The National Film Board (the people who brought you “Democracy on Trial: the Morgentaler affair”) have done it again (with your money). Joanne Lewicky and I were invited by the NFB to a private screening of Abortion: Stories from North and South, written and directed by Gail Singer. This abortion travelogue assumes from the outset that abortion is a good thing and therefore there should be more of it. The bias is so blatant that even the “pro-choice” Toronto Globe and Mail in its review admits that ” … the film’s pose as an investigatory artifact is … laughably transparent …. Singer’s interpretation of history is … polemical and feminist.”
This film is a mixture of unsupported statistics, half-truths, downright lies and contradictions. There are the usual stereotypes: unforgiving (Christian) parents, hard-hearted (male) clergymen, compassionate abortionists (including lots of footage of Morgentaler) and, always, “woman as victim.” No thought or footage is given to the true victims of abortion – the babies.
This piece of pro-death propaganda has been made and will be distributed across Canada at the taxpayers’ expense.
Please write to the Hon. Marcel Masse, Minister of Communications in Ottawa, not particularly to protest the film’s contents, but to question whether the continued existence of the NFB can be justified today. The NFB’s mandate originated – in pre-TV days – to interpret Canada to Canadians. This role has now been taken over by TV, radio and the Canadian publishing industry, The NFB, no longer having a clear mandate, has drifted and become a propaganda tool in the hands of a minority group of secular humanists who so not reflect the views of the majority of Canadians. Send a copy of your letter to your M.P.
If this “Pro-choice” melodrama is typical of the NFB then we should seriously consider its termination.
Anne Beardshall is President of Campaign Life, Alberta.
