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An abortion-related motion is defeated by more than two to one (203/91) in a House of Commons dominated by the most conservative government in living memory.

Along the way, the most outspoken government defender of a woman’s right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term turns out to be a seventy-something retired male army general.

As government whip, Gordon O’Connor is responsible for making sure that the Prime Minister’s ducks are lined up in the lead-up to a vote. If I was going in battle in Parliament, I would rather have him on my side than just about any other member of Stephen Harper’s cabinet.

In the aftermath of what has to be construed as a demonstration that there is a not the political will to reopen the issue, abortion rights activists still work themselves into a lather over the unsurprising confirmation that Stephen Harper’s government is home to a solid contingent of social conservatives.

The fact that this group of MPs has just been shown to be unable to call the shots within their own government ends up being treated as an inconvenient detail.

For the record, in parallel circumstances in the mid-eighties, a much narrower vote against the death penalty sounded the death knell of the capital punishment debate.

Then as now, some pretty influential members of a Conservative cabinet — including deputy prime minister Don Mazankowski — were on the losing side of the vote and many government MPs swore they would not give up the fight.

In this instance, Status of Women minister Rona Ambrose certainly lost the confidence of most of the vocal associations she deals with when she supported the proposal to explore giving the fetus competing legal rights with those of the mother.

Her vote pit her against the best advice of the bulk of the medical and legal communities; in that context, her explanation that concerns over sex-selective abortions drove her decision was not compelling.

But rather than call for Ambrose’s head, her critics might consider that the outcome of the vote demonstrates that the status of women ministerial brief has outlived its usefulness.

Second only to Ambrose, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney managed to make news by turning out to be who everyone knew he was.

Before becoming one of the Prime Minister’s top ministerial lieutenants, Kenney was the highest-profile caucus supporter of fellow social conservative Stockwell Day in the leadership battle that pit the latter against Harper for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance 10 years ago.

Since Day retired, Kenney has become the leading social conservative in cabinet.

Whether that would serve him well in a leadership contest or, more importantly, in a leadership position is an open question.

Just last spring in Kenney’s home-province of Alberta, the Wildrose Party saw a strong pre-election lead evaporate over concerns at to its social conservative streak.

As this week’s vote has demonstrated, diehard opponents of abortion rights have not stood down since they helped kill a Charter-friendly abortion bill because it was too permissive 20 years ago.

But, by all indications, they — like some of their most virulent critics — are operating in a time warp.

It has been two decades since Canada has not had an abortion law on the books and if a legislative vacuum had turned out to be the invitation to abuse that was initially predicted, surely the efforts of the anti-abortion lobby would have gathered more steam.

Social conservatives do not have a monopoly on calls of conscience.

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As it turns out, the doctors and the nurses who are on the front line of the health care system and the provinces who run it are largely content to leave well enough alone.

That being said, there is an intellectual case to be made for Parliament being well within its rights to entertain the possibility of a discussion of the abortion issue. But frankly, those arguments would be more persuasive if they were equally applied to a thorny issue that is of more pressing interest to Canadian civil society as a whole.

The matter of the right to die with dignity comes to mind.

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