a pregnant woman failed, but it put the debate over the status of the fetus back in the spotlight. Moreover, Bruinooge recently introduced a bill to protect women against being intimidated into having abortions.

• The religious right claims victory for the failure of the Liberal party in March to get through its own motion - in support of maternal and child health that includes abortion - even with NDP and Bloc Québécois support. The bill, introduced by Toronto Centre’s Bob Rae, says: “The Canadian government should refrain from advancing the far right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush Administration in the United States.”

• Even a campaign that failed, such as the 2008 lobby against the Order of Canada award for abortion pioneer Dr. Henry Morgentaler, was seen as a messaging opportunity. “Morgentaler does not deserve the Order of Canada,” Trost told the online, Lifesitenews.com, calling his actions, “reprehensible.”

• Carolyn Egan, from the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, reports increased harassment of women at their sites. “We believe the Conservative government policies have emboldened and given confidence to the anti-abortion element and it’s extremely unnerving.”

Liberal MP Szabo says it could take a generation for a vote on abortion in the House. Meanwhile, the anti-abortion caucus continues to work for that day, with monthly meetings over dinner on Parliament Hill. They fly so far under the radar it’s not clear how they divvy up the cost of their researcher from their parliamentary budgets or even who they count as members. According to Szabo, “It’s under a hundred.”