The International Pro-Life Conference is just around the corner. CLC National, together with Life Canada and the International Right to Life Federation, is co-sponsoring the “Creating a Culture of Life Around the Globe Conference,” in Toronto October 2-4. CLC Toronto is hosting the event. Call today to reserve your spot. The conference price is $195 and that includes the Thursday reception and Friday banquet. The cost for the conference without the reception and banquet is $150. You may register by calling CLC at (416)204-9749 or 1-800-730-5358.

There are speakers providing information from different parts of the globe and different facets of the pro-life battle: Dr. Jack Willke, president of IRLF and author of numerous books including Abortion and Slavery, History Repeats and the Handbook on Abortion; Stephanie Gray of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, whose hard-hitting signs compare abortion to past injustices that dehumanized vulnerable human beings; Rosemary Connell of Show the Truth, a pro-life witness that graphically exposes the terrible truth about the abortion procedure; Georgette Forney, co-founder of Silent No More Awareness Campaign, which provides women suffering from past abortions to share their experience; Fr. Alphonse deValk C.S.B., editor of Catholic Insight magazine, a trained historian who has been chronicling the Culture of Death for four decades; John Smeaton, national director of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, the world’s largest and oldest pro-life organization.

Other speakers include: Bert Dorenbos, president of the Dutch pro-life group Cry for Life; Dr. Talmir Rodriguez, a Brazilian legislator; Phil Horgan, the president of the Catholic Civil Rights League; Senator Kit and Fenny Tatad, pro-life leaders from the Philippines; John-Henry Westen, editor of LifeSiteNews.com; Dr. Sheila Harding, Associate Dean of Medical Education at the University of Saskatchewan; Lech Kowalewski, co-founder of the Polish Federation of Pro-Life Movements; Ewa Kowalewska, executive director of Human Life International; the Sisters of Life; Fr. Raymond de Souza, a columnist with the National Post; MPs Tom Wappel and Jeff Watson, and former MP Pat O’Brien. There will also be a special visit from Fr. Ted Colleton at the Friday banquet.

There is something for everyone at this conference. You won’t want to miss it.

The venue is the Marriott Toronto Airport Hotel and there are a limited number of rooms being reserved at a special price for conference attendees – a saving of more than $100 per room per night, so book as soon possible. Standard rooms will be $109 a night. Suites are $149, not including taxes. Quote code NLC to avail yourself of the special rates when calling the hotel at 416-674-9400.

On August 20, Angelina Steenstra, National Coordinator of Silent No More Awareness Campaign and a spokesman for Campaign Life Coalition on the issue of Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada, turned in a petition signed by 30,000 Canadians demanding that Governor General Michaelle Jean revoke the abortionist’s Order of Canada nomination. The petition was launched by CLC in mid-July to help provide an outlet for Canadians to express their outrage over granting of the country’s highest civilian honour to a man who dedicated his life to killing the unborn.

Surrounded by supporters bearing signs to the injustice of Morgentaler’s award, Steenstra spoke of the division the Order of Canada announcement has caused and why Morgentaler doesn’t deserve the honour. “There is nothing heroic or award-winning about taking the life of an unborn child; as a woman who has suffered an abortion, I know that to be true,” she said. Steenstra added: “A simple common-sense test in choosing a winner is to ask whether a daycare center or an elementary school could be named after each winner … Imagine ‘The Henry Morgentaler DayCare Centre’ or ‘The Henry Morgentaler Elementary School’ - somehow, this does not match with the historic honour of the award.” She also reiterated our call to Conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper to launch “a formal, long overdue review of the Order of Canada to prevent this kind of national division from ever happening again.”

We thank all of you who signed and distributed petitions. This massive undertaking speaks volumes to the division that the Governor General has caused by announcing that Morgentaler would receive the Order of Canada. Unfortunately, there was little media coverage with some local papers carrying a three paragraph Canadian Press story (that omitted any reference to CLC) and some CanWest papers ran an abbreviated version of a longer Ottawa Citizen story. But despite the powerful visuals and importance of the issue, many media outlets ignored the story.

On August 13, a group of pro-life and religious groups formally requested the Canadian Judicial Council to examine concerns about the role of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in the awarding of the Order of Canada to abortionist Henry Morgentaler. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin chairs the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada and on July 1, Governor General Michaelle Jean announced that Morgentaler had been named to receive Canada’s highest civilian honour. The group says that the Chief Justice may have compromised her position on the bench to rule on future cases involving abortion that come before the Supreme Court (Morgentaler currently has a challenge against New Brunswick’s refusal to fund private abortion facilities before that Province’s Court of Queen’s Bench.)

The Chief Justice answered her critics on August 15 after a Canadian Bar Association meeting and was questioned by the press about the complaint. She claimed not to have voted in the recommendation of Morgentaler and said reports that she helped usher through his nomination were false. She claimed not to vote in most decisions to advise the Governor General except to break a tie. It has been widely reported that decisions are unanimous, but she said that is a convention, not a rule. She said she has no choice but to chair the council, while maintaining impartiality by merely chairing the meetings to ensure they are run efficiently and has not participated in the discussions about individual nominees for the Order of Canada.

Charles McVety, president of the Canadian Family Action Coalition, the group that instigated the complaint responded, “Our complaint to the Canadian Judicial Council was never based on how Beverley McLachlin voted; it was based on how she chaired a council that showed such a lack of respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the integrity of the Supreme Court.”

McLachlin also said that there has “been a lot of misinformation” about the nominating and approval process. Fine. Then become transparent and make the deliberations public, starting with Morgentaler’s nomination.

We also have concerns about the review of the complaint against Chief Justice McLachlin. The Chief Justice chairs the Judicial Review Council (JRC). Furthermore, Manitoba Chief Justice Richard Scott, who chairs the Judicial Conduct Committee of the JRC, told the Globe and Mail, he would be ‘surprised’ if Canadians had ‘a problem’ with the Chief Justice’s work on the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, although he also claimed he still had to assess the complaint against her. It seems, however, he has already made up his mind considering that he doesn’t think Canadians will have much of a problem with it.

The Federal Government gave the Canadian Blood Services $35 million to create a national organ donor system. Canadian Blood Services was created following the tainted blood scandals, to manage the country’s reformed blood donor system and has expanded into the collection of bone marrow, stem cells, and now solid organs and tissues for transplant. The new expanded mandate will have CBS create and manage three electronic registries, an “Urgent Status Registry”, a “Living Paired Exchange Registry” for living donations and the third, “Intent to Donate Registry” to keep track of all Canadians who volunteer their organs after their deaths. They will help coordinate the independent Provincial organ donation systems; all Provinces and Territories have signed onto the plan hoping it will increase organ transplants.

Pro-life ethicists warn that the push for organs has created a threat to vulnerable patients.

Some organs and parts of organs can be donated by a living donor, including kidneys and portions of the liver. These are not morally problematic under the right circumstances. Neither are other tissues such as bone marrow, corneas, heart valves and skin which may be removed after death has occurred, after the loss of respiration and cardiac function and the onset of rigor mortis. CLC Medical Advisor Dr. John Shea warns that among the many problems is the pressure created by the organ transplant business, whether public or privately funded, to re-define death to obtain organs from patients who may still be alive. Dr. Shea says the use of “brain death” and “cardiac death” criteria to obtain soft tissue organs for transplant has given rise to ambiguities that put vulnerable patients at risk. We can never be sure that the entire brain is dead. As Dr. Shea notes, “There is no consensus on diagnostic criteria for brain death.” Dozens of different sets of criteria for determining brain death are used in various countries and other jurisdictions.

In cardiac death, doctors wait for a short time after the cessation of the heart beat, sometimes as briefly as five minutes, and then declare death while other body systems are still functioning. There are, however, numerous cases where patients have been known to revive long after the five minute cut-off. Even so, doctors who are under pressure to procure organs, are shortening even the five minute wait period to maximize the quality of the organs.

While we have no problems with ethical transplants - those that do not result in the death of the organ ‘donor - we are very concerned about any plan that promotes organ transplants without providing safeguards which will prevent vulnerable patients from being killed prematurely.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine supports those that object to the use of ‘brain death’ as a medically honest diagnosis. Dr. Robert D. Truog, a professor of Medical Ethics and Anesthesia (Pediatrics) in the Departments of Anesthesia and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston and Dr. Franklin G. Miller, a faculty member in the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, argue that “as an ethical requirement for organ donation, the dead donor rule has required unnecessary and unsupportable revisions of the definition of death.”

They say the scientific literature does not support brain death or cardiac death as being real death. They say that the fiction of brain death should be abandoned but that medical professionals can ethically remove organs from live donors for transplant. Truog and Miller suggest that, rather than insisting on dead donors, “ethical requirements of organ donation” should be looked at “in terms of valid informed consent under the limited conditions of devastating neurologic injury.”

The Summer might be quiet politically, but Canadian abortion advocates have reiterated their criticism of C-484, the Unborn Victims’ of Crime Bill, Ken Epp’s Private Member’s bill that would grant legal recognition to unborn children who are harmed or killed when their pregnant mothers are the victims of crime. Epp’s bill goes out of its way to state that it does not apply when women have doctors abort their child and no honest reading of the legislation could see a link between criminalizing abortion and protecting the unborn in law in certain Criminal Code cases. As C-484 states: “For greater clarity,” the legislation will not apply in respect of “conduct relating to the lawful termination of the pregnancy of the mother of the child to which the mother has consented.” Any misrepresentation of what C-484 is and is not, must be willful. The Canadian public seems to understand what the bill means as polls consistently show a majority (and up to three-quarters in some surveys) supporting such legislation.

However, pro-abortion feminists continue their fanatical assault on C-484. On August 4, Joyce Arthur issued a media release on behalf of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada arguing that Epp’s bill “makes the fetus a separate legal person, in direct conflict with the rights of the pregnant woman.” This is nonsense, but is a vivid reminder that pro-aborts have long pitted mother against the child rather than recognizing that one is dependent upon the other and that mothers are meant to be nurturing. There is no conflict between the two.

The abortion coalition also said it would prefer that C-543, a counter-bill, be passed instead. In May, pro-abortion Liberal MP Brent St. Denis introduced C-543 as an alternative, saying that Epp’s bill – which critics insist on calling a Government bill – would result in the law identifying an unborn child as a person with rights. C-543 would amend the Criminal Code to allow for the possibility of harsher penalties for those who attack “a person who he or she knew, or ought to have known, was pregnant.” But this does not go far enough. The families who have lost children, grandchildren and nieces and nephews, as well as their own daughters, wives and sisters, know that there are two victims and want the law to recognize that. The status quo and St. Denis’s bill ignore the reality that when a pregnant woman is killed or injured, there are often two victims - mother and child.

Three days after being released from jail on July 28, Linda Gibbons was again arrested outside the Scott abortuary in Toronto. On July 31, she was arrested, as she was in May (and many times prior to that), for violating the terms of the 1994 ‘temporary’ injunction prohibiting peaceful pro-life activity within 20 meters of abortion facilities. According to Rosemary Connell of Show the Truth, when the Sheriff presented Gibbons with a copy of the injunction, she tore it up. She was arrested and taken away by the police.

Linda is currently being held at the Vanier Center for Women in Milton and her trial date is set for September 10. Despite the fact that on July 28, Justice Cadsby questioned both the legitimacy of the ‘temporary’ injunction and the laying of the charge of disobeying a peace officer, there is no indication that the abuse of the legal system (by charging Gibbons inappropriately) is about to end. Is there any doubt that the police and Crown attorneys are getting their (political) orders from on high and ignoring any semblance of justice?

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario held a public comment period for a draft policy on conscience rights for medical doctors. Dr. Will Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life, said under the new proposed policy, “Refusal on conscientious or religious grounds to refer a woman for an abortion could be deemed professional misconduct.”

The new draft policy document, “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code” says “a physician who refuses to provide a service or refuses to accept a patient on the basis of a prohibited ground such as sex or sexual orientation may be acting contrary to the (Human Rights) Code, even if the refusal is based on the physician’s moral or religious belief.” As an example, the document suggests a physician would violate the Code by refusing to provide artificial procreation to a homosexual. The change is justified by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons as a pre-emptive response to potential human rights commission complaints.

The new policy would seriously undermine the right of physicians to act on conscience or religious conviction – and violate the conscience rights recognized by the codes of the Canadian Medical Association. As Montreal-based physician and frequent National Post letter writer Dr. Roy Eappen says, “I am absolutely appalled that the College feels it can force me to violate my own ethics and principles.” But as Dr. Eappen wonders, what about the human rights of doctors and other medical professionals?

The Protection of Conscience Project, a group devoted to freedom of conscience for professionals, is joining forces with Physicians for Life in demanding an extension of the comment period for the draft policy. Dr. Johnston concluded, “There could be serious problems with what the Ontario College is proposing and we need time to study the implications of this policy in detail. If doctors feel coerced into compromising their deepest convictions as a result of this policy, certainly that’s a problem – not only for the integrity of physicians, but also for the welfare of their patients.”

Action Item: To express concerns to the College contact: feedback@cpso.on.ca or write Andréa Foti, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, 80 College St., Toronto, Ontario, M5G 2E2 or call (416) 967-2600 ext. 387, fax (416) 967-2644 or email her directly at afoti@cpso.on.ca.

On July 4, the Canadian Human Rights Commission announced that it was dropping its 16-month investigation against Catholic Insight and its editor Fr. Alphonse de Valk when it determined that the magazine’s articles on homosexuality were not likely to expose individual homosexuals to hateful actions. However, on July 31, Rob Wells, the complainant, requested a judicial review of the case. This means that Catholic Insight, which has already paid $20,000 in legal fees combating these nuisance complaints, could face further legal bills in tens of thousands of dollars. Fr. de Valk said, “I’m very disappointed if I have to go through this again,” labeling the action as “another attempt to drain us of funds.”

On September 23, Ottawa area pro-lifers will take part in a ground-breaking 40 Days for Life that Campaign Life Coalition has brought to our nation’s capital. 40 Days for Life is an intensive pro-life initiative in which people of faith and conscience pray, fast and witness for 40 days. The duration takes its inspiration from Biblical examples in which God brought about world-changing transformation in 40-day periods.

Previous 40 Days for Life events in the United States, in which pro-lifers witness outside abortuaries and reach out to the community, have resulted in many abortion facilities subsequently closing; others saw abortion numbers decline dramatically. 40 Days for Life spokesman Nicole Campbell said: “As people here in Ottawa join with others from across the country to pray and fast and take courageous action for 40 days to end the tragic violence of abortion, we look forward to seeing what kind of transformation God will bring about in our city and throughout Canada.” Volunteers are needed to witness every hour of the day and organizers are hoping that pro-lifers across the country will offer prayers and fasting in support of this witness.

People in the Ottawa area can call Nicole Campbell at the Ottawa office at 613-729-0379. Others interested in supporting 40 Days for Life with either a donation or through prayer and fasting, please contact Suresh Dominic in the Toronto office at (416) 204-9749 or 1-800-730-5358.

Considering the renewed pro-life activism this Summer following the announcement of Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada, we have no doubt that more Canadians will take a stand on October 5 during LifeChain as a prayerful, peaceful pro-life witness against the killing of unborn children through abortion. Tens of thousands of Canadians, and many more Americans, take part in this powerful demonstration for one hour on the first Sunday of October.

Each year, we stand with signs that remind the public that abortion takes the lives of unborn children, that it harms women, and that there are alternatives to abortion. In most locations it is held from 2-3 pm, but some communities might have different times, so please contact your local pro-life group, check the ad in the September Interim or call your church.

One of the best means of spreading the pro-life message and keeping people informed about life and family issues is through the pages of The Interim, your pro-life newspaper that has been publishing monthly for 25 years. If you do not have a paid subscription, order one today. It is one of the best things you can do to promote pro-life news and views. A regular paid subscription is $40 per year, but a special rate is offered to CLC supporters, only $25 for a one year subscription. E-mail dirocco@lifesite.net or phone 416-204-1687.

CLC needs a secretary for the National President in our Toronto office. The secretary needs to be a strongly self-motivated, flexible and people-oriented person especially competent in reliably providing a wide variety of secretarial services in a fast-paced environment. The positions requires an extensive knowledge of pro-life issues and a strong, personal commitment to the pro-life cause. Candidates for this positions would ideally be very familiar with Campaign Life Coalition and its work. Please contact office manager Deny Dieleman at (416) 204-9749 or 1-800-730-5358.

Occasionally, it is necessary to activate pro-lifers for immediate action. For those of you with access to the internet, please forward your email address to clc@lifesite.net. This will enable us to enhance our communications with supporters for specific action items.

Yours for life and family
Jim Hughes
CLC National President