Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan delivered a sweet but strong pro-life statement in his speech last night: “We believe that in every life there is goodness; for every person, there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of Life. We have responsibilities, one to another – we do not [...]
Bryan Caplanhas six "rules for optimizing your family size" which concludes with this: When you're on the fence, err on the side of having another kid. A life well-lived includes achievement as well as happiness. Creating and raising one more child is a great achievement, even your last child makes you marginally less happy. A year ago, I reviewed Caplan's Selfish Reasons [...]
It's crunch time here at The Interim as it is production week. Great September issue and we'll tell you more about it next week. But blogging won't resume until either next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Yesterday I noted a new EFC report and recent Claire Hoy column about the Ontario government now refusing to release abortion statistics (under the guise of transparency and accountability -- how Orwellian). Suzanne Fortin at Big Blue Wave has two comments about this topic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Good [...]
Today is the first anniversary of Jack Layton's death and the NDP and left-wing media are milking it to promote his example of tirelessly working to advance the socialist agenda. Of course, that's not how they put it, but that's the point. The average person didn't understand that "Jack" wasn't all about smiles, but rather socialism. To correct the sycophancy of the [...]
Editor's Note: In the August edition of The Interim we published a survey of pro-life groups regarding incrementalism and gestational limits. The Christian Heritage Party response was not complete because CHP leader Jim Hnatiuk did not reply to the portion on incrementalism. We have edited the survey online after receiving this letter to the editor from Hnatiuk, which will appear in the [...]
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has released an excellent report, "Black Holes: Canada’s Missing Abortion Data: A Brief Examination of Canada’s Abortion Data Collection Policies and an Analysis of Ontario’s New Legislation." It provides context and history and debunks the argument usually offered for keeping the public in the dark about the number of abortions done in the publicly funded health care [...]
In the wake of the attack on the Family Research Council, Jonathan S. Tobin has a very good post at Commentary about the Southern Poverty Law Center, in which he observes, "It’s clear that the SPLC has long since stopped being the heroic defender of civil rights and become just another left-wing advocacy group that engages in its own version of intolerant and [...]
Campaign Life Coalition's Matthew Wojciechowski addresses the news that the Canadian Medical Association has urged defeat of M-312. He says, "A 'medical association' doesn’t want to debate 'medical and scientific evidence' on something that is so central to their profession; human life." That's because the CMA is fully committed to legal abortion, and has been for a long-time. What is interesting is [...]
We have coverage of Melinda Gates promoting birth control for the developing world and insisting it is uncontroversial in the August Interim. The irony is that Gates would not have to repeatedly call contraception uncontroversial if it weren't already controversial. She sees it as substantively different from abortion, but that doesn't mean it is not without issues (many contraceptives are abortifacient, her [...]
Helen Gurley Brown, the famous former editor of Cosmopolitan, has passed away at the age of 90. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "Cosmo, as it was called, became the sex and style bible of single girls worldwide." Donald DeMarco wrote about HGB in The Interim in April 2003. DeMarco wrote: Helen Gurley Brown enjoys needlepoint and stitching hip slogans onto pillows. [...]
Campaign Life Coalition is hosting a series of smaller pro-life conferences in three Ontario cities this Fall: Kitchener (September 15), Ajax (September 22), and Sudbury (October 13). Details and registration forms are available here. Each event is $25 including lunch and is held on a single day. It is inexpensive and convenient. Paul Tuns, editor of The Interim, will be speaking at the Kitchener Pro-Life Forum on "Why a small pro-life paper will outlast [...]
Politico reports on Democratic National Convention planning documents that they've seen and how Barack Obama's party is planning to highlight the so-called "hot-button" issues like gay rights, abortion, Planned Parenthood funding, and immigration. Politico reports: The most innovative — and harshest — element of the preliminary program is a nightly “social contrast” in which two people describe their personal experience with a hot-button [...]
I was going to make this point but Campaign Life Coalition's Matthew Wojciechowski beat me to it: Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he will follow the science only when its convenient. Here's Harper on the Northern Gateway pipeline: “The only way that governments can handle controversial projects of this manner is to ensure that things are evaluated on an independent basis scientifically, and [...]
We have a column online entitled "Labels used to shut down debate" that looks at how terms like "racist" and "homophobic" (one might add "sexist") are used to end debate on contentious issues. Author Pauline Kosalka concludes: Dismissing different points of view, especially holding “traditional” views, is the easy and cowardly way to avoid engaging in a serious debate about morals and [...]