At the end of October, a significant case came before the Supreme Court, which once again, brings the legal status of the unborn child before the nation’s highest judicial body. In 1985, a baby which British Columbia midwives Mary Sullivan and Gloria Lemay were delivering dies from lack of oxygen. The baby’s head had emerged, but its body had not. The women [...]
Allen Linden, LRC chairman since 1983, has been appointed to the Federal court of Appeal by Justice Minister Kim Campbell. Under Linden the Commission did the groundwork for a revision of the Criminal Code according to secularist principles. Two of the LRC’s contributions to the secularization of Canadian law are their recommendations on euthanasia suicide and abortion. The LRC’s new chairman is [...]
In Britain, the House of Lords passed into law the Human Fertilization and Embryology bill, October 18. All eleven Anglican Bishops present in the Lords voted against it. The Bill includes wide-ranging amendments to the 1967 Abortion Act, removing the last vestiges of protecting the unborn child. In a joint statement Baroness Cox and the Duke of Norfolk, whose restricting amendments were [...]
In late June 1990, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Antonio Lamer, 57, Chief Justice of the supreme Court of Canada. Lamer describes himself as a “libertarian” (Toronto Star, June 30). Mr. Justice Antonio Lamer was the one justice (among seven) who fully concurred with then Chief Justice Brian Dickson’s January 1988 ruling in the Morgentaler case. The ruling abolished the 1969 abortion [...]
Almost a hundred years ago in an Encyclical letter to the American bishops, in 1895, Pope Leo XIII wrote a glowing tribute to the American people. In it he praised “the great Washington.” He recalled that President’s statement that religion and morality are indispensable for democracy’s survival. Added Pole Leo: “And not without cause, for without morality the State cannot endure…But the [...]
In March of this year the European Parliament passed a resolution which called for abortion to be made readily available as a woman’s right in all countries of the European Community (EC). The move caused a tremor of concern in pro-life groups in each of the 12 European countries which make up the Community, and brought renewed international interest in its Parliament. [...]
In the famous Baby M case settled I 1988, the child which Mary Beth Whitehead had conceived through artificial insemination was taken from her and awarded to the father, William Stern, and his wife Elizabeth. A New Jersey court ruled on what it considered the best interest of the child: the Sterns could offer it a better home. But the court also [...]