Rita Marker (New York, William Morrow and Company, 1993, pp 302, $24.95) The deadly truth about euthanasia It seems more likely as a plot for an ambitious novel than the basis for a true story: the co-founder if a radical pro-euthanasia group seeks out and then becomes a dear friend of the founder of an anti-euthanasia group. But it did happen, Rita [...]
AIDS: Rage & Reality – Why Silence is Deadly Gene Antonio Kate Fillon’s column in the Globe and Mail for May 13, 1993 carried an account of Fashion Cares, the annual gala to raise money for the AIDS Committee of Toronto. She described two young men, so emaciated that every bone in their rib cages was visible, shambling around a stage “holding [...]
Explaining the STD crisis Risky Sex is one national bestseller that should be in every public and high school library. It isn’t a steamy romance. Just read its subtitle: “The Onslaught of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.” Yet teens and adults are grabbing this book. The humourous illustrations beak the ice but it is Genuis’ combination of knowledge and compassion that wins the day. [...]
Canadian courts flex new muscle over abortion debate Near the end of a 1989 appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Henry Morgentaler was holding court in a hotel room with the cream of Canada’s media elite. “The tone was informal,” says F.L. Morton in his wide-ranging study, Morgentaler V. Borowski: Abortion, the Charter and the Courts. “The reporters chatted and joked [...]
How many times have you taken your kids to a movie, or rented a video for them, only to be shocked by the gratuitous sex, violence and profanity that seem to have become so common in today’s films? It’s getting more and more difficult to find good movies these days; movies that both your whole family can enjoy, and that don’t put [...]
Ethics for High Schools By Leonard A. Kennedy Toronto: Life ethics Centre, 50 pages; soft cover; 1992, $2.00 In recent years, there has been an emphasis on students developing their own moral outlook through the analysis of ethical dilemmas, values clarification, and similar methods. In his short and readable booklet, however, Father Kennedy teaches that there is such a thing as objective [...]
Two years ago, York University professor and Olympic athlete William Gairdner surprised the Canadian political establishment with a trenchant and dramatic attack on its collectivist ideology. The Trouble with Canada: A Citizen Speaks Out lambasted the Canadian government, arguing that its emphasis on “top down” socialism and its concern with special interest groups had crippled popular democracy and eroded human rights and [...]
Condom Sense: Questions and Answer Ontario Ministry of Health June 1992, In English and French, illustrated, 32 pp. Reviewed by: David Dooley, The Interim For all I know, Frances Lankin may be as scrupulous in her private life as she is unscrupulous in her public. As we do know, she has no qualms about funding Henry Morgentaler’s unsavoury business; she has no [...]
“Prenatal human beings, even at the earliest stages of life, should be treated with appropriate respect as members of the human family and not viewed as commodities.” For years Prof. Donald De Marco has been pointing out the damage to personal relationships which may result from the new reproductive technology. Fatherhood and in-vitro babies What happens to the concept of fatherhood, for [...]
Andrew Kimbrell (New York, Harper Collins, 1993, pp 305, $29.50) Selling ourselves piece by piece In The Human Body Shop, Andrew Kimbrell has taken on the kind of challenge that would send most writers running for an ice pack and a darkened room. Not only has he set out to explain advances in medical and biological technologies to the non-scientist, but he [...]
Joan Dower Kosmachuk (Winnipeg, Windflower Communications, 1992, pp85, $6.95) Pre-teen novel is no fairy tale As a pro-life parent, it is always difficult to know just when and how to introduce the topic of abortion to one’s own children. Ever though, as adult activists, we grapple with the issue on a regular basis, the innocence of children also needs to be respected. [...]
Late in 1990, Richard Snyder, chief executive of Simon & Schuster, read a book for which his firm had paid a large advance of $300,000. It was a novel entitled American Psycho by a writer in his mid-twenties, Bret Easton Ellis. Presumable Snyder had not read it before, but he was warned of the book’s contents by a Time article describing its [...]
In December, 1985, twenty married couples from around the world who were members of Cardinal Gagnon’s Pontifical Council for the Family met in Rome to discuss Pope John Paul II’s teaching on Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic teaching on the family and the transmission of human life. Their presentations, together with four papers presented by other members of the Council, have [...]
As all book reviewers know, sometimes the biggest chore is preserving to read the book through to the end. Because I’m asked to review many ‘lifestyle’ books—about families, divorce, children, grief, etc.—a lot of trite and ‘junk-food’ genre publications come across my desk. So it’s with great delight I draw The Interim readers’ attention to a new publication Nazareth, a Catholic Family [...]
The Moral Question of Abortion by Stephen Schwary is an excellent book. The author is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island and a pro-life activist. He deals with every aspect of the abortion issue, arguing in great detail that the child in the womb is a human being from the moment of conception. He devotes a chapter to showing [...]