Several years ago, when speaking to an anti-abortion conference, I was introduced as “one of Canada’s leading pro-life journalists.”

My response was to thank my host but point out that “since there were only about three or four pro-life journalists” in the business, it wasn’t much of a challenge being one of the leading ones.

All these years later, things haven’t changed much. The vast majority of journalists are not only “pro-choice,” as it is called – as if the unborn baby has a “choice” – but have also bought into the widespread mantra that the abortion issue has been “settled” and there is no reason to even debate it.

Enter the Guelph-based Alliance for Life, a group which hopes to at least spark a debate on what surely is an issue of profound human concern. They’ve launched a 14-week campaign called “We Want The Debate.”

In a recent Guelph Mercury story on the campaign, Alliance head Jakki Jeffs explained, “It’s an effort to change the paradigm. We just want an honest debate.”

But University of Guelph professor Victoria Burke, who teaches medical ethics and philosophy there, told the newspaper, “Less than 30% of the population is opposed to women having the right to choose. The majority of the population has settled the issue.”

Even if that were true – which, according to a recent poll on the matter, it isn’t – it’s an odd position for an “ethics” expert to say that the issue is “settled.”

As things are, Canada is the only democracy in the world with no abortion laws whatsoever. None. Every other country has laws governing abortion to various extent, and despite the consistent propaganda from the pro-abortionists, polls have consistently shown that while only around 30% want legal protection for the unborn from the moment of conception, a majority actually do want some protection for the unborn at some point during the conceptionto birth cycle.

That aside, had the activists pushing for abortion-on-demand taken the view that the laws prior to 1969 – when abortion was prohibited except where the mother’s life was at risk – were already “settled,” since the large majority of Canadians agreed with them at the time, then we wouldn’t have had a debate then either, and the law wouldn’t have eventually been tossed out by the Supreme Court. Many large moral and ethical issues have been “settled” at various times in history, only to be changed by people who, like Alliance for Life, insisted on having the debate. Before the U.S. Civil War, for example, slavery was certainly “settled.” For much of Canada’s earlier history, capital punishment was also “settled.”

In all those cases, moral and ethical issues all, public sentiment was overwhelmingly supportive of the status quo, yet people felt the debate was worth having and they had it.

On abortion, despite claims to the contrary, there never has been overwhelming support for the concept of absolute abortion-on-demand.

A poll earlier this year by

Abacus Data Inc., for example, found that 59% of the respondents supported some form of

National legal protection for the unborn, Affairs compared to just 22% who believe that legal protections should only begin after birth. (Another 19% were undecided.)

That hardly makes abortion “settled.” Not only that, but 64% of people identifying themselves as Conservative supporters wanted to have a debate on the issue, while 59% of NDP supporters wanted a debate. Overall, 52% of the respondents said there should be a debate on the issue, while only 26% said the issue should be left alone. Hardly “settled.”

Consider this: since 1970, when abortions were made readily available, more than three million unborn Canadians were killed by abortions. Had they been allowed to live, many would now have families of their own and would be contributing to Canada in much the same way that those of us who weren’t aborted are.

Sadly, despite the ongoing efforts of several Tory MPs, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has consistently said he “would not open the debate on abortion.”

Why not? As Jeffs says,“We believe that the suppression of any debate in a democratic society is unacceptable.”

Not to mention unethical and immoral.

What is it, exactly, the pro-abortion side is so afraid of that they can’t even countenance a debate?

And when will sycophantic media begin asking the same thing, whatever their personal view on the subject?