Act of Contrition
People tell me that I lost my vote in the last election by voting for the Canadian Alliance. I don’t think so. I voted for the party that would guarantee me the right to private property. People who voted for the Liberal Party do not have that right.
As a matter of fact, Canadians had the right to private property before 1982. But the Charter of Rights and Freedoms denied all Canadians this right. Communism and socialism deny the right of private ownership of goods, including productive goods. For all the talk about Canada being such a vibrant democracy, the reality is our country is run by half-a-dozen people who are unelected (like the Supreme Court of Canada). All the power is in the Prime Minister’s office, and this office hands out rewards and punishments to MPs according to whether or not they tow the line. This is Soviet-style democracy.
Those who say they are Christians, who believe in the right to life from the moment of conception to natural death, and also the Catholics who stand up before Mass and confess, “what I have done and what I have failed to do” – you failed to use your votes, to give the unborn child the right to life. The Liberal Prime Minister who calls himself a Catholic, bragged that his party will support a woman’s “right” to abort her child. That party also denies the father of that unborn child any recourse to prevent the killing.
How far behind is the law to make euthanasia a right? Will there be anyone to protect the elderly, the sick, and the infirm? Where will it end?Robert Chapman
Orillia, Ont.
Scientific fact
In the November 2000 edition of The Interim you reviewed the leaders of the Canadian political parties and reported that Stockwell Day answered Campaign Life Coalition’s candidate survey by saying “he believes human life begins at fertilization.” This reflects a strategic blunder and/or careless use of the English language. The fact that human life begins at fertilization is a scientific fact and not a point of belief. To suggest that there is freedom to believe or to not believe that human life begins at fertilization is to concede a critical point to those in our community who would hold that it is up to the individual to decide when human life begins or exists.
But there is absolutely no basis for dispute about when human life begins. Our entire population is educated to accept what is established by science as fact and part of reality. A matter of belief enters the discussion when one attempts to establish that some component of the total population of human life has no value and can be eliminated. When the choice to eliminate human life is left to individuals with no interference from other interests we have the essence of a “culture of death.” There is no reason to hold that the aged, the disabled, or the unwanted will be spared – hence the need for consistent legal protection for all.
I was disappointed that the focus within the pro-life lobbying community during our elections continues to be one of interrogation and publication of partial responses rather than educating the candidates and employing our strongest allies – scientific fact and the belief that all life has value to someone (without vested interest) and must be protected.Harold Gutek
Calgary
Abortion not the only issue
I support the pro-life movement, but I voted for a Liberal pro-choice candidate in the recent federal election. Spare me the dried-up turnip, Mr. Kennedy (“Liberal Heaven,” December 2000), but I think I made the right choice.
Copying Campaign Life Coalition, Mr. Kennedy tries to depict the election as a one-issue campaign. That’s wrong in my humble opinion. Although you cannot soften the impact of a life-and-death issue such as abortion, it must still be weighed against the potential harm of an Alliance-Reform government.
Even a quick rehash of their policies is unsettling. More power to the provinces (enter Premiers Mike Harris and Ralph Klein), tax cuts at the expense of social programs, cancelling gun-control legislation, selling off the CBC, curtailing equalization payments to the Atlantic provinces, a to-hell-with-Quebec attitude, and confrontational politics (see Mr. Harris’ Reform-Tory government vs. Ontario’s teachers). Surely, Mr. Kennedy cannot be promoting this kind of an agenda, simply because Alliance leader Stockwell Day is a pro-life advocate. As admirable and as virtuous his pro-life beliefs may be, they cannot stand as an apology for extremism.
As for Prime Minister Jean Chretien, it’s unfortunate that he continues to push his party’ s pro-choice position, without at least acknowledging the fact that many pro-life supporters also vote Liberal. Perhaps Mr. Chretien could steal a page from U.S. President Bill Clinton. The outgoing President is on record as being personally opposed to abortion, but politically supporting a woman’s right to choose.
In the mean time, let the pro-life march continue. After all, the last time I checked, the opposite of pro-life is not pro-choice, but pro-death.
Robert Bourque
Belleville, Ont.
‘Preborn’ I
Re: “Preborn” Incorrect (Interim, Dec. 2000) Pre-travel arrangements are made before travelling, not after. A pre-born child is a child before it is born. Pre-cooked food means food cooked before it is offered for sale, unless we want to call it pre-sale cooked food. Pre-heated oven means a oven heated before being used, unless we call it pre-use heated oven. Pre-born indicates the item (child) before it is born, before it is available to us. Thus it indicates that it is a child before birth. With “unborn” child, it may be understood as not existing.
J. Cober
Guelph, Ont.
‘Preborn’ II
I have to agree with Philip Cooper (Letters, December 2000), that the invention of the term “preborn” in the pro-life cause has been a mistake. Presumably its purpose was to emphasize that the unborn child is already a child – already human – before birth takes place. This is of course indisputably true. However, as pro-lifers we do not need to manipulate language in our favour. Language is already on our side. The unborn child is a child who has not yet been born. The more we use simple, clear, standard speech, the more effective our verbal witness will be.Lise Anglin
Toronto
New Year’s resolutions
We have just celebrated a great event – the birth of a very special Baby, the Christ Child. What a dignity our Father gave to human life and life in the womb! We of the Christian community simply respond by doing His Will and living the way His Son came to show us – the abbreviated version is, “Love God and love our neighbour.”
As we make our New Year’s resolutions, our first thought should be to learn from our mistakes of last year. The ideal place to start would be to ask ourselves: What did we do to respect our neighbour’s basic human rights, the most basic being the right to life? All other rights and privileges are obviously secondary.
To complete this check list, we must ask ourselves: Did we vote for and elect a government which promotes killing the child in the womb, the defenceless elderly or the handicapped? God forgive us, someone did. Did we support prayerfully and financially those people and organizations trying to defend these defenceless ones? God bless you if you did.
There are many areas in our cruel world that could benefit from our New Year’s resolutions. To formulate these, we must work through love of God and love of neighbour. If we love God we will defend life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Notice the right to life must come first.
Chuck Roche
Tillsonburg, Ont.
