For years, federal Conservative leaders have refused to propose a new law on abortion, despite pressure from grassroots members.

That's because article 65 in the party's policy book states that a Conservative government "will not support any legislation to regulate abortion".

However, today delegates to the Conservative policy convention in Halifax voted to repeal article 65, according to an anti-abortion group.

That has pleased two B.C. anti-abortionists with the organization, Mike Schouten and Tabitha Ewert, who travelled all the way to Nova Scotia to witness this.

“While we certainly support in principle the resolution which was seeking to modify Article 65 into a pro-life policy, we are confident that simply removing the article will ultimately be more beneficial in advancing pre-born human rights,” Schouten said in a news release.

Ewert, a graduate of the UBC law school, acknowledged that the vote "doesn't tie the party to a specific legislative option but allows the conversation to continue among the party".

Their group is called We Need a Law.

In 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country's abortion law as unconstitutional in the landmark Morgentaler ruling.

The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney subsequently passed legislation to create a new law, but it failed to gain approval in the Senate.

Since then, Canada has not had federal regulations over abortions.

The Conservative party's decision today to open the door for a discussion about an abortion law comes a year and three months after anti-abortionist Andrew Scheer became party leader.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives' most ardent libertarian, Quebec MP Maxime Bernier, quit the party yesterday and pledged to form a new political organization. 

Bernier very narrowly lost to Scheer in the 2017 leadership race.

Update

Despite the August 24 news release above, which was sent out by We Need a Law, on Saturday (August 25), delegates at the Conservative convention voted against removing article 65 from the policy handbook.

You can see We Need a Law's August 25 news release below.