In a 1976 issue of Esquire magazine, the late surgeon and writer, Richard Selzer, wrote about his experience of witnessing an abortion. He sets the scene: a professional doctor in his 40s, at ease in hospitals, and unfazed by the remedies and rites of the ailing body, he has asked to see a procedure which, like all right-thinking, university-town-dwellers, he notionally supports. What [...]
The Scottish philosopher, Edmund Burke, once wrote that manners were more important than laws. Unlike the law, which “touches us but here and there, and now and then” manners are, by contrast, “what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us.” They surround and soften social reality in a way that is “constant, steady,” and “uniform.” Burke’s [...]
On April 11 2019, something quite unexpected occurred. After six years of near-total silence, pope emeritus Benedict XVI, published “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse,” an essay which offers an important supplement to the discourse about what the retired pontiff calls, at the outset, “the current crisis of the faith and of the Church; a crisis experienced throughout the world [...]
Dr. Barrie DeVeber honoured Editor’s Note:The December 2012 Interim reported on a Euthanasia Prevention Coalition national convention held Nov. 17, in London, Ont., which included a banquet to honour Barrie deVeber. We reprint excerpts from the article as part of our coverage of deVeber’s passing last month. After the conference, about 100 people attended a banquet honouring Dr. Barrie deVeber, [...]
Doug Ford Premier of Ontario It is hardly a secret that candidates for political office do not always keep their promises, and yet voters get fooled time and time again by politicians vowing to do this or that. Many voters assume that when a politician speaks he or she is lying, cynically believing that a promise made on the campaign [...]
The Globe and Mail reported that the Ontario government of Doug Ford will continue indefinitely a program put in place by Kathleen Wynne in December 2015, funding one full cycle of in vitro fertilization once per lifetime for women under 43 years of age experiencing fertility problems. Fertility clinics were pressuring the government to make the funding permanent; the $50 million annual program was [...]
In what passes for popular discourse these days, it has become increasingly common to accuse an intellectual adversary of being in the thrall of a conspiracy theory. The charge has become a convenient way to malign anyone outside of a carefully curated and ever-narrowing range of acceptable beliefs. The clear implication behind this charge is that a serious exchange with someone so [...]
We recently reviewed Population Bombed: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Changein these pages (“Persistently incorrect population worries,” October), in which authors Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak argue that concerns about the environment are always -- always -- accompanied by the desire to control reproduction. Put another way, the solution to real or imagined environmental challenges inevitably includes depopulation control measures [...]
The 70th anniversary of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) ought to be an occasion for celebration. Framed in 1948 in the aftermath of the Second World War, this document promised a future all the more bright for its contrast with the recent past. The promise of that future, however, has not been kept, and the rhetoric of rights [...]
On Sunday, Sept. 30, a peaceful pro-life protest was the occasion of an unprovoked assault. After defacing both the signs and the clothing of participants at a LifeChain intersection in Toronto, a man, later identified as Jordan Hunt, was confronted about his acts of outright vandalism and assault by pro-life activist and Campaign Life Coalition Youth Coordinator, Marie-Claire Bissonnette. The brief conversation [...]
In March 1983, this paper was launched to inform readers of the “day-to-day battle to protect unborn babies.” That first paper announced that “the philosophy of this monthly will always be one of no compromise on abortion,” because “a human life, from the moment of conception represents an individual, precious gift from God.” We have stayed true to that mandate, and since [...]
In our cultural lexicon, the phrase “the birds and the bees” has been, for generations, a quaint shorthand for the natural mysteries of fecundation and generation which manifest themselves in the regular rhythms of nature. As winter thaws, we see bodies join with bodies to bring forth new bodies in due time. The symbolism attached to these animals and insects works for [...]
On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI promulgated Humanae Vitae, the epoch-making encyclical through which the Catholic Church affirmed her opposition to all forms of artificial contraception. Despite the widespread confusions wrought by the internal and external upheavals of the times, the Church did not compromise its moral teaching about the procreative dimension of the sexual act within marriage and, instead, drew [...]
On May 9, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeated something he has said too often. He called abortion a right. Conservative MP Ted Falk (Provencher) challenged the Prime Minister, saying “it is not a right.” The Prime Minister should know that. Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes wrote to him last fall noting the legal and constitutional facts that abortion is not [...]
It was incredibly disappointing to see Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford throw Tanya Granic Allen under the bus after the Liberals released videos showing the former PC leadership contender and PC candidate for MPP in Mississauga Centre saying some politically incorrect things about the gay community (see page three for the story). We would have obviously preferred to see Ford stand [...]