This May 14 will mark the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Omnibus Bill, the law that opened the door to abortion on demand. On that day, Parliament approved Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s and Justice Minister John Turner’s law that technically kept abortion illegal but allowed abortion when it was approved by a Therapeutic Abortion Committee.

Within a few years, the number of legal abortions jumped – from just over 11,000 in 1970 to 37,232 in 1971 and more than 52,000 in 1974. By the 1990s, more than 100,000 unborn babies died every year by abortion and by Statistics Canada’s own numbers, from 1969-2004, just under 2.9 million abortions were committed in this country. About another half million children have perished at the hands of abortionists in the past five years. That’s nearly 3.5 million babies killed by abortion. Imagine anything else that would have eliminated 10% of the Canadian population. Would it be allowed to continue without any restrictions? Would it be funded by Provincial Government health budgets? Would there be an imposed silence by politicians and the press? This tragedy is an abomination and it must not be allowed to continue. It must not be allowed to continue unchallenged.

Every year, thousands of Canadian pro-lifers speak out against the injustice of abortion at the National March for Life in Ottawa and Provincial demonstrations across the country. Please take part in this very important demonstration this year. We want Canadians to take notice of the tragic consequences of abortion - the killing of so many unborn children, the damage it causes to women and the harm it has inflicted on society. Human beings are the earth’s most precious resource but Canada is blithely eliminating nearly 100,000 unborn children - future teachers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, laborers, parents, taxpayers - without consideration of what we are really doing.

Join us for this year’s Marches for Life to mark the historical importance of this tragic day in our country’s history and join the movement demanding something far better – a Canada without abortion. For information about the Provincial March for Life events, contact your local pro-life group. If you can make the National March for Life in Ottawa, please plan now to be there. See details of this years March and sign up to receive updates at: http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/march2009/index.html

This year’s theme is Exodus 2009 – A Future without Abortion. It begins on Wednesday, May 13th with a Mass at St. Theresa’s Parish at 7:30 p.m. followed by a Candlelight Vigil at the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights Monument in the nation’s capital at dusk. On May 14th there are a number of ways in which Christians might spiritually prepare for the day’s events. At 10 a.m. there is a Mass at both Notre Dame Cathedral and St. Patrick’s Basilica, a Prayer Service at St. George Anglican Church, and a worship and meditation service hosted by the Canadian Reformed Church at the Merivale United Church.

At noon, the gathering begins on Parliament Hill with the introduction of dignitaries and select speeches. The March will begin at 1:30 p.m. and lasts about an hour. When people return to the Hill, the Silent No More Awareness Campaign will make a presentation at 2:45 p.m. The Eastern Catholic Chaplaincy of Ottawa will lead a closing Prayer Service at 4 p.m.

The Rose Dinner begins at 6 p.m. with cocktails and dinner at 7 p.m. This event is held at the Hampton Inn (200 Coventry Road) and tickets must be ordered in advance. Former MP Tom Wappel and Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson will both speak at the Rose Dinner. Tickets are just $75. Call (613) 729-0379 or 1-800-730-5358 to order or for more information.

On May 15th, there is a large Youth Conference from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hampton Inn. Call Yoli at 1-800-730-5359 for more information. The program has yet to be finalized, but it is always worth attending with past events tackling the issues of pro-life politics, abortion and the media, stem cell science, and euthanasia.

We ask that all of you pray for the success of these events and if you cannot make one of the Marches yourself, that you consider sponsoring a student or other individual to take part in this historic occasion.

There has been a tremendous response to the 40 Days for Life in the cities that have hosted the 24-hour, 40-day prayer vigil near abortuaries (Toronto, Ottawa and Winnipeg). Other communities, including North Bay, Kingston and Saskatoon, among others, have held daily or weekly vigils as part of the preparation for the 40th anniversary of the legalization of abortion on May 14th.

There are a number of touching stories, including a pair of older Italian gentlemen who told the 40 Days for Life that they watch the vigil from their window and pray for their success from the comfort of their apartment and the woman in North Bay who came with coffee for the participants of the vigil outside the local hospital. There are more signs of support than disagreement or abuse. Fortunately, there are no reports of violence exhibited against pro-lifers like there was in the Fall in Ottawa. Toronto organizer Nicole Campbell has reported a hardly unique experience of positive discussions with people as they enter the abortion facility, including a polite conversation with abortion counselors.

On March 14, Toronto had its first confirmed turnaround (saved baby). Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins said a Mass at the halfway mark of the 40 Days for Life vigil at a packed St. Charles Borromeo Church. In Winnipeg, what began as a handful of supporters on the first day, turned into 125 volunteers to man the 12-hour daily vigil. Across the country, many hundreds of pro-lifers have braved the Canadian cold to bear witness to the injustice of abortion, help women seeking a real solution to their problems, and pray for an end to abortion in Canada.

Included in this mailing is a petition calling for legal protection for unborn babies from the moment of conception/fertilization to natural death. We would like you to find 25 people to sign it and return the petition to us as soon as possible. If you feel you can get more signatures, first make as many photocopies as you need of the blank petition and then go to it. We will forward the completed petitions to pro-life politicians to so that they will formally present the petitions in the House of Commons before May 14, the 40th anniversary of the legalization of abortion. If you have any questions, please call the office at (416) 204-9749 or 1-800-730-5358.

Action Item: Please download the petition form from http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/ and return the signed petition/petitions to our Toronto office at 300-104 Bond St., Toronto, Ont., M5B 1X9.

On March 9, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order rescinding two restrictions on embryonic stem cell research put into place by his predecessor, George W. Bush. In 2001, President Bush limited Federal funding of ESCR to a number of existing stem cell lines thereby placing restrictions on the use of taxpayer money for the destruction of embryonic human beings in research. In 2007, he signed a second Executive Order encouraging the use of adult (somatic) stem cells which do not require the destruction of human life to harvest.

Obama overturned the restrictions, saying that his administration would not stand in the way of science or play politics with science policy. He criticized what he called the “false choice between sound science and moral values,” saying that “As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering.” He said the research will proceed with “humanity” and be done “responsibly” but he ignores the lethal process of harvesting stem cells and, therefore, the humanity of the embryo and the responsibility to protect that life. This is all total nonsense. Wesley Smith, on his blog referred to all of this as “dishonesty piled upon dishonesty by the Obama administration on stem cells.”

The National Institutes of Health is expected to submit guidelines for funding ESCR within four months. Pro-life groups criticized the move, saying that ethical stem cell research is yielding real treatments today so that destructive ESCR is not only morally wrong but medically unnecessary. They also criticized the President for his utilitarian view of human life. Cardinal Justin Rigali, Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said: “This action is morally wrong because it encourages the destruction of innocent human life, treating vulnerable human beings as mere products to be harvested.”

In June 2007, President Bush signed Executive Order 13435 which required the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “conduct and support research” on stem cells that “may result in improved understanding of or treatments for diseases and other adverse health conditions, but are derived without creating a human embryo for research purposes or destroying, discarding, or subjecting to harm a human embryo or fetus.” So that his directive to fund ESCR did not contradict his predecessor’s directions to HHS, Obama over-rode Executive Order 13435 encouraging ethical stem cell research. So now, human embryos will be created in order to be destroyed so their stem cells can be harvested. It reduces human beings to raw materials for research, thus demeaning the sanctity and uniqueness of human life.

The Winnipeg Free Press reports that Conservative MP Steven Fletcher praised the President’s announcement, saying “I think it’s long overdue.” Fletcher, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident more than a decade ago, said he thinks the policy will result in medical treatments and said “It brings hope to a great number of people.” It is a false or misplaced hope. Embryonic stem cells present huge problems for the same reason they provide such promise. They are pluripotent which means that they can turn into any other cells and, theoretically at least, be turned into the cells to replace tissue that has been damaged due to injury or disease.

The problem is that they can and do turn into other cells, often into tissue, that is not desired in the treatment. Alzheimer’s patients treated with fetal stem cells had teeth and nails grow in their brains and they went through agonizing pain after their treatment. The pluripotency of embryonic stem cells might not be controllable by scientists and thus either put patients at great risk or never deliver the ‘promised’ treatment. In February, the medical journal PLoS Medicine (Public Library of Science) says that an experiment with fetal stem cells in an Israeli boy suffering from the fatal genetic disease, ataxia telangiectasia, resulted in the development of brain and spinal cord tumours. Indeed, there has never been a single successful clinical trial of embryonic stem cells.

Adult stem cells, on the other hand, are currently being used in numerous treatments and more than 300 clinical trials in the United States alone have demonstrated their tremendous potential. When President Obama signed the Executive Order, the memorandum directed the development of a strategy “for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making” and “to ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science.” The soundest science right now supports adult stem cells research. As Rep. Chris Smith (R, NJ) said after Obama’s announcement, “Why persist in the dehumanizing of nascent human life when better alternatives exist, alternatives that work on both ethics grounds and efficacy grounds?” Good question.

On March 1, it was reported that scientists at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto, may have made a big breakthrough in coaxing skin cells taken from skin to act more like embryonic stem cells in pluripotency. The reprogrammed adult cells that appear to avoid the problem of embryonic stem cells that develop uncontrollably into tumours or other undesired tissue. The Toronto Star reported that the researchers think that the process they have discovered is a technique that will find innovative cures for disease and create personalized organs for patients.

The paper reports the “discovery quickly will be adopted by labs around the world and will accelerate further advances in biology’s hottest field.” It allows regenerative medicine to move forward without the ethical problems inherent in embryonic stem cell research. Furthermore, as McMaster University scientist Mickie Bhatia says, using adult stem cells from the patients themselves because they reduce the rejection dangers of using tissue created from other people’s cells.

Dianne Irving, a biochemist formerly with the National Institute of Health in the U.S. and a bioethics expert at Georgetown University, warned pro-lifers to be cautious. She is concerned that the ‘breakthrough’ might resemble the ‘ethical’ adult stem cells utilized by Kyoto University researchers in Japan in 2007 that nonetheless relied on a fetal stem cell line and were not quite what was advertised. But, Irving said, if the research does not rely on embryonic or fetal material at any stage, it “should at least be given a chance.” Independent verification of this new research is necessary to ensure that it is derived from ethical sources. The search for ethical sources, however, is a victory for the Bush policy that pushed for research that does not rely on the destruction of embryonic human beings.

The question is why, with the medical inferiority and ethical problems, anyone would continue to push for embryonic stem cells over adult stem cell research. Even if this story out of California and Toronto proves to have some ethical concern, there are numerous other adult stem cell success stories. There is simply no need to kill embryonic human beings and taxpayer funding should go only to ethical stem cell research.

The Freedom of Choice Act has yet to be introduced in Congress, but pro-life organizations and grassroots supporters are gearing up for a big fight. If passed, FOCA will eliminate all Federal restriction on abortion, including taxpayer funding of the procedure and the ban on partial-birth abortion, and could possibly throw out even State and municipal level restrictions on abortion. There are reports that some in the Obama administration and Congress want to introduce an abortion bill that would lift most restrictions or do so by piecemeal, in order to avoid a public backlash.

If FOCA is introduced and passed, it could wipe aside all the legislative progress the pro-life movement has made in three decades of defending human life. It remains to be seen whether the administration will push for this now or wait later. Nonetheless, pro-life organizations have activated their supporters who are letting their elected representatives know that they do not want the Freedom of Choice Act passed or even introduced. polls show that every Federal and State-level restriction on abortion has popular support, but the Democrats, including Obama, ran on FOCA in the 2008 elections and their feminist supporters and other members of their radical base want it enacted now.

Obama has won plaudits from the mainstream media by pushing radical policy but not doing it immediately, thereby not appearing ideological, but still eventually getting his policies enacted. This stealthy campaign to roll back restrictions might be another example of Obama having it both ways. On the plus side, it cannot bring about these changes unilaterally by Executive Order; they must be debated in Congress, where public pressure can be brought to those in the House of Representatives and Senate. We will continue to monitor this closely because what happens in the U.S. often trickles across the border. If the battle to defend human life appears lost in the United States, there will be ramifications (if only for morale) around the world.

In January, President Barack Obama abolished the Mexico City Policy which prohibits U.S. taxpayer money from paying for foreign abortions, abortion counseling or abortion advocacy. The Mexico City Policy was popular with a majority of Americans and its demise will result in an increase in abortion availability in the developing world. Money that would have gone to legitimate health care needs will now be diverted to the killing of unborn children in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Is this the hope and change Americans voted for? Adding to the tragedy, is the fact that when America becomes a leader in supporting abortion, others follow. On March 10, the Australian Government followed suit, as Kevin Rudd’s Labour Government approved funding for foreign aid programs that will pay for abortions. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith acknowledged the issue is divisive (“there are strong views, firmly held, on all sides”) and said that family planning services designed to avoid abortion will still be supported - even though many family planning programs are coercive, undermine parental authority, conflict with local values and employ abortifacient contraceptives.

On March 5, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory lost in a by-election designed to put him in Queen’s Park. After failing to win his own seat in the 2007 Provincial election and barely holding onto the leadership at a March 2008 party convention, Tory finally convinced Laurie Scott, a sitting MPP to resign and let him contest a safe PC seat in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock. Tory lost by nearly 1,000 votes in the rural, central Ontario riding just west and north of Peterborough. The pundits wondered why a moderate Red Tory didn’t do better in ‘moderate’ Ontario.

But Tory wasn’t the leader of Ontario, he was the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and his values were out of touch with his base. Tory’s values were in sync with downtown Toronto and the liberal, if not radical, social elites. He marched in the Gay Pride Parade and took part in a homosexual youth film festival; he proudly declared himself a vocal spokesman for gay rights (equating them with human rights) and publicly urged Stephen Harper to not re-open the same-sex ‘marriage’ issue in 2006. He repeatedly described himself as a ‘inclusive’ and ‘tolerant’ – code words for socially liberal. In the by-election in response to a CLC leader, he said he supported taxpayer funding for abortion and called abortion “a difficult decision.”

Tory tried to reach out to religious voters by promising to extend Provincial funding for religious schools but he attached strings that would likely have undermined the religious teaching of those schools. On most social issues his views were identical to those of the Provincial Liberals and NDP, thereby depriving his party of a potentially successful differentiation from his political opponents. Tory’s brand of conservatism never resonated with the voters and the PCs have only 26 seats as their leader twice failed to win his own.

CLC was involved in the campaign, supporting Family Coalition Party candidate Jake Pothaar. We sent questionnaires to the candidates, found that Pothaar was the only pro-life candidate and supported him with a telephone voice blast and mailing. Still, the FCP candidate only received 258 votes (0.73%) in a nine-way race. Time and again, it seems that most pro-life voters would much prefer to have only candidates in the main parties to vote for.

The Progressive Conservative Party has yet to announce a date for a leadership race, but rumours abound that it will be either late June or early September. Mary Ellen Douglas, Ontario president of Campaign Life Coalition, said it was “good to see John Tory go” because he was so far left on the social issues. She added that it would be difficult for a new leader of the party to be worse than Tory both for the sake of life and family, but also for the electoral prospects of the PCs. Most potential leadership candidates are more socially conservative, including Tim Hudak (Niagara West-Glanbrook), Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington), Frank Klees (Newmarket-Aurora), Elizabeth Witmer (Kitchener-Waterloo), and John Yakabuski (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke).

Red Tory Christine Elliott (Whitby-Oshawa), wife of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, is more socially liberal, but would not be expected to be as vocal as John Tory was on social issues. There is also a lot of talk of a revival of the “Common Sense Revolution” of Mike Harris and company. We certainly do not want to see that. The Harris model was also socially very liberal. The cause of life and family worsened further under that heartless, fiscally conservative regime. Harris concentrated more political power into Queen’s Park, forced the merger of many communities into impersonal and distant municipal power blocks and made access to municipal representatives and school trustees much harder.

We encourage Ontarians who are inclined to support the Progressive Conservative Party to ensure that their party membership is up-to-date so they can participate in the leadership contest. You can sign up online at https://secure.ontariopc.com/secureforms/pcsecurepay.aspx?type=membership or you can call Jeff Gunnarson at (416) 204-9749 or 1-800-730-5358. There will be leadership candidates who can make a difference on life issues, or at the very least not stand in the way those of MPPs who are willing to take a stand. As always, we encourage people to work within the parties they support without becoming blind party loyalists. Other than the Family Coalition Party, no political party in Ontario is committed to protecting human life from the moment of conception to natural death, although there are pro-lifers within the major parties.

The 53rd U.N. Commission on the status of Women was held from March 2-13 in New York City. The theme of this year’s CSW was “The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/AIDS.” CLC’s U.N. representative attended the two week commission and lobbied alongside representatives of other pro-family and pro-life organisations. As expected, the U.S delegation resorted to positions from the Clinton era and sided with the European Union and Canada to push for sexual and reproductive rights. The final document was not nearly as bad as we thought it might end up being, with a narrower focus on the stated agenda than we usually expect at the UN. Most references to sexual and reproductive health were limited to education and were not included as rights.

The Canadian Minister for the Status of Women, Helena Guergis delivered a statement on behalf of Canada during the first week of the CSW. Some feminist Canadian NGOs organised a protest the day of Minister Guergis’s visit. They were denouncing the Canadian government’s poor performance on women’s rights and intend to put forth a complaint against the government with the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women) Committee. NDP MP Nikki Ashton joined the crowd of about 30 in front the UN buildings. The pro-life/pro-family U.N. coalition will be keeping an eye on the upcoming Commission on Population and Development and the 15th year review of the Beijing Conference on Women which is scheduled to take place in 2010.

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.

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,

Jim Hughes
CLC National President