The Trudeau government wants to make sure federal money for summer jobs isn’t spent on paying young people to hand out anti-abortion leaflets.

That’s a reasonable goal, one the great majority of Canadians would agree with. There’s no reason tax dollars should fund activist campaigns against a woman’s right to choose. And no one has a right to demand money to do that.

But the government has overreached on this issue. Instead of focusing on what summer-jobs money would pay young people to do, it has made an issue of what the organizations that apply for the funds believe.

In doing so, it’s handing a PR victory to anti-abortion militants, right-wingers and religious groups eager to spread fear that the Liberals are out to ban conservative beliefs.

The government’s support for Charter rights in general, and reproductive rights in particular, is admirable. But it should re-think its approach on this issue.

At the very least, it should reword the “attestation” now attached to applications for summer-job funding so that organizations seeking grants don’t have to sign on to a broadly worded values statement. Instead, it should limit the conditions to what the jobs would actually involve.

That would be a well-considered response to the events that put this issue on the government’s radar in the first place. Last spring it emerged that, over the past seven years, just over $344,000 of summer-jobs money went to four groups whose explicit mission is to campaign against reproductive rights, often by shoving graphic images of aborted fetuses in people’s faces.

Stopping tax money from going to fund campaigns like that is one thing. But the government’s response was to attach the “attestation” to the application form for its Canada Summer Jobs program. Groups applying for money must now declare they support Charter values, and the guidelines make clear that includes the right “to access safe and legal abortions.”

That means, for example, that a group affiliated with the Catholic Church looking to hire students to work at a day camp or a homeless shelter over the summer is in a tough spot. Does it tick the box declaring it goes along with the attestation, and worry that it’s compromising its beliefs? Or does it stand on principle and forgo the money?

The government insists it doesn’t have to choose. Employment Minister Patty Hajdu points out the wording applies only to an organization’s “core mandate,” so even faith groups with reservations about abortion can sign up.

But those seeking federal funds shouldn’t have to wrack their brains over the distinction between “core” and other beliefs. And they shouldn’t be ruled ineligible for tax money because they’re connected to groups out of tune with a government values statement, however worthy.

Of course, as Michael Coren notes in the Star, there’s the usual load of hypocrisy involved in the increasingly noisy campaign against the government’s summer-jobs policy.

Right-wingers weren’t speaking out so loudly about freedom of conscience when the Harper government exercised its own ideological bent and cut funding for religious groups it disagreed with. They’re also wilfully exaggerating the likely real-life effects of the policy, portraying the government as blatantly anti-Christian.

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Still, the government should fix its policy or risk looking heavy-handed at best, oppressive at worst. It needs to address the problem of funding for anti-abortion activists in a way that takes into account all rights — those of conscience and religion as well as a woman’s right to choose.

It needs to return the debate to one about actions, not beliefs. Government doesn’t have to fund actions that violate rights, but it shouldn’t try to police what people believe.

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