The President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), Archbishop James Hayes, sent a letter to MPs an Senators on June 15, 1988. The Board of Directors of Campaign Life Coalition, at its Annual General Meeting on June 25, 1988, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, unanimously rejects this letter as unacceptable.
Campaign Life Coalition rejects the abortion options presented to Parliament. They are three different forms of legalizing the killing of unborn babies. All three barter away the rights of the unborn babies for political reasons. We urge all MPs to defeat all three options.
Amendment “A”, ostensibly the most restrictive of the three, may tempt some people as a “pro-life option.” It is anything but that. It perpetuates the risks to the unborn so sorrowfully evident in the 1969 legislation and worse, now also opens the door to abortion as a commercially motivated service.
The accommodating position in support of Amendment “A” as the least objectionable of the three options, taken recently by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), is unacceptable. We remind Canadians that the CCCB does not have any official mandate to teach on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. That mandate rests on the shoulders of each individual bishop in union with the Holy Father in Rome.
Campaign Life Coalition denies that any person can dispose of the rights of anybody, such as the right of unborn babies to life and birth.
We re-affirm that all MPs must uphold truth and may never vote for an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law approving abortion in principle.
We deny the right of any person or group of persons to exonerate the conscience of legislators in voting for the legalization of abortion on the grounds that a “perfect” law is not likely to be passed in the immediate future. Such an exoneration is nothing less than a betrayal of both nation and church.
We call upon all Canadians to stand fast and continue to work for full, legal protection for the unborn, from conception until natural death.
APPROVED by the Board and Annual General Meeting of Campaign Life Coalition, Canada, Charlottetown, P.E.I., this 25th day of June, 1988.
The above statement has been endorsed by Alliance for Life, the umbrella organization for 255 educational pro-life groups across Canada, Charlottetown, P.E.I., June 25, 1988.
