On February 10, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an excellent think tank based in Ottawa that studies social policy, celebrated its fifth anniversary. Here are speeches by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, former MP Monte Solberg, and conservative author William Gairdner, among others. I agree with Solberg who thanked them for their contributions to public policy when he said that what [...]
Mark Shea and Robert George both have very good posts on why people from Live Action misleading Planned Parenthood to say and do incriminating things by pretending to be someone they are not engaged in an illicit tactic for pro-lifers. As we say in an editorial in the forthcoming March issue, the Culture of Life cannot be built on a foundation of lies. Peter [...]
My editor's desk column in the February issue provides a "social conservative assessment" of five years of the Harper Conservatives in power. Bottom line: a pass on social issues in general, but a fail on abortion. Yet even that assessment is grading on a curve: Indeed, on most issues, the Conservative government has prevented a liberalizing or broadening of immorality and decadence. [...]
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Donald Trump might run for president in 2012 and last week he addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference where he declared himself pro-life (12:00 at this video which might require registration). He doesn't have a chance to win the Republican nomination or the White House, but the fact he says he is pro-life and opposes gun control shows how serious he is thinking about throwing [...]
MercatorNet runs an excerpt from Rocco Buttiglione's latest book, Exiting a Dead End Road: a GPS for Christians in Public Discourse, under the headline "The banality of tolerance." The first half of the excerpt is about freedom and the second half on the relationship between tolerance and freedom. Well worth reading and the bottom line is that tolerance without truth is incompatible with [...]
Brian Lilley has a great introduction on his blog before getting to his column on C-389, Bill Siksay's private member's bill granting special human rights protection to people who self-identify as transgender and transsexual by adding gender identity and gender expression to Canada's human rights laws. Lilley says: Later today MPs will vote on a number of bills, most of which are technical [...]
We report in the February issue about the Halton Catholic school board's capitulation to pressure from gay activists to abandon its Catholic approach to sexual morality in their schools. Makes you wonder why we bother with Catholic schools at all; that's not a proposal, just frustration speaking.
A pregnant Colorado woman was mistakenly given an abortion pill by her pharmacist rather than an antibiotic. Fate of the unborn child is unknown. Pharmacy says sorry. Sure mistakes happen, but as Andrea Mrozek says, tragedies like this one wouldn't occur if health care practitioners followed the Hippocratic Oath.
The final vote on C-389, which adds transgender and transexual to the list of specially protected classes of people under Canada's human rights laws, will be Wednesday. Catholic Insight has reproduced our lead editorial from the February issue with slight amendments to the last paragraph because at the time we went to press, it appeared that the vote would be later this month [...]
There is more news from the House of Horrors story: another woman suspects Kermit Gosnell caused an infection that seriously harmed her. CNN reports: On a recent Sunday, LaToya Ransome sits near a space heater in her grandmother's living room in north Philadelphia. "I still deal with it all the time," she says, glancing at the TV and grazing two fingers over [...]
For some reason, apparently coincidental, I'm on Behind the Story on CTS on Super Bowl weekend. The show used to broadcast Sunday nights at 7pm -- the Super Bowl starts at 6:30 pm -- so even I would miss it. This year, BTS moved to Saturday nights and you can watch the broadcast next week online. This week we are talking a lot [...]
Here's our February cover story: "House of Horrors: Philadelphia abortionist faces 39 charges in connection with death of woman, seven newborns." I posted most of this story before, but it has a new conclusion quoting Rev. Johnny Hunter of LEARN, in which he condemns Kermit Gosnell for betraying his fellow blacks.
Josh Brahm has a good guest post at the Life Training Institute blog about the pro-life reaction to stories such as the House of Horrors abortuary in Philadelphia and Live Action's exposing Planned Parenthood's cooperation with someone they thought were pimps for underage sex workers. Brahms says of the latest scandals: As atrocious as Gosnell's barbaric acts were, and as bad as covering up sex trafficking [...]
Great video helps show how large the crowd was for the March for Life in Washington DC. Time Lapse March for Life