The following is the first of several articles, we hope, discussing the political future of the pro-life, pro-child, pro-family movement. Readers are invited to contribute. Well-written articles of no more than 1500 words will be considered for publication. The editors reserve the right of editing and printing.
In our next issue, the Committee considering a New Party will publish the results of their questionnaire printed on page 24 of the April issue.
A review of Conservative Policy since Sept. 1984
With dreadful certainty, pro-life activists know the course that the Progressive Conservative government is charting after 18 months in office. The ship which it steers will not carry the unborn to a safe shore. Even with a strong pro-life caucus and a prime minister who should be strongly pro-life, there has been no thrust in a direction which remotely promises protection to the unborn child. That is not to say that Hansard does not record many pro-life questions from those MPs that are pro-life but their collective effectiveness is non-existent.
Perhaps this review is a premature criticism in that there may be some subtle and complex plan, but surely something would be known of it now. For pro-lifers, like myself, there is a feeling of betrayal by the government. We did expect more but, I am afraid, the disease of moral dis-establishment has invaded public life far more deeply than we expected. This disease is expressed by the government who make a public disavowal of a “moral stand” or a “moral judgment,” as it chooses to call any criticism of current social mores.
There are two words which characterize the Conservative government’s actions: appeasement and fashion. Appease the special interest groups who want a fashionable moral code which, being fashionable, is subject to abrupt change. By morally dis-establishing themselves, members of cabinet (including Prime Minister Mulroney) lay aside their personal beliefs and morality to accommodate the current opinion.
No backbone
It would be sensational if I could charge the Mulroney government with a deliberate policy against pro-life, the family and Christian moral values, but it has not the backbone to go that far. Trudeau, when in power, gave subtle glimpses of his overall strategy to dismantle all of these by sacrificing government to the cult of individual liberty. He, at least, took a determined, if amoral, course. Mulroney had his cabinet stumble from one moral quagmire to the next, with only fickle public opinion and the goading of fashionable interest groups as their pathway. This has caused an erosion of moral values by government at an alarming rate which is seen in several of its decisions and reports.
Ambassadors
While attempting to placate opposition and criticism in Canada, the Mulroney government has not been careful in its choice of ambassadors in two cases. Stephen Lewis was appointed to the United Nations and Dennis McDermott was sent as ambassador to Ireland. Lewis was appointed ambassador soon after Mulroney won power.
Lewis, a clever and perceptive politician, had resigned as provincial leader of the NDP knowing that his party would never achieve power. He had been a thorn in the flesh of Conservatives both provincially and federally. Therefore, his appointment was both a gesture of reconciliation and a denial of patronage by the Mulroney government. But Lewis was also one of the most ardent pro-abortionists in the country, indeed the first politician to introduce a bill (in the Ontario legislature in 1965) calling for the legalization of abortion.
The United Nations through its agency the World Health Organization, with the help of the International Planned Parenthood federation, oversees and promotes mass sterilization programmes, some of which are forcibly inflicted on defenceless people. Obviously, this is not a posting to which a government with some sense of pro-life would even send a doubtfully-principled ambassador, never mind one who would be supportive of these programmes.
Recently, Joe Clark, the Minister of External Affairs, appointed Dennis McDermott, ex-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, as ambassador to Ireland – the only country to enshrine life, from conception, as sacred in its Constitution. McDermott, after a demagogic and fitful reign over the Congress, is as committed to the NDP principles as ever. The Canadian Labour Congress ratified, under his presidency, the abortion-on-demand principle. Again this appointment was totally insensitive to conservatives and could have been insulting except to the Irish who are at heart a tolerant people. They may do more to change McDermott than the Mulroney government.
More recently, Maureen McTeer, wife of the Hon. Joe Clark, accepted a directorship in CARAL, the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. This, of course, was not of Mulroney’s doing. Nevertheless, it bespeaks the government’s frame of mind. One may recall that the very last action of the Hon. Joe Clark as Prime Minister was to announce that he fully supported the existing law (which permits unlimited numbers of abortions). McTeer’s action goes much further. It denotes total support for the right to kill the unborn. But, once again, nothing is said for fear of offending fashion.
Walter McLean
And fashion takes no more vigour than when appeasing vocal feminists whose cry is for reproductive freedom, inevitably without the virtue of chastity. The Hon. Walter McLean was appointed Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. He in turn appointed Sylvia Gold, an ardent feminist, to be the president of the Advisory Council on women. No consideration was given to other women’s groups who represent moral values and support family life.
A few weeks ago the Council spawned a report called “A Feminist Review of Criminal Law,” which was so naïve in content that the government swiftly denied that any of its findings would become its policy. Besides calling for the decriminalization of abortion, the report repeated the standard argument that the abortion decision is the individual mother’s “choice.”
The Council followed these old demands with something new; that a mother should not be prosecuted if she steals food for her children because she is poor. While my sympathy goes out to anyone who steals food to survive for any reason, I do not think a responsible council or committee under the auspices of a Conservative government should issue loose social commentary like this which belongs in the moral philosophy classroom.
The feminist review was undertaken with a $15,000 federal grant. Mr. McLean’s department also funds, among many others, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women ($300,000 last year), the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women ($295,000), the National Association of Women and the Law ($100,000) and the Canadian congress of Learning Opportunities for Women ($189,000).
Crosbie
Even that one-time rugged individualist, John Crosbie, is turning moral cartwheels to ensure that homosexuals, who admit the practice of sodomy, should be given more protection in society. Those poor persons are not to be “discriminated” against in the army and the RCMP. He is also proposing legislation to allow the sale of hard-core pornography, as long as it does not depict violence.
Crosbie was quoted in the Globe and Mail of April 8, 1986, while attempting to dissociate himself from McLean’s feminist committee report. He stated that there would be no change in the Criminal Code to the section on induced abortion. Abortion, hi is quoted as saying, is a bitterly divisive issue. This type of comment is not the mark of a government that is pro-life. It is not even the comment of a strong government, which continues with a Prime Minister who remains what he always was, a conciliator and mediator, rather than a leader.
Appeasement
Divisiveness will grow deeper as our elected representatives try to appease the forces lashing them from both sides. There are many who say we must work within the Conservative Party and change it from the grass roots. But the party in power, with a supposedly solid caucus of pro-life MPs, is going nowhere.
I know that there are many who will defend the Conservatives and say that there will be a change toward pro-life. But unless the elected person relentlessly drives home his or her defence of the unborn and his or her unshakable moral code as the operative force in their political life, nothing will be done.
Under the current political system, such a person will be excluded from cabinet posts unless their public silence is bought. This happened in the Trudeau government, when a prominent pro-life MP was given a junior cabinet post, and is happening now to a prominent pro-life MPP in Ontario, after being given a ministerial post by Premier Peterson.
Access to vote
It is time that the established parties were forced to recognize that the pro-life vote is significant. Those silent pro-lifers should be given access to the electoral process to truly show their disgust at the shallowness and cynicism of what is happening in politics. That is not to say that pro-life activists should not continue trying to change the thrust of the parties, if they feel that the policies of that party are important. But it is easy to be absorbed by the philosophy of the party; to become part of a “seamless garment of good.” I quote Jim Hughes, President of Campaign Life, from The Interim, July/August 1985,
“Often political ‘hopefuls’ claim that they are pro-life when they seek our support, but once elected they conveniently turn their backs on the unborn…Many so-called pro-lifers are just as guilty. Their support for the Liberals, the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats is so unshakable they merely become part of the abortion problem.”
The time has come for a new party.
