Every minute of every day one pregnant mother and 18 young children die prematurely. That is 500,000 mothers and 9 million children under the age five die annually, mostly due to preventable causes. Prime Minister Stephen Harper highlighted the issue in January and announced that during the G8 summit to be held in Huntsville, Ont., in June, he would promote an initiative [...]
Liberals insist Canada follow American abortion policy One week after a Liberal motion calling upon the federal government to provide for “the full range of reproductive options” in its international maternal and infant health initiative, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that maternal health includes abortion and contraception during a visit to Canada. During a meeting of G8 foreign [...]
On April 1, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had commended the Roman Catholic Church as “the conscience of the nation.” Given the record of the Brown government, informed readers might well have dismissed the story as an April Fools Day prank. Yet the report was accurate. With a general election impending on May 6, Brown [...]
Notably, social issues absent from negotiations between two left-of-center parties How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot (The Inside Story Behind the Coalition) by Brian Topp (Lorimer, $24.95, 192 pp.) The coalition that almost usurped power from the Conservatives in the fall of 2008 seems like a distant memory in the spring of 2010, but How We Almost Gave the Tories [...]
On April 14, Rod Bruinooge (C - Winnipeg South) tabled Bill C-510, a private member’s bill to amend the Criminal Code of Canada to outlaw coercing women into having an abortion. Bruinooge, the chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, in introducing An Act to Prevent the Coercion of Women to Abortion to the House of Commons, said, “This bill will [...]
Keith Martin (Lib. Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) equates abortion to life: “Why on Earth is the government not giving these women and children the option to choose life that we have in our country.” Martin also says that being pro-life requires supporting abortion: “When it comes to being pro-life, does it not mean enabling women and men to have full access to an [...]
Pro-life Conservative MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East) told The Interim he was furious at being misled about the nature of a parliamentarians’ association he agreed to become a vice-chair for after it was presented to him as a group dedicated to population and development issues, but which turned out to be focused narrowly on abortion and contraception. On March 22, [...]
Campaign Life Coalition’s CLC National News publication was all ready for layout, with a story that praised the Conservatives for holding firm on keeping any facet of “reproductive health” out of the government’s signature policy to improve maternal and infant health in the developing world. On March 17, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon informed the foreign affairs committee that the [...]
On March 23, as The Interim went to press, Canada’s opposition parties sought to require the Conservative government to fund abortion as part of their maternal and child health initiative at the G8 summit this June. Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae tabled a motion that would require “the maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions” to “include the [...]
I’m going to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville,” I told my wife Ileen. “Sarah Palin is going to be the keynote speaker.” “Sarah Palin! She’s terrific. Who’s paying for it?” she asked, suspiciously. “The Tea Party people. The Democratic party recommended me highly.” “The Democratic Party!” she exclaimed. “After what you accidentally did to the Democrats telling the whole world [...]
Michael Ignatieff has famously insisted that the government’s plan to address maternal health and infant mortality include abortion. We cover this story in depth on pages 10-11, but there are two important points. First, nobody in his right mind would equate abortion with maternal health; that much should go without saying, although apparently there are some things only a Harvard professor can [...]
Ignatieff pushes abortion as Harper calls for G8 to help world’s poorest The numbers are staggering. A half-million women die during pregnancy every year. Nine million children in the developing world will die before their fifth birthday. That’s one pregnant mother and 18 children every minute of every day of the year will die prematurely, unnecessarily. Their dire circumstances cry [...]
In November, the House of Representatives passed the Stupak-Pitts amendment (240-194) prohibiting direct or indirect federal taxpayer subsidies for abortion through the comprehensive health care reform bill before the House. The battle then moved to the Senate where senators Robert Casey Jr. (D, Penn.) and Ben Nelson (D, Neb.) fought for a similar amendment in the bill brought forward by [...]
Ontario’s Family Coalition Party is riding a wave of enthusiasm as it prepares to enter 2010 by welcoming its third leader in its 22-year history. Phil Lees, a Hamilton-area educator and municipal family issues activist, was acclaimed to head the party during its leadership convention at the Hamilton Convention Centre on Oct. 24. He succeeds Giuseppi Gori, who took over [...]
Editor’s Note: The Interim asked past winners of Campaign Life Coalition’s Joseph P. Borowski Award (for outstanding pro-life leadership in the political sphere), “What do you foresee in the future for the pro-life movement?” We attempted to contact Roseanne Skoke but they did not return our calls. Rob Merrifield was contacted several times but did not respond. Senator Stanley Haidasz passed away [...]