GUEST COLUMN: Quebec town’s tree-rights resolution exposes Canada’s abortion blind spot

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Source A small town in Quebec has decided to officially recognize trees as living beings with rights of their own. On June 9, Terrasse-Vaudreuil city council adopted a resolution declaring that trees are worthy of protection, including the “right to life, to natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration.” There is nothing wrong, of course, with wanting to protect trees. Trees are good. They beautify neighbourhoods, provide shade, and improve air quality. They deserve admiration and care. As poet Joyce Kilmer famously wrote, “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” A community that plants and protects trees is usually doing something sensible. But there is a profound moral confusion at work when a municipality formally recognizes a tree’s “right to life” while human beings in the womb remain completely unprotected. Unborn children have no legal protection...