OTTAWA

It is not often that a Parliament Hill rally turns into a bit of love-in for the government of the day or that the latter is reluctant to allow itself to be showered with unrequited public affection.

Such was the case last week as thousands of anti-abortion activists used their annual Parliament Hill rally to celebrate Stephen Harper’s maternal health initiative.

Not one of the Prime Minister’s many social conservative ministers was on hand for the event. But the crowd’s message that it likes the government’s recent activism on the anti-abortion front and wants more of it was heard loud and clear by every politician who toils in Parliament.

That was the latest signal that events have overtaken Harper’s stated objective of keeping the abortion issue off the radar.

After years of shadow boxing around the notion that the Conservatives have a hidden social-conservative agenda, the opposition parties are not about to let the matter rest now that they feel they have something solid to sustain their narrative.

Just as importantly from the government’s perspective, a vocal section of the Conservative base has been galvanized by the federal decision to not fund international development initiatives that include helping women secure safe abortions.

The question is no longer whether the Conservative approach to abortion rights will be in the picture of the next federal campaign but rather what Harper will do about it.

His political future may ride on his handling of the issue and yet there is not even a consensus as to whether the current alignment of the ideological stars is Harper’s worst nightmare or a dream come true.

There is no doubt the Prime Minister pushed the play button on the dormant debate on abortion rights when he unveiled his plans for a maternal health initiative last winter.

But there is no agreement as to whether that was deliberate or accidental.

Those who subscribe to the first school point to the increasingly visible social-conservative influence within Harper’s government.

It stretches all the way up to the cabinet front-line and Harper’s own team of tacticians.

In a timely book on the religious right in Canada, titled The Armageddon Factor, journalist Marci McDonald documents the unprecedented access various militant religious lobbies have come to enjoy in Harper’s Ottawa.

Proponents of the big-plan theory also make a case that Harper, who had until recently acted as a buffer between the social-conservative movement and his government, is changing tack; that he is transforming himself into a social-conservatism facilitator as part of a last-ditch strategy to craft a Conservative majority.

Arguing for the other side and the law of unintended consequences — many analysts point to the fact that Harper and his Reform/Alliance predecessors were always hobbled, not helped, by the perception that their parties were vehicles for the social conservative agenda.

Based on past trends, playing the social-conservatism card would be a losing gambit.

The ranks of those who feel the government has not so much set a new strategic course for itself as somehow lost its way include some Conservative insiders.

Last week, former Harper adviser Tom Flanagan used the word “atrocious” to describe the government’s current political management. Other contrarians offer an alternative explanation for the prominence of the social conservatives in the government, arguing that they may have risen by default rather than by design.

Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney — the top social-conservative figures in the cabinet — also happen to be two of Harper’s few solid ministers.

Finally, in support of the notion that Harper accidentally strayed onto the abortion minefield, there is the matter of his failed effort to convince his caucus to support a recent Liberal motion that spelled out that the maternal health initiative covered the full range of contraception options.

If the motion had been adopted, especially with Conservative support, it would have put the matter to rest.

But since it was defeated, the government has endeavoured to showcase its anti-abortion creed.

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And it has set out to put its aggressive social-conservatism stamp on other high-profile decisions — including moves to cut funding to a host of women advocacy groups and the Toronto Gay Pride Parade.

Having let the social conservatism genie out of the bottle, Harper now does seem inclined to embrace it.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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