Editor’s Note: We asked more than 15 pro-life groups, organizations, and leaders to answer two questions: Do you support gestational limits* on abortion. Would you like to state why? (* for the purpose of this survey, gestational limits means restricting abortion after a certain point, whether by trimester or some other time period.) What kinds of incremental measures do you support. If [...]
Waiting until the second-last business day to file, Canada’s federal government appealed the June 15 decision of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lynn Smith overturning Canada’s ban on euthanasia and assisted suicide. Smith claimed that Canada’s Criminal Code prohibiting euthanasia and assisted suicide violated the Charter rights of those seeking assistance killing themselves and those who help them carry out their lethal wishes. [...]
For decades, the pro-life movement has experienced division; sometimes over strategy, sometimes over principles. It is of no use to assign blame or rehash old arguments. People of goodwill can differ over tactics and strategy, but on principles it becomes more difficult to countenance disagreement. On the (once again) difficult issue of gestational limits to abortion, as a way of reducing abortion, [...]
Over the past three months, pro-life activists have been physically assaulted by abortion supporters, a sign, pro-lifers say, that their message is hitting a nerve. In Thunder Bay, Ont., in June, the New Abortion Caravan saw a man berate three pro-life activists as he poured chocolate milk over them. A few days later in London, Ont., a group of pro-abortion activists confronted [...]
An appeal is being launched into the conviction of Mary Wagner after the judge told her: “Your God is wrong.” The case dealt with Wagner’s arrest on Nov. 8 after she entered Bloor West Village’s “Women’s Clinic” in Toronto. She had already been arrested several times for entering abortion facilities to provide women with counseling and roses as part of her [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal by pro-life prisoner of conscience Linda Gibbons on June 8 as she continues her 18-year battle to overturn a Toronto injunction banning pro-life activity outside abortion facilities. Gibbons was appealing a criminal charge of disobeying a court order by arguing that while the 18-year-old temporary injunction she is accused of violating was instituted [...]
On June 13 Bill 33, a private members bill in the Ontario legislature that would add “gender expression” and “gender identity” to the Ontario Human Rights Code and give special legal protection to people who self-identify as transgender and transsexual, passed with all-party support in an unrecorded vote. Opponents of Bill 33 and similar bills at the federal level have called the [...]
Canada The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada released a position statement saying they were “troubled” by Stephen Woodworth’s private member’s motion, M-312, which is passed will have a Parliamentary committee examine the scientific evidence as to whether the child in the womb is a human being with an eye to amending Section 223 of the Criminal Code definition that says [...]
In early June both the Globe and Mail and Toronto Sun reported that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was pressuring Conservative MPs to vote against Stephen Woodworth’s private member’s motion calling upon Parliament to create a select committee to examine the modern scientific and medical evidence regarding preborn life and the human rights implications of those findings. The Criminal Code says that a [...]
Provinces across Canada are seeking to adopt anti-bullying legislation after a series of high-profile cases in which bullied students committed suicide. In light of these recent developments, a new report by the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada evaluates the overall effectiveness of anti-bullying legislation. “The limits of anti-bullying legislation” by senior researcher Peter Jon Mitchell warns that lawmakers are introducing such [...]
One small step to restoring our democratic rights The House of Commons passed Brian Storseth’s private member’s bill C-304 repealing Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act that proscribes so-called hate speech. C-304, An Act to Amend the Human Rights Act, was introduced by Storseth last October and passed third reading June 6 on a 153-136 near party-line vote. All members [...]
Participants at the Toronto Pro-Life Forum were informed, inspired, and, organizers hope, activated, after a weekend of listening to pro-life and pro-family speakers explain what is happening politically and culturally and challenging both youth and movement veterans to speak up and defend their moral values. In 2011, Campaign Life Coalition increased the number of regional and provincial conferences in order to [...]
In Greek mythology, Europa was a princess whom Zeus abducted in the form of a bull, and their union produced three sons. Pagan legends are replete with such stories of the violent visitation of the divine: they believed that the gods not only blessed their people with offspring, but would sometimes impose such blessings. The Continent which lays claim to such legends [...]
Confidence is the hallmark of a successful social movement. Groups which possess a conviction in their cause will trust in the power of justice and the appeal of truth, and are, therefore, always eager to articulate their ideals to any willing listener. How interesting, then, that despite their dazzling success, socially liberal groups display no such confidence, and no such desire for [...]
Was I naïve? In the early 1980s, I mounted an argument against abortion that I thought no one could refute. In a brief to government, I asked: if the unborn do not have rights from the first moment of their existence, on the grounds of their being human, how can we be sure that they acquire rights later on, and [...]