Prime Minister Stephen Harper deserves praise for his decisive demonstration of support for our troops in Afghanistan.

Under the aegis of the United Nations and NATO, Canadian servicemen and women have willingly placed themselves at risk in hopes of introducing freedom and democracy to a part of the world where those priceless benefits have never been known.

Politicians clamoring for a debate on Afghanistan are out of touch, out of time, and out of order. The time to debate—or even discuss—the role of our troops is not after they're in the field. And we can't trust them to pass up the temptation of an easy sound-bite; Jack Layton never met a microphone that didn't immediately set his jaw-bone in motion. Nope. No debate.

And the Prime Minister is right: it's not the Canadian way to cut and run once such an undertaking has been launched.

Now Prime Minister Harper should—at the earliest opportunity—turn his attention from the liberation of Afghanis to the liberation of another group of people who have never known the benefits of democracy, never get to vote, and therefore have zero political clout. And these people live in one of the most dangerous places on earth: the womb.

It's great to defend the rights of people half-way around the world. But every year the lives of 110,000 Canadian babies are snuffed out for the "crime" of being conceived at an inconvenient time. Who will defend them?

The Prime Minister's statement that "Canadians don't cut and run" should also be applied to the abortion crisis and the need for Parliament to respond. Canadians don't cut and run from foreign obligations; now will Mr. Harper's government show the same kind of courage and tenacity in this urgent domestic situation?

Having made such a brave start, our Prime Minister would really establish his legacy—not just in Canada, but in the whole world—if he took a similarly courageous stand to defend the rights of the most helpless members of the human family.

It would take courage, character and conviction to state—as Stockwell Day once did—that the position political advisors persuaded him to take during the election campaign was wrong. The Prime Minister whose first foreign trip was to visit our troops in Kandahar just might have the iron in his spine to undertake that kind of honest re-examination, and then lead the nation to do what's right about the most burning moral issue of our time.

Freedom and human rights for Afghanis and Iraqis? Sure! And also for pre-born Canadians.

It's time.