Mrs. Monique Vezina, MP
Minister responsible for CIDA
Ministry for External Relations
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0G2
Dear Mrs. Vezina
Re: International Planned Parenthood Federation funding by the Department of External Relations
Thank you for your letter of January 24, 1985. We have been informed by others who corresponded with the Department that they received identical replies. Regrettably, we cannot accept your answer as satisfactory.
You mention that you are “advised” that IPPF does not promote abortions, that it consists of autonomous national associations, that the Government does not necessarily support all the policies of non-governmental associations it funds and moreover, that any funds directed towards IPPF are made with the agreement that “our funds are not used for abortion-related activities, but for education and community health services, to help people plan their families in ways which respect their social and ethical traditions and values.” Let me stipulate first that pro-life people do not ask the Government to approve every and all actions of NGOs such as those of churches and other wholesome organizations. This takes care of your third point.
As for points one, two and four concerning the nature of IPPF, let me be brief. IPPF, is concerned with one issue only: population control. Planned Parenthood is essentially about not being parents, about not having children. Abortion is an integral part of this philosophy, inseparable from it.
To say that IPPF or PP Canada or any other national PP association “does not promote abortion” is like saying that fish do not swim in water and birds do not fly in the air. IPPF has no intention whatever “to help people plan their families in ways which respect their social and ethical traditions and values.” Their whole purpose is to replace these values with their own anti-child despair. While other agencies may do one or more of a host of things in the third world countries digging wells, building bakeries, opening schools- IPPF has only one aim: to contracept, to sterilize, if necessary to abort.
In our letter of November we provided you with statements from IPPF’s own program substantiating our presentation above. In addition, the notion that IPPF is a federation of autonomous national units which have their own programs which may differ from place to place, is nonsense. They all exhibit the same traits everywhere. Today the U.S. Planned Parenthood Association finances and runs over 50 (fifty) abortion clinics in that country. The special report on abortion published in Newsweek magazine, January 14, 1985 mentions PP abortion clinics no less than three times. Surely you must be aware that as of the beginning of the year the U.S. State Department has cut IPPF from its international aid program.
In Canada the PP Federation is an ardent agent of the contraceptive/sterilization/abortion syndrome. In January, MPs and Senators received a circular letter from Mr. George W. Cadbury, of Oakville, Ontario (heir to Cadbury chocolate fortune), on behalf of IPPF and attacking Campaign Life. It appears that your advisors based their “advice” to you on this letter.
The letter contains the usual disclaimer that already mentioned above: “it is not … our policy to promote abortion.” This is a standard phrase, used even by CARAL, the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. According to them, they are not pro-abortion, no not at all. They merely want all women to have the right to have one whenever they want one. The Cadburys are the founders of the PP Toronto and PP Canada. Both of these groups have been listed-at one time or another as supporters of CARAL. Planned Parenthood offices such as the one in Edmonton, Alberta, annually report the number of girls and women they refer to American abortuaries in the daily newspaper. The Family Planning Federation of Canada was among the early lobbyists for legalized abortion. (Barbara Bishop, “Activities of the Family Planning Federation of Canada,” speech delivered at St. John’s Newfoundland, May 11, 1973.) The Cadbury Foundation provides PP locals with financial assistance in the form of bursaries.
Let me conclude. Individuals and pro-life groups have written the government before on this matter. We had hoped that the PC government would introduce changes in policy with respect to agencies and individuals with and anti-child philosophy which attack the family. But apparently you intend to remain faithful to policies supporting secularist anti-family feminist views. The appointments of Mr. Stephen Lewis to the United Nations, Mrs. Sylvia Gold as Chairman of the Federal Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the financial support of a number of radical feminist groups while denying aid to pro-family, seems to be an indication of your intentions to carry on the same policies with the same attitude. We hope we are wrong.
Meanwhile, we must inform you that we do not intend to repeat our long-suffering and ultimately foolish attitude of tolerance – always hoping but never receiving-which we displayed towards the previous government. In the last elections hundreds of thousands of pro-life members abandoned the Federal Liberal Party in English Canada- after having their views mocked for ten, fifteen years. They did not vote Conservative in order to be ridiculed for another fifteen years. We hope to receive a more satisfactory reply from your office. Unless we do, we are prepared to begin our counter campaign by informing the official representatives of third-world countries in Ottawa that to receive health benefits from Canada’s foreign aid programs is to invite interference and manipulation in their internal affairs.
Yours Sincerely,
James Hughes
President
