Earl Amyotte, past President of Windsor (Ontario) Right to Life, urged “armchair generals” to take a more role in the fight against abortion at the ‘Life, It’s Irreplaceable’ National Pro-Life Convention, held July 4-6 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

He joined a host of other leaders of the pro-life movement, who came from every province in Canada to attend the conference jointly sponsored by Alliance for Life and Campaign Life Coalition.

Too many pro-lifers “eat, treat and retreat,” he observed.  “The message is, the joyride which has let abortionists kill babies without having repercussions is over.  Picket their homes, the place they work and their barbeques.  Do not be afraid of the aftermath.  Abortions have increases 9.1 per cent in recent years.  The signal to me is we must intensify our efforts.”

Seventy-eight pro-lifers took his advice and picketed the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre on Saturday, July 6th.

In a letter to Patricia Soenen, Executive Director of Manitoba’s League for Life, dated April 17, 1991, James L. Rodger, Assistant to the President, proudly acknowledges that Health Sciences Centre killed 2,169 preborn babies “from January 1, 1990 – December 31, 1990.”

Robert Mahood

Roger Mahood commits abortions at Morgentaler’s Winnipeg ‘clinic’.  About forty picketed his home after the hospital demo.

He and his friends (some were visiting from France) appeared greatly disturbed and mortified.

Mahood’s neighbours hid their children and wouldn’t allow them out on the street.  They even discouraged them from looking out the window at the pro-life signs that were carried up and down the block.

Working in tandem

Joe Borowski, godfather of the pro-life movement, was there, and U.S. Bishop Austin Vaughn (arrested 12 times for rescuing) attended the conference.

The educators, the politicos, and the activists were working in tandem and you couldn’t tell one group from the other.

It was beautiful seeing everybody leaned over backwards to encourage and praise other organizations for hanging tough in their particular battle, whether it was to educate people about the evils of abortion, or to debunk the fraudulent claims of Planned Parenthood or to stress the value of chastity in a world gone mad with lust or to get out there and picket a preborn killer’s home in Winnipeg.

Leona Chalmers, president of the Winnipeg League for Life, our host, said that the conference gave people a chance to share the information they’ve gathered throughout the year I their fight for their beliefs.

”We hope to educate and inform each other and renew our enthusiasm – that’s what conferences do,” she said.

Thrashed out

A lot of political issues were thrashed out in the open.

And with an assembly of leaders of the pro-life movement from all across the country, you have almost as many opinions regarding strategy as there are stars in the sky.

Is the Reform Party really Pro-Life?  Could a pro-life Reform M.P. be forced to vote pro-abortion if the majority of his constituents tell him to?

Is Liberals for Life or the provincially-bases Family Coalition Party (FCP), now both in Ontario and B.C., the way to go?  Is it not the pragmatic approach to ride the polls-ahead Federal Liberals back into power with a hefty contingent of pro-lifers aboard?  Or are we being naïve?  It was Heather Stilwell, past president of Alliance for Life, who said at the conference: “It is easier to make a pro-lifer into a politician than a politician into a pro-lifer.”

What about the Christian Heritage Party (CHP), the only federal party genuinely pro-life?  Do they have too narrow a focus to ever emerge as a threat to the old-line parties?

Saskatchewan NDP

Is it possible, as Saskatchewan lawyer, Tom Schuck, proposes, to take over the pro-abortion Saskatchewan NDP (with the tide running their way in the polls) and pick only strong pro-life candidates to fill the assembly?  He believes that he has the machinery – the Voter identification system – that identifies pro-life people of all political stripes.  He has staff that can engineer voter support for pro-life NDP candidates.

Schuck claims that it has worked well in Minnesota and what works in the U.S. will work in Canada.  But would Saskatchewan NDP MLA’s find that they are bound by the pro-abortion party resolutions they are powerless to change?

Declining

Doug Scott of the U.S. Christian Action Council revealed the evil intentions of Planned Parenthood.  Due to his efforts and those of others, government and private sector financial support for PP is on the decline.  Even though his talk was shocking, he had his listeners screaming with laughter.

Every school board in Canada should have him as a guest speaker.

Great job, Doug!

Post-abortion Syndrome, which Henry Morgentaler calls a myth, turned out to be real in a lively conference conducted by Bev Daw, Achnes Smith, and Dr. Murray McGovern.

TV coverage

There was good TV coverage.  Two articles appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press and one in the Winnipeg Sun. Two covered the opening conference on Chastity: Post Sexual Syndrome, conducted by Maureen Hudec and Baptist minister Gary Hellard, both from Saskatchewan.

The conference made it to the CBC’s AM radio National News at 5 p.m. on Friday, July 5th with a straightforward interview of Heather Stillwell.

The annual Kurelek Award, named after the late, pro-life Ukrainian-Canadian painter William Kurelek, was given posthumously to Archbishop James Francis Carney of B.C., and presented to his brother John, who attended the conference banquet.