On December 18, 1992 at Queen’s Park, Toronto, when Health Minister Francis Lankin wholeheartedly endorsed the report handed down by the Task Group of Abortion Services Providers, the NDP government took another step towards making Ontario a police state.
No one should really be surprised by Ms. Lankin’s enthusiastic acceptance of the report, which dealt with access to abortion services in Ontario. After all, everyone knows where she is coming from when the subject is abortion. In fact, the Task Group was set up by her. Why wouldn’t she be pleased with it?
Now if you think you have already seen and heard everything when it comes to the NDP, stop and take another look at this report whose masterminds ignored their own terms of reference.
The 46 recommendations, which Francis says she will implement (no conflict of interest here, folks!), call for wideopen access to abortion right across Ontario (no exceptions will be tolerated); the co-operation of doctors and nurses when it comes to making referrals; pro-abortion education in schools; the promotion of RU-486; and “no disagreement in the ranks, please.” This means no pickets or protests outside abortuaries.
Other little snippets included the promotion of midwifery. Now I know that profession-ally-trained and competent midwiv
es are usually women who really love and respect new life. Why is the NDP so anxious to promote this profession?
You all know that I can be a cynical and suspicious type of guy. Could the NDP be toying with the notion of having all sorts of people, one day, doing abortions? Mind you, Michael Harding, a spokesman for the Department of Health, strongly denied this – the same way Michael Wilson once said there would be no GST.
The media, in general, were silent regarding this report of a group of professionals – pro-fessional – with one notable exception.
Toronto Sun columnist Christie Blatchford, who likes to be considered “pro-choice,” in her December 22 column described the report in these terms: “The ultimate step in political correctness – stifling dissent, outlawing protests – but the Ontario Government is poised to take it.”
Good for you, Christie. No wonder they tore down the Berlin Wall in East Germany. We needed it here in Ontario.
Coercion is not new to the NDP, but this report is something else – coercion, coercion, coercion. (Watch it, Attorney General Howie Hampton – it’s a bomb!) According to the report, if coercion fails, there’s to be financial lollypop for those who surrender their in-tegrity for money. Summed up, if all else fails – bribe.
One especially touching morsel is the hint that Catholic hospitals will be forced to pro-vide abortion services. Was this what Frances had in mind when she recently attempted a take-over of Catholic hospital boards.
Incidentally, congratulations and thanks to Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic for spear-heading the letter-writing campaign (57,000 letters opposing this deal). We sincerely hope that His Grace has his pen and paper ready to give an encore.
In the past, no one could ever accuse governments of breaking the sound barrier when it comes to getting things done. Not so in the case of implementing this report, which tossed out recommendations like flies off an elephant’s back. The Task Group wants the recommendations initiated within six months and completed within a year. Never say the
NDP doesn’t get things done. Of course, what it does is another matter.
Don’t ask questions regarding the cost of implementing the demands while cutting le-gitimate and essential health services to pay for them. The same applies to the fact that the Ontario Police Force will become a tax-payer-funded security staff for abortuaries. The Task Group doesn’t think it is any of your business.
Not everything in the report was bad, however – just most of it. One little piece of en-couragement came from the assertion that abortionists are becoming an endangered species. The old are heading for Florida or Arizona, and the young don,t really want to do the dirty work. Pro-life protesters must be doing something right.
