Reaffirming ethical medical research

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
In the aftermath of the recent breakthrough in somatic cell reprogramming that has rendered embryonic stem cell research virtually obsolete, all of us – scientists and non-scientists alike – would do well to reconsider and reaffirm a cardinal principal of Western Civilization: Thou shalt not deliberately kill an innocent human being.
For the past several years, the practitioners of embryonic stem cell research have systematically violated this most basic of moral axioms, by killing human embryos for the purpose of extracting their pluripotent stem cells. Proponents of the procedure held out the promise, which was never fulfilled, that embryonic stem cell research might lead to cures for a variety of disabilities and diseases ranging from spinal cord paralysis to multiple sclerosis.
It happens that we all began life as a human embryo – that is to say, as a tiny, developing human being from fertilization to the end of the first eight weeks of gestational age. The hard and inescapable truth is that in harvesting human embryonic stem cells, researchers inevitably kill the donor human being.
As a proponent of the sanctity of human life, United States President George W. Bush cannot condone such death-dealing medical research, no matter how promising, so he announced in 2001 that his administration would restrict funding for human embryonic stem cell research to 60 already existing stem cell lines “where the life and death decision has already been made.” In response, many critics maligned Bush as a mindless Christian with a heartless lack of compassion for all of the patients who desperately hope for a cure derived from embryonic stem cell research.
Following an extensive debate on this same issue, the Parliament of Canada enacted legislation in 2004 which authorizes medical researchers to harvest human embryonic stem cells from so-called surplus human embryos produced for reproduction in an in vitro fertilization clinic. Given this precedent, one can only wonder what other human beings might next be designated as surplus to Canadian needs and consigned to death for the potential benefit of others.
Meanwhile, in November, two teams of researchers, one led by Shinya Yamanaka in Japan and the other by James Thompson in Wisconsin, confirmed that they have succeeded in reprogramming adult skin cells to behave like pluripotent embryonic stem cells that can be coaxed into growing into all the main tissue types in the body including muscles, neurons and heart cells. Dr. Robert Lanza, one of the foremost authorities on stem cell research, has hailed this achievement as “a tremendous scientific milestone – the biological equivalent of the Wright brothers’ first airplane.”
Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the secretariat for pro-life activities for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was no less enthusiastic: “It’s a win-win,” he exclaimed. “The scientists can get all the benefits they think they might get from embryonic stem cells, and the rest of us can applaud and support it.”
While it sometimes seemed that only theologically orthodox Christians and Jews were concerned about the fundamental ethical dimensions of the debate over embryonic stem cell research, that was not the case. Thompson says he, too, has always had concerns about killing human embryos. He told the New York Times: “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
Yamanaka, a father of two, concurs. Eight years ago, he first looked down a microscope at a human embryo in an in vitro fertilization. In recalling this revelatory experience, he said: “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters. I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”
Thanks mainly to Yamanaka and Thompson, we now know that, indeed, there is a better and easier way to acquire pluripotent human stem cells for medical research. It follows that there is no longer any scientific or medical excuse for continuing with death-dealing, human embryonic stem cell research. The sooner this morally debased line of scientific inquiry is stopped, the better.

Muslim attack on Maclean's

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a flagrant attack on the historic rights of Canadians to freedom of the press, the Canadian Islamic Congress has filed three human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine and its editor-in-chief, Kenneth Whyte, accusing them of spreading “hatred and contempt” for Muslims, by publishing an article by Mark Steyn on October 23, 2006, entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam.”
The article in dispute is an excerpt from Steyn’s best-selling book “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.” Consider the implications: By the logic of the CIC’s attack on Maclean’s magazine, the owners and operators of Canadian libraries and bookstores could also be charged with violating the human rights of Muslims, by making not just Steyn’s article, but his entire book widely available to Canadians throughout the country.
In attacking Maclean’s magazine, the CIC is not acting alone. It has the support of the Ontario Federation of Labour. In a statement backing the CIC, OFL executive vice-president Terry Downey said: “We want to make sure there’s dignity and respect for all individuals in the province.”
That the leaders of the CIC and the OFL betray such contempt for freedom of the press is lamentable, but not altogether surprising. It might be supposed, though, that at least the human rights commissioners of Canada – the purported guardians of our historic rights and freedoms – would summarily reject the CIC’s complaints against Maclean’s.
But not so. At a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Faisal Joseph, CIC legal counsel, confirmed that the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has accepted the CIC’s complaint and scheduled hearings in the case for June 2-6, 2008. Likewise, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has likewise accepted the CIC complaint, while the typically dithering Ontario Human Rights Commission has yet to decide whether it will pursue the matter or not.
What has gone wrong? How could such a gross violation of freedom of the press occur in Canada – a country that used to have one of the best records in the world for respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms?
The problem can be traced to the overweening powers of Canada’s human rights tribunals. Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, underlined the danger last year after the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada filed a human rights complaint against the Western Standard for republishing a set of Danish cartoons that many Muslims found offensive. In an article in the Calgary Herald, Borovoy wrote: “During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create (human rights) commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech.”
Borovoy explained that the restrictions on speech in the codes were intended to apply only to communications that fostered discrimination on such bases as employment or housing. Instead, human rights tribunals have adopted such expansive interpretations of these speech restrictions that a newspaper or magazine could get into trouble for publishing even a truthful article about conflict in the Middle East, Bosnia, Rwanda or elsewhere that is likely to expose at least one of the parties to contempt.
Such considerations evidently mean nothing to Canada’s power-grabbing human rights commissioners and they also have scant regard for the original understanding of the codes they enforce. Otherwise, the British Columbia Tribunal and the Canadian and Ontario human rights commissions would have promptly dismissed the CIC’s complaints against Maclean’s as entirely without merit.
As it is, Maclean’s is standing by its right to freedom of the press. In a forthright statement on the issue, Whyte avowed that he would rather have the magazine go bankrupt than surrender to the CIC’s demand for equal space to respond to Steyn’s lengthy article.
Meanwhile, Tom Flanagan, professor of political science at the University of Calgary and former campaign manager for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has waded into the controversy. He urges: “All who write and speak in the public domain should rally to Mark Steyn’s defence. If so called human rights commissions can be used against him, they can be used against anyone who dares to express an idea worth debating.”

New Life Matters

The Interim
December, 2007

In a remarkable article entitled "New Life Matters" which was published in the National Post on November 6, Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Law, Ethics and Medicine at McGill University, acknowledged: "The fetus is a new human life," and she added: "That matters ethically, and should matter legally."
Quite so. Somerville advanced this argument in the course of discussing criminal assaults on pregnant women. She noted: " In the past three years, at least five pregnant women, along with their babies, have been killed in Canada in violent attacks." Yet in every case, the offender could only be charged with killing the mother. There is no provision in the Criminal Code of Canada prohibiting the deliberate killing or injuring of a baby in the womb.
That does not sit well with most Canadians. In a recent Environics Poll, 72 per cent said they would support legislation making it a separate crime to kill or injure a fetus during a criminal attack on the mother. In this same poll, Canadians were asked: "At what point in human development should the law protect human life?" In response, 34 per cent of the women and 26 per cent of the men said from conception on. Altogether, 62 per cent said the law should protect babies at some time prior to birth.
As it is, thanks to the calamitous 1988 ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in Morgentaler, Canada has no law protecting human life in the womb from abortion. Canada also has no law prohibiting the killing or wounding of a baby in the womb by any means other than abortion, because, in conformity with the policy preference of the Supreme Court of Canada, Parliament has specified in section 223 of the Criminal Code that: "A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother."
One is reminded of the immortal words of Mr. Bumble: "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass – a idiot."
Somerville observed in her article: "Seeing the fetus as an unborn victim of crime … causes us to see the fetus as what it is, an early human life. Those who support abortion must be able to square that fact with their belief that abortion is ethical in certain circumstances."
Somerville counts herself among those who believe that abortion is ethical in certain circumstances. It follows by her own logic, that she must also believe it is ethical in certain circumstances to kill an innocent human being.
That proposition is dead wrong. Our Judeo-Christian civilization is based on the principle: "Thou shalt not kill." And it follows that no circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being either inside or outside the womb.
As a medical ethicist, Somerville should champion the sanctity of all human life, but, like so many of her trendy academic colleagues, she fails to do so. At least, though, she supports an unborn victims of crime act as well as some restrictions on abortion, including the enactment of an informed-consent law stipulating that prior to consenting to an abortion, "the woman must be given information about the mental and physical health risks abortion poses."
Somerville also favours the adoption of a fetal pain awareness act requiring a physician to advise a woman who is contemplating a later-term abortion about scientific evidence indicating that after 20 weeks, an abortion causes the fetus to die "in excruciating pain." Somerville furthermore proposes that under this same law, the woman would "have to be offered anaesthesia for the fetus, which it would be her choice to take or decline."
The mind boggles. How can anyone suggest that the law should allow a mother to refuse anaesthesia to her baby prior to an abortion and thereby condemn the child to death in excruciating pain? Surely, Somerville will promptly reconsider this barbaric suggestion.
In concluding her article, Somerville underlined what should be an obvious truth -- that "having no law [on abortion] is not a neutral stance. It contravenes values that form part of the bedrock of Canadian society."

An egregious case of parental abuse

The London Free Press,
By Rory Leishman

London author Dawn Stefanowicz has published a compelling memoir entitled Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting. In this important book, she presents an open and honest account of her anguishing experiences as a child growing up in a dysfunctional home dominated by a homosexual father and a submissive mother.
The book is well structured and beautifully written. In her acknowledgements, Stefanowicz expresses appreciation for the painstaking assistance of her editor, London Free Press columnist and award-winning playwright, Herman Goodden.
The resulting portrayal of Stefanowicz’s harrowing childhood should give pause to everyone from trendy journalists to know-it-all judges who blithely assume that sexually active homosexuals are no less competent to parent a child than are married heterosexuals. That assumption certainly does not accord with Stefanowicz’s experience. From early childhood, she was painfully aware that her compulsively promiscuous father was rarely available in the home to provide the care and guidance so desperately needed by his three children.
This is not to suggest that Stefanowic’s father was altogether negligent. One summer, he took the entire family to a cottage for a week-long vacation. Once there, however, he promptly disappeared. Stefanowicz, who was then nine years old, relates: “It hasn’t been work that has called him away, but pleasure. The hard truth that all of us struggle to understand is that Dad prefers the company of other men to that of his wife and children.”
Throughout Stefanowicz’s childhood, her father exposed the rest of the family to one transient boyfriend after another. She writes: “Though for a few months at a stretch it might appear Dad was settling into a monogamous relationship with just one other man, appearances were deceiving. In fact, Dad’s sex life was becoming ever more chaotic and reckless. He still had one-night stands with lovers he’d casually bring home any night of the week.”
Dawn Stefanowicz cannot be written off as just an embittered homophobe. To the contrary, she makes clear that, despite everything, she both loved and feared her father. And she also commends his last partner, Ron for standing by her father for 14 years and tending to him “in a tireless and selfless way” during the last agonizing months before he succumbed to AIDS at age 51.
Of course, all too many children have been neglected and abused by philandering heterosexual parents. Could it be, then, that Stefanowicz was just unlucky in having a homosexual father who was exceptionally promiscuous?
Consider the judgment of Mr. Justice James Nevins of the Ontario Court of Justice in Re K and B (1995). In this case, he amended the Ontario Child and Family Services Act to allow for the adoption of children by same sex couples on the ground that homosexuals have an equality right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to adopt children. In support of this policy, Nevins contended: “Despite stereotypical beliefs to the contrary, there is no evidence to support the suggestion that most gay men and lesbians have unstable or dysfunctional relationships.”
That assertion is patently untrue. Sex in America, reputedly the most scientifically rigorous survey of the sexual habits of the people of the United States, found that the average number of lifetime sexual partners is 4 for heterosexuals and 50 for homosexuals, while the percentage of monogamous couples who have been 100 per cent faithful to their spouse or partner is 83 per cent for heterosexuals, but less than two per cent for homosexuals.
Nonetheless, several studies purport to show that homosexual couples are no less competent to nurture children than heterosexual couples. These claims are not credible. Given that very few children raised by a homosexual couple have grown to adulthood, it is impossible to prove the competence of homosexuals as parents.
Meanwhile, there is reason to fear that the anguish experienced by Stefanowicz with a homosexual parent is not uncommon. In a prefatory note to her book, Dr. Michelle Cretella, Chair of the Committee on Sexuality of the American College of Pediatricians in the United States expresses the hope: “May society heed Dawn’s courageous testimony and spare other innocents the suffering she and her siblings sustained. We must refuse to sacrifice our children on the altar of diversity.”

Conservatives succeed in curbing poverty

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Liberals and socialists like to think of themselves as compassionate champions of the poor and the needy, yet over the past 20 years, they have introduced policies that serve only to aggravate and perpetuate the evils of poverty.
Consider, for example, the historical record in Ontario. Between 1986 and 1995, first the Liberal government of former premier David Peterson and then the New Democrat government led by former Premier Bob Rae attempted to alleviate poverty by increasing welfare benefits. The results were disastrous.
John Richards, a professor in the Graduate Public Policy Program at Simon Fraser University, points out in a commentary published by the C. D. Howe Institute that in the 10 years ending in 1995, the percentage of the Ontario population drawing social assistance benefits more than doubled. With a peak of close to 13 per cent of the population relying on the dole in 1994, Ontario had the highest level of welfare dependency in the entire country.
Meanwhile, in Alberta, Ralph Klein’s newly elected Conservative government proceeded to slash welfare benefits and restrict access to the program by persons deemed to be employable. The results were no less dramatic than in Ontario: By 1998, the percentage of the Alberta population relying on welfare had dropped 4.1 percentage points to barely three per cent, the lowest level in the country.
In 1996, the Ontario Progressive Conservative government of former premier Mike Harris followed the Alberta lead, by also cutting benefits and reducing eligibility for employable adults. Within five years, the proportion of welfare dependents among the Ontario population had dropped more than 7 percentage points to less than six per cent.
By comparing changes in welfare dependency in Alberta and Manitoba, whose welfare policies have remained quite steady over the past 20 years, Richards has demonstrated that the Klein reforms had a significant impact in reducing welfare dependency. The impact of the Harris reforms is more difficult to determine, because they came just two years before the Liberal government of former prime minister Jean Chretien introduced the National Child Benefit System, which has also made welfare dependency less attractive, by increasing the incomes of low-income adults who have children and are gainfully employed.
One point is clear: Richards has demonstrated that by acting together to reduce welfare benefits in relation to the after-tax income of workers in low-paying jobs over the past 10 years, the federal and provincial governments have persuaded many potentially employable welfare recipients to move off the dole and into the paid labour force.
Furthermore, as a result of lower rates of welfare dependency and higher rates of employment, there has been a sharp drop in poverty across Canada. Using Statistics Canada’s low-income cutoffs as a poverty measure, Richards notes that the poverty rate for all Canadians declined to 11 per cent in 2005, down from 16 per cent in 1996.
Richards has had a chequered career. As a New Democrat Party member of the Saskatchewan legislature and proponent of the party’s radical Waffle movement in the 1970s, he was one of Canada’s leading left-wing ideologues. Today, as a student of public policy, he has come to understand the perverse consequences of the well-meant anti-poverty policies that he used to advocate.
Would that all Liberals and New Democrats were so enlightened. Alas, many remain wedded to the failed policies of the past. For example, members of the Toronto Task Force on Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults have called upon Ottawa to introduce a negative income tax for low-income adults at an estimated annual cost of $7 billion. As Richards points out, this policy would once again reduce work incentives, increase welfare dependency and foster higher, not lower, poverty rates among employable, low-income adults.
Granted, more should be done for the poorest of the poor in Canada. Richards cites six priorities, including increased assistance for persons with a severe mental illness. Over the past 30 years, successive Liberal, Conservative and New Democrat governments have kicked most of these vulnerable patients out of mental hospitals and abandoned them to fend for themselves in the streets.
That’s shameful. It’s the alleviation of this kind of real poverty that should rank among the top priorities for every federal and provincial government in Canada.

John Tory is not a real Tory

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
According to a recent poll, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader John Tory is trailing badly in his own riding of Don Valley West. For genuine conservatives this is good news.
Let there be no mistaking: Tory is neither a fiscal nor a social conservative. He is leading his nominally conservative party to defeat, by offering voters little more than a slightly watered-down version of the same liberalism espoused by the Ontario Liberals.
Consider the fiscal policies proposed by the two parties. While Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is promising to increase program spending to a whopping $96.6 billion in 2012, up from $82.2 billion this year, Tory says his government would increase spending to $96.3 billion, minus $1.5 billion in unspecified savings and efficiencies.
On the fiscal side, there is only one significant difference: Tory promises to eliminate the Ontario Health Premium Tax, which the McGuinty Liberals introduced, despite having repeatedly promised during the last provincial election that they would not impose any tax increases. Now McGuinty insists that the new health tax must be retained on the ground that the $2.7 billion in annual revenue which it generates is essential to boosting health-care spending and balancing the Ontario budget.
The Liberals and Progressive Conservatives also used to differ over Tory’s promise to extend public funding to all religious schools that agree to abide by the Ontario curriculum. Since the election campaign got underway, McGuinty has been successfully hammering away at this key Tory policy. And now, in the face of impending defeat, Tory has essentially scuttled his own proposal, by promising a free vote on the issue in the next Legislature.
On the most vital issue of all, there is no difference between McGuinty and Tory: Both favour unbridled abortion on demand. In the case of McGuinty, this stance is all the more disgraceful because he professes to know as a Catholic that all human life is sacred.
McGuinty and Tory also support same-sex marriage. However, earlier this year, Tory outdid even McGuinty in bidding for the homophile vote, by having himself declared an honorary “distinguished patron” of the Queer Youth Video Project at Toronto’s annual Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Granted, Tory does not represent all Progressive Conservative candidates. Many, including most of those in the London area, are genuine fiscal and social conservatives. Take, for example, Rob Alder in London North Centre and Jim Chapman in London Fanshawe. In response to an all-candidates’ questionnaire that was compiled and published on the internet by Citizen Impact Canada, Alder and Chapman have both indicated that they strongly oppose government funding for abortion on demand; support full disclosure of all relevant medical information to persons considering an abortion; and would direct all child-care subsidies directly to parents so they can freely choose the best available child care for their family.
Voters who are fed up with runaway government spending, ever-rising taxes, and misguided government policies should search out and vote for candidates like Alder and Chapman who stand the best chance of getting elected in their riding and making a difference for the better in the Ontario Legislature. These same voters should also hope that Tory is soundly defeated, quits politics and clears the way for the selection of a more inspiring leader for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.
In a referendum accompanying Wednesday’s Ontario election, voters will be asked to choose between retaining the province’s existing voting system or adopting a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system that would entail the creation of two classes of MPPs: 90 elected as they are now by a simple plurality in single-member constituencies and another 39 drawn from lists of candidates chosen by the political parties and elected essentially in proportion to each party’s share of the province-wide vote.
With MMP in effect, it would be practically impossible for voters to defeat any politician appointed near the top of the list for one of the major parties. For this reason alone, voters should reject MMP. It would be far better to stick with the existing voting system, despite its flaws, than to adopt a less democratic system of proportional representation that would give an array of party favourites a virtual lock on a seat in the Legislature.

The long-feared perils of public schools

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
In a 19th century classic, the eminent philosopher John Stuart Mill admonished parents not to hand over the education of their children to the state. He warned: “A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.”
Consider, in this respect, the ominous decision of the British Columbia Education Ministry to introduce a radical new course on “social justice” for Grade 12 students in the public schools. Among the legally prescribed “learning outcomes” for the course is the requirement that all students must “describe social injustice based on characteristics including … marital and family status, religion and faith, sex [and] sexual orientation.”
In particular, the ministry’s guidelines suggest that teachers require their students to “analyse specific historical and contemporary examples of injustice in Canada” in relation to such matters as “reproduction rights” for women as well as “marriage, adoption [and] spousal rights” for “people who are LGBT” – that is to say, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. There is even the suggestion that teachers assign their students to “describe limitations on the scope of human rights legislation” in relation to “gender” and “sex-trade workers.”
Imagine that: Perhaps some Grade 12 student in British Columbia will get an “A” this year for a homework paper urging the Supreme Court of Canada to write equality rights for prostitutes and cross-dressing homosexuals into section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Parents all across Canada should beware: Given the steadily deteriorating moral standards throughout our country, a course of twisted propaganda that begins as an option for Grade 12 students in British Columbia could soon end up as compulsory in all public schools.
Not even the publicly funded Catholic schools of Ontario are immune to the moral degradation prevalent in the secular public schools. How otherwise can one explain the decision of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association to have Michelle Landsberg, the former columnist for The Toronto Star and shameless advocate of abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, serve as the keynote speaker at the union’s annual meeting in August?
In every province of Canada, all teachers and principals employed in the public schools, both secular and Catholic, must belong to an authorized teachers’ union. It’s the leaders of these unions together with like-minded ideologues in the provincial education ministries who set the moral tone for the public schools.
To an ever increasing extent, the state is also imposing its prescribed curricula on independent schools. For example, last year, the Quebec Ministry of Education warned independent Christian schools that they must provide their students with a government-approved course in sex education. Meanwhile, during the current election campaign in Ontario, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory is promising to extend funding to independent faith-based schools if they agree to “teach the Ontario curriculum.”
The whole point of an independent school is to teach the curriculum preferred by the parents for their children. The state should not interfere in this process unless there is reason to believe that the school is depriving its students of basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic or serving as a breeding ground for terrorists.
As it is, we Canadians have ignored Mill’s warning about the perils of a general state education. We have allowed most of our schools to come under the control of government bureaucrats and union bosses who exercise a despotism of the mind over the children in their care.
And as Mill predicted, that despotism of the mind is naturally leading to a despotism of the body. Sooner or later, some stalwart Christian in Canada who insists that sexual intercourse should be confined within marriage between a man and a woman will be convicted and fined by a human rights tribunal and, ultimately, jailed by the appellate courts for steadfastly defying the orthodoxy of gay rights as inculcated in our state-run schools.

Medical drama with a message

Mercatornet
By Rory Leishman

Amid the vast wasteland of contemporary television, one of the few features that bears watching is House, a weekly medical drama originating with the Fox Television Network. The series stands out for the intelligence of the scripts, the brilliance of the actors, and, most remarkable of all, occasional flashes of genuine moral insight.
Until House became a popular hit, the star of the show, Hugh Laurie, was best known for his portrayal of Bertie Wooster in television adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse’s hilarious Jeeves and Wooster novels. In House, Laurie plays Dr Gregory House, a brilliant and cynical medical diagnostician modelled on Sherlock Holmes, who presides over a team of young medical residents at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. In each episode, House and his colleagues are presented with a patient whose symptoms have baffled other medical experts. The plots are intricate and intriguing. And the scripts have been commended by medical experts for their accurate portrayal of diagnostic dilemmas.
Correspondingly, the sordid private lives and moral outlooks of the physicians depicted in the series are all too plausible. In one episode, we learn that two of House’s young residents, Dr Allison Cameron and Dr Robert Chase, have taken part in some recreational sex. There is, of course, nothing unusual about such occurrences on television. What’s different about House is that in this instance, as so often in life, the indulgence in casual sex has painful consequences. Chase falls in unrequited love with Cameron. For weeks thereafter, he is a miserable and forlorn lover, while she is annoyed by his discrete but persistent invitations for another date.
The most arresting episode in the House series, entitled "Fetal Position", was first broadcast on April 3. In this case, the patient, Emma Sloan, is a pregnant woman and a famous celebrity photographer. While on a photo shoot, she suffers a stroke. After extensive investigation and several false leads, House and his team conclude that Emma is suffering from a rare condition, Maternal Mirror Syndrome, which designates an illness in the mother that is caused by an abnormality in the foetus. After having established that some undiagnosed problem with the foetus is causing Emma’s liver to fail, House advises her that the only way to save her life is to terminate the pregnancy.
Emma rejects this advice. She is single, 42 years old and childless. Having had several miscarriages and gone through the rigours of in vitro fertilisation, she fears that she might never again have another chance to give birth. Now in the 21st week of pregnancy, she urges House to find some way to keep her and the baby alive for at least another two weeks so the baby can reach the point of viability outside the womb. In exasperation, House warns Emma that she has only two days to live. Still, Emma resolutely refuses to consider an abortion.
In the face of this impasse, Dr Lisa Cuddy, House’s boss, takes over the case. As a single woman who has also been trying to conceive a child, Cuddy empathises with Emma. After further investigation, Cuddy recommends exploratory surgery on the baby in the womb despite the risk that Emma, in her fragile medical condition, might not survive the operation. Nonetheless, Emma readily agrees to the surgery and Cuddy persuades House to perform the dangerous operation. In the middle of the procedure, Emma suffers a serious heart attack. With House poised to cut the umbilical cord with surgical scissors, a measure that is sure to kill the baby and might save the mother, Cuddy quickly intervenes, grabs a defibrillator, warns House to step aside or be electrocuted, and tries to shock Emma’s heart back into a normal rhythm. Emma’s heart responds to the treatment and House continues with the operation.
Then, in one of the most dramatic scenes in contemporary television, the baby reaches a tiny hand up through the open womb and grasps House by the finger. House is momentarily stunned. He continues the operation, finds lesions in the baby’s lungs and removes them. The result is a happy ending: Emma and her baby live. And in the final scene, House, the arch-cynic and proponent of abortion, is depicted later that evening sitting at home in the privacy of his den, staring meditatively at his finger.
This episode in House is based on an actual incident that occurred in 1999 at the Vanderbilt Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee -- one of the leading teaching hospitals and medical research centres in the United States. The patient in this case was Samuel Armas, a 21-week-old baby undergoing corrective surgery for spinal bifida. In a famous photograph taken for USA Today, the tiny hand of Baby Samuel is seen reaching out of the womb and grasping a finger of one of the surgeons.
In mimicking this event, as in so many other ways, House reflects contemporary reality. With a content rating in the United States of TV-14 (suitable for older children), the series is one of the most popular television dramas in North America. While hardened cynics and amoral liberals find a soul-mate in House, others cherish the show as a rare example of intelligent television that occasionally dares to explore the continuing relevance of the universal moral truths revealed in Sacred Scripture and affirmed by reason.
Rory Leishman is a freelance journalist in Canada. He is the author of Against Judicial Activism: The Decline of Freedom and Democracy in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).

Ontario's mediocre public schools

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
The Ontario Liberal Party proclaims in its official policy platform for 2007 that: “Education is our top priority.” More specifically, the Liberals pledge: “We will complete our drive to have 75 per cent of kids meet the provincial standard in reading, writing and math.”
Voters are entitled to regard this Liberal commitment with considerable scepticism. During the 2003 provincial election campaign, the Ontario Liberal Party likewise promised: “Our Excellence for All plan guarantees that within our first mandate, 75 per cent of our students meet or exceed the provincial standard on province-wide tests.”
What, though, do we find? At the end of the Liberals’ first mandate, the province’s Education Quality and Accountability Office reports that only 64 per cent of Grade 6 students passed the provincial standard for reading during the past two years, while in mathematics, only 59 per cent passed this year, down from 61 per cent last year.
However, rather than apologize for this lamentable failure to achieve the Liberals’ supposedly guaranteed 75-per-cent pass rate, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty emphasizes that the province’s elementary students are now achieving higher test scores in reading, writing and math than under the previous Progressive Conservative government. In response, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory points out: “The McGuinty government has been quietly lowering education standards to make the standardized test scores look better.”
Nonetheless, on one point in the educational debate, Tory and McGuinty are agreed: In Tory’s words: “Ontario’s public school system is one of the best in the world.”
This contention is altogether wrong. Ontario public schools are not even the best in Canada. Over the past 25 years, students in Ontario schools have almost always done less well on standard tests of academic achievement than students in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.
Why is that? Lack of funding is not the problem. Ontario spends approximately the same amount per student as Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.
Likewise, Ontario parents cannot be faulted. They rank among the best educated in the entire country.
In one respect, the Ontario education system stands out from its counterparts in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec: namely, in lack of competition. This difference is crucial. In a study of school choice in Canada, the Society for Quality Education notes: “The high-performing provinces – Alberta, BC, and Quebec – have the most school choice … Unless defenders of the status quo in Ontario can refute decades of test results or prove that the children in some other provinces are intrinsically more intelligent than Ontario students, we must conclude that Ontario’s public schools are not teaching students as effectively as the schools in the provinces with more school choice.”
Regardless, the McGuinty Liberals are committed to maintaining the educational status quo. They adamantly oppose any increase in school choice for Ontario parents.
In contrast, the Progressive Conservatives promise to extend public funding to faith-based independent schools. Such a half-measure is insufficient. The government should offer all parents educational vouchers equivalent to the average cost per student in the publicly funded schools.
Some critics oppose educational vouchers on the ground that they could be used to finance schools run by apologists for Islamist radicals, Tamil terrorists and other extremists. But to deal with this threat, it is not necessary to deprive all parents of the right to school choice. Rather, the government should specifically shut down all subversive, hate-mongering schools and associated houses of worship, whether publicly or privately funded.
McGuinty defames the great majority of independent schools in Ontario, by charging them with undermining the province’s “social cohesion.” And in taking this stance, he boasts: “Teachers’ organizations support us.”
That’s hardly surprising. Thanks to the existing funding formula, the province’s strike-prone teachers’ unions have such a stranglehold over the publicly funded schools that they were able to extort a hugely expensive, four-year contract out of the McGuinty Liberal government that includes wage hikes of almost 10 per cent.
Ontario parents have no reason to share the unions’ enthusiasm. As the Society for Quality Education contends, the determination of the Liberals and New Democrats to oppose any initiative to increase school choice and school competition is bound to assure the continuing inferiority of the quality of education in Ontario schools.

From same-sex marriage to polygamy

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

Time and again, the proponents of traditional marriage and the natural family warned that changing the legal definition of marriage to accommodate same-sex couples could also lead to the legalization of polygamy. Former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler disagreed. He insisted that “the practice of polygamy, bigamy and incest are criminal offences in Canada and will continue to be.”

Alas, Cotler’s assurance was worthless, and he knew it. As a former law professor, he understands full well that over the past 20 years, Parliament has abjectly surrendered supreme legislative authority over controversial moral issues such as the legalization of polygamy to the courts.

Neither Cotler nor anyone else can foresee with certainty how the Supreme Court of Canada will deal with polygamy, because most of the judges on that Court have become a law onto themselves: They have no regard either for valid legal enactments or the court’s own precedents.
Richard Peck, a special prosecutor in British Columbia, has underlined the severity of the problem. In a report based on his investigation of allegations of misconduct against members of a Mormon sect in the community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia who practise polygamy as an article of religious belief, he has recommended that the provincial government should ask the courts for an advisory opinion on the current law on polygamy in Canada.
Peck wrote: "The legality of polygamy in Canada has for too long been characterized by uncertainty. The integrity of the legal system suffers from such an impasse.”
Peck is surely right. And the fault lies not with any ambiguity in statute law: Section 293 of the Criminal Code plainly states: “Every one who practises … any form of polygamy … is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”
In an earlier study funded by federal taxpayers and submitted to Cotler, three trendy law professors at Queen’s University took the view that the Supreme Court of Canada would, and should, strike down the legal ban on consensual polygamy as an unjustifiable infringement of the guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion in section 2 of the Charter. In contrast, Peck argues: “There is a substantial body of scholarship supporting the position that polygamy is socially harmful. With great respect to those who have given opinions to the contrary, I believe that s. 293 may well be upheld by the courts as consistent with the Charter’s commitment to religious freedom.”
As for B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal, he opposes the legalization of polygamy. "My disagreement is based on the fact that I don't think Canadians would condone polygamy,” he said. “I think Canadians would find it abhorrent."

Perhaps so, but the judicial activists on the Supreme Court of Canada have no more regard for public opinion than for established law. Regardless of what the great majority of Canadians might prefer, these arrogant judges are all too likely to strike down the ban on polygamy in Canadian law.

In that event, would Oppal call upon Parliament to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution as a means of reinstating the legal ban on polygamy over the objections of the Court? Not likely. And the same goes for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the leaders of every other major federal and provincial party in Canada.

After the Supreme Court of Canada arbitrarily decided in M. v. H., 1999 SCC, to strike down the denial of spousal benefits to same-sex couples under the Ontario Family Law Act, the Ontario Legislature promptly capitulated. Instead of standing up to the Court, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats all colluded in rushing an omnibus bill through the Legislature that conferred spousal benefits upon same-sex couples under not only the Ontario Family Law Act, but some sixty-six other Ontario statutes.

In recent years, judicial activists have imposed everything from abortion on demand to the legalization of the vilest pornography. Voters who oppose these and other immoral judicial enactments, and who wish to revive genuine democracy and the rule of law in Canada, should resolve that from now on, they will only support a candidate, federal or provincial, who can be counted upon to oppose the judicial usurpation of legislative powers.

Customs union the solution for border delays

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The Pont de l’Europe linking Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, used to straddle one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world. Today, cars and trucks whiz across the bridge without stopping: There are no border guards, no customs officials and no immigration officers to impede the free flow of goods and people between France and Germany.

Consider, in contrast, the supposedly longest undefended, border in the world between Canada and the United States. Thanks to tight border security, cars and trucks attempting to cross any of the major border points between these two countries routinely experience delays of an hour or more.

In reaction to the September 11 terrorist attack, the United States immediately closed the border altogether. No traffic was allowed to enter the United States by land, sea or air. And for days after the border was reopened, intensified inspections by United States customs officials caused trucking delays of 12-to-18 hours.

The result was a severe economic blow to employers and workers on both sides of the border. On average, some $1.4 billion worth of goods, services and investment income daily crosses the Canada/United States border. More than 100 million people cross that same border every year.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attack, all cross-border traffic was severely curtailed. Some plants such as those in the automobile sector that depend on just-in-time deliveries across the border had to shut down.

At this week’s summit in Montebello, Quebec, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George Bush discussed plans for keeping the border open during future emergencies. Meanwhile, on the provincial level in Ontario, Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield has disclosed that by the end of this year, her department will begin issuing new, more secure driver’s licences with imbedded citizenship information. She hopes that these licences will meet the requirements of a law enacted by the United States Congress that could require everyone seeking entry into the United States to present a passport or some other secure identification document as soon as next summer.

The introduction of easier documentation, more customs inspectors and other similar measures is all to the good, but cannot eliminate the underlying problem of chronic border costs. It has been estimated that brokerage fees, duties, customs administration and waiting times for shipments across the Canada/United States border routinely cost companies at least $10 billion a year.

Allan Gotlieb, Canadian Ambassador to the United States from 1981 to 1988, has long argued that there is only one sufficient remedy: namely, the elimination of all controls on the border between Canada and the United States. In his view, cars and trucks and goods and passengers should be able to sale across the Bluewater Bridge between Canada and the United States in the same way that traffic freely moves across the Pont de L’Europe between France and Germany.

Gotlieb is not alone in taking this view. In recent studies of cross-border trade, Danielle Goldfarb and William B. P. Robson of the C. D. Howe Institute and Alexander Moens of the Fraser Institute have come to the same conclusion.

Of course, eliminating border controls would be no simple matter. Among other measures, Canada and the United States would first have to harmonize their external tariffs, establish mutually acceptable procedures for preventing terrorists from infiltrating their countries, and reach agreement on common food and safety standards.

To the dismay of our more strident Canadian nationalists, some of these issues were discussed at the Montebello summit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was justifiably dismissive of the alleged threat to Canadian independence. He asked reporters: “Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize jelly beans?”

Instead of relying on half measures, Harper should propose an outright customs union and the eventual elimination of all border controls between Canada and the United States. With solid Canadian support, the idea should meet with a favourable reception in the White House and Congress. It stands to reason that the free and unimpeded flow of people and goods across the border between Canada and the United States would enhance the North American Free Trade Agreement which has proven hugely beneficial in boosting living standards for millions of people in both countries.

Our philanthropic neighbours

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Compared to the people of the United States, we Canadians are far more generous in supporting the poor, the sick, the needy and other worthy causes, right?

Actually, that assumption is completely false. In a recent study of generosity in Canada and the United States, the Fraser Institute found that charitable donations amount to 1.67 per cent of aggregate income in the United States as compared to just 0.72 per cent in Canada.

This is not to suggest that Canadians are unusually stingy. In Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, reports that the people of the United States also give more than twice as much of their income to charity as the British and Dutch, almost three times as much as the French, more than five times as much as the Germans, and more than 10 times as much as the Italians.

As in Canada, so in every country of Western Europe, the percentage of personal income donated to charity is less than half the level in the United States. Why is that? Why are the peoples of Canada and Western Europe so much less generous than the people of the United States?

One prime factor is the extraordinarily high percentage of committed Christians in the United States. In a recent survey of attitudes in the countries of Europe and North America, the Pew Research Centre found that the proportion of the population for whom religion is “very important” amounts to 59 per cent in the United States as compared to just 30 per cent in Canada, 33 per cent in Britain, 27 per cent in Italy and a mere 11 per cent in France.

Brooks has found that there is a strong and specific correlation between religious faith and support for charity. He relates that: “All across Europe, we find that religious citizens are more than twice as likely to volunteer for charities and causes as secularists.”

In the United States, religious people who say they devote “a great deal of effort” to their spiritual lives are 42 percentage points more likely to contribute to charity than secularists who have little or no religious faith. Moreover, religious Americans do not just give to their churches: They are also significantly more likely than secular Americans to donate money and time to non-religious charities such as the United Way.

Brooks has also found a strong and specific correlation between political ideology and charity. In both the United States and Europe, conservatives who believe in limited government are far more likely to make charitable contributions than are liberals who think government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality.

Note the irony: Liberals who support the governmental redistribution of income are apt to deride conservatives as selfish, yet these liberals are far less likely than conservatives to donate their own time and money to help the poor and needy. Of course, there are subsets within both groups: For example, religious liberals are a lot more generous than secular conservatives.

Many of the liberals who give little or nothing to charity attempt to justify their selfishness on the ground that government is more effective than private charity at redistributing income. Perhaps so, but at what cost? When Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party government of Ontario increased welfare benefits in the middle of a recession at the beginning of the 1990s, the predictable result was a crisis of soaring welfare dependency that demoralized thousands of workers and disrupted their families.

Brooks persuasively argues that the combination of relatively small government and high rates of charitable givings has contributed to the extraordinary economic prosperity and relatively high living standards for all income classes in the United States. And he also contends that it’s no coincidence that unlike Canada and Europe, the United States, the world’s most Christian and conservative democracy, has avoided a calamitous drop in birth rates.

Canadians might well meditate upon Brooks’s findings: Perhaps, with more religious conviction and less reliance on big government, we, too, might also become more generous, more prosperous and less reliant on massive levels of immigration to sustain the population.

Recipients disgrace the Order of Canada

The Interim
By Rory Leishman

Governor General Michaelle Jean outraged many Canadians on June 29, by announcing the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes to the Order of Canada. Hawkes is not only the longstanding pastor of Toronto’s Metropolitan Community Church but also one of the foremost gay activists in Canada and a leading proponent of same-sex marriage.

Several critics of the appointment directed their ire at Prime Minister Stephen Harper. That was a mistake. In making appointments to the Order of Canada, the Governor General must act upon the recommendations of an independent advisory council headed by the Chief Justice of Canada.

In addition to the Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada, the advisory council includes five other ex officio members as well as five temporary members who are nominated by the ex officio members of the Council and appointed by the Governor General for a three-year term. Of the 11 persons currently serving on the Advisory Council, the great majority were chosen directly or indirectly by previous Liberal governments.

The appointment of Hawkes is not the only recent controversy engendered by the Order of Canada. In February, Jean conferred the honour on Michele Landsberg, a radical feminist, left-wing journalist and one of the most notorious proponents of abortion on demand in Canada.

Moreover, Jean and the Advisory Committee considered Landsberg worthy to serve not just as an ordinary Member, but as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Four years earlier, Landsberg’s husband, Stephen Lewis, the former leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, was appointed to the highest rank of Companion of the Order of Canada.

In the latest notice of appointments, both former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and former Reform Party leader Preston Manning have also been designated as Companions of the Order of Canada. In Manning’s case, the distinction is well deserved and most exceptional. Over the past 40 years, few of the social activists among the more than 5,000 Canadians who have been appointed to the Order of Canada have been social conservatives. The overwhelming majority have been liberals and left-wingers.

Notably missing from the ranks of the Order of Canada are such distinguished Canadians as Jim Hughes, leader of the Campaign Life Coalition; Gwen Landolt, National Vice-President of RealWomen of Canada; William Gairdner, author, professor, philanthropist and champion of the natural family; and Dr. L. L. (Barrie) deVeber, who, among a long list of distinctions, is President of The Euthanasia Coalition of Ontario, and Founding President of The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research.

It’s appropriate that many recipients of the Order of Canada are ordinary Canadians who have been recognized for “a lifetime of distinguished service in or to a particular community, group or field of activity.” Who, though, could better qualify for such a distinction than Joanne Dieleman, former director of Aid to Women, a crisis-pregnancy centre located next to an abortuary in downtown Toronto?

Despite having eight children of her own and caring for innumerable foster children, Dieleman found the time and energy over the past 25 years to provide counseling, emotional and financial assistance to women troubled by a crisis pregnancy. During 19 of these years, Dieleman served as the unpaid director of Aid to Women. Altogether, she is credited with helping to save the lives of 1,500 babies.

That Dieleman and others like her have not been named to the Order of Canada is scandalous. At the least, the House of Commons Government Operations Committee should bring McLachlin and her colleagues on the Advisory Council to account before an open hearing and grill them on their biased recommendations for Order of Canada appointments. Most especially, members of the Committee should admonish the Advisory Council to stop discriminating against distinguished Canadians who uphold the natural family and the sanctity of human life.

Given the dominance of transgressive liberals and leftists in Parliament, no such hearing is likely any time soon. Regardless, the failure of the Governor General to appoint principled Canadians like Dieleman to the Order of Canada in recognition of their outstanding service will in no way impair their heroic determination to go on fulfilling their duty to do the right as God gives them to see the right.

Worthy candidates for the Order of Canada

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

On June 29, Governor General Michaelle Jean announced the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes to the Order of Canada. He is the pastor of Toronto’s Metropolitan Community Church and one of the foremost proponents of same-sex marriage in Canada.

Earlier this year, Jean also invested Michele Landsberg into the Order of Canada, not as an ordinary Member like Hawkes, but with the higher rank of an Officer. Landsberg is a radical feminist, left-wing journalist and one of the most notorious proponents of abortion on demand in Canada.

Critics of these appointments should direct their ire not at Prime Minister Stephen Harper but at Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is the ex officio head of the advisory council that recommends Order of Canada recipients to the Governor General.

Jean has also recently designated former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and former Reform Party leader Preston Manning as Companions of the Order of Canada. In Manning’s case, the distinction is both well deserved and most exceptional. Over the past 40 years, few of the social activists among the more than 5,000 recipients of the Order of Canada have been social conservatives: The overwhelming majority have been liberals and left-wingers.

Notably missing from the ranks of the Order of Canada are eminent Canadians like Dr. L. L. (Barrie) deVeber, Professor Emeritus in Paediatrics and Oncology at the University of Western Ontario. He is also the former director of the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology program at the Children’s Hospital of Western Ontario.

DeVeber is an internationally recognized pioneer in palliative paediatric dare and currently serves as the President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario. He is also the Founding President of The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, an organization previously known as the Human Life Research Institute that was renamed in his honour in 1996.

As President of Alliance for Life Canada in May, 1975, deVeber presented a petition with more than one million signatures to Parliament, requesting legal protection for the life of the unborn. As a medical researcher, professor, clinician and community volunteer, deVeber ranks among the most accomplished of contemporary Canadians. Yet he holds no rank whatever in the Order of Canada.

Among the many other prominent social conservatives who richly deserve the Order of Canada is Salim Mansur, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. He is internationally renowned as an outspoken Muslim champion of freedom and democracy.

Mansur has frequently appeared on network television and written extensively for newspapers and magazines in Canada and the United States, including National Review, the Middle East Forum and Frontpagemag. He is a founder of the Washington-based Centre for Islamic Pluralism; a member of the academic council for the Centre for Security Policy, also based in Washington, DC; and a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies.

In February, 2006, Mansur teamed up with David Frum for a debate in Doha, Qatar, with two apologists for Hamas that was broadcast internationally on the BBC. Salim acquitted himself well, forthrightly denouncing the anti-Semitism and terrorism of Hamas. For his impartial advocacy of justice for both Arabs and Israelis, Mansur received a “Profile in Courage” award at a national meeting of the American Jewish Congress in Los Angeles in September.

Granted, not everyone admires Mansur. In a letter in November to UWO President Paul Davenport, Mohammed Elmasry, National President of the Canadian Islamic Congress, denounced Mansur for having allegedly published opinion-based columns that “consistently denigrate Islam and Muslims” and “are filled with hate-literature expressions.”

Elmasry is hardly in a position to level such charges. In 2004, he was subjected to a hate-crime investigation, (albeit never charged), by the Halton Regional Police for having stated on the Michael Coren television program that all Israeli citizens over the age of 18 are fair targets for assassination by Palestinian suicide bombers.

Like Mansur, deVeber also has his critics. Nonetheless, as exemplars of the courage, integrity and moral convictions that are essential to the peace, prosperity and very survival of Canada as a free and democratic county, both deVeber and Mansur clearly rank among the distinguished Canadians who eminently deserve the Order of Canada.

McGuinty flouts the Pope

Catholic Insight
By Rory Leishman
In an exchange with reporters on May 15, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty repudiated the admonition of Pope Benedict XVI that Catholic politicians are no less obligated than all other people to uphold the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. "I have a different constituency than does the Pope,” said McGuinty. “I am responsible for representing all kinds of people from all kinds of different backgrounds, different faiths, different cultures, different traditions."
McGuinty added: “There’s one particular aspect of myself that is in common with the Pope … I happen to be Catholic.” Is that right? How can anyone claim to be Catholic while defying the most solemn pronouncements of the Church on fundamental principles of morality?
McGuinty, of course, is not alone in taking this self-serving stance. Numerous other Catholic politicians have done the same. In a press conference on May 9, Pope Benedict singled out the Catholic politicians in Mexico who recently voted to legalize abortion during the first 12 weeks of life. Benedict noted that in approving this law, these legislators had excommunicated themselves, because “the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ.”
In response to this statement, McGuinty has, in effect, accused the Pope of violating the separation of church and state. The charge is groundless. The Pope has never issued any instructions to the legislatures of Mexico, Canada, Ontario or any other jurisdiction. He has simply reminded Catholic politicians of their Christian duty to oppose abortion and uphold the sanctity of human life.
McGuinty presumes to disagree. Notwithstanding the Pope’s instruction, he contends that he has an overriding duty as a politician to pander to the people even when their wishes violate the teaching of the Catholic Church on the most profoundly important moral issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Just how far, though, would McGuinty take this argument? Peter Singer, the notorious professor of ethics at Princeton University, argues that the law should permit a medical doctor to kill a severely handicapped newborn infant at the request of the child’s parents. According to McGuinty’s logic, if the majority of the people of Ontario were to embrace this perverse notion, he would be morally obligated as a political leader also to favour infanticide.
That’s plainly absurd. Surely, there must be some vitally important moral principles that McGuinty would not violate for the purpose of gaining and retaining political power.
On one point, McGuinty is right: He and the Pope have different responsibilities. While the Pope has a duty to expound the fundamental principles of the natural moral law, it’s up to legislators like McGuinty to translate those principles into state laws and public policy.
Instead, McGuinty has become a law unto himself. He flouts the fundamental moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II clearly spelled out the position of the Church on abortion in his definitive encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life). In remarks directed specifically to legislators, John Paul stated: “When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.”
In Canada, only Parliament can outlaw abortion through an amendment to the federal criminal code. However, the provincial legislatures could at least limit the number of abortions by such measures as defunding the death-dealing procedure, introducing parental notification laws and requiring a mother to see an ultrasound recording of her baby in the womb before consenting to an abortion.
What, though, has McGuinty done to curb abortion on demand in Ontario? Absolutely nothing. He has not even made clear his absolute personal opposition to abortion both as a private individual and a public legislator.
That’s shameful. McGuinty might still be a Catholic, but according to no less an authority than Pope Benedict XVI, he and other likewise errant Catholic politicians are not entitled to approach the Eucharist until they sincerely repent for their complicity in the evil of abortion.

Violent dimensions of marital breakdown

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

The shocking death by murder suicide of two London police officers earlier this month has underlined once again that no Canadians are immune to the potentially violent consequences of a breakdown in marital relations. However, the extent of spousal homicide in Canada should not be exaggerated. The fact is that such tragic and deplorable crimes are rare, and getting rarer.

In a study published last year by Statistics Canada, Melanie Kowalskir eported that there were only 74 spousal homicides in all of Canada during 2004. Moreover, the rate of spousal homicides in 2004 was just 4.3 per one million spouses, down 16 per cent from 2000.

While most of the perpetratorswere male, fully 20 per cent were female. Common law spouses are especially at risk. According to Statistics Canada, they comprised just 13 per cent of spousal relationships, yet accounted forno less than 40 per cent of all spousal homicides between 1994 and 2004.

Of course, spousal homicide is only a small, albeit extreme, part of the overall issue of spousal violence. To get an accurate understanding of the full extent of the problem, Statistics Canada conducted a massive General Social Survey (GSS) on Victimization in 1999. This study, the most definitive ever conducted on family violence in Canada, was based on arandom sample of approximately 24,000 Canadian men and women aged 15 and over.

The results were startling. Although government and the mass media concentrated then, as they continue to do now, almost exclusively on spousal violence against women, Statistics Canada found in this study that men are hardly less likely than women to be victims of spousal violence. Specifically, Statistics Canada reports: “Results from the 1999 GSS found that eight per cent of women and seven per cent of men who were married or living common-law experienced some type of spousal violence in the past five years.” A follow-up survey in 2004 produced similar results, although the number of victims had marginally declined by about 47,000 among women and 4,000 among men.

The GSS surveys have also found that men and women vary in the kind of spousal violence they experience. For example, far more men than women say they have been kicked, bitten, hit or slapped by a spouse, whereas far more women than men say they have been beaten, choked or sexually assaulted in a spousal attack.

Women are also more likely than men to use a weapon in a spousal fight. However, given the superior physical strength of men, it’s not surprising that women usually come out the worse in spousal brawls. The 2004 GSS survey found that 13 per cent of the female victims of spousal abuse, compared to only two per cent of the men, said they had sought medical attention for aninjury inflicted in a violent altercation with their spouse.

This same survey also indicated that spousal violence is more than “twice as common among homosexual couples compared with heterosexual couples.” Studies in other countries have come to similar conclusions. In 2003, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported that a representative, cross-sectional survey of men and women in England and Wales had found that “38 per cent of the gay men and 31 per cent of the lesbians admitted having been physically attacked during the preceding five years.”

Altogether, the data from Canada and elsewhere indicate that people living in common law marriages and same-sex unions are far more likely than legally married couples to become embroiled in spousal violence. Why is that?

A large part of the explanation is that common law relationships and same sex unions are much more prone to breakdown than are legally married unions.It is during the period when an intimate sexual relationship is breakingapart that tensions between the couples tend to escalate and the risks of spousal violence become the most acute.

Here, then, is one among many good reasons for Canadians to avoid informal sexual liaisons outside of marriage: There is overwhelming statistical evidence to prove that legally married husbands and wives who fulfil their wedding vows to love and cherish each other in a sexually exclusive relationship are exceedingly unlikely to experience spousal homicide or any other form of domestic violence.

A user-pay solution to traffic congestion

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

Over the past 40 years, London, like every other city in Canada, has been on a road-building spree: Virtually every major artery has been significantlyexpanded, yet the traffic congestion is worse than ever. What can be done?

It’s evident that simply building and expanding ever more roads and streets in growing cities like London will not solve the problem. Experience from around the world suggests that no amount of road construction can keep pace with the rapidly increasing numbers of cars in countries that are blessed with sustained economic growth.

Some environmentalists contend that a hefty increase in gasoline taxes would eliminate traffic congestion, although there is no evidence to support this contention. Throughout Western Europe, many cities are plagued with massive traffic jams, despite modern roads and gasoline taxes that are more than two and three times higher than in Canada.

Many cities in Europe and North America have found that a combination of reduced fares and better service for mass transit can persuade some commuters to abandon their cars, but not nearly enough to end traffic jams. It’s a safe bet that even if mass transit were free, a large proportion of urban commuters would still prefer to travel directly to their homes,workplaces and other destinations by automobile despite the inconvenience of traffic jams.

Commuters are all the more likely to travel by automobile, when it’s not they, themselves, but the entire community that has to pay much of the costs for traffic congestion in the form of higher greenhouse gas emissions as well as expensive delays in moving people and merchandise. Moreover, these costs are not at all trivial. Transport Canada recently estimated that traffic delays cost nine large urban areas more than $3 billion annually.

What, then, can be done? Robert Lindsey, a professor of economics at the University of Alberta, commends the solution advanced by Ken Livingston, the socialist mayor of London, England, who is popularly known as “Red Ken.” In an illuminating commentary for the C. D. Howe Institute entitled “Congestion Relief: Assessing the Case for Road Tolls in Canada,” Lindsey points out that Livingston first invested in additional transit buses during his inaugural term in office and then, in February, 2003, levied a new system of road tolls called the London Congestion Charge on motorists driving into a 21-square kilometer area in the centre of the city between 7:00 am and 6:30 pm on weekdays.

Vehicles entering this core area are identified by cameras like those used on Toronto’s 407 toll road that automatically photographs the licence plates of passing vehicles. This efficient system is a considerable money maker. Under terms of the Greater London Authority Act, all of the revenues generated by the London Congestion Charge must be used to improve the city’s network of roads, streets and facilities for mass transit.

So far, Livingstone’s initiative has proven to be hugely successful. Both traffic congestion and automobile pollution have been considerably reduced. And virtually all in the city have benefited: Everyone who still drives into the heart of the city encounters fewer traffic jams, while all others enjoy the advantages of improved mass transit, including faster bus service on congestion-free roads and streets.

Of course, a system that works for a vast metropolis like London, England, might not be suitable for many smaller cities. However, Lindsey points out in his commentary that over the past 20 years, the Norwegian cities of Bergen and Trondheim – both less than half the size of London, Ontario –have also come up with systems for charging motorists entering into their downtown areas that have been successful in reducing congestion, cutting pollution and raising considerable revenues for improving urban transportation and financing environmental projects.

Lindsey makes a compelling case in his commentary for having Canada’s largest cities -- Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – experiment with roadtolls. Politicians and city engineers in smaller cities like London, Ontario, should also give serious consideration to this idea.

Make the polluter pay is a sound principle. And there is no better way to make car drivers pay for their pollution than through a system of road tolls that are well calculated to cut greenhouse gas emissions and ease traffic congestion.

A significant pro-life judicial victory

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
In a landmark, five-to-four ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart on April 18, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act which the Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003.
In reasons for the majority in Carhart, Mr. Justice Anthony Kennedy described partial-birth abortion (also known as intact dilation and evacuation) as a procedure in which an abortion doctor typically delivers all but the head of a living baby from the womb, before piercing or crushing the baby’s skull so the head can pass through the cervix.
Kennedy agreed with the finding of the United States Congress that: “Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life." On this basis, he upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which makes it is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment for an abortion doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion, unless the procedure is “necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”
The Parliament of Canada should take note: Thanks to the calamitous judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988, Canada is the only democracy in the world that has no law governing abortion. If a mother decides, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants her pre-born baby, it is lawful in Canada for an unscrupulous abortion doctor to kill that baby at any time during the pregnancy right up to just a few seconds before birth.
Granted, late-term abortions are very rare in Canada. But so is infanticide. It makes no sense for the Criminal Code to condemn the deliberate killing of a newborn infant, while doing nothing to curtail late-term abortions.
Carhart represents a small, but significant, step back from the 1973 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade that initiated abortion on demand. In a torturous attempt to justify this decision, the majority of the Court in Roe argued that women have a right to abortion by virtue of the “right to privacy” contained in “penumbras formed by emanations” of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have repudiated Roe. In a concurring opinion in Carhart, they reiterated their view “that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.”
In a future case that deals directly with Roe, Chief Justice John Roberts and Mr. Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. -– both recent appointees of President Bush – are likely also to agree that Roe was wrongly decided, because there is nothing in the plain language or the history of Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits the legislatures of the states from constricting abortion.
Correspondingly, there is nothing in the plain language or the history of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that authorized the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down Canada’s abortion law. In a dissenting opinion in Morgentaler, Mr. Justice William McIntyre persuasively argued that even in the Charter era, it is “for Parliament to pronounce on, and to direct, social policy.”
McIntyre explained: “This is not because Parliament can claim all wisdom and knowledge but simply because Parliament is elected for that purpose in a free democracy and, in addition, has the facilities -- the exposure to public opinion and information -- as well as the political power to make effective its decisions.”
In Morgentaler, McIntyre exercised judicial restraint: He fulfilled his duty as a judge to uphold the law and the Constitution, while leaving legislating to legislators.
Alas, there is today no judge on the Supreme Court of Canada in the McIntyre mould. None can be counted upon to uphold the separation of legislative and judicial powers.
Our judicial rulers in Canada profess to be enlightened and compassionate, yet none shows any disposition to agree with judgment of the United States Supreme Court on the urgent need to curtail at least the horrors of partial-birth abortion. What a shame and what a pity.

Barbaric abortion procedure outlawed

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a landmark, five-to-four ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart on April 18, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act which the Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003.

In reasons for the majority in Carhart, Mr. Justice Anthony Kennedydescribed partial-birth abortion (also known as intact dilation and evacuation) as a procedure in which an abortion doctor typically delivers all but the head of a living baby from the womb, before piercing or crushing the baby’s skull so the head can pass through the cervix.

Kennedy agreed with the finding of the United States Congress that: “Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life." On this basis, he upheld the Partial-BirthAbortion Ban Act, which makes it is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment for an abortion doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion, unless the procedure is “necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”

The Parliament of Canada should take note: Thanks to the calamitous judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988, Canada is the only democracy in the world that has no law governing abortion. If a mother decides, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants her pre-born baby, it is lawful in Canada for an unscrupulous abortion doctor to kill that baby at any time during the pregnancy right up to just a few seconds before birth.

Granted, late-term abortions are very rare in Canada. But so is infanticide. It makes no sense for the Criminal Code to condemn the deliberate killing of a newborn infant, while doing nothing to curtail late-term abortions.

Carhart represents a small step back from the 1973 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade that initiated abortion on demand. In a torturous attempt to justify this ruling, the majority of the Court in Roe argued that women have a right to abortion by virtue of the “right to privacy” contained in “penumbras formed by emanations” of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have repudiated Roe. In a concurring opinion in Carhart, they reiterated their view “that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.”

In a future case that deals directly with Roe, Chief Justice John Roberts and Mr. Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. -– both recent appointees of PresidentBush – are likely also to agree that Roe was wrongly decided, because there is nothing in the plain language or the history of Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibits the legislatures of the statesfrom constricting abortion.

Correspondingly, there is nothing in the plain language or the history of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that authorized the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down Canada’s abortion law. In a dissenting opinion in Morgentaler, Mr. Justice William McIntyre persuasively argued that it is not for the courts, but “for Parliament to pronounce on, and to direct, social policy.”McIntyre explained: “This is not because Parliament can claim all wisdom and knowledge but simply because Parliament is elected for that purpose in a free democracy and, in addition, has the facilities -- the exposure to public opinion and information -- as well as the political power to makeeffective its decisions.”

In Morgentaler, McIntyre exercised judicial restraint: He fulfilled his duty as a judge to uphold the law and the Constitution, while leaving legislating to legislators.

Alas, there is today no judge on the Supreme Court of Canada who can be counted upon to uphold the separation of legislative and judicial powers. While our judicial rulers profess to be enlightened and compassionate, none shows any disposition to agree with judgment of the United States Supreme Court on the urgent need to curtail at least the horrors of partial-birth abortion.

What a shame.

Into their own hands

Mercatornet
By Rory Leishman

“[Liberty] cannot subsist long in any state, unless the administration of common justice be in some degree separated both from the legislative and also from the executive power. Were it joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe.” ~ Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69)

The world’s democracies have come under internal attack by an unlikely foe – rogue members of the judicial establishment. Prior to the 1950s, the great majority of judges in the democracies practised judicial restraint. In conformity with the separation of legislative and judicial powers, they understood that they had a duty to uphold duly enacted statute laws and the constitution as originally understood by elected representatives of the people in the legislative branch of government.
Today, democracies are plagued by judicial activists; that is to say, judges who have no compunction about making radical changes under the guise of judicial interpretation. Far from respecting the exclusive authority of elected legislators to amend laws and constitutions to meet the needs of a changing society, judicial activists have taken this responsibility upon themselves. Thus, judicial activists on the Supreme Court of the United States have amended the laws on evidence in criminal proceedings, abolished centuries-old laws authorizing prayers in the public schools, and defied the express will of Congress, by imposing racial and sexual preferences in hiring and promotion within both the public and private sectors.
Far from respecting the exclusive authority of elected legislators to amend laws and constitutions to meet the needs of a changing society, judicial activists have taken this responsibility upon themselves.
In Canada, judicial activists on the Supreme Court have likewise transformed themselves into a veritable super-legislature. Under the pretence of upholding the Constitution, they have promulgated equality rights for homosexuals, passed judgment on the wisdom of a government decision to authorize the testing of cruise missiles in the wilderness of northern Canada and, in the case that particularly outraged former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, promulgated a set of entirely non-legal, political guidelines for amending the Constitution.
For a striking illustration of the difference between judicial activism and judicial restraint, consider the contrasting majority and minority opinions of the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973. In this calamitous seven-to-two ruling, the majority swept aside long-standing state laws restricting abortion. It did this on the ground of incompatibility with a woman’s “right to privacy”, a right which the Court had found hidden in “penumbras formed by emanations” of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. This ruling was entirely unprecedented. Writing in dissent, Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted: “To reach its result the [majority] has had to find within the scope of the 14th Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment.” In a separate dissent, Justice Byron White likewise charged that in purporting to find a right to abortion hidden in the Constitution, “the Court engages not in constitutional interpretation, but in the unrestrained imposition of its own, extra-constitutional value preferences.”
Three years later, in 1976, much the same abortion issue came before the Supreme Court of Canada, when counsel for a convicted Canadian abortion doctor, Dr Henry Morgentaler, urged the Court to follow the Roe precedent, by finding that Canada’s abortion law violated the rights of women “to life, liberty, [and] security of the person” in section 1 of the Canadian Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court rejected this argument. Chief Justice Bora Laskin, stated: “How foreign to our constitutional traditions, to our constitutional law, and to our conceptions of judicial review was any interference by a Court with the substantive content of legislation”.
In 1988, Morgentaler came back before the Supreme Court of Canada, having again been charged with unlawfully procuring an abortion. This time, his counsel asked the Court to hold that Canada’s law on abortion violated the substantive rights of women in section 7 of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” In a complete turnaround, a majority of the Court agreed with this revisionist argument. In striking contrast to the previous Morgentaler ruling, the Court evaluated the substantive content of Canada’s abortion law, arbitrarily decided that the law was ill advised, and struck it down.
In 1976, the Court exercised judicial restraint: It respected the separation of legislative and judicial powers. In 1988, the Court indulged in judicial activism: It usurped the legislative powers of Parliament to define an abortion law for Canada. As justification for this policy flip-flop, judicial activists contend that the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms mandates judges to second-guess the wisdom of laws that have been duly enacted by Parliament and the provincial legislatures.
However, these judges can cite no persuasive evidence for this claim in either the language or the history of the Charter. In a compelling dissenting opinion in Morgentaler, 1988, Mr Justice William McIntyre wrote: “The solution to this [abortion] question in this country must be left to Parliament. It is for Parliament to pronounce on, and to direct, social policy. This is not because Parliament can claim all wisdom and knowledge but simply because Parliament is elected for that purpose in a free democracy and, in addition, has the facilities -- the exposure to public opinion and information -- as well as the political power to make effective its decisions.”
It’s tragic that the majority of the judges in 1988, did not pay heed to McIntyre. As a result that Canada became then, and remains now, the only democracy in the world that has no law whatsoever to protect the lives of babies in the womb. If a mother decides, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants her pre-born baby, it is lawful in Canada for a doctor to kill that baby at any time during the pregnancy up to a few seconds before birth.
Judicial activism is rampant not only in Canada and the United States, but also in democracies like the Netherlands and Australia that do not have a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights. In the Netherlands, it was the courts, and not the Dutch Parliament, that initially sanctioned physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, by arbitrarily refusing to enforce the ban on euthanasia in article 293 of the Dutch Penal Code. In Australia, judicial activists have likewise usurped legislative power by adopting a "progressive" approach to interpretation of the Australian Constitution. Greg Craven, professor of government and constitutional law at Curtin University, explains:
This is an approach to constitutional interpretation which essentially posits that the High Court should so construe Australia's constituent document as to continually up-date it in line with perceived community and social expectations, rather than according to its tenor or in conformity with the intentions of those who wrote it.This form of judicial activism, which naturally has profound social and political implications, has taken the High Court by storm over the past decade. Thus, the Court cheerfully has invented an implied freedom of political communication (along with other associated freedoms), a freedom which in reality emerges neither from the words of the Constitution themselves, nor from the wildest imaginings of the Founding Fathers.
However, things seem to be changing in the US. Judicial activists are losing their grip. In a remarkable five-to-four ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart on April 18, the Supreme Court broke with a string of abortion judgments going back to Roe, by upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Under the terms of this federal law, it is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment for a doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion (also known as intact dilation and evacuation), in which the doctor typically delivers all but the head of a live baby from the womb, before piercing or crushing the baby’s skull so his or her head can pass through the cervix. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act absolutely forbids recourse to this brutal and gruesome procedure, unless it is “necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury.”
In a concurring opinion in Carhart that was joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas stated: “I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.” While Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, Jr – both Bush appointees ­– refrained from expressing a similar opinion in Carhart, they are proponents of judicial restraint and might well also affirm that Roe has no basis in the Constitution when a directly pertinent case comes back before the Court. Consequently, there is reason to believe that the US Supreme Court might now be just one vote short of having a majority determined to uphold the laws and the Constitution of the United States as originally enacted and understood.
Sir William Blackstone would be pleased.
Rory Leishman is a freelance journalist in Canada. He is the author of Against Judicial Activism: The Decline of Freedom and Democracy in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).

Good News for Pro-Lifers

The Interim
By Rory Leishman
Former prime minister John Diefenbaker was nothing, if not steadfast in his resolve. “When the going gets tough,” he used to exclaim, “the tough get going.”
It’s an adage that Canadian pro-lifers would do well to remember. For those who stand up in Canada and proclaim their support of the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death in Canada, the going is sometimes tough.
In many respects, our pro-life counterparts in the United States are more fortunate. For the past seven years, they have had the outspoken support of President George W. Bush. In proclaiming “National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2007” on January 19, he said: “I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not felt able to offer any such encouragement to pro-lifers in Canada. During the last federal election, he pledged that his government “won't be initiating or supporting abortion legislation, and I'll use whatever influence I have in Parliament to be sure that such a matter doesn't come to a vote."
Harper, alas, has been true to these words. Under his leadership, as for the past 30 years, Parliament has enacted no law whatsoever to curtail abortion.
During this same period, pro-life legislators in the United States have been making significant gains. With the backing of the Bush administration, the United States Congress has enacted the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002," the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003," and the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004."
More than half the state legislatures in the United States have enacted laws prohibiting partial-birth abortions. Granted, these laws have all been struck down by the courts. However, these rulings might themselves soon be overturned. Thanks to the judicial appointments of President Bush, the United States Supreme Court could be just one vote short of having a reliable pro-life majority.
In contrast, there does not appear to be a single pro-lifer among the nine justices currently serving on the Supreme Court of Canada. Our top court is so in thrall to the culture of death that it could soon legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide as well as abortion on demand.
Given all the bad news for the pro-life movement in Canada, what should Canadian pro-lifers do? Give up in despair and retreat into silence? Most certainly not.
We should strive all the harder to speak out and act as best we can in defence of the imperilled lives of the unborn, the sick and the handicapped. And in doing so, we should take heart from some encouraging signs of a rebirth in respect for the sanctity of human life in Canada.
One of those positive signs is the feebleness of Canadians for Choice, a successor to the defunct Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. Over the past two years, Canadians for Choice has managed to publish just two press releases on its meagre website, both deploring the growing strength and achievements of the Canadian pro-life movement.
Specifically, Canadians for Choice laments that “only one in every six hospitals in Canada offers accessible abortion services.” The pro-abortion agency is especially concerned that the death-dealing procedure was made available in only 17 per cent of the hospitals in Ontario during 2006, down from 23 per cent just three years earlier.
Correspondingly, the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), the political arm of the pro-abortion movement, is alarmed over the number of pro-lifers in Parliament. ARCC claims that “at least 63 per cent of Conservative MPs and 21 per cent of Liberal MPs” are publicly pro-life, and warns that the proportion of MPS who would favour a ban on at least partial-birth abortions is probably much higher.
For pro-lifers, this is exceedingly good news. With the Harper Conservatives poised to form a majority government in the next federal election, it’s essential for pro-lifers to put partisanship aside and make a concerted effort to support whichever pro-life candidate in their constituency stands the best chance of getting elected.
Sooner, perhaps, than later, the happy day will come when Canada will once again have a pro-life majority in Parliament.