Canada

There has been pressure both within New Brunswick and from federal politicians for the provincial government to fund Clinic 554 in Fredericton. The private facility is threatening to close its door for good because the for-profit killing centre claimed “it is financially unsustainable for us to keep our doors open.” It’s website says, “We are committed to sex-positive, gender-celebratory care, anti-racist and feminist practices, and full-scope reproductive care, including abortions.” The Green Party made support for the Throne Speech contingent on the Trudeau government’s support for the abortuary. And NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said the Liberals should press the provincial government of Blaine Higgs to fully fund the abortuary. Last summer, then-federal health minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, a New Brunswick MP, wrote a letter to all provincial health ministers warning them that women should not pay out of pocket for abortions because she claimed it violated the Canada Health Act. Campaign Life Coalition, which launched a petition to discourage the Progressive Conservative government from paying for abortions at the private facility, notes that the Canada Health Act makes no mention of abortion. Trudeau said during the federal campaign that failure to fund the private abortuary could lead to a reduction in federal health transfer funds.

As of Dec. 1, pharmacists in Nova Scotia can prescribe a limited number of pharmaceuticals and extend expired prescriptions up to 180 days. Among the drugs okayed for pharmacist prescriptions is chemical birth control pills. Leigh Heide, provincial coordinator at Sexual Health Nova Scotia told the CBC the move caught them by surprise. “We didn’t hear that was coming … but on the surface it seems like a really positive thing.” She said with so many Nova Scotians either lacking a family physician or too busy to see their doctors during regular office hours, the move will increase access to birth control in the province. The change in regulation also affects drugs to treat routine bladder infections, shingles and other ailments, but the CBC only covered the birth control angle and talked to not one but two sources at Sexual Health Nova Scotia.

At The Interimwe get press releases from Global Affairs Canada, the department that oversees Canadian foreign policy and aid. The press releases routinely announce funding for various women’s programs and laud the benefits of promoting and extending “reproductive and sexual health.” The most recent is the announcement by Karina Gould, Minister of International Development, to fork over $21 million in Canadian taxpayer money to “support a gender-sensitive approach to women’s reproductive health services in Pakistan.” Partnering with the United Nations Population Fund and Aga Khan Development Network, Canada will help “provide women and adolescent girls with family planning services,” with an eye to underlying obstacles to access birth control and perhaps abortion. Among those obstacles are “social and cultural barriers.” That means Canadian foreign aid is going to pressure Pakistanis to change their attitudes on pregnancy prevention. How is this not a form of ideological colonialism? And how would Canadians feel if Pakistan – or Saudi Arabia or Iran – funded groups in this country with an eye to changing attitudes about certain topics?

A self-identified Canadian trans-woman named Jessica [Jonathan] Yaniv has been involved in several litigious situations in 2019. When her insistence on having young, female immigrant estheticians wax her male appendage was rebuffed, she brought a human rights complaint against them. Fortunately, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal rejected her case. One of the tribunal members said that, “In many of these complaints (against the estheticians), the complainant (Yaniv) is motivated to punish radicalized and immigrant women based on her (Yaniv’s) perception that certain ethnic groups, namely South Asian and Asian communities are ‘taking over’ and advancing an agenda hostile to the LGBTQ+ people” (Many of the women were represented by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, whose founder and lead counsel –John Carpay – is a monthly contributor to The Interim.) Yaniv, whose appeal was also rejected, is in the news again for two counts of weapons charges – possession of unauthorized weapons (stun guns) – and will appear in court on Jan. 13. Yaniv had a Canadian feminist – Meghan Murphy – permanently banned from Twitter, because Murphy insisted on referring to Yaniv as ‘he’ in her Twitter account. Murphy is a controversial feminist, in feminist circles, who does not follow the controversial Third Wave of feminism, but instead argues that biological males should not be permitted in women’s spaces such as women’s sports, shelters or prisons. Her identification as a ‘feminist’ includes the belief that pornography and the sex-trade industry should be criticized as harmful and violent toward women. (For pro-lifers, Murphy’s support of women’s health rights may put her in the pro-abortion camp, although a specific support of abortion could not be found.) In October, Vickery Bowles, chief librarian of Toronto Public Library, knowing full well that Murphy had issues with trans-activism, bravely – and against push-back by the mainly left-leaning Toronto mayor and council – said that Murphy could hold a talk and conversation in a public library venue in the city. For this decision, the librarian was called a ‘fascist.’ She explained that “as a public library and as a public institution, we have an obligation to stand up for our democratic values and principles. … (Murphy’s talk) is not defined under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms … as a hate speech. Otherwise she (Murphy) would be facing criminal charges. But she’s not.” The talk went ahead with much protesting but no violence. Murphy argues that allowing men ‘to identify as women’ undermines women’s rights. And she is rightly concerned that the right to free speech (and all our other rights) could be curtailed by the young people being educated today who are the leaders of tomorrow. According to Murphy these young people seem to be saying “Free speech for me, but not for you.” And, “Free speech is fine as long as I agree with it.” (Lindsay Sheppard, Canadian free speech advocate and contributor to TrueNorth, interviewed Meghan Murphy in late 2019. The interview is available on the TrueNorthwebsite and also on YouTube.)

Catholic education has been hit again by the LGBTQ+ ideology. Cardinal Thomas Collins of the Toronto Archdiocese has said that he is o.k. with the LGBT agenda being added to the curriculum in the Toronto Catholic District School Board, as long as “it is taught through a Catholic lens” – whatever that means. And, Bishop Douglas Crosby of the diocese of Hamilton gave his blessing for a teachers’ ‘spiritual development’ day in the Waterloo Catholic District School Board on Dec. 6, whose facilitators included an LGBTQ activist and critic of Catholic teaching, and a retired lesbian Catholic principal. The workshop director of education said that there was “nothing that will be covered that is contrary to Catholic teaching.”

United States

An academic paper by two Ph.D. candidates in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, is causing many in the academic and professional world to sit up and take notice at the findings. Using data from Washington State, students Masim Massenkoff and Evan Rose performed a large-scale study of childbirth and marriage to examine “the connection between the incidence of pregnancy, childbirth and marriage, and the incidence of crime.” Analysis by Massenkov and Rose, the largest such study ever carried out in the U.S., indicates that “pregnancy triggers sharp declines in crime, rivaling any known intervention. For mothers, criminal offending drops precipitously in the first few months of pregnancy, stabilizing at half of pre-pregnancy levels three years after birth. Men show a smaller, but still important, 25 per cent decline beginning at the onset of pregnancy, although domestic violence arrests spike for fathers immediately after birth … Marriage is a stopping point, marking the completion for both men and women. The data … suggests forward-looking behavior among married and unmarried mothers.” George Mason University economist, Alex Tabarrok, compares the findings of this study with those about rates of offending in the American three-strike laws, in which the prospect of an additional 20 years to life behind bars reduces criminal recidivism by 17 per cent. Tabarrok says that “the effect of pregnancy is astoundingly large” in reducing the incidence of crime by pregnant women and the fathers. He suggests that it is about “socializing and civilizing both men and women – which people have been saying for centuries: get a man to marry and he becomes a civilized and responsible person. (To read the study, google Family Formation and Crime – Massenkov.)

International

The federal election in the United Kingdom concluded Dec. 12 with an overwhelming majority vote for the Conservatives (364 seats) and a resounding defeat for Labour (203 seats). The Society for the Protection of the Unborn (SPUC) — the largest and oldest pro-life group in the U.K — worked tirelessly during the election to elect pro-life candidates, despite the claim by some that “abortion is not really an election issue in the U.K.” as it is in America. For the first time, two major parties, Labour and the Liberal Democrats (LibDems), made further liberalising abortion laws party policy. The bishops of England and Wales put life issues at the core of their election guide calling on Catholics to ask candidates how they will uphold “the innate dignity of every human being, defending both the child in the womb, the good of the mother and an understanding of the immeasurable good of a child not born.” Catholic bishops of Northern Ireland also asserted that candidates have a duty “to support and cherish the lives of mothers and their unborn children.” Also, Church of England clergy and laypeople spoke out expressing concerns about the proposal of both the Labour and LibDem parties to further liberalise abortion laws in the U.K. So, what were the results of the push for U.K. pro-life candidates to win? No prominent pro-life MPs on the mainland have lost their seat and a number of pro-abortion MPs lost their seats, including the influential Anna Soubry who defected from the Conservatives to run for The Independent Group for Change. And, Jo Swinson, leader of the LibDems with a manifesto committed to extending abortion lost her seat in Scotland. Four newly elected Conservative MPs have pledged to vote to oppose decriminalising abortion and assisted suicide. The Conservative Party does not have a policy to decriminalise abortion. (Using the Canadian experience, decriminalising abortion has meant no abortion laws at all, and has led to the situation where a pre-born child has no rights at all – to the extent that a baby aborted in the birth canal is not recognized as having human rights. But there is more. In Canada, a child just born is sometimes killed, with no repercussions for those responsible for the killing. That is the route that the SPUC is warning will be in store for the U.K. if abortion is decriminalised.) John Smeaton recalls that the Thatcher government allowed abortion up 24 weeks’ gestation with the inevitable exceptions up to birth. He warns that “it’s unethical and led to abortion up to birth. The pro-life movement must never again trade the lives of unborn children to reach a political settlement on abortion.”

Hungary has eliminated the Master’s program in gender studies at its universities, stating that “the discipline is an ideology not a science” and market demand is “close to zero.” The country’s deputy prime minister added that “no one wants to employ a gender-ologist.” The ban has drawn the ire of academics – “this is a major infringement on academic freedom and university autonomy” – although no academic group has come forward to privately fund the ‘woke’ course of study. The Central European University, founded by George Soros, has claimed that “Gender Studies is an internationally recognized academic field which produces socially relevant knowledge. It failed to document what knowledge gender studies produces and why it might be socially relevant.