The Past year witnessed the usual peaks and valleys for pro-life, pro-family supporters in North America and throughout the world. While there was a measure of success in some areas, number of trouble spots, particularly growing tolerance for assisted-suicide and continuing inroads against the traditional family –continue to present major concerns.

Undoubtedly one of the most significant events was a somber one for Canada’s pro-life community. The September 25 passing generated limited attention in the country’s leading defender of unborn children. Borowski’s passing generated limited attention in the secular media, although some commentators offered grudging respect for his honesty and commitment to principle.

Borowski is remembered as a man who inspired a whole generation. His great sacrifice in defending unborn children from abortion stands in stark contrast to the majority of today’s political leaders who refuse to take a firm line on moral issues.

As a testament to Borowski’s work, Campaign Life Coalition life in November established the Joseph p. Borowski Award to the politician or former politician who exemplifies the pro-lifers integrity in defending the unborn.

Another sobering moment came in May with the federal government’s passing of Bill C-33, legislation outlawing outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. While proponents of the legislation couched its significance with egalitarian language, family groups voiced grave concerns. They see the bill as the first step in a radical redefinition of the family. Immediately after the bill’s passage, NDP members of Parliament said the bill opens the door to legal recognition of homosexual unions.

The past year opened on a high note with a universally favorable reaction to Pope John Paul’s to stand firm against new threats to human life made laughable a publicity seeking appeal by abortionist Henry Morgentaler that pope and bishops restrain the actions of pro-life activists.

On the legal front, the past year began auspiciously when Judge E.J. Cronin of the British Columbia court ruled in January that the province’s “bubble zone” legislation, designed to restrict pro-life witnessing near abortion clinics and hospitals, infringed the

Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For activist Maurice Lewis, the first person charged under the bubble zone legislation, the victory would be short-lived. The B.C. New Democrats, stung by a road-block in their rush to protect abortion, immediately launched an appeal of the ruling. As pro-life and pro-abortion forces prepared their arguments for the appeal, the New Democrats under Premier Glen Clark were returned to power, and the likelihood of the January decision being upheld grew more remote.

The appeal wore on throughout the summer and pro-lifers noted a less than sympathetic reaction to their court-room arguments. It was little surprise when in October; appeal court Justice Mary Saunders overturned the Cronin decision. She ruled the province’s efforts to protect abortion services supersede the right to public demonstration. Despite some disenchantment with the legal system, the pro-life community of B. C. appealed the October ruling, and it’s expected the matter will wind up in the Supreme Court of Canada.

LOSS OF RIGHTS

The bubble zone battle has tremendous significance for pro-life supporters who fear the loss of their rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Throughout the year, pro-lifers warned of a growing clamp-down on traditional forms of public demonstration.

No one is more aware of this than pro-life prisoners Michel Tissot of Montreal and Linda Gibbons, who spent most of 1996 in detention centres, feels morally bound to protest against an Ontario injunction prohibiting pro-life witnessing around abortion clinics. She has been charged repeatedly with breaking probation and obstructing a peace officer in connection with her activity.

Pro-lifers had hoped to see Gibbons set free in 1996, especially with the defeat of the Ontario New Democrats in June, 1995. The Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris had been highly critical of the injunction while in opposition, but after 18 months in power, it has done nothing to lift the injunction or to drop a $500,000 lawsuit against 18 Ontario pro-life activists. Government inaction has lead many pro-lifers to conclude that while the Harris Tories are conservative on fiscal matters, they are little different from the previous New Democrats on social and moral issues.

Abortionist Henry Morgentaler and suicide dealer Jack Kevorkian loomed large in the news pages and television reports throughout 1996. Morgentaler was the subject of a fawning interview on the CBC in the spring and there were hints abortion backers attempted to have him nominated for the Order of Canada award. A setback for the country’s leading abortionist occurred in September when the province of Prince Edward Island refused to provide tax dollars for non-hospital abortions.

CANADIAN VICTIM

Kevorkian, an emaciated champion of a cynical, sad cause, continued his crusade throughout 1996. His growing list of victims included a Canadian when in May, multiple sclerosis suffer Austin Bastable crossed from Windsor to Detroit to partake of Kevorkian’s unique brand of care. Pro-lifers took note of a video left by Bastable in which he argued for changes in Canada’s laws prohibiting doctor assisted suicide. For many, Bastable’s final days were seen as an exercise in exploitation by the country’s pro-euthanasia forces. The Kevorkian caper continues to confound Pro-life supporters who fear a growing public tolerance for assisted-suicide. Kevorkian, like Morgentaler before him, relies on law breaking, sympathetic media coverage and superficial appeals to sympathetic juries to win acquittals. Their action create a favorable climate for practices once considered

Abhorrent. And with the court system superseding Parliament and Congress as the expression of the popular will, many long-held traditions continue to fall.

The Chrétien government no doubt took note of the Kevorkian-Bastable situation in contemplating its assisted suicide policy. In June, Liberal Senator Sharon Carstairs promised to introduce such legislation in time for the next federal election, and in October, the liberal national convention endorsed a call to repeal a Criminal Code prohibition of the practice. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Justice Minister Allan Rock downplayed the move, but prolifers take little comfort in such political wrangling.

In the United States, no single issue had a greater impact in pro-life circles than Bill Clinton’s veto of the Congressional ban on the partial-birth abortion procedure. The veto effectively allows doctors to remove the brain tissue from still-living babies just prior to the child exiting the mother’s womb.

In addition to exposing Clinton’s pro-abortion extremism, the veto invited some of the harshest criticism of the president ever seen. Calling the partial-birth abortion a crime against humanity. Cardinal John O’Connor of New York was at the forefront of a prolonged clerical attack on Clinton’s action. Even the Vatican dispensed with diplomatic niceties to offer stinging rebukes of the veto.

Clinton coasted to an easy victory in the November presidential election, in spite of the partial-birth abortion controversy. The win signaled the failure of the Republicans to offer a strong pro-life alternative to the Clinton Democrats. U.S. pro-life leaders took some comfort in the fact that abortion opponents are in the majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives, but they promise to be more circumspect in future in evaluating the real commitment of so-called “pro-life” politicians.

Symptoms of the reduced respect for human life came from all parts of the globe in 1996. In India, hundreds of unborn female babies were aborted by families hoping for male offspring. Poland, for years a pro-life stronghold, bowed to pressure from liberal elements to relax its abortion law. And in October, the destruction of 3,300 human embryos by British medical authorities put the spotlight on new reproductive technology and bioethical issues.

Pro-lifers in 1996 noted with disdain the rise of chemical abortions as an eventual replacement to “therapeutic” surgical abortions. The U.S. government cleared the way for the “morning after” and RU-486 abortion pills, as well as the “abortion cocktail” methotrexate and misoprostol. The Canadian government is now considering clinical trails of these same drugs. Meanwhile in the Philippines, pro-life forces were able to confirm suspicions that vaccines administered to women of childbearing age were tainted with sterilizing chemicals. The scandal, coupled with international development agencies’ aggressive promotion of abortion and contraception, brought renewed fears of renewed fears of population control programs in Third World countries.

A chastity least two court cases in Canada raised the question of legal protection for unborn children. In May, a pregnant woman shot herself with a pellet rifle, presumably in an attempt at self abortion. Her son, born two days later, underwent surgery to remove the pellet from his brain. The woman was charged with attempted murder, but the case hinges on the Criminal Code recognition of the unborn. At present Canadian law doesn’t regard the unborn as persons until they are fully removed from the mother’s womb.

The unborn’s legal status has implications in the case of a pregnant Manitoba woman addicted to glue sniffing. The children’s welfare agency ordered the woman to enter a detoxification program to prevent further harm to her unborn child. The woman had previously given birth to three children, two of whom suffered brain damage as a result of her addiction. A Manitoba court could not be forced into a detoxification against her will.

While the woman has since made efforts to overcome her glue-sniffing habit, the case again showed the lack of legal protection afforded the unborn in Canada.

NEXT GENERATION

Not all the news in 1996 was demoralizing. Youth pro-life efforts made strong gains. A November Students for Life conference in Cambridge, Ontario attracted more than 400 participants. Many students have begun to take up protection for the unborn as a social justice issue, and their enthusiasm and dedication bode well for the next generation. As well, more young people seem open to the chastity message. A Chastity Challenge team which makes presentations in Canadian high schools reported a positive response to the chastity message in many parts of the country.

Other positive notes included the efforts of endocrinologist Dr. Joel Brind of New York to gain greater public awareness of the abortion-breast cancer link. Despite efforts to discredit and suppress his research, Brind in October published a “met-analysis” of previous studies in the influential British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The study, which combines the results of previous research, has forced the medical/scientific community – and abortion supporters- to admit that abortion is not as risk-free as women had been led to believe. Brind hopes the analysis will be advised of the implications of the procedure.

Underlying all pro-life news events was a November report from statistics Canada indicating a record 106,255 abortions in this country in 1994, the latest year for which figures are available. It’s clear from this information that despite claims to the contrary, abortion is being used as a form of birth control and that the justification for abortion as a medical necessity is wildly unfounded.

Pro-lifers can anticipate similar struggles as 1997opens. Although there is nothing quantitative on which to base assumptions, many pro-life supporters speak of a growing receptiveness to the right to life message.

Abortion, with all its attendant rhetoric about choice, equality and self-determination, is increasingly seen as a violent, emotionally devastating solution to crisis pregnancy. In addition, more commentators have noted that the decreased respect for marriage, family and human life in general is rooted in 30 years of widespread abortion and contraception.