Canada
During the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership debate in London, Monte McNaughton repeatedly brought up the issue of parental rights in education, referring to “parents as first educators.” Christine Elliott stressed the party should be “fiscally conservative and socially compassionate” … Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced that Ontario would enforce tough new federal strictures against prostitution after musing that the province would ignore the Conservative government’s Protection of Communities And Exploited Persons Act which became law in December … Ontario’s Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi announced that transgender inmates will now be housed according to their self-identified gender and not based on physical sexual traits. The new policy means that self-identifying transgender inmates will be referred to by their preferred name, integrated into the general population and not isolated, get to keep personal items – including prosthetics – necessary to express their gender, and have the option of choosing to be searched in frisk searches by a male or female correctional officer or both. Naqvi said, “our number one priority is to protect the human rights of the inmates, but also the safety and security of inmates and our correctional staff” … The Canada Border Services Agency banned the Russian anti-homosexuality film Sodom claiming it is “hate literature.” A copy of the film was seized at the Calgary airport last year from Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality as he was on his way to a conference being staged by Bill Whatcott, a Saskatchewan crusader for Christian sexual morality. John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom said the seizure was anti-democratic: “If you truly want to show that you understand freedom of expression, then you are going to tolerate statements that are anti-gay, anti-Islam, and anti-abortion.”
United States
During a Jan. 22 press briefing, Nancy Pelosi, the pro-abortion Democratic House leader, said she had “great standing” to talk about and promote abortion because she is “Catholic” and “mother of five” children and therefore “knew more about having babies than the pope.” During her scrum with reporters, Pelosi twice refused to say whether the unborn child at 20 weeks gestation was a human being … Former New York governor Mario Cuomo passed away at the age of 82. Cuomo popularized the political phrase “personally pro-life but …” which was used by liberal politicians to justify tolerating and even promoting abortion-on-demand. David Dooley pointed out in The Interim at the time (1984) that Cuomo and others who use this line of thinking demean their own faith. The late Bishop Austin Vaughan, an auxiliary bishop of the Catholic archdiocese of New York, warned Cuomo that his position on abortion threatened his soul. … Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R) told the Rally for Life in Topeka that he would sign the newly proposed Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act … In a guest column in the Wall Street Journal, Paul McHugh, a retired physician at Johns Hopkins, warned doctors not to support euthanasia: “Once doctors agree to assist a person’s suicide, ultimately they find it difficult to reject anyone who seeks their services. The killing of patients by doctors spreads to encompass many treatable but mentally troubled individuals, as seen today in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.”
International
In first-ever speech to the Russian Parliament, the Duma, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called for total abortion ban. He said, “The argument that a ban would cause an increase in the number of underground abortions is pure nonsense. People have to pay money for these operations and our task is to make the price of a legal infanticide the same as of the illegal one. Taxpayers must not pay for this.” He called for increased material support for both young couples having children and the medical community to create incentives to care about all human life. On the website of the Moscow Patriarchate, Patriarch Kirill has proposed a series of measures, including asking that the Ministry of Health and Social Development make “preservation of pregnancy a priority task for the doctor” and ban “medical initiatives on its interruption.” … The Lancet, a medical journal, argued for worldwide decriminalization of “sex work” to address the prevalence of HIV among prostitute. It said that increased access to contraception and abortion services would make prostitution safer. Richard Horton, Lancet’s editor, said “sex work is part of the human story” therefore countries should be “accepting and embracing” prostitution. One article in the series advocated recognizing the “human rights” of prostitutes and elimination of “perceived morality concerns” surrounding sex work.