Although the fuss about Mary Beth Whitehead and her baby “M” has subsided, whenever I think about “surrogate” motherhood two items from the testimony at the Baby M custody-court hearing spring to mind. According to one of the psychiatrists who testified against her, Mary Beth was not an approved mother because she provided the baby with soft cuddly toys to play instead [...]
A woman is carried by the seat of her pants and the scruff of her neck to a bus by a policeman, who says: “This job is a lot of fun.” Prison guards with their name and identification tags missing, assault the women while the men are not fed for 33 hours. Russia, you say? No, Pittsburgh, U.S.A! In a Philadelphia Operation [...]
Some call it the Abortion Pill, but the inventor of RU486 prefers to call it a “contragestive,” saying that the word abortion is “automatically negative and guilt-inducing.” Last year, Etienne Baulieu told the New York Times, I resent [it] when people present the very early interruption of pregnancy as killing a baby, morally or physically. I think it’s a crime to say [...]
“The Church regards as worthy of praise and consideration the work of those who, as a service to others, dedicate themselves to the public good of the state and undertake the burdens of this task.” This sentence, from a document of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), is quoted by Pope John Paul II in his recent statement on the laity. [...]
Many Ontario MPPs claim to be Christian. But few of them stand up for the values which must underlie any decent society. None of them have protested against the Peterson-Caplan abortion policies and only one of them Hans Daigeler (Nepean) who absented himself, lifted a finger to prevent the passage of the Sunday shopping bill, which went ahead despite the massive evidence [...]
I believe in praying for the unborn, but don’t the people who pray outside abortion clinics put another burden of guilt on women who have abortions? Many do not know what they are doing. (S.S., Barrie, Ontario) In the pro-life movement we do not make judgments concerning the guilt of women who have abortions. We are not the jury, and we are [...]
“Pro-lifers terrorize defenceless women,” said the caption over an April 10 letter in the Toronto Star. The letter writer was a high school student. He described the tactics used by Operation Rescue protesters as a disgrace to the city: women facing an abortion should not have to face “hordes of screaming, abusive adults….” The writer presented no evidence that he had actually [...]
For sheer malicious slanting, it would be hard to beat an opinion piece by syndicated columnist Gerald Caplan (see for example, the Times Transcript, Moncton, January 20). “Let’s be fair.” He says at one point, and proceeds to be as unfair as possible. “For hours in Toronto, typically,” he says in discussing a rescue mission at the Morgentaler ‘clinic,’ “a handful of [...]
In February 1989, a British Columbia Supreme Court judge issued a criminal injunction prohibiting both picketing and blocking access to a Vancouver abortuary. He stated that the killing centre was “legal.” He sent 104 protesters to jail for two weeks, gave 44 of them a suspended sentence of three months, gave another 13 sentences to be served on weekends and, so far, [...]
Junior Lewis Davis and Mary Sue Davis, involved in divorce proceedings in Tennessee, are fighting over the control of their frozen embryos. Mary Davis says that the eggs are the result of years of surgery, tests and self-administered injections, and offer her her best chance of becoming a mother. “I would love to be a mother,” she says. “I’m not even sure [...]
On April 13, Rescuers in Vancouver blocked access to Everywoman’s Health Centre, the local abortuary, for the fifth time. Fifteen pro-lifers chained themselves to the doors of the abortuary. Two were jailed immediately for three months. Cliff Coutts and Kathryn Davies had earlier been given three-month suspended sentences for ignoring the injunction. The thirteen others pleaded not guilty and will appear again [...]
Ottawa – The latest step towards the perversion of public morality and public law was taken by Canada’s federal Human Rights Commission. On April 13, 1989, it ruled that homosexual Brian Mossop has the right to bereavement leave to attend the funeral of his male lover’s father. The chairman of the Ontario Human Rights commission, Raj Anand, especially appointed by Attorney General [...]
The operators of the Morgentaler abortuary in Toronto have applied for an injunction prohibiting all pro-life activity outside their killing centre. They are also suing five pro-life activists for one million dollars. The first judge to review the application, however, gave the abortionists much less than they wanted. At a hearing on Thursday, April 13, Supreme Court Justice Craig issued a temporary [...]
Joanne Dieleman, experienced co-ordinator of the pro-life coffee house “The Way Inn,” adjacent to the Morgentaler abortuary in downtown Toronto, is an extraordinary mother o many: eight children (two adopted), five grandchildren and 249 foster children. As well, she mothers picketers, distressed pregnant women and their mates and any others who step in to The Way Inn. As one picketer said, “She [...]
There used to be an American TV drama series called Naked City, each episode of which always ended with an announcer intoning on “voice over,” “There are a million stories in the Naked City…This has been one of them.” Well, Operation Rescue has a lot of interesting stories, most, if not all of which never make the eleven o’clock news on TV, [...]