As Mary Ellen Douglas says in our cover story on C-6 (formerly C-13) passing the Senate to become law, the battle is not over. In fact, it has just begun. In many ways, March 11 will be like May 14, 1969, when Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government passed an omnibus bill that legalized abortion. With one defeat in the battle to defend human life, pro-lifers must awaken to begin the challenge of overturning an egregious law.
If some pro-lifers, as we at The Interim have heard, are ready to declare the cause of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning lost and go home, we will indeed be handicapped in our fight to overturn C-6. But this “can’t do” attitude is not what has gotten the pro-life movement to where it is today.
For three years, pro-life Canadians have lobbied their MPs, written letters to their newspapers, called radio talk shows, and engaged their friends, family and neighbours in conversation with the goal of informing as many people as possible about why embryonic stem cell research is wrong (because it always kill a human being in the embryonic stage of life) and why C-13 should have been defeated in the House of Commons. We were not successful in defeating C-13 in the House or, (as C-6) when it got to the Senate. But the groundwork has been laid for overturning this legislation down the road as more and more Canadians realize that the legislation does not do what it claims to do (ban human cloning, strike a balance between the sanctity of human life and the desire for scientific research) and that it sanctions the destruction of embryonic human beings.
Now is the time to redouble our efforts. Now is the time for more conversations about why harvesting human embryos for stem cells is both immoral and bad medicine. Now is the time to have church groups and pro-life organizations raise awareness about the false hope of embryonic stem cell research. Now is the time to urge our elected officials to offer amendments to correct those flaws in C-6 which are immediately correctable.
