Mr. Justice Allen Linden is to be thanked for expressing the philosophy of law on which the Law Reform Commission is basing its recommendations for a new abortion law. It gives the rest of us a chance to examine that philosophy which up to now has been as nameless as its advocates have been faceless. Justice Linden, according to the reports, told [...]
On March 6, Mr. Justice Josiah wood found 104 men and women in contempt of court and imposed three-month suspended sentences for returning to the injunction-protected Everywoman’s Health Clinic in Vancouver on February 7. Before doing so, however, Wood permitted each of the rescuers to address the court directly “to consider what I heard and make sure what I do is correct.” [...]
The Roe v. Wade. Akron and Thornburgh decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the Morgentaler and Borowski cases in the Canadian Supreme Court, have seriously undermined the public’s trust in, and respect for, the highest courts of justice in North America. It is not only the obvious bias and uneven handling of the cases before the courts (and this latter [...]
Sex Education in Schools It is always a surprise to find Prince Edward Island so widely regarded as an oasis of tranquility, somehow spared the troubles of the cruel world. In reality, all the trends found elsewhere have their local proponents, and if they are sufficiently aggressive or sufficiently subtle, they can have an influence far beyond their numbers. There is, for [...]
Communion refused Arlington, VA. – Michael Jackson, member of the City Council of Alexandria, Va., plans to complain to R.C. Bishop John Keating about being refused Holy Communion at the local St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Jackson, a Catholic, voted for establishing a local birth control/health clinic for teenagers. Jackson told the Washington Post in January of this year that he was “stunned” [...]
Austrian moral theologian Bernard Haring, a retired professor at Rome’s Alphonsianum Academy, Lateran University, in mid-January again questioned Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae (HV). In an article in the Italian magazine Il Regno, Haring called for the debate on contraception to be re-opened in order to stop the “catastrophic polarization” in the Church. Having claimed that “theological intransigence” is responsible [...]
Vancouver Lawyers for some of the Vancouver rescuers sentenced under the civil and the criminal codes have filed appeals challenging the rulings of two B.C. Supreme Court judges. The actions filed in B.C. Court of Appeal challenge Justice Lloyd MacKenzie’s injunction, the civil convictions and sentences, the award of costs to the abortion ‘clinic’ and the criminal convictions and sentences. Lawyer Paul [...]
Media and Courts React to Vancouver Rescue By David Dooley Media response to the February rescues at Vancouver’s, Everywoman’s Health Clinic gave the B.C. newspapers lots of opportunity or sensational headlines. The Vancouver Province for February 8 ran a headline right across its front page in very large type, saying, “Behind bars,” and beneath it, “105 anti-abortionists held overnight.” Wenham The paper [...]
I have often wondered and perhaps others have too what I would have done if I had not been called to the Priesthood. Sometimes I have concluded that I would have probably lived and died on welfare! But recently, I have come to the tentative conclusion that I might have “made it” as a book salesman. For the past month or so [...]
In 1988, the Jesuit journal Compass published some articles and editorial comments on abortion. In May 1988, it published Bela Somfai’s “A law against abortion is not enough.” In July it lent its pages to Marshall Hewitt, a feminist University teacher to set out the standard pro-abortion view. In October associate editor Leo Serroul meditated on language. In November, the magazine published [...]
The Morgentaler challenge to the New Brunswick policy on abortion funding was heard February 14, 1989 in the Court of Queen’s Bench, Fredericton, N.B., under Justice William Stevenson. Eugene Mockler, lawyer for Morgentaler, argued that Morgentaler had or should have legal standing to pursue this case. New Brunswick’s lawyer, William Anderson, presented a very narrow case restricted to ‘standing,’ and existing New [...]
In The Interim’s March issue, Grace Kelly set the scene and sketched in the characters of the picketing at Toronto’s Morgentaler abortuary (“Who keeps the vigil, pgs. 26-27). In this issue, she discusses by the name some of the picketers who have been there from the beginning. On the Toronto picket line, I spoke to men and women of different ages, backgrounds [...]
For the first time in Alberta, pro-lifers attempted to rescue pre-born children. February 28 at Calgary’s Peter Lougheed Hospital. The hospital has a self-contained abortion ‘clinic’ – accessible to a rescue mission – where 25 abortions are performed each week. After a combined Catholic-Evangelical prayer service and briefing session at a nearby church, the rescuers set out for the recently opened hospital. [...]
On February 23, around 200 pro-lifers assembled in Toronto in the chilly pre-dawn hours to rescue the babies scheduled for death that day at the Morgentaler abortuary on Harbord Street. Many reporters linked the rescue to a protest over the just-released Law Reform Commission report on abortion. In fact, the rescue was held, as usual, to save the babies in danger of [...]
Testimony No. 1 Paul Patterson The following account is from pro-lifer Paul Patterson of Abbotsford, B.C. Mr. Patterson describes for his parents and others in Fort St. John the experience of being held in jail overnight for taking part in the rescue at Vancouver’s “Everywoman’s Health Clinic,” on February 7. The letter had been shortened for reasons of space. To the members [...]