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

Human beings in the womb remain completely unprotected since Supreme Court’s 1988 Morgentaler decision

Published Jul 11, 2026  •  4 minute read

Silhouette of a pregnant woman. Photo by nelic / iStock /Getty Images

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A small town in Quebec has decided to officially recognize trees as living beings with rights of their own.

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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

Terrasse-Vaudreuil is a small town of roughly 2,000 people. Like every other community in Canada, it almost certainly has unborn children living quietly within their mothers’ wombs. Yet those children have no legal protection whatsoever.

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Quebec has one of the highest abortion rates in the country. More than 22,000 abortions were reported in the province in 2024, the latest year for which data is available. While one Quebec town is making a public effort to protect trees, the province’s youngest and most vulnerable human beings remain exposed to abortion.

These children are not theoretical lives. They are living human beings. They possess their own unique DNA. They grow, develop and mature from the earliest stages of life. They are not potential human beings; they are human beings with potential.

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Yet in Canada, unborn children can be targeted by abortion throughout the pregnancy, for any reason or no reason at all. Since the Supreme Court’s 1988 Morgentaler decision, Canada has had no law protecting human life in the womb. The result is a complete legal void, even though the justices called on Parliament to legislate in a way that would protect the interests of both the mother and the child.

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That is what makes the Terrasse-Vaudreuil resolution so revealing.

Mayor Michel Bourdeau said that trees are living entities that breathe and communicate through their root systems. “A tree is like a human being,” he said. “It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things.”

But an unborn child is not “like” a human being. An unborn child is a human being.

Beating heart in womb

The child in the womb lives. He grows. She develops. The child has a beating heart, a unique genetic identity and a real biological relationship with his or her mother from the earliest moments of life. This child is not part of the mother’s body in the way an organ is part of the mother’s body. The child is a distinct human life temporarily dependent on the mother, as every newborn remains dependent after birth.

If Elon Musk ever reaches Mars and discovers anything as complex, organized and alive as a growing embryo in a mother’s womb, headlines around the world will proclaim that “life” has been discovered on another planet. Yet here on Earth, we are told to ignore the miracle unfolding in every pregnancy: a new human life growing and developing, with a future all its own.

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That is why the irony is so stark. A Quebec town is spending public energy recognizing the value of trees while unborn children, who possess an immeasurably higher form of life and therefore a far greater dignity, are left without protection.

An unborn child is part of nature, too. He belongs to the human family. She has a place in the community, in the nation, and in the universe. “You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here,” wrote Max Ehrmann in his famous 1927 poem “Desiderata.”

Lost moral bearings

A society that protects trees while permitting its youngest members to be destroyed by abortion has lost its moral bearings. It may fill its streets with shade and greenery, but if it refuses to protect children in the womb, it is cutting off its own future. There will be no future generations to enjoy the trees if those generations are never allowed to be born.

Supporters of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree say that trees are living beings, that they are a common good and that life on Earth depends in part on their existence. They also say human beings must act toward trees with fraternity and solidarity.

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Fair enough. But Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person.”

Surely human rights should come before tree rights.

When it comes to balancing claims, the rights of human beings must come first. A society that recognizes a tree’s “right to life” while refusing to recognize the right to life of an unborn child is not compassionate. It is confused. It is not morally advanced. It is morally inverted.

We are stewards of creation, and trees certainly deserve care. But human beings deserve protection first. And the youngest human beings of all — children in the womb — deserve the right to live.

It is time for Canada to get its priorities straight. If we can recognize the value of a tree, we can certainly recognize the humanity of an unborn child.

— Pete Baklinski is the communications director for Campaign Life Coalition. He holds a Master’s degree in theology and lives in Ontario with his family. He can be found on X at @petebaklinski.

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