In early June, the Ontario New Democrats introduced legislation to end the wide-open Sundays which have prevailed since the municipal option clause passed into law by the previous Liberal government was struck down.

Under the new law, the municipality may still make the decision but only within a general framework which emphasizes a common pause day. It must hold a public hearing before passing by-laws allowing exemptions.  The new bill confirms Sunday as the common pause day, requiring most stores to close on official holidays and on Sundays.

Small corner stores, pharmacies, book stores and art galleries will be able to open.

Retail workers will have an “absolute right” to refuse to work on Sundays and holidays.

Employees who agree to work on holidays will be allowed to change their mind only after 48 hours.

The Ontario NDP is carrying out a promise made during the election to halt the all-out attack launched up0on Sunday rest by the pro shopping lobby, consisting of three groups—some large retail stores, four main supermarket chains, and the Jewish business community.

In the legislature, opposition politicians have criticized the bill for not spelling out how workers can “enforce” their right to refuse to work on holidays. But Solicitor-General, Mike Farnan has pointed out that where there’s a will, there is a way. He spoke of “fine-tuning” that part of the legislation as experience warrants.

Needless to say, the pro-shopping lobby denounced the legislation. They have argued before the courts that Sunday laws regulating shopping violates the freedom of religion of shoppers and retailers.

On the other hand, Christian communities strongly supported the legislation. They see the constitutional challenge by the large retailers such as Hudson Bay-Simpsons not as one of ‘freedom of religion’ , but as a bid for ‘freedom from religion’.

The NDP’s main motivation for the “common pause” day is to protect worker’s rights and family life.

The Churches’ main motivation is to protect workers’ rights and family life, but also to protect Sunday as a day of worship of God. Sunday rest is a necessity also for the mental sanity of society.

In the News…In the News…In the News

Victoria B.C A second provincial Family Coalition Party (FCP) has been founded in British Columbia. Kathleen Toth, organizer of the new Family Coalition Party of British Columbia, made the announcement at a press conference on June 13, 1991. From 1978-1982, Mrs. Toth was president of Campaign Life Canada, the pro-life organization active in politics.

FCP/BD is sister to the FCP of Ontario, founded in 1986 and recognized by the Ontario Electoral Commission in June 1987 after signing up 11,000 supporters.

FCP Ontario participated in the 1987 provincial election with candidates in 36 ridings (out of 130), receiving 48,999 votes or 4 per cent of the total vote in the riggings contested.

In the 1990 election, the FCP ran candidates in 68 ridings, receiving 111,000 votes or 5.2 per cent of the popular vote in those ridings.

The FCP/BC has a 20-member Board of Directors and will participate in an as yet undisclosed number of ridings in the forthcoming provincial election scheduled for later this year. A founding convention is to be held soon.

The Family Coalition Party of BC was formed “to fill a vacuum which the two incumbent parties (NDP and Social Credit) have created by advocating almost identical policies on issues which affect families, “ said Mrs. Toth.

The provincial and national media have hounded former Social Credit Premier Bill VanderZalm for over three years after he took a strong anti-abortion stand in February 1988 following the Supreme Court decision disallowing the 1969 Amendment to the Criminal Code.

His successor, Mrs. Rita Johnson, has proclaimed herself pro-abortionist.

Nova Scotia MD Sidesteps Fetal Rights

David Dooley

Dr. Judy Kazimirski is the current Chairman of the Canadian Medical Association’s [CMA] board of directors.

At the end of April she threw radical feminists into consternation by stating that fetal rights must be enshrined in law. In a speech to the women’s section of the Hamilton Academy of Medicine, she suggested that the rights and legal protection of the fetus should increase as it approaches birth. In fact, she said, “We must face the tough but responsible decision on the question, “At what point do the rights of the fetus surpass those of the mother.”

Judy Rebick, head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women [NAC], was shocked and appalled by such talk of fetal rights. The courts have clearly established, she said, that the fetus is part of the mother’s body until it is born. Why pretend otherwise, and stir up needless controversy?

Family Physician

Dr. Kazimirsky is a family physician who practices with her husband, also a doctor, in Windsor, Nova Scotia.

She must know the position of Judy Rebick and of the Supreme Court in its latest decision on the midwives case that a baby in the process of being born is not yet a human being.

But the evidence shows she is thoroughly confused.

Last January, the CMA’s delegation appeared before the Senate committee reviewing Bill C-43, the government’s abortion bill. It received a respectful hearing and was given plenty of time to present its case.

It presentation takes up 21 pages of Hansard, whereas Campaign Life Coalition’s, which followed it , takes up only 9.

Dr. Kazimirski was the CMA’s chief spokesman, and as expected, she flailed Bill C-43 from the pro-abortionist point of view.

Her arguments were the familiar ones; doctors were being scared off from doing abortions and this was a bad thing; the bill singled out abortion as the only recognized medical act to attract criminal sanction; it would make physicians the target of extremists; it would deprive women of needed medical care, and so on.

Medical ‘Service”

She paid much attention to abortion as a medical ‘service’, but none to the fact that abortion takes a baby’s life. In her view the bill was a threat to the woman justified in having an abortion.

Nevertheless, well on in the discussion before the Senate committee, Dr. Kazimirski introduced the idea of fetal rights, as she did in her speech in Hamilton. The CMA has defined abortion as the active termination of a pregnancy before fetal viability. After this stage, she said, “what you are dealing with is the potential for a person.”

If the pregnancy has arrived at the gestation level where the baby could survive, she went on to say, “you are not dealing with abortion, that is not the issue at all, and you must deal with that baby.” Physicians, she continued are not dealing with only one individual: “they have a responsibility not only to the mother, but also to the potential baby”. (emphasis added)

One of the defects of the proposed legislation, added her colleague Dr. Kluge, is that it does not even mention the fetus.

Intellectual Confusion

Dr. Kazimirski’s position—the position of the CMA—is replete with intellectual confusion. The Campaign Life Coalition presentation to the Senate committee came just after the doctors had finished. The destroyed the CMA assumptions in two minutes—though of course the senators did not acknowledge that they had done so.

The physicians maintain that abortion is a necessary medical service; they simply assume this to be a fact. Said CLC spokesman Father Ted Colleton: “How the killing of a baby can be a lawful medical procedure escapes my intelligence.”

He quoted Dr. Jerome Jejune as saying, “If the fertilized egg is not, by itself, a full human being, it would never become one because something would have to be added and we know that does not happen.”

The baby in the womb is not merely ‘potential’ either before or after viability. It is  real, or it would not have a heartbeat.

Other Contradictions

Dr. Judy Kazimirski’s position contains other contradictions. She is a Roman Catholic. She entered a convent when she left high school, planning to become a nun and train as a medical missionary. Today she defends the killing of unborn babies. As has been pointed out again and again, it is impossible for a sincere Roman Catholic to be an advocate of abortion.

Dr. Kazimirski’s prescription for dealing with the problem of unwanted pregnancies is more sex education, more contraception, even though the widespread use of contraceptives increases, not decreases, the number of abortions.

Authoritative

She deplored the fact that the majority of Canadian teenagers are sexually active by the time they leave high school, and called government funding directed to family planning and contraceptive counseling nothing short of pathetic.

“It’s not often that someone comes along who is so authoritative and aggressively articulate” CBC reporter Neil MacDonald said in a profile of Dr. Kazimirski in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (March 15, 1990).

“She injects certainty and moral rectitude into her answers. She lectures MPs and reporters and they love it.”

As we have seen, however, what Mr. MacDonald describes as moral rectitude is moral confusion. The greatest contribution Dr. Kazimirski could make to Canadian society, including Canadian women, would be for her to admit that she had been wrong about abortion.

No reason in the world can justify taking the life of an unborn child, after viability or before it.