OTTAWA—A long-serving Conservative backbencher wants to strike two special parliamentary committees to examine the legal rights of “children before birth.”

Maurice Vellacott has signalled he intends to bring two motions before the House of Commons — one to examine Supreme Court rulings on abortion since 1988 and any “negative impacts” from those decisions, and another to determine what “legal protections Canada ought to provide children before birth.”

The move comes just weeks after fellow pro-life Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth brought forward a motion to legally recognize “the equal worth and dignity of every human being.”

“Frankly, this is for the best interests of children, the best interests of women,” Vellacott (Saskatoon—Wanuskewin) said Monday, adding that those who oppose his motions should “look at (the motions) on the face of it.”

“If they’ve got nothing to be concerned about in terms of the particular position they take, in terms of study, and they know it will just be confirmed by way of such a study, then I’m not sure what the harm would be in that.”

New Democrat MP Niki Ashton (Churchill) accused Vellacott of having a “one-track mind” for repeatedly bringing the issue forward.

Ashton, the party’s status of women critic, said the enduring focus on abortion issues from a small faction of pro-life MPs is distracting from “the discourse we ought to be having on moving forward on women’s rights.”

“It’s a mystery to me why (Vellacott) can’t just accept that Canadians want to move on,” Ashton said.

“We had votes on (Woodworth’s) Motion 312 that indicated we want move forward and respect women’s right to choose. But yet he’s still putting the issue out there.”

The first of Vellacott’s motions would establish a special committee to examine Supreme Court decisions on the abortion issue since 1988 — and specifically what the court said with regard to Parliament’s role in resolving public policy questions on the matter.

The committee would then be asked to bring forward options “to address any negative impact of these decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada may have had, directly or indirectly, on women, men, children and Canadian society.”

Vellacott wants a second committee to determine what legal protections the federal government “ought to provide to children before birth,” citing the United Nations’ Convention Rights of the Child, ratified by Canada in 1991.

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Both motions are almost certainly doomed to fail. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been consistent on having no desire to reopen the abortion debates in Canada, and his party has shut down numerous efforts by pro-life caucus members to do so.

Vellacott expects the votes to take place within a couple of days of the House of Commons returning in January. This is the last chance Vellacott has to bring the matter forward. First elected as a Reform MP in 1997, he announced in July he will not be seeking a seventh term in office.

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