September 16 – Ottawa – By a vote of 99-62, the House of Commons passes legislation ending baby bonuses and bringing in a new child benefit system aimed at helping the working poor. The baby bonus was established by Mackenzie King in 1945, to ensure that children would have their basic needs met. The monthly payments were made directly to the mothers, not to their husbands.
In the Senate, the Liberal opposition had 31 expert witnesses prepared to criticize it, but the Conservative majority abruptly cut off hearings on October 9.
September 20 – New York – John Lu Pien, director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, declares that the world now produces enough food to feed all mankind. There are now 150 million fewer malnourished people in poorer countries than there were two decades ago.
“The food supply and the farmers have actually kept up with the growth and exceeded it,” said Lu Pien. He was commenting on a new UN report, Food and Nutrition: Creating a Well-fed World. He credited the green revolution; better farming techniques, safer storage, and better distribution for the improvement. “Right now,” he said, “there’s enough food to feed everyone, if in fact it could get to the people who need it.” (Toronto Star, September 21)
September 21 – Vancouver – Newspapers report that a California fertility clinic, Pacific Fertility Medical Centers, is offering “wombs for rent” to B.C. women unable to carry their own children. Dr. Christo Zouves, former director of the in vitro fertilization clinic at Vancouver’s U.B.C., is head of a recruiting team which offers infertile couples the option of traveling to California to hire a surrogate to carry their embryo to term.
Vancouver lawyer Janice Dillon said that the Canadian Bar Association’s committee that she had headed had recommended that womb renting be illegal. Dr. Patricia Baird, head of the Royal Commission on reproductive technologies, said that the issue of surrogacy is a deeply troubling one: it makes the child a commodity, something delivered for money, something that can be bought and sold. Pro-lifers have opposed surrogacy from the beginning.
September 21 – London – Dr. Nigel Cox, of Winchester, England, has been convicted of attempting to murder a terminally ill patient, in a landmark case on euthanasia. He had treated Lillian Boyes for 13 years; she died in 1991, after Cox gave her an injection of potassium chloride.
September 26 – Vatican City – Pope John Paul II expresses support for Irish laws opposed to abortions. Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds has promised a referendum on abortion for later this year.
“There can be no justification from the moral point of view for disseminating Information the purpose of which is to facilitate the killing of the unborn,” the Pontiff told a group of Irish bishops visiting Vatican City.
September 28 – Toronto – Ontario Attorney General Howard Hampton assures the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights that the Rae government will not appeal a decision by the Ontario Human Rights Commission requiring the provincial government to provide pension benefits to same-sex “spouses.” (See Month in Review, September 1, 1992, October Interim)
Tom Warner was angry with the government for not moving quickly to change 79 provincial laws that, he says, must be changed in order to comply with the Commission’s ruling.
September 29 – Toronto – Toronto Sun columnist Christina Blizzard describes the local AIDS committee’s defense of a brochure for Toronto schools as “bizarre.” Ed Jackson, the Committee’s director of education, argues that the pamphlet is aimed at a target group of gay young men and is not for general consumption.
Blizzard points to the filthy language used in the brochure to describe sex, masturbation and assorted homosexual practices, including sado-masochism. Whether or not the brochure is aimed at gay men, she states, it ended up in a publicly funded community centre downtown.
Toronto Board of Health Chairman Chris Korwin-Kuczynski was also appalled: “If they are persistent in putting out this kind of pamphlet, it could jeopardize their funding from the City of Toronto,” he said.
The AIDS Committee received $1,288,398 in grants from the federal government, the city and Metro for the year ending March 1992. This raises the familiar question of why so much money goes to a social disease that its victims could usually prevent and so little to breast cancer, a far greater killer, which its victims can usually not prevent.
October 1 – Burnaby, B.C. – A state-of-the-art women’s prison in Burnaby, B.C., is in an uproar over disclosure of lesbian relationships between guards and inmates. “Things go on in this jail that would blow everybody’s mind,” said prisoner Francine Nantel, 22, who disclosed a relationship with a guard.
October 2 – Washington – The House of Representatives fails to override President Bush’s veto of a family-planning bill that would allow personnel of federally financed clinics to advise abortion. The vote was 266-148, ten votes short of the required two-thirds majority.
October 4 – North America – Over one million pro-life Canadians and Americans line the sidewalks of selected streets in their cities and towns from coast to coast demonstrating their continued abhorrence of the monstrous crime of abortion, fully legalized by governments and ardently supported by feminists as a woman’s right.
The idea behind Life Chain is a silent protest and witness to abortion’s continued assault upon children, women and society. (See front page)
October 15 – Prague – Czechoslovak women, long used to free abortions on demand, under their previous Marxist regime, will now have to pay to have their babies killed.
Under a law that took effect on October 15, a woman will be charged up to $140 for an abortion. The average monthly salary is about $190.
