Both the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Campaign Life Coalition seem to take a harsher view of the Supreme Court's reference decision yesterday on Canada's reproductive technologies regulations than I did in my original post. I don't substantially disagree with their critiques, although it seems to me that their ultimate criticism is with the lack of legal protection for newly created life [...]
Having read the Supreme Court's Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act decision this morning, I will provide my Coles Notes take on it in a moment. A longer analysis, for which I am woefully unprepared and unqualified to write, is necessary and will appear in the February issue of the paper. Here is the takeaway: the majority of the Court have upheld most of the [...]
In the final days before we went to press, we had to downsize the paper from 20 to 16 pages which is always a lot of work. It is unpleasant having to cut stories -- shortening stories or taking them out completely. Still, it's a packed paper with articles on the defeat of C-510 (anti-coercive abortion bill), the report stage passing of C-389 [...]
Yesterday NDP MP Irene Mathyssen (London-Fanshawe) once again brought up in Parliament the fact that the government's maternal health initiative proposed last January and accepted by the G8 in June, did not include abortion. Mathyssen rose in the House and stated: Mr. Speaker, 2010, like all years, has had its ups and downs, but when it comes to women's equality, 2010 has [...]
C-510 or Roxanne's Law, Rod Bruinooge's private member's bill that would outlaw coercing a woman to have an abortion was defeated 97-178. Bruinooge is quoted saying he expected only 75 votes in favour of his bill. Still, this is a disappointing result because whatever flaws the bill may have contained, the defeat of Roxanne's Law before it even went to committee will send a signal to society [...]
We have a review of A Matter of Conscience by John Haas, Douglas Farrow, Francois Pouliot, and Maria Kraw. The book is a collection of presentations from the first annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of Catholic Doctor's Guild in 2009. The review is good, the book is excellent and the points both make about how conscience is formed is important. The bottom line on the [...]
Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick writes hysterically about abortion -- which is the only way Mallick writes about anything -- implying that the procedure is difficult to obtain in many places and that darn it, there are still nasty pro-lifers all across the country who disagree with the abortion license. Mallick slyly suggests that only men are pro-life by appealing to the sisterhood in the [...]
Michael Taube's review of two religious books from the Classics Illustrated series -- The Story of Jesus and The Ten Commandments -- appeared in the December issue of the paper. Both books make excellent Christmas presents for young children.
Marg Baker in a letter to the editor of the National Post today: Nothing demonstrates the poverty of spirit of our society more than this subject. It seems to me that the most risky/violent place to be these days is a mother's womb. With about 100,000 surgical abortions committed in Canada each and every year -- and more than a million in [...]
Paul Kengor has a very good piece on the American Civil Liberties Union and its communist/atheist roots. No wonder they are in perpetual war against Christmas. Kengor on ALCU founder Roger Baldwin: Baldwin was an atheist. He was also a onetime communist, who, among other ignoble gestures, wrote a horrible 1928 book called Liberty Under the Soviets. Notably, he was smart enough [...]
In a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, Virginia Zignego, communications director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, explains why pro-lifers do not accept the rape and incest exception: it unfairly punishes the unborn child for the crime of another and makes the woman an aggressor. Zignego says: The circumstances of conception may have been criminal, but the life of the newly-created human being is [...]
New condom ads compare the cost of the prophylactic to costs associated for a bobo upbringing (elite daycares, fancy strollers, etc...). Reducing children to dollars and sense is always classy. But it is hard to class up a condom advertisement.
Rory Leishman's December Interim column is about immigration not being a panacea for Canada's falling fertility rates. First, as the C.D. Howe Institute has noted -- in two studies, "Faster, Younger, Richer? The Fond Hope and Sobering Reality of Immigration's Impact on Canada's Demographic," (2009) and "No Elixir of Youth: Immigration Cannot Keep Canada Young" (2006) -- it only slightly slows the aging of [...]
Congressmen Chris Smith (R, NJ) and Dan Lipinski (D, IL) are two of the most outspoken and hardest working pro-life members of Congress so it is no surprise that they were elected co-Chairs of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-life Caucus for the 112th Congress. Jill Stanek has a copy of the press release of the announcement. I hope that the Republican leadership understands what Democrat Lipinski [...]
Our December cover story is now online: "Christmas, battleground in a culture war." It notes that trying to get rid of Christmas is nothing new -- Oliver Cromwell and the Soviet Union tried to ban the celebration of Christ's birth. The article concludes, "as Tom Fleming of Chronicles magazine wrote a decade ago, the war against Christmas is at heart battle for [...]