“Frank, sit down. What can I do for you?” “Well Millstone, old friend, you are acknowledged as the greatest oracle in the Western world. I come to you for some free advice. What would you do to solve the difficulties facing Pope Benedict today?” “Frank, I’ve never accepted the old bromide that the buck stops here and by that, I mean at [...]
Early in the previous century, G.K. Chesterton observed that it is the mark of the modern that “the normative is everywhere and always being subordinated to the non-normative.” In our own age of proliferating “rights,” it is a further mark of the modern that the universal is everywhere and always subordinated to the particular. Until relatively recently, the natural rights upon which [...]
The sun is shining, or it’s raining or snowing, so it must be time for yet another attack on the Roman Catholic church. This time involving lies about the Pope, his brother and, before long, his auntie Freda and his pet cat Hans. Logical thinking and balanced thought were eliminated from this subject long ago. It’s church-bashing time and why [...]
Notably, social issues absent from negotiations between two left-of-center parties How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot (The Inside Story Behind the Coalition) by Brian Topp (Lorimer, $24.95, 192 pp.) The coalition that almost usurped power from the Conservatives in the fall of 2008 seems like a distant memory in the spring of 2010, but How We Almost Gave the Tories [...]
Life is not like a baseball game with clear, clean lines The brief interim between the end of batting practice and the commencement of the game invites a moment of reflection when the spectator can look at the field of play while it is devoid of players. In this meditative moment, undistracted by the game, one can begin to appreciate the significance [...]
On April 14, Rod Bruinooge (C - Winnipeg South) tabled Bill C-510, a private member’s bill to amend the Criminal Code of Canada to outlaw coercing women into having an abortion. Bruinooge, the chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, in introducing An Act to Prevent the Coercion of Women to Abortion to the House of Commons, said, “This bill will [...]
Liberal MP Hedy Fry says she's wants to debate abortion. Stephanie Gray, of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, says bring it on. Of course, abortion advocates seldom actually debate pro-lifers. They typically don't want to give the pro-life side any credence. That, and they know that their arguments don't stand up to serious scrutiny.
Mark Mercer is a professor in the philosophy department at Saint Mary's University and yesterday he wrote an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen that will make your head spin. The column is beyond excerption, but briefly his argument is this: the unborn child is a human being but it isn't a person because it is not aware of itself in the world and therefore doesn't [...]
Our lead editorial in the May issue is on why pro-lifers should participate in the national and provincial marches for life: National March for Life represents the beginning of a new, civilized chapter in Canadian history and the end of a dark age of barbarism. That this coming community is imperiled before its birth is not surprising; but, unlike so many innocent [...]
On April 21, Bill C-384 was overwhelmingly defeated when the House of Commons voted 228-59 against Francine Lalonde’s (BQ, La Pointe-de-l’Île) private member’s bill to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. After the vote, two Liberal MPs (Ujjal Dosanjh and Ken Dryden) sought but were denied permission to change their vote from in favour of C-384 to opposing it because they claimed they [...]
Keith Martin (Lib. Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) equates abortion to life: “Why on Earth is the government not giving these women and children the option to choose life that we have in our country.” Martin also says that being pro-life requires supporting abortion: “When it comes to being pro-life, does it not mean enabling women and men to have full access to an [...]
Pro-life Conservative MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East) told The Interim he was furious at being misled about the nature of a parliamentarians’ association he agreed to become a vice-chair for after it was presented to him as a group dedicated to population and development issues, but which turned out to be focused narrowly on abortion and contraception. On March 22, [...]
Chris Selley writes in the National Post about what he perceives as a phony abortion war in Canadian politics, and as far as I can tell he means in both the context of maternal health and abortion in general. His argument comes down to using a single two-year-old poll to suggest that because only 4% of respondents oppose abortion in all circumstances [...]
Former Bush speechwriter and current Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson tackles the issue of Hillary Clinton's criticism of Ottawa's G8 maternal health initiative which excludes abortion. I'm going to gloss over the fact that Gerson too easily accepts the notion that contraception (condoms) is a legitimate component of the development agenda and focus narrowly on the issue of abortion. He says that Clinton's [...]
For the past four days there have been "news" reports that Stephen Harper's government is not going to fund abortion as part of its proposed G8 maternal health initiative although it has indicated other countries can pony up for abortion if they want. At some point this really isn't news anymore but regurgitation masquerading as journalism. Yesterday, the Globe and Mail reported [...]