We have been actively fighting against this specific legislation - C-6 (formerly C-13) and its various incarnations - since then Health Minister Allan Rock presented proposed legislation in May 2001. Three different health ministers have been responsible for the file, the Standing Committee on Health held hearings for several months, and, of course, numerous and repeated debates in the House of Commons and Senate. It was a valiant fight and one that was almost won several times. The Senators, like their colleagues in the House of Commons, did not understand the legislation and were pressured into passing it without amendments.

The government put off the vote on C-13 (and previous to that, C-56) numerous times because it did not have the numbers to get it passed and finally needed a special deal with the NDP for it to pass the House. The Senate then rammed the legislation (as C-6) through the "chamber of sober second thought" in lightning speed because they knew that any scrutiny would raise too many questions to pass it in the government's hurried time frame. But we did well to prolong the fight as long as we did. Over the last three years there were a series of obstacles that we faced trying to defeat this bill.

1 The lack of religious leadership. We know of only a few bishops, priests or pastors who spoke from their pulpits to inform the public and politicians about the evils of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research. The issues raised by the government's legislation are life and death issues and religious leaders should have made the defeat of C-6 a priority. They made several presentations to the House or Senate committee but in most cases that was the last we heard from many of them. This was insufficient leadership; we expected and needed them to declare repeatedly and loudly to their congregations about the sanctity of life from the moment of conception/fertilization and that it is absolutely wrong and sinful to destroy human life, no matter how small or young, for scientific research or any other reason. Voters and public officials needed to hear this message. As is often said, the silence was deafening.

2 Large pharmaceutical companies pushing for embryonic stem cell research. In our society, money talks. When a CLC researcher went to Ottawa, she found evidence that "Big Pharma" was behind the push for embryonic stem cell research; indeed, pharmaceutical companies funded University of Toronto produced "educational" material promoting such research. Why do pharmaceutical companies want embryonic stem cell research? They stand to make billions from anti-rejection drugs if people are treated with embryonic stem cells (other people's cells) instead of their own stem cells such as those obtained from fat, skin or brain cells.

3 A media that failed to report the truth about embryonic stem cell research. All success stories on stem cell research resulted from the use of non-embryonic stem cells. The media hyped every report about successful stem cell research giving credit to the boasts of scientists, no matter how dubious the claim and often ignored real successes in the field of ethical stem cell research. Most people now think all stem cell research is the embryonic kind.

4 A media that would not report the truth about the government's claims about what C-6 (C-13) did and did not do. It is the job of journalists to be sceptical but most in the media never questioned the government's faulty claims that C-13 banned cloning and restricted embryonic stem cell research or that C-13 balanced the need to do scientific research and respect for human life and never acknowledged the proof that we gave to them.

5 The government ignored the Standing Health Committee's recommendations on Allan Rock's draft proposal. In December 2001, the Standing Health Committee suggested that a slightly (but insufficiently) more restrictive bill be introduced. The government seemed to have made up its mind. The committee proposed that embryonic stem cell research be permitted only after researchers had claimed that other forms of stem cell research would not suffice.

6 Reproductive technologies are a complicated issue. Or, better put, the science is complicated. The moral principles are simple. Cloning is wrong. Killing tiny, human beings in their first 14 days of life is wrong. Creating animal-human hybrids or mixing the genes of various species is wrong (and dangerous!). Legislators got caught up in the scientific terms and threw their hands up in exhaustion. Many individuals voted for legislation they did not understand, enamored with the idea of supporting scientific progress.

7 The government further complicated the issue needlessly. As our analysis of the legislation demonstrated, numerous terms were needlessly ambiguous or poorly defined. This led to confusion about what the bill did (permit some forms of cloning) and did not do (prohibit cloning).

8 A disengaged public. In the last year, many Canadians rose up and spoke out against same-sex "marriage" and C-250 because what is at stake (family and freedom of speech/freedom of religion) was crystal clear and easy to understand. Embryonic stem cell research is not easy to understand. Generally speaking, people close their eyes to anything that appears technologically complicated.

9 The government made a deal with the NDP to get C-13 passed. Just prior to the October vote, the government agreed to an NDP demand that the regulatory agency overseeing research grants guarantee a set number of positions for women. The NDP had other complaints about the bill, including their perception that it was too restrictive, but sold out to the government for quotas at the new regulating body. Prior to the deal, the government was not sure it had the votes in the House of Commons to pass the bill and probably would not have risked C-13's defeat without the agreement with the NDP.

10 The Standing Senate Committee on Science and Technology was rigged to not hear Campaign Life Coalition or any other pro-life groups. We applied to address the Senate on our moral and other objections to this legislation. Instead they paraded numerous pro-embryo research scientists before the committee, heard a small handful of ambiguous comments from religious representatives and called it balance. The Senate was forced to make a decision on life and death issues without hearing an unambiguous pro-life argument against the legislation.

11 The rush to get it passed. First, the government was reacting to the demands by scientists to allow this type of research now and effective blackmail by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The CIHR even went to far as to announce that it would go ahead and develop a protocol for distributing research grants before Parliament enacted the legislation establishing the rules regulating such research. By February 2004, with the legislation held up by the Senate, Paul Martin's PMO pressured the Senate leadership to pass this (and other) legislation quickly, so he could call a snap election. As of this writing, the election writ has not been dropped, because of the public uproar over the Adscam scandal.

12 At the last minute, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops undermined all the efforts pro-lifers had put in over the previous three years attempting to have the legislation amended or defeated. The CCCB failed to uphold the teachings of the Catholic Church and provided excuses for Catholic politicians to vote for the legislation. Later, a representative of the CCCB said that they cannot tell legislators how to vote because MPs and Senators must vote their conscience. Certainly, however, the CCCB can remind Catholic politicians of what their conscience must consider when they cast their votes.

CLC Medical Advisor Dr. John Shea recently reviewed the scientific literature on embryonic stem cell research and found that despite the media hoopla, there is little prospect for embryonic stem cell treatment for humans. Among his findings:

• Dr. John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University has stated that embryonic stem cells are "surprisingly genetically unstable" in mice and perhaps in humans as well. He said that this "may complicate efforts to turn cells into cures. You may have to establish hundreds of cell lines to get the few you would want to have." This would require destroying thousands of embryos, and replacing them with thousands more when the original cell line becomes too unstable for further use.

• Bioethicist Glenn McGee has confirmed what many other researchers have found, namely that it is extremely difficult to prevent embryonic stem cells from turning into all kinds of cells and tissues. McGee stated that, "The potential that they would explode into a cancerous mass after stem cell transplant might turn out to be the Pandora's box of stem cell research."

• A study published in Science found that embryonic stem cells used in cloning mice created with embryonic stem cells had many faulty genes. These genetic defects often led to severe abnormalities in the research mice. These faults were not due to cloning but to the embryonic cells.

• In February of this year, Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., warned that gene expression flaws could affect personality, intelligence and other human attributes in cloned humans. He warned that embryonic stem cell research is not of practical use at this point.

• Dr. Carlo Croce M D., Director of the Kimmel Cancer Center, of the Thomas Jefferson University, in Pennsylvania, foresees problems with embryonic stem cells because animal experiments have shown that serious cancer frequently develops when animals receive manipulated embryonic stem cells. He believes that the carcinogenic risk is serious, and that it will be a long time before any patients could be treated with cloned embryonic stem cells.

• It is abundantly clear that it is not an interest in treating or curing disease that is behind the push for embryonic stem cell research. The scientific evidence paints not a promising future but a risky and dangerous one. No one in his or her right mind would go down this path.

Immediately after Stephen Harper won the Conservative Party leadership, the March 22 Toronto Star ran an article that gave an early insight into the Liberal strategy: condemning Harper as a social conservative extremist. It is pathetic that the Liberals are resorting to their desperate and divisive attack strategy employed by Chretien in 2000.

The Liberals are calling Harper "dangerous" and "scary." Recall that after Maclean's asked of Stockwell Day "How scary?" the Liberals used abortion as a wedge issue to paint Day and the Canadian Alliance as extremists. The Liberal campaign strategists are up to their same tricks. Party president Mike Eizenga says that Harper is "trying to run from his history as an extreme politician." An unnamed member of Paul Martin's PMO said: "Stephen Harper is the most right-wing, most socially conservative and most extreme leader that has ever been elected to headline anything purporting to call itself the Conservative party in our nation's history."

Openly gay Liberal MP Scott Brison, who defected from the Progressive Conservatives to the Liberals the week after the Canadian Alliance and Tories merged in December, said the new party has "been taken over by the far-right-wing, extremist pirates. This is a sad day for the country."

But whom do they think they are kidding? Stephen Harper is not pro-life and he is willing to accept the so-called compromise of same-sex "unions" instead of "marriage." Not only is this strategy unlikely to work but it betrays what the elite of the Liberal Party thinks is the defining issue. So we ask you this: if the Martin campaign team thinks social issues are the central issue in this election, do you?

Many Canadians are partisans in favour of one party or another. CLC is also partisan, but not for any party or politician. We are partisan for the cause of life. We work to help pro-life candidates get elected to office - MPs, provincial representatives, city councilors and school board trustees - and once elected, we continue to educate them on life issues. Just as our focus in the past few years has been defeating the government's reproductive technologies bill in the House of Commons and supporting traditional marriage, as an election approaches our focus is on electing pro-life Members of Parliament.

We strongly urge you to look beyond the party label and closely examine the candidates' position on the life issues. Despite being led by Jean Chretien, a staunch supporter of abortion in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Liberal Party had many stalwart pro-life MPs who stood up to their own government on C-13 and other life and family issues. In Canada, we do not elect parties; we do not even directly elect the prime minister. We do, however, elect our local Member of Parliament. That is why it is important to ascertain where your MP stands on abortion and euthanasia before going into the voting booth.

There are fellow well-meaning pro-lifers who say it is wrong for CLC to support candidates who are running under the (take your pick) Conservative, Liberal or NDP banner because none of those parties have a pro-life plank in their platforms." The Christian Heritage Party is the only pro-life party. However, they also are committed to running candidates in all ridings possible which means they are sometimes running their candidates against ones who have taken strong pro-life stands in Parliament." This could endanger the re-election of some of these MPs by splitting the pro-life vote which would allow pro-abortion MPs to replace them.

CLC believes that it is imperative to return to Parliament those MPs who have shown the courage of their pro-life convictions. In many cases, they have received a great deal of flak from their party leadership and sometimes their caucus colleagues. Some of them certainly have jeopardized the likelihood of ever being named to a cabinet post or senior critic's position. We cannot abandon these principled men and women; that would be a cruel betrayal. Furthermore, we encourage voters and politicians to try to affect change within each party, so that some day, we will not have to make our election decisions based on this one issue.

Some people will say that we should not vote by putting one issue above all others. But are there not issues which are so important, some principles so inviolable, that candidates who support the wrong-side on the issue are not suitable for elected office? We return to our 1997 Voter's Guide, which laid out the issue clearly and starkly and which demonstrated that abortion is not like any other issue: "Abortion is the killing of a child in its mother's womb. It is the most violent act designed by man against Almighty God, against society at large, against women, and against children in the womb in particular." By voting for someone who refuses to act to stop abortion, you are implicitly endorsing that violence. You are saying you do not care enough about the damage done to women and the killing of more than 100,000 unborn children each year to put aside issues such as taxes and trade, poverty, unemployment and the environment. All these issues are important, but they are not nearly as important as abortion.

We will not get pro-life legislation until we have enough pro-life MPs. We will not have pro-life MPs if pro-life voters vote for candidates who are not pro-life. Several years ago we found that in non-election years, pro-life groups in Canada have more members than all the political parties combined. There are a lot of us and we can make an overwhelming difference.

I have a question for you. Does your MP represent your values on life and family? Now, recall the last election. Did you vote for that person? Are you doing your job to help elect a pro-life majority in Canada? As an old friend of CLC has said, candidates who support the evils of abortion and euthanasia "do not deserve to be voted in as dog catcher."

On April 2, Justice David Russell denied a request by a coalition composed of numerous life and family groups including Campaign Life Coalition to intervene in the case of Morgentaler vs. New Brunswick. CLC joined numerous provincial and national pro-life groups including Life Canada, New Brunswick Right to Life, Focus on the Family Canada, Canada Family Action Coalition, Real Women of Canada, Physicians for Life, the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint John, the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches, Christian Legal Fellowship, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Catholic Civil Rights League, the Mother and Child Welcome House, Catholic Women's League of Canada (New Brunswick), and the New Brunswick State Council of the Knights of Columbus in responding to the lawsuit launched by Morgentaler last year against the province to get full taxpayer funding of his private Fredericton abortuary.

Judge Russell criticized the Coalition's focus on the morality of abortion when the issue at hand is the "spending of taxpayer's money" saying such a perspective could not help the court resolve the issues raised by Morgentaler's lawsuit. "The central issue here," said Russell, "is whether the Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes an obligation on the Province to provide funding for abortions performed at the plaintiff's clinic Any intervention by the applicant would not be of assistance to the Court in determining that question." We find it doubtful that Morgentaler really cares about the Charter issues himself as his court battle seems little more than an attempt to increase his profits and once again return to center stage.

On March 31, Statistics Canada reported that in 2001, the number of surgical abortions increased 1% as 106,418 babies were killed in their mothers' wombs by abortion. That number, of course, does not include the undetermined number of chemical abortions committed by the abortion pill, the morning-after pill or abortifacient "contraceptives." The number of surgical abortions - about equal to the population in number to a medium size city such as Moncton, N.B. or Kelowna, B.C. - is added to the more than 2 million babies killed by abortion since 1969. Statistics Canada also revealed that one in three pregnancies end in abortion. These numbers are alarming.

Many abortion advocates say abortion is a "last resort" for women whose "birth control didn't work" or for those women facing crisis pregnancies and abortion is "the least bad choice." (When will people learn that the contraceptive mentality frequently leads to abortion?) But with one in three pregnancies ending in abortion and more than 100,000 aborted babies every year, abortion is the most common surgical procedure in the country.

Abortion advocates paint scenarios of heart-wrenching "hard cases" - incest, rape, birth defects, poor and single teenage girls, and the numbers demonstrate that abortion is not the exception but commonplace. It is time for Canadians to wake up to the fact that it is slowly destroying its future by eliminating one-third of Canada's future productive citizens.

About two weeks after the abortion numbers report were made public, Statistics Canada released another report showing that Canada's birth and fertility rates were declining. The newspapers reported that were it not for immigration, the country would have a declining population. A few noted that lifestyle changes including the easy availability of The Pill contributed to our demographic woes but nobody made the connection between the fact that one in three pregnancies end in abortion and that Canada's declining birth rate. This isn't rocket science, folks.

The National Silent No More awareness campaign is an effort dedicated to raise awareness about the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain women experience after abortion. Organizers want women who are silently suffering to know help is available. Silent No More is planning to meet on the steps of Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 13,2004 at 3:00 p.m after the March. They are asking women who regret their abortion and who feel it is time to speak the truth about the aftermath of abortion to join them. They will meet other women who understand the pain of abortion and have received help and healing. For information regarding this event please contact Angelina Steenstra of Silent No More Awareness at 905-430-7990 or call 1-888-PFL-3448. You can also register on line at www.SILENTNOMOREAwareness.org.

Yours for life
Jim Hughes
National President

P.S. Please send in your nominations for the politician who best represents the determination and zeal of the late Joseph P. Borowski in defending the rights of the unborn. The 2003 winner was Paul Szabo (Liberal, Mississauga South).

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