Years ago, while covering the case of Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer who killed his disabled daughter in cold blood, a columnist observed: “A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.” This incisive observation cuts to the heart of the contradiction [...]
The Quebec National Assembly recessed on Feb. 20 and will not return until March 11. Bill 52, which would legalize euthanasia as “medical aid in dying” in the province, may not come for a vote if an expected provincial election is called before the legislature returns or if the minority Parti Quebecois government falls on the budget vote expected shortly after Members [...]
The Liberal Party of Canada adopted a resolution at the party’s biennial policy convention calling for decriminalization of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide in a vote by show of hands. The resolution said: “Be it resolved that voluntary medically-assisted death be de-criminalized after a public consultation process designed to make recommendations to Parliament with respect to the criteria for access and the appropriate [...]
According to the preamble of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” It follows, therefore, that any distance between its founding principles and its current ones may be measured at a glance: insofar as both God and the rule of law are recognized in Canada, its original [...]
An analysis by blogger Blazing Cat Fur determined that Canada gives more than $1 billion to predominantly Muslim countries where widespread persecution of Christians is occurring. Examining the Statistical Report on International Assistance and cross-referencing it with the Open Doors “World Watch List” of persecution, the blogger found that in 2011-2012, 30 Muslim countries that are rated “extreme” in their persecution of [...]
When the Magi set out on their journey to Bethlehem, their maps marked the borders of a large empire which ruled a world of small gods. The times were full of hunger and blood; slavery and tyranny were not exceptions but the rule; and the lot of human life, in general, was a brevity which could be extended and a misery which [...]
In the days before we went to press, two major abortion-related stories broke in the press. MP Stephen Woodworth (CPC, Kitchener Center) introduced a motion that may affect life issues as it focuses on “legal recognition of the equal worth and dignity of every human being.” In another breaking story, the Canadian Press reported that minutes obtained under the Access to Information [...]
To the 18th century, French encyclopedist, Diderot, is attributed the enlightened observation: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Christ’s immortal Church has its origin in a violent, state-sponsored murder. And, although the actors may change, the same drama plays itself out on the world stage throughout the centuries: from savage [...]
The campaign to defund abortion is going national, with the kickoff of formal Defund Abortion campaigns in Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Manitoba this Fall and Saskatchewan and Quebec next Spring. This Campaign Life Coalition initiative is an incremental effort we can all get behind, and not only pro-lifers. In 2011, The Interim, CLC, and LifeSiteNews.com co-sponsored an Abacus [...]
We ought to be delighted that a recent press release from REAL Women attracted the attention of Canada’s major news outlets; such coverage implies that this organization’s valuable perspective on current issues reached a wider audience. But, of course, when the mainstream media turns its collective attention towards social conservatives, it is usually only to rebuke or misinterpret. In this case, it [...]
The main character in one of Molière’s plays makes a delightful discovery: without knowing it, he had, all of his life, been speaking in prose. A similar revelation occurred to the politicians, pastors, and right-thinking citizens of the 20th-century who learned that they were “pro-life.” What had hitherto been the unspoken conviction of civil society in an unbroken tradition from Hippocrates to [...]
Some pundits and pro-life activists are pointing to the Kermit Gosnell case as evidence of the necessity for a late-term abortion ban because he killed babies, who survived the abortion procedure, by snipping the spine; pro-life Rep. Trent Franks (R, Arizona) invoked Gosnell when he introduced his bill last month in Congress that would ban abortion after 20 weeks. But Pennsylvania [...]
When Jason Collins came out of the closet as the first homosexual athlete in a major North American team sport, he was widely praises as a “hero” and everyone was expected to join in celebrating the accomplishment of publicizing his sexuality. Collins was likened to Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodger who broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947. What [...]
On March 13, a Member of Parliament visited the University of Waterloo to make an address to a group of students. In the middle of his speech, this elected representative was interrupted by a handful of protesters, one of whom was not even a student at the university. But campus police did not intervene during this disruption, so the speech was cancelled [...]
Some nine months after our in-depth examination of the issue of gestational limits to abortion, we continue to receive correspondence on the issue. We don’t want to beat a dead horse because our position is well-known: aside from the semantic and philosophical arguments for or against gestational or other time limits on abortion, The Interim does not think this flawed incremental approach [...]