Statement to the Government of Canada from Ontario Pro-Life Clergy Council
Text is as follows:
“On January 28th, 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s abortion law. Since then Canada has been without any restrictions on abortion – a distinction we share with only Communist China. We expect Parliament to enact abortion legislation which will protect all unborn children without exception from conception onwards.
“Pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not a medical necessity. A proposal which would include a ‘life or health’ exception, therefore, is not acceptable. It will neither reduce the number of abortions nor provide protection for the unborn.
“Parliament has both the legal right and the moral duty to prohibit women from killing their unborn children. The claim that women have a ‘right’ to kill their own unborn offspring is utterly contrary to both reason and religious teaching and has been so from the earliest days onwards till modern times.
“Abortion was rejected in all major pre-Christian civilizations from the Sumerian Code (2000 B.C.) to the Hippocratic Oath (500 B.C.) which forbade the administering of abortion-causing drugs or instruments. The Christian tradition took up the defense of the dignity of the human person from the very beginning. Its earliest known collection of teachings, The Didache (Teaching of the Apostles), 90-100 A.D., tersely commands: ‘Thou shalt not kill the foetus by an abortion.’
“We exhort all Canadians but especially the current government of Mr. Brian Mulroney to take up the challenge in defense of all human life by bringing forward without delay a bill prohibiting abortions in Canada.”
