Toronto, Ont. – Feminists celebrated International Women’s Day by dumping a coffin and hundreds of coat hangers on the doorstep of the Campaign Life Coalition office in downtown Toronto. Some 1000 young women carrying banners and chanting such slogans as “Free abortion on demand” participated in the daylong rally.
“If these people (the pro-lifers) had their way, it would be back to coat hangers for poor women,” said Cherie MacDonald, the (latest) spokesperson for the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) as she stood outside the office of the Campaign Life Coalition on Dundas Street East.
According to the March 5 Toronto Star, MacDonald said the protest outside the Campaign Life Coalition office was held “to express our anger over what they’ve been going to us” and to show disdain for the pro-life group’s efforts to “harass women” trying to obtain abortions.
Newfoundland, RU-486 – On January 31, 1989, Dr. Robert Walley addressed the annual Newfoundland Right to Life meeting on the threat of RU-486 – France’s killer pill.
Dr. Walley sees this abortion pill as a major threat to the pro-life cause. Terms such as ‘contragestive’ and ‘postcoital contraceptive’ hide the real character of what is plainly and simply an abortion pill. Its manufacturers are promoting it in third world countries which lack the medical sophistication necessary even to handle its application.
RU-486 has been legalized in France, China and India and will be legalized elsewhere “if people remain uninformed. Walley noted.
(The Interim will bring more information on the pill in future articles.) The meeting elected Mrs. Philomena Rogers as the Association’s new president.
Housing
Much has been written on the increasing number of homeless and hungry people. The increase is usually blamed on faulty housing policies of municipal, provincial of federal governments. American sociologist Dan McMurray decided to study the issue firsthand by joining the homeless himself in a number of American cities over extended periods of time and asking them about the source of their problems. In “Down and Out in America” (Crisis magazine, February 1989), he reports three basic causes:
a) Family breakup: This occurs not only because of divorce but also because of the growing unpopularity of marriage. The poor have nowhere to turn for help. Divorce also hurts poor people more than the well-to-do;
b) De-institutionalization: The mentally handicapped are evicted from hospitals before they are ready, and persons in capable of caring for themselves are not institutionalized.
c) Alcoholism: This disease is on the rise because of the recent decriminalization of public drunkenness, vagrancy and other affronts to civil life. Alcoholism is more prevalent among the young together with an increased use of drugs.
In most cases homelessness is brought on by a combination of the above.
