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July 2006
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Harper calls for free vote on marriage in Fall Right now, the vote to reopen is too close to call with a number of previously pro-traditional marriage MPs against reopening the issue and a number of new MPs refusing to publicly commit to a position. From a political point of view, some elected officials will find it harder to “take away” marriage “rights” for homosexual couples than it was to try to maintain the traditional definition of marriage in the first place. We need you to urge your MPs to stand up for marriage and support the motion to revisit the issue. Former Liberal MP Pat O’Brien, who left the Liberal Party over this issue last year, has repeatedly said that the process in which then Prime Minister Paul Martin used to ram through same-sex ‘marriage’ was a “farce” because it was not a free vote, committee meetings were hurried and the original cross-country hearings from 2003 were ended prematurely. O’Brien is actively lobbying his former colleagues on the matter, pointing to new evidence on the subject (how marriage affects children) and calling for the hearings to be resumed to hear this new evidence. Action Item: We strongly urge every single family or individual who reads this newsletter to contact your MP and urge them to stand up for marriage and family by voting to revisit the issue and then vote in favour of traditional marriage. Let them know that their votes on this issue – both the motion to revisit and, if it comes to the floor, the bill on marriage – will be a deciding factor in the next election. Let us know what they say. 
Conservatives kill Unborn Victims of Violence bill In May, Conservative MP Leon Benoit (Vegreville-Wainwright) introduced Bill C-291, which would amend the Criminal Code to ensure that individuals who committed violence against pregnant women would face additional charges if the unborn child was killed or injured during the commission of a crime. Benoit has been championing an Unborn Victims of Violence bill since last Fall, when Olivia Talbot, a 19-year-old Edmonton girl, was killed by a former classmate, resulting in both her and her unborn baby’s death. The assailant has been charged with only one murder. Unfortunately, this straightforward matter of simple justice for the families of women who have chosen to keep their babies, which we suggest most Canadians would support, was deemed non-votable on May 31 by an all-party committee. It was brought forward for one hour of debate on. The committee, comprised of Chairman Joe Preston (Conservative), Scott Reid (Conservative), Derek Lee (Liberal), Pauline Picard (BQ) and Jean Crowder (NDP), met in camera and would not state why they ruled the bill non-votable. On June 6, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs considered an appeal by Benoit but upheld (7-1 with three abstentions) the sub-committee’s finding. Notably, C-291 is the only private members bill, other than the one to support traditional marriage, to be deemed non-votable since Parliament changed procedural rules to assume all bills votable unless specifically targeted as problematic by the committee. During the committee meeting, a memo from Justice Minister Vic Toews was presented stating that the Unborn Victims of Violence bill was unconstitutional. One MP’s staffer told us that it was likely Toew’s office was directed to do this by the PMO, a worrying sign that perhaps not all that much has changed with the new government when it comes to parliamentary democracy. During the election, Stephen Harper told reporters in Montreal that he would use the weight of his office to prevent “anti-abortion” private members’ bills from coming forward; although C-291 is not a “pro-life” bill, the PMO may not have wanted such legislation brought forward under the mistaken assumption that protection of unborn victims of violence would endanger “abortion rights.” CLC National Organizer Mary Ellen Douglas said she was disturbed by the rejection of the common sense legislation. “As a grandmother waiting for the birth of my grandchild, I would be horrified to find that a murderer of my daughter would not also be charged with the murder of my grandchild.” Douglas’ hypothetical situation is a reality for Alberta’s Mary Talbot, Olivia’s mother. A self-described “pro-choice” supporter, Talbot has fought for Unborn Victims of Violence legislation as a matter of simple justice. She traveled from Edmonton hoping to testify before the committee to make the case for C-291, but Bloc MP Marcel Proulx, without giving Mary Talbot an opportunity to testify, insensitively insisted that she had nothing to add to the deliberations; Mary Talbot left the room in tears, no doubt feeling that her family was once again a victim of injustice, this time as a result of political maneuvering. Liberal MP Paul Szabo (Mississauga South) said such a law would have bipartisan support, and called for the bill to be debated in the House. Szabo did not regard it as being outside of what should reasonably be considered by Parliament. Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition, responded to the nixing of the bill saying, “This very reasonable piece of legislation deserved to be debated and voted upon by the whole of Parliament... The Laci Peterson case in the United States proved that most reasonable people understand that two victims die at the hands of the murderer, when the woman who is murdered is pregnant.” We hope that a future Parliament will reconsider this matter of extending simple justice to women who have decided to carry their unborn children to term, and recognize that separate crimes are being committed against two victims when a pregnant woman and her unborn child are assaulted or killed. Sex-selection abortions in Vancouver The Western Standard magazine has revealed an internal document from Women’s Hospital in Vancouver showing that abortions are carried out (at taxpayer expense) to eliminate unborn girls. The cover story of the June 8th issue reports that many immigrants from China and India, two countries where sex-selective abortions are leading to major imbalances in the male and female populations, are continuing their preference for boy babies once they come to Canada. The memo indicates that a clinic at the hospital held a presentation on February 9 dealing with sex selection, providing a rationale for acceptance of the practice. The one example offered was the case of “Mary” who already has four boys and wants a girl. The memo states, “during her routine 18 week ultrasound she was told she is carrying another boy. She would like to terminate the pregnancy and try one more time for a girl.” The magazine also quoted a former student of Vancouver abortionist Garson Romalis, who says that Romalis admitted to committing sex selective abortions. You would think that killing off thousands of girls – and the Western Standard provides an educated guess that the number of sex selection abortions could be that high – would offend feminists. But in 2000, feminist groups applauded then Health Minister Allan Rock when he decided that the federal government would not regulate the practice of sex-selection abortions. And Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada states in a position paper, “Being pro-choice means supporting a woman’s right to decide whether or not to continue a pregnancy for whatever reason, even if one personally does not agree with her reason.” Interestingly, the 2004 law on reproductive and experimental technologies outlaws sex selection to be used for in vitro fertilization or similar artificial procreation procedures, except in the case of sex-linked disorders. But the Western Standard article notes that, “Once the resultant fetus is a few weeks old, however, sex selection becomes entirely legal and the couple is free to abort if it doesn’t like the gender.” CLC calls upon provincial governments to investigate whether and to what extent sex-selection abortions are being committed, and strongly urges that the targeting of unborn girls be ended immediately. Abortion battle heats up in New Brunswick We were delighted to hear that beginning July 1, the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton would cease committing abortions. This virtually halts all publicly funded abortion in New Brunswick because the hospital was the last such institution to commit abortions. However, New Brunswick Health Minister Brad Green made a public plea for other doctors to take up the practice. Green would later tell the CBC that physicians in two other hospitals “have indicated that they are willing to begin providing these procedures, so our focus now is on continuing to meet with those doctors, with their respective regional health authorities to ensure that there is as seamless a transition as possible.” Green said that making “certain that access to medically necessary termination of pregnancy procedures” was a “priority” of his government. In recent years, neither the federal health department nor any provincial health minister has produced evidence that abortion is ever “medically necessary”. CLC New Brunswick President Peter Ryan said that the province’s laws do not require funding of such procedures and condemned the health minister for “flouting his moral responsibility: arranging the taking of life is surely not the business of government.” Meanwhile, Henry Morgentaler, who is the middle of a lawsuit against the province for its refusal to pay for abortions committed at his facility in Fredericton, held a press conference calling for a resolution with the government to help fill the abortion void by fully funding abortions at his abortuary. However, his press conference got little media attention, indicating that the media may have tired of covering the same song and dance about government funding of his private, for-profit abortion facilities. Action Item: To contact the New Brunswick Ministry to urge Health Minister Brad Green to stop encouraging doctors to commit abortions, write to the Ministry of Health, Carleton Place, P. O. Box 5100, Fredericton, N.B., E3B 5G8 or fax (506) 453-5243. Or you can write to Brad Green at his Fredericton South Constituency Office at 83 Regent Street, Fredericton, N.B., E3B 3W3 or fax him at (506) 457-4904.
Amnesty International pushes abortion Following in the steps of Amnesty International branches in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, AI Canada voted at its annual general meeting to have the organization move into abortion advocacy. Amnesty International will consider a motion to promote “reproductive rights” at its international conference next year. Canadian religious leaders and organizations, including Calgary’s Catholic Bishop Fred Henry and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada have said that abortion advocacy tarnishes the group’s reputation as a defender of human rights and they urge pro-life Christians to reconsider their support of Amnesty International. In May, LifeSiteNews.com revealed that in AI’s response to critics, its decision to advocate abortion rights stems from its support for women’s and homosexual rights. LifeSiteNews.com obtained a copy of a form letter that Amnesty sent to supporters who contacted AI objecting that abortion violates the rights of the unborn, which stated that the proposal to support “sexual and reproductive rights” stems from AI’s “global campaign to Stop Violence against Women, as well as its work on HIV/AIDS; on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, economic, social and cultural rights and on related issues.” Amnesty risks losing much of its support among abortion opponents for whom human rights are a high priority in their charitable donations.
Action Item: Pro-lifers who donate to Amnesty International should immediately cease their donations to the organization, let AI know why they are doing so, and spread the word to their relatives and friends. Write to Amnesty International Canada, 312 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ont., K1N 1H9 or fax (613) 746-2411. Alberta private bill to protect conscience killed Sadly, a bill that would protect the freedom of Albertans to opt out of teaching homosexual material or performing same-sex ‘marriages’ ran out of time on May 8, as opposition members used stalling tactics to ensure that the bill did not have a chance to pass. Bill 208, a private members bill, the Pro (Marriage) Statutes Amendment Act, sponsored by Conservative MLA Ted Morton, would have provided protection to those who oppose homosexual activity by amending the provincial Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act. If it had passed it would have forbidden sanctions against Albertans who express their freedom of conscience and religion by supporting or opposing same-sex marriage. Morton reacted to the opposition’s dirty tactics: “It’s a sad day for democracy when the Liberals and ND’s won’t allow a debate on an issue this important.” Alberta Premier Ralph Klein did not publicly support the bill until it was derailed, and only then did he mention that it grew out of existing Conservative government policy. Klein said: “I don’t want to be perceived as a gay-basher, because I’m not ... But I want to protect those who, on moral and religious grounds, don’t want to marry a gay couple.” To his credit, the premier implicitly recognized that the forward march of gay rights and existing religious and conscience rights are inevitably going to clash. Morton said that he will revisit the issue during the coming Alberta Conservative leadership race, in which he is expected to be a candidate. Pro-abortion lies Joseph Goebbels was Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief in Nazi Germany and he famously said that if you tell the big lie often enough, people will eventually believe it. Ultimately, however, the lie was exposed and resulted in Hitler’s downfall. In Canada, the big lie seems to be that abortion is a ‘right’ either enshrined in the constitution or created by the Supreme Court of Canada. The most prominent abortion lobby outfit is called the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, and Joyce Arthur, a pro-abortion propagandist, routinely calls abortion a ‘constitutional right.’ One such example of Arthur’s foray into untruth is a position paper from June 2005, but forwarded to MPs following the March for Life in May 2006. The paper is about the supposed medical necessity of abortion, and it she claims that abortion is “unlike any other medical procedure” because “legal, accessible abortion is also a Charter right.” She’s wrong. Read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, abortion is not mentioned. There was a debate in 1982 on how to deal with the issue of unborn life and, for whatever reason, it was not addressed in the actual Charter. That’s why Joyce Arthur is forced to clarify that it isn’t in the Charter itself. Instead, she claims, it is a Charter right “as per the Supreme Court’s Morgentaler decision in 1988.” The problem is, the abortion laws of that time (which required permission from rubber-stamping therapeutic committees, which were not available in free-standing abortuaries) were deemed unconstitutional on purely procedural grounds by four of the five justices that voted to overturn the abortion law. This is a far cry from declaring a “right to abortion,” a fact noted by another judge, Bertha Wilson. She was the only justice to declare that there was an abortion right. So what did the Supreme Court do in 1988? It ruled that the therapeutic committees were unconstitutional and it left it up to Parliament to decide to draft new abortion legislation. It did so because, in the words of one of the judges, “the court cannot presume to resolve all of the competing claims advanced in vigorous healthy, public debate.” That is, Parliament, which ostensibly reflects the will of the people, should act on the issue. In 1991, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney introduced the fundamentally flawed C-43 which would have done nothing to reduce abortions. The bill was defeated on a tie vote in the Senate, and Parliament has ignored the issue ever since. So there is a void in the law, with no restrictions; but neither is there a declaration of abortion as a right. That gaping hole should be filled with some law that protects the unborn from injury and lethal violence, and vulnerable women from exploitation and harm; but to do so, the politicians, the press and the public must know the truth: there is no right to abortion in Canada. In fact, if one can understand that one does not have the right to do wrong, no legitimate case can be made for permitting abortion. The lie will ultimately be exposed. Nova Scotia election The Conservative government of Rodney MacDonald was re-elected, although with a minority of just 23 of 52 provincial seats. Unfortunately, the abortion issue was not raised by the political leaders or media although regular voters, as always, brought it up with local candidates. MacDonald, who declared himself pro-life but unwilling to do anything about abortion earlier this year when he was elected Tory leader, and a few other MLAs signed the Nova Scotia CLC questionaire. They indicated an openness to some regulation of abortion. The opposition MLAs returned disappointing form letters that accept the abortion status quo. Please pray that the elected representatives of Nova Scotia – and everywhere across the country – uphold the sanctity of human life.
Pro-life senator Forrestall passes away  Senator John Michael Forrestall, a Conservative Senator from Nova Scotia, passed away on June 8, a loss for both the pro-life movement and Canada. He was elected six times as MP for Dartmouth between 1968 and 1984, and appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1990. As an elected representative, he stood up for life in Parliament and even helped Campaign Life Coalition solve a problem with Canada Post when an individual within the corporation was sabotaging our mailings.
When, in the early 1980s, CLC produced “pro-life cards” (like hockey cards with the MP’s picture, riding and a pro-life quote from the MP), it was an easy decision to have J.M. Forrestall among the honorees. As a senator, he was less identified with social issues, becoming a recognized expert on foreign affairs and defense matters, but life issues were obviously not far from his mind. Among other pro-life events and activities he engaged in during the past few months, he unexpectedly showed up at the March for Life in Ottawa in May. He died at the age of 73, giving 40 of those years in public service. He was a fine man, a salt-of-the-earth type Maritimer, who will be greatly missed. Please support CLC's actions with your generous donations. Tel: (416) 204-9749 Fax: (416) 204-1027 E-mail: clc@lifesite.net |