Life Chain 2009
Record numbers took part; youth were out in force
Record numbers of Hamilton pro-lifers came out for the Life Chain on Sunday, October 4, to proclaim their commitment to uphold the sacredness of life.A total of 636 held banners and prayed at five locations from west to east and on the Mountain.
- At Upper James and Mohawk, 225
- At Highways 20 and 8, 75
- At Fiesta Mall, Stoney Creek, 61.
- At MacMaster, 200
- At Redeemer University College, 75
Below: Redeemer's great pro-life 'army'. See also News In Pictures
Life Chain 2009: Pro-lifers at the busy Upper James and Mohawk Road intersection.
Ancaster Fair booth educated
visitors on pro-life
Hamilton Right to Life drew a steady stream of visitors and passers-by again this year at our booth in the Ancaster Fair, late September.
The main attraction was the display of models of babies developing in the womb. Children in particular were fascinated by them, able to see how they grew in their Mums only a few years before. We planted pro-life seeds in their minds.
Many people lingered without picking up information, but were captivated briefly by the displays. Some approached us to discuss and many of them told us they were pro-life at heart.
Even a nurse who came by was surprised to read about the abortion/breast-cancer link. It just shows there are always opportunities for us to educate.
Luckily for us this year the Fair had moved to a new location and we were in an indoor display area. No more rain and high-winds to contend with. Turn to News in Pictures.
HRTL coffee and dessert evening
Jason Jones: Signs of hope
Abortion is a fatherhood issue too
There are great signs of hope that the evil of abortion will be defeated, Jason Jones said in his lively, entertaining and inspiring talk at Hamilton Right to Life's second annual coffee and dessert evening.
Popular movies and music favour life
Popular culture is tending to the culture of life, he said, including some recent movies:
- Bella, the movie with which he is associated and is promoting, won a People's Choice Award at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Visit http://www.bellahero.com: women who have been planning to abort have changed their minds after seeing this movie.
- Juno -- a young woman changes her mind in an abortion clinic and gives her baby up for adoption.
- Waitress -- a young woman pregnant in a loveless marriage.
- August Rush -- an orphaned musical prodigy looks for his birth parents.
- Jason even mentioned a movie with a strong and offensive sexual theme that had an anti-abortion message.
- Popular music:
- A Kid Rock song with an anti-abortion theme.
- Rap singer Nick Cannon's "Can I Live."
American youth are pro-life
When Jason spoke publicly about abortion in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he said almost no-one he spoke to was pro-life. Now, 70% of Americans under 30 identify themselves as pro-life.
What happened since the early 1990s, he said, was the debate in the U.S. over late-term and partial-birth abortions.
Now, President Obama promised Planned Parenthood he would sign the Freedom Of Choice Act (FOCA) on his first day in office. FOCA would restrict pro-life activities and make it illegal for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to refuse to perform abortions. But, Jason said, a strong stance of the U.S. Catholic bishops, who would close down Catholic hospitals, is the likely reason why the President has not yet signed.
Abortion will be defeated, like Nazism, Communism
In 1941, when Saint Maximilian Kolbe was murdered by the Nazis, who would have thought, Jason asked, that Nazism would be dead by 1945. And who would have thought in 1980 that by the end of the decade Soviet communism would be dead.
The evil of abortion will be defeated also. We have to take the fight as seriously as people did Nazism and Communism.
Everyone is touched by abortion
One in three American women have had surgical abortions. There is no-one who is not affected by abortion. Jason himself was deeply hurt by an abortion, as he described in his talk that he titled "Abortion: It's a fatherhood issue too."
At 16, Jason discovered his girlfriend was pregnant. Rather than being angry, he surprised her by being happy. They planned to have their baby, and he dropped out of school to join the Army to be able to support his new family. But she phoned him at his boot camp and wept as from her very soul to tell him her father had made her have an abortion.
At that moment, he promised her and his aborted baby he would fight abortion, which he did at university, in Hawaii Right to Life and with Human Life International.
A message for students
To the students at the coffee and dessert evening, he had a special message. It's easy to campaign against landmines and for peace, but it takes courage to fight for the culture of life. Speak out in class, he said. He did, and he changed pro-choice students' minds.
The prayer of an atheist
When he made his pledge as a teenager, he was as yet an atheist.
How was it that abortion was unthinkable to a 17-year old atheist, he asked. As an atheist, he prayed"if there is a God" to end abortion.
Now a Catholic, Jason asked: if God could hear the prayer of a teenaged atheist, how much more the prayers of the faithful?
Go to News in Pictures for photos of the coffee and dessert evening
HRTL's bus and bus shelter ad campaign update
City still rejects our poster
(January, 2009) Father Ted Slaman reports that HRTL recently had its mediation session in Toronto with the Human Rights Commission about our advertisements being pulled last year from the City of Hamilton buses and shelters.
"It did not go as we had hoped," Fr. Ted said. "The city was not willing to give us any notice in the paper, nor assure us that the poster would be allowed up again.
"We intend to now go to CBS Outside and Streetseen (who manage the advertising spaces) to put the shelter posters and the bus ads back up. If there is no problem, we may withdraw our human rights complaint. We do have a date to go before the tribunal in July if we wish to proceed. We will discuss this with the board members."
Policy change, but our ad still excluded
The city changed its policy in 2008 to now allow community advocacy types of advertising, as well as commercial product advertising. Advertisements have to be approved by the Canadian Advertising Council, and the city maintains the right to reject any advertising it decides is not in accord with the city's interests. The city manager would make the decision to take down current advertising, or reject advertising even if it was passed by the Canadian Advertising Council.
One of the advertisements, which states "9 months - the length of time abortion is allowed in Canada - no medical reason necessary," was rejected by the Canadian Advertising Council as being misleading. We believe this is a false judgement of this ad. This ad, also available as a postcard, is shown below.
The HRTL board had planned to test this new policy by applying to again advertise in the bus shelters and the back of the buses. Our understanding is that another similar ad was not rejected, so we were to try to advertise with that one.
Prayer and Candlelight Vigil
The light o f life shone in winterDespite cold and snow, a hardy and dedicated group of activists for the culture of life gathered for Hamilton Right to Life's 2nd Annual Prayer and Candlelight Vigil on the evening of January28, first at Canadian Martyrs Church and then along the sidewalk opposite McMaster Hospital.
Pro-life youth
Alongside the HRTL members were Mac students from the University's Lifeline pro-life club, who carried their large banner out on to the street. (Go to News in Pictures to see their banner.)
In a reflection for the vigil, Father Bill Trusz, pastor of Margaret Mary parish, Hamilton, observed that young people are revitalizing the pro-life movement. He said theirs is the generation affected by abortion, since so many of those who would have grown up with them as their contemporaries were not given a chance at life.
Let the light shine
He quoted from the Gospel which calls us to the light of Christ.
Yet, he said, we tend to want to hide the light of our faith "under a bushel" because to let it shine is uncomfortable. It can be especially uncomfortable to let the light of reverence for life to shine in the current culture of death.
However, it is not our light that we must allow to shine, he said. It is the light of Jesus.
He mentioned how he had attended previous vigils in the Kitchener-Waterloo region in the company of a woman in her 80s who, one year, came out within days of having surgery. She was an inspiration of allowing God's light to shine.
The new civil rights movementFather Bill also sp oke of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) newscast of the March for Life in Washington, the day after President Obama's inauguration. Among them were a group of women from Silent No More, bringing to light the truth of the aftermath and regrets of their abortions.
During that TV newscast, Father Bill added, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Dr. Alveda King, was asked if the 200,000 to 300,000 pro-life marchers reminded her of the civil rights marches of her uncle's time. She had said they didn't just remind her of the marches, but that they are part of the same movement, the modern generation of the civil rights movement.
These people show how we are to let the light of Christ shine in our defense of life.
HRTL "on the air"
Hamilton Right to Life Launches a New Radio Ad Campaign
A new radio advertisement for Hamilton Right to Life will air on local stations K-Lite FM, CKOC and Talk 8
20 starting on January 5 and will run to February 8, 2009. The advertisement has the voice of a young woman saying how she was scared when she became pregnant and how afraid she was that she would not still be able to have a life if she had a baby. She says she knows she has a baby in her womb and not just a blob of tissue, and that her friend steered her to a website that helped her make the right decision: Hamiltonrighttolife.org
Father Tom Lynch at the HRTL dinner:
We should disturb people about abortion
We have to be bold and imaginative in our defense of the culture of life, he said.
You can catch all of Father Lynch's presentation on YouTube at http://www.priestsforlifecanada.com/ and follow the link for: "Fr. Tom Lynch, National Director of Priests for Life Canada speaks to Hamilton Right to Life."
Here are just some of the advice he urged on the attendees:
- We need to mobilize our churches. "Christians have by and large forgotten the unborn. . . . Pastors mu st inspire people to speak up."
- Our churches need to be activated and educated -- we absorb culture but we need to be counter culture.
- Behind Father Lynch on th e stage were illustrations of developing life in the womb. We need to show such pictures everywhere, he said, so that people will understand that life in the womb is precious.
- Pictures such as those of aborted babies displayed by the Show the Truth organization make people very uncomfortable because they show the reality of abortion.
- Let's hire unused trucks and mount pictures and signs and park them on private property where the public can see them.
- We have to focus on youth. we need to reach out to them with all the modern tools -- blogs, Twitter. The Federal Government needs to hire 4,500 new people. Most will be young. What a powerful influence young people on fire for life could be on government policy.
- We're all so busy these days that fewer people have time to volunteer. That's a major reason why we have to be motivated and to motivate to create and propagate the culture of life.
Poll reinforces our need to act
Most Canadians do not know abortion is legal through all 9 months
An Angus Reid Strategies poll has put a number on what Hamilton Right To Life members and volunteers have known for years from comments made by members of the public at events such as the Life Chain and the Ancaster Fair: most Canadians do not realize that abortion is legal through the entire nine months of pregnancy.
In the poll, commissioned by human rights organization Signal Hill, 92 per cent of the respondents did not know that, in Canada, abortion can be performed throughout the full nine months of gestation. Most (61 per cent) believed that abortion can be performed legally in only the first three months of pregnancy.
A June, 2008, poll by Angus Reid Strategies found that 46 per cent of Canadians approve of the Canadian
legal status quo, even if—as the more recent poll shows—they do not actually understand what the status quo is.
Women should be given full information
The new poll, conducted in October, 2008, and released in January, also found that respondents overwhelmingly wanted information to be readily available to women contemplating abortion: 95 per cent said all information about all options should be made available to women, and 95 and 96 per cent (respectively) said information about the physical and psychological effects of abortion should be made available.
“Canadian women have a right to know,” said Yvonne Douma, Executive Director of Signal Hill. The BC based organization has a mandate to provide accurate information to the public on human rights and other life issues (http://www.thesignalhill.com).
"Choice is not an absolute"
The poll also found only six per cent supported a woman’s right to choose abortion when the fetus is an undesired gender, usually female.
“Society recognizes that choice is not an absolute,” Yvonne Douma said. “Some choices cannot besupported as is evident with gender selection abortions. But informed consent is vital to making good choices, and we do not see women getting all the information they need when making these life-changing decisions."
These poll results emphasize that we must redouble our efforts to keep the Canadian public informed. In the U.S., meanwhile, President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign the Freedom Of Choice Act (FOCA) that will, if passed by Congress, enshrine the freedom to abort as a woman's "fundamental right." That must not be allowed to influence Canadian thinking.
Hamilton Right to Life's Bus Ad campaign
During 2008, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court's horrendous decision striking down the law on abortion, Hamilton Right to Life launched an advertising campaign. This was to display five advertisements in bus shelters and seven on the backs of buses, using posters produced by LifeCanada. The bus shelter ads were placed, then about two weeks after, two were vandalized, and three people anonymously complained about the ads. Mr. Brian McHattie, Ward 1 City councillor, asked that the ads be pulled. Mr. Hull, the director of Hamilton Street Railway, complied.
Since then the Hamilton Spectator published an article about this event as well as various letters to the editor. Fr. Ted Slaman, then HRTL president, and Johanna Miller both had articles printed in the "Points of View" page.
A blog had been set up by the reporter who had written the initial article in the paper. Of the approximately 80 responses, only a handful were in favour of pulling the ads, and about 75 were speaking out in one form or another for the right to express our point of view.
As of Janaury 31st , 2008, the city had yet to respond to our request to place the ads again. Fr. Slaman had spoken with Mr. Hull, who had asked that a policy be set in place regarding "controversial" community ads, since generally they have placed ads for the usual consumer sales.
We had received good publicity about this, and many people have commented about seeing the articles etc.
Also, the ad itself was printed together with the article a couple of times, once large enough for everyone to be able to see the ad well.
Demand to the Ontario Human Rights Commission
A month or two after this happened, the board decided to present our demand for the right to publish our ads on the bus shelters to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Board member and lawyer Peter Boushy, with Sandra's help, presented the documents. It is presently before the commission.
Meanwhile the city has been very uncommunicative: they never told us directly that our bus shelter ads were going to be taken down (we heard it through the Spectator), and never have they told us about the policy change. We had requested the opportunity to give input to the proposed policy, but we were "brushed aside", never given opportunity to present our thoughts, though the original decision had affected us very directly.
Let us await the outcome, when we will be "forced" to face us directly.
Morgentaler Receives the Order of Canada
The Order of Canada, highest civilian award in Canada, was bestowed upon Henry Morgentaler, on Canada Day in Quebec City.
This is the man who blatantly disobeyed the laws of the land regarding abortion, and who brought his fight right up to the Supreme Court of Canada. There, on January 28, 1988, the decision was made that the law placing some limits on abortion in Canada was unconstitutional.
Canada was left without any criminal law regarding abortion - the only country in the world not to have any law about the killing of unborn infants.
Many pro-life supporters wrote letters to editors and to politicians and to the Governor-General expressing outrage regarding this travesty against our highest award. A petition was also presented to the Governor General, which she refused to accept in person.
A number of previous recipients of the Order of Canda returned their awards in protest.
Poll results support culture of life:
Canadians want women to be informed of health risks of abortion
The fifth annual poll on Canadians' opinions on abortion found that 71 per cent of respondents surveyed by Environics Research Group were in favour of informed-consent laws that would require that women be informed about fetal development and all health risks and complications before they choose to have an abortion. This response has been consistent during the past four years that people were polled about informed-consent laws.The poll was commissioned by LifeCanada, the national educational pro-life group, and includes questions on parental consent for abortion, informed consent and views on tax-funding of abortion.
Almost two-thirds of the 2,021 people responding to the survey support laws to protect human life before birth. Although the number stating that life should be protected from conception has fallen slightly over five years (from 37 per cent in 2002 to 31 per cent in 2006) the number supporting legal protection beyond the third month of pregnancy has increased significantly (from 13 per cent in 2002 to 23 per cent in 2006).
Only three in 10 support the current Canadian policy in which there is no legal protection for human beings at any stage of development before birth.
On the issue of parental consent, 55 per cent of those polled supported a law requiring parental consent for minors under the age of 18 to have an abortion. Currently in Canada there is no parental consent requirement. Girls as young as 13 and 14 can obtain abortions without parental consent.
Canadian taxpayers pay for most abortions in Canada, LifeCanada's President Joanne Byfield said, yet two-thirds of those polled said that abortions should either be funded privately (18 per cent) or funded only in medical emergencies (48 per cent).
"Why do our governments insist on using scarce health care dollars to pay for this personal choice?" she asked.
The results to the annual poll have differed little for five years in a row.
"We pose the questions in terms of rights," she said. "We're looking at the right to life, enshrined in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; the rights of women to be informed about the procedure they are about to undergo; the rights of families to protect their children; and the rights of taxpayers to decide how their money should be spent.
"Canadian politicians, federally and provincially, avoid dealing with this issue. We urge them to read these results, listen to Canadians and craft laws and policies that reflect the wishes of the people."
Canadian Physicians for Life warning:
Avoid vaccines from aborted babies
Canadian Physicians for Life has become aware that some viral vaccines were developed from tissue from aborted fetuses. (A list of some of those vaccines can be found on CPL's website.) This presents a serious moral dilemma to those who might view the use of such abortion-related vaccines as a form of cooperation with an immoral act, but who are also aware of the dire health consequences of failing to immunize themselves or their children."It has been brought to our attention that legally approved and effective vaccines are available which have been created from sources other than abortion-derived fetal cell lines," CPL writes in a recent release. "Specifically, the infant vaccine, PENTACEL (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio and Haemophilus B), contains the MRC-5 fetal cell line while PEDIACEL (same diseases) does not. Both vaccines are Health Canada approved but only PENTACEL is marketed in Canada. PENTACEL is publicly funded in the regular childhood vaccination programs.
"For PEDIACEL to be available to Canadians requires the recognition of these concerns by Health Canada and, most importantly, the provincial vaccine acquisition programs, and it is this recognition and assistance which Canadian Physicians for Life is requesting at this time.
"First, we are asking provincial governments to provide a choice between these two vaccines for parents who are morally troubled by the origins of the PENTACEL vaccine. In terms of practical action, the current contract for PENTACEL (at least in the province of Ontario) expires in March 2007. Finally, as physicians concerned with both the health and moral concerns of our patients, we request government intervention to ensure the supply of vaccines from non-objectionable sources."
CPL adds: "Among all the medical advances of the past two centuries, immunization may have brought the greatest improvement to our health and life expectancy. It provides the best possible protection against some very serious diseases. Canadian Physicians for Life recommends that all adults and children be vaccinated according to the current national and provincial immunization guidelines.
"Some vaccines protect against bacteria, and some against viruses."