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There has been considerable consternation about this. Although polls suggest most Canadians support the right to an abortion in general, it is hardly unanimous, and many people, given the chance, would certainly agree that some rules — say, on late-term abortions, or sex-selection procedures that allowed girls to be terminated for the sin of being girls — would not be out of place.

Trudeau is unmoved, and unwilling to accept that fellow Canadians who hold views different from his own shouldn’t be treated as lesser beings, ineligible for public funds to which they contribute, and to which all other Canadian organizations are welcome to apply.

“An organization that has the explicit purpose of restricting women’s rights by removing rights to abortion and the right for women to control their own bodies is not in line with where we are as a government, and quite frankly where we are as a society,” said Trudeau.

Photo by Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press file photo

His employment minister, Patty Hajdu, expressed a similar view.

“In terms of church groups that are concerned that this may invalidate them from funding, in fact, my perspective is that it won’t, as long as their core mandate agrees with those hard-won rights and freedoms that Canadians expect us to stand up for,” she said.

Neither Trudeau or Hajdu appear to understand that there is no wording in the Charter that offers a constitutional right to abortion. Nor is there anything in the law, since there is no abortion law in Canada. The Supreme Court’s 1988 ruling on abortion threw out the legislation that existed at the time, but left a vacuum in its wake, which no government has had the nerve to fill. Suggesting Canada has “hard won rights and freedoms” that protect the right to terminate unborn children is simply not true. What it has is a total lack of rules, and a public unwilling to confront the commotion that would surely arise from any effort to re-open the matter.