The issues addressed in the Campaign Life Coalition Questionnaire, as crucial as they are, are often not understood by candidates.

1. Do you believe life begins at conception (fertilization)?

This has unfortunately become a confusing subject in recent decades because some in the medical, scientific and other disciplines are attempting to arbitrarily re-define when human life begins according to philosophical, ideological or other changeable criteria. Such re-definition conveniently legitimizes destructive embryo experimentation, early abortion and other abuses of early human lives.

The following are excerpts from the article “When do Human Beings Begin? “Scientific Myths and Scientific Facts by Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D.
See the full article

The question as to when a human being begins is strictly a scientific question, and should be answered by human embryologists. The question as to when a human person begins is a philosophical question.

Basic human embryological facts
Upon fertilization, or upon creation of a clone, parts of human beings have actually been transformed into something very different from what they were before; they have been changed into a single, whole human being. During the process of fertilization, the sperm and the oocyte cease to exist as such, and a new human being is produced.

To understand this, it should be remembered that each kind of living organism has a specific number and quality of chromosomes that are characteristic for each member of a species.

The characteristic number of chromosomes for a member of the human species is 46 (plus or minus, e.g., in human beings with Down's or Turner's syndromes). Every cell in a human being has this characteristic number of chromosomes.

The commonly used term, "fertilized egg," is especially very misleading, since there is really no longer an egg (or oocyte) once fertilization has begun. What is being called a "fertilized egg" is not an egg of any sort; it is a human being.

The fusion of the sperm (with 23 chromosomes) and the oocyte (with 23 chromosomes) at fertilization results in a live human being, a single-cell human zygote, with 46 chromosomes-the number of chromosomes characteristic of an individual member of the human species.

Abortion is the destruction of a human being. Destroying a human sperm or a human oocyte would not constitute abortion, since neither are human beings. The issue is not when does human life begin, but rather when does the life of every human being begin. A sperm or an oocyte all possess human life, but they are not human beings-they are only parts of a human being.

A human zygote is a human being. It is not a "potential" or a "possible" human being.

The "morning-after pill," RU486, and the IUD can be abortifacient, if fertilization has taken place. Then they would act to prevent the implantation of an already existing human embryo-the blastocyst-which is an existing human being.

2. If elected, will you support measures to introduce and pass a law to protect every unborn child from the time of conception (fertilization) onward?

This question is not asking the candidate to support only to a law that would outlaw all abortions such as existed in Canada prior to 1969. Such a law would be very unlikely to pass let alone be introduced or receive a fair vote at this time. The question is really asking if the candidate opposes the killing of unborn human beings for any reason and would consistently act on that as an MP.

There are many other acceptable, so-called incremental measures, supported by a majority of Canadians, that could be introduced and passed into Canadian law if there were a sufficient number of pro-life leaning MPs elected to Parliament.

Examples of such measures are informed consent or “right-to-know”, mandatory waiting period, parental consent, de-funding abortion, an Unborn Victims of Violence Act, prohibiting government agencies from sending a pregnant woman to a foreign country for abortion, a ban on partial-birth abortions (it is unknown if this form of infanticide takes place in Canada) and mandatory reporting by abortionists of cases involving potential sexual abuse in under-age girls.

3. Are there any circumstances under which you believe a woman should have access to abortion?
    (Note: Surgical or medical intervention, designed to prevent the death of the  mother i.e. in the cases of tubal pregnancy or cervical cancer, which results in the unintended death of the preborn child is not an abortion)

Some candidates have exceptions to their opposition to abortion, often for personal reasons or, more often, because of misunderstandings or lack of knowledge on the issue. The Note in the questionnaire clarifies a misunderstanding. Medical treatments to save the life of a pregnant mother and which do not intend to kill her unborn child are in fact NOT abortions.

Medically and scientifically speaking, in Canada, there never were and still are not any legitimate reasons that could be given to justify an abortion to save the life of a mother. It is extremely rare now for a woman to die because of pregnancy, no matter what her condition. Medical incompetence would be the more likely cause of such a death.

Many women are told that an abortion is needed because their pregnancy is putting their life in danger. However, but the primary concern in those situations is almost always the avoidance of a possible lawsuit or avoidance of required major effort and cost to treat complications.

It is very common for Canadian women to be pressured by their doctors to have an abortion only to ignore the doctor and give birth to a perfectly healthy child.

See also
Rape & Incest Victims Call for Congressional Hearings on Abortion
Women who become pregnant from sexual assault say they don't want or need abortions

Conception resulting from rape is extremely rare and abortion in such instances is not in the best interests of the woman. Victims of rape and incest above all need emotional and other support rather than the supposed quick fix offered by an abortionist which adds further, life-long complications, both physical and psychiatric.

4. If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures that would prohibit the
   dispensing of abortion-inducing pharmaceuticals?

This question concerns abortion drugs such as RU-486 and abortifacients such as the morning after pill.

It is an issue of major controversy both in Canada and the United States concerning not just abortion but also significant health risks to women and the watering down of normal pharmaceutical testing and approval standards for these pills. As well, unusual over the counter dispensation privileges for the high dosage morning after pills contradicts normal medical safety standards for such medications.

Ru-486 and similar drugs are formulated specifically to cause an abortion. They involve the consumption of powerful drugs to force the expulsion of an early age unborn child. These are dangerous drugs and the process of the death and expulsion of the child, usually at home, is often traumatic for women.

See
Public Documents Reveal Numerous RU-486 Complications

Emergency contraception pills, or ECPs, such as Preven or Plan B, are high doses of the hormones found in regular birth-control pills, taken in two steps within 72 hours of sex.  ECPs (emergency contraceptive pills) work to stop ovulation from taking place, stop the sperm from coming down the tube, or stop a fertilized egg from becoming implanted."

They make the lining of the uterus inhospitable to a living, human embryo who may and could have been conceived before the pills take effect. The embryo is unable to implant and gain nourishment, so it dies.

Here is an excerpt from The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th Edition, by Moore and Persaud (P. 532):

“Postcoital [after intercourse] birth control pills... Ovarian hormones (estrogen) taken in large doses within 72 hours after sexual intercourse usually prevent implantation of the blastocyst [embryo]... These hormones prevent implantation, not fertilization. Consequently, they should not be called contraceptive pills [italics added]. Conception occurs but the blastocyst does not implant. It would be more appropriate to call them "contraimplantation pills." Because the term abortion refers to a premature stoppage of a pregnancy, the term abortion could be applied to such an early termination of pregnancy.”

Side effects: About 50% of women experience nausea and 20% vomit. The use of ECPs increases the risk of ectopic pregnancy. There is also a significant risk of developing blood clots and blockage of blood vessels - which may lead to heart attacks, strokes. Studies have indicated that the risk of both benign and malignant liver tumors may be increased by Preven use. Smoking and the use of Preven greatly increase the chance of developing possibly fatal heart disease. Distribution of the early forms of birth control, which were higher dosage pills, was halted precisely because of regular occurrences of these outcomes. ECPs are even higher dosage pills than the early birth control pills.

Experts argue that making the pills more accessible could lead to teens engaging in activities they might otherwise not do, based on the false sense of security inherent with availability of the pill. Increased availability of the pill also raises concerns over increased exposure to sexually transmitted infections, that in turn spark a significant increase in cancer and infertility. As well, a predictable, growing tendency to use these high dosage pills as a regular form of birth control is raising concerns about additional serious health issues among repeat users. The effect of long term use of ECPs is not known at this time.

5. If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures to prohibit experimentation upon human embryos, at every stage of development?

Embryos are in fact living, developing, individual human beings. This is scientific fact.

All human embryonic experimentation is destructive, that is, the embryo is killed or dies as a result of the research. Euphemistically called “therapeutic” embryonic research always results in the death of the embryo.

Embryos used in embryonic research are often obtained from IVF procedures which discard all but one or two of the embryos created. Research embryos are also deliberately created via other means for the sole purpose of being used for experimentation. In other words, tiny humans are deliberately created to be experimented upon and killed. Such experimentation upon humans, which is not intended to aid the humans being experimented upon, was condemned at Nuremberg and violates every serious principle of medical and scientific ethics.

Destructive embryonic research sets a precedent and a principle that is impossible to limit to only embryonic humans and endangers any vulnerable humans, especially those who are cognitively impaired, from being preyed upon by exploitive researchers who have no concern for the lives of their human research subjects.

Human embryonic stem cell research, which is all the rage in the medical research industry, has not produced ANY significant cures or medical advances to date. Billions of tax dollars are being spent on this research that investors and medical corporations themselves are mostly unwilling to invest in because of very uncertain profitable outcomes from such research.

In the meantime, ethical adult stem cell research, which does not require the killing of embryos, is constantly producing astonishing advances. This form of research has far less interest for the medical industry because it does not require life-long use of costly anti-rejection drugs by those that may be helped by its possible discoveries. As well, it provides far less patent profits and other lucrative financial benefits for medical industry investors.

See LifeSite’s Stem Cell page with numerous articles and news reports on this issue

For numerous additional articles published in the last year enter “stem cells” in the LifeSiteNews.com search.

6. If elected, will you oppose any legislative or regulatory measures designed to permit the deliberate killing (euthanasia) of a human being regardless of age, state of health or “anticipated quality of life” or designed to permit “doctor-assisted suicide”?

There is growing pressure for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada and elsewhere. This is an issue that Members of Parliament will not be able to avoid addressing in the immediate future.

The euthanasia/assisted suicide movement is a direct outcome of the abortion movement which has massively undermined acceptance of the intrinsic value of every human life. Abortion has also been conditioning society to accept that there can supposedly be valid reasons for killing innocent humans. Euthanasia, therefore is one of the next logical steps as pro-life advocates have warned for years.

Euthanasia advocates emphasize that euthanasia and assisted suicide should only be permitted to take place under strict conditions and only for those who are suffering unbearably from incurable, deadly conditions. Experience in Holland and elsewhere has shown that maintaining such conditions or restrictions eventually becomes impossible once a nation has stated in its laws that some vulnerable, innocent persons may be killed for some reasons.

Others logically push the envelope and say, if some may take their lives or be killed, then why not other categories of persons? Who is to say who may live or die if the principle has been established in law that some vulnerable persons may die or be killed?

Also, the right to die invariably becomes the duty to die for persons considered a burden upon family, the medical system, institutions, the state. As well, once the practice of euthanasia becomes accepted many persons who become chronically ill or incapacitated will become afraid to enter hospitals, as they are now afraid in Holland, and will feel powerful pressure to allow themselves to be killed or to do the deed themselves.

Lastly, euthanasia is seen a solution to the huge imbalance of elderly persons resulting from the massive drop in birth rates over the past four decades because of the contraceptive/abortion and population control mentality.

It is important to note the refusal of extraordinary and burdensome medical treatment by a terminally ill patient or the patient’s legal proxy, in the case of incapacity, is not euthanasia. The bogeyman of requiring dying patients to suffer all kinds of pain and being hooked up to machines and many tubes just to keep them alive a little longer is a cruel fiction.

Patients have always and ethically had the right to refuse such treatment and allow their incurable condition to take its natural course. The current emphasis for such patients must be on quality palliative care and better provision of pain treatments. Canada is far behind many other countries in this area.

However, it should be emphasized that the provision of basic nutrition and hydration is NOT extraordinary treatment. This treatment may never ethically be removed from a patient unless it cannot actually prolong life or serve its function due to heart or kidney failure or in cases in which it may harm the patient. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly common for sick elderly and other patients to be quietly, unnoticeably and always very painfully killed through this removal of nutrition and hydration.

Abortion has proven to not be a solution to anything and has instead created numerous, serious and unexpected new problems. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are certain to create their own, severe social damage. These elements of a growing acceptance of a death culture threaten everyone and threaten to destroy the basic foundations of our entire civilization.

7. If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures to explicitly exclude abortion as an insured health service under the Canada Health Act?

A large majority of abortions are elective and for convenience as even leading abortion rights advocates have admitted.

Abortion is the most common elective surgery and is one of the most publicly funded and protected elective medical procedures. As well, abortion and the free provision of abortifacients such as the abortion pill RU-486 and the morning after pill are some of the least effectively regulated, serious medical procedures or medications.

The removal of public funding of abortion services has, in countries or US States that have done so, resulted not in more “back alley” abortions, but rather in a substantial drop in the abortion rate. This indicates our current, mostly free and exceptionally easy access to abortion has encouraged more women to use this service as a form of birth control.

This reality does not deny the fact that many women do indeed experience emotionally trying unintended crisis pregnancies but there are other options that should be presented to these women other than the usual government funded abortion-only option.

It is often stated that abortion must be funded under the Canada Health Act since it is a medically necessary service. Abortion, as we have already stated, is overwhelmingly elective, and never medically necessary.

Under the Canada Health Act, the individual provinces have the authority to determine which procedures are medically necessary. However, for many years, the federal government has violated that provision by demanding abortion be deemed medically necessary. Provinces that have resisted this have been threatened with the removal of large amounts of federal health care transfer payments if they persist in not funding or not fully funding abortion.

8. If elected, will you vote for measures that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others?

The forced redefinition, by activist judges and a less than free vote in Parliament, of marriage to include same-sex couples, threatens not only Canada’s foundational family life but also our freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

There are many aspects to this court and government imposed change to Canada’s most important social institution that gravely concern many Canadians.

Although the issue is now considered closed by those who supported the marriage redefinition of Bill C-38 and rulings by various Canadian judges, numerous Canadian individuals and organizations are committed to raising the issue again. They are committed to reversing what they consider to have been an abuse of power and authority to impose an unpopular, unjust and dangerous social experiment upon Canadian society, an experiment that defies all previous human experience and history of social behaviour outcomes.

9. Do you consider yourself ____ “pro-life” or ____ “pro-choice”?

Many candidates have previously not had to consider how they would categorize their overall views on the abortion, euthanasia and other life issues concerning decisions on the life or death of innocent human beings. It is useful to candidates to confront their current overall philosophy and principles on the life issues via this question.

Poverty, homelessness or other issues that may result in the eventual deaths of some persons are not pro-life issues since they do not involve decisions to intentionally take life.

Knowing the candidates’ perceptions of their position on the life issues is helpful for CLC leaders who engage in discussions with candidates and especially later with those who are elected.

Many candidates who say they are pro-life do indeed hold consistently pro-life positions on all the issues concerned. Others have some exceptions to their otherwise strong leaning in the pro-life direction.

Other candidates sincerely believe themselves to be pro-life but have a poor knowledge or understanding of the issues and consequently hold positions on one or more of the key life issue questions that not pro-life. However, because such candidates are sincere in their mistaken beliefs it is likely possible to work with them and to assist them to increase their knowledge of the life issues – if they are open to learning more about these issues.

Unfortunately, it is also common for candidates, especially in ridings that have a significant number of pro-life voters, to state that they are pro-life to those they know would like to hear that and then to state to other voters that they are pro-choice. They will often give one or more responses to the CLC questionnaire that are clearly not pro-life, or refuse to respond to any of the questions and yet continue to insist that they are pro-life. As well, it has often happened that candidates stating they are pro-life, after being elected, act and make statements that clearly rate them as anti-life or, they do nothing to support measures attempting to advance protection of life in Canada.

All those in the preceeding paragraph cannot be considered sincere in their election campaign response that they are “pro-life”.

For this and the other reasons above, Campaign Life Coalition does not publish the answers to #9 in the Voter’s Guide but does consider the answers to this question important for further communications with candidates and elected Members of Parliament.