Explaining gestational limits legislation

Sean Murphy gives pro-lifers an excellent explanation of the legal status of abortion in Canada.

He explains why a law to restrict abortion (sometimes called abortion incrementalism) would not create a "right" that did not previously exist.

Why ‘weneedaLAW’ in Canada’s abortion debate

By John Hof

Special to The B.C. Catholic

It has been 42 years since Pierre Elliott Trudeau sent Canada down the path of liberalized abortion laws. As a result we are today the only democratic country on the planet with absolutely NO law on abortion at all.

Any unborn child, at any time during its nine months in the womb, can be aborted for any reason, or no reason at all, and 100 per cent of the costs are picked up by taxpayers.

We are in the dubious company of only North Korea and China when it comes to the status of the children in the womb. I am not at all comfortable in this company.

This shocks and dismays most Canadians, who think something needs to be done. More than 77 per cent believe there needs to be some regulation and restriction on this brutality.

A vast majority believe this can be done by addressingthe problem through legislation: making it illegal to commit abortion after some point in the pregnancy.

Therein lies the problem. We know the unborn are human from the moment of conception, and for that reason should be protected from harm by the laws of a civilized society. But how can we move from having absolutely no law to having complete protection? This is a dilemma I am sure even King Solomon would have had trouble with.

Enter into the discussion weneedaLAW.ca. This new political group announced as their mission “to build a groundswell of support among the Canadian public for federal abortion legislation.”

Some might say we in the pro-life movement have been trying to do this since the Trudeau days.

How have our effortsworked out so far? More than 4 million children have died by abortion since 1969. Maybe, just perhaps, we need to be open to a new strategy.

What makes the weneedaLAW group different? These young people are thesurvivors of abortion. They know that one-quarter of their generation have lost their lives to “choice.”

They want more than just idle words and rhetoric. They want to stop the killing in their lifetime, and they have a strategy to do it.

Naturally they need help and encouragement, and they received that when they gained an endorsement from Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, May 16.

“Canada does need a law, and this initiative is a helpful first step toward correcting an unacceptable legislative void that is unique among democratic nations. I encourage Canadians to support it and pray for its success,”said the archbishop.

There are some who will say that unless a law protects all pre-born children in thewomb it is not good enough. I could not agree more. Unfortunately we live in a day and age where all pre-born children are at risk, and we need to start granting them protection at some point, knowing that ultimately our desire and mandate is to protect them all.

Protecting and saving some may not be “good enough,” but it is far better than having open season on all the unborn. Common sense tells us we need to start somewhere to turn back the tide.

The archbishop understands this; the youth of today understand this. It is high time all of us in the pro-life movement understood this and fell in line with this strategy.

If we don’t, we risk spending the next 40 years on the outside of the political spheres of influence. We will continue to be taken for granted by political parties and their leaders, and by individual members of  Parliament who “refuse to raise the abortion issue.” The unborn will continue to die at the rate of more than 100,000 per year.

Saving some children is not a compromise of our belief that all life is sacred. Politics is the art of the possible. Prudence says that there are opportunities to save some children in Canada.

We need to start somewhere, and the archbishop has just indicated a good place to start taking that “first step” is working with weneedaLAW.ca.

John Hof is the director of Campaign Life Coalition B.C. Reprinted with permission from the author

Abortion law unlikely without change in tactics

All-or-nothing approach by some pro-lifers to force policy against ‘choice’ hasn’t worked

By Paul Ranalli
Special to The B.C. Catholic

Within the community of those who work to promote respect for the innocent unborn, few can claim to match the passion, commitment, and work ethic of Jakki Jeffs, executive director of Alliance For Life.

That said, what are we to make of her latest iteration of the “all-or-nothing” approach to pro-life political action?

Many of us share her unwavering gaze on the goal of “legislated protection of life for every Canadian citizen in or out of the womb.” Ah, but how to get there? How to translate undoubted conviction into concrete achievement?

Sadly, the answer, by any objective standard, would not be to follow the political tactics exhibited over the years by AFL. While these groups do much good work in pro-life education and awareness, their legislative achievements have been an utter failure.

The only thing “amazing” about the “45 years of struggle” by Ms. Jeffs’ stream of the pro-life movement is just how little has been achieved from so much effort.

Any successful social movement allows for the unfettered efforts of many different streams, effecting a sort of “parallel processing,” in engineering terms. A social campaign will not long survive, much less succeed, with the kind of internecine sniping expressed by Ms. Jeffs toward the “we needaLAW” campaign.

Sadly, this is just the latest example of the demoralizing top-down criticism of honest pro-life efforts in this country by those who appear more interested in hegemony than actual political success.

Most pro-lifers would never dream of interfering with the good work of others in the field. However their tactics may differ. Yet some members have never been shy about offering their unsolicited advice, or worse.

A Chinese proverb states that a 1,000-mile journey begins with the first step. Apparently some in the Canadian pro-life movement believe otherwise.

However consider these moments in history: while Mahatma Gandhi demanded freedom for the Indian people from their British colonizers, his pivotal action was marching his supporters to the coast to make salt without paying the salt tax.

While Martin Luther King demanded full personal and political equality for black people in America, a legendary first step was a request to be able to sit in any seat of a city bus in Birmingham, Ala.

Closer to home, a Montreal general practitioner who once demanded unrestricted legal access to abortion for women began to perform abortions one at a time, and he got himself thrown into jail repeatedly.

To some in the pro-life movement these individuals might be seen as betraying the cause, because they attempted to achieve their ultimate goal in incremental steps. They did not exhibit the purity of demanding nothing less than an instantaneous law proclaiming full victory for their cause.

They must have had their tails between their legs, too. After all, what did they ever achieve?

Paul Ranalli is a neurologist from Toronto. Reprinted with permission from the author.