a little child shall lead them

"12-Year-Old Stuns Pro-Choice Teacher and School with Pro-Life Presentation"

earth hour - 60 minutes for lights ON!

Sometime today - in the evening when it's dark, I guess - we're encouraged to celebrate Earth Hour by dousing all the lights. This from the great environmental establishment to get us to contemplate, in the dark, how we must reduce our carbon footprint.

I like the National Post's quasi rebellious editorial stance (clicked on front-page link headlined "Earth Hour is a joke" - I like it):

"Once you’ve had enough of sitting in the dark, think about what it means that you can go back to that switch on the wall and put the lights back on. Electric light, now regarded as a banality, was in fact a breakthrough technology that expanded our great-grandparents’ universes radically: It transformed the productivity of businesses and workers, enabled round-the-clock transportation, made the night less terrifying in both imaginative and practical respects, and — let Canadians never forget it — allowed humans to settle the realm of short winter days without being required to basically hibernate.

To renounce that — and all that it represents — even symbolically, is to renounce ourselves."

But even more, I like Joel Johannson's idea of turning on the lights during earth hour in defiance of all the killing that's happening in abortion mills (read mostly public hospitals) throughout Canada:

"My one hour of all-lights-on action represents for me the eleven or twelve pure, innocent, helpless babies being savagely “aborted” on just that hour, on “Earth Hour”, in Canada. (275 will be “aborted” that whole 24-hour day, including the “Earth Hour” of cult darkness.) All will be aborted at taxpayer expense against my conscientious objections, mostly in public hospitals, largely for utterly no reason except convenience and cosmetics and birth control for idiots who have, given the choice, chosen to shirk the highest and most sacred responsibility given to humans, and who as a result will choose to engage in the most disgusting, most egregious act ever thought of by humans.

I call it “human hour”.

Way to go Joel! We're with you!!

U of Calgary "totalitarian regime"?

CALGARY, Alberta, November 19, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The U of C is again attempting to censor student members of the campus pro-life club by threatening them with arrest and sanctions for non-academic misconduct (including the possibility of suspension and expulsion) if they do not comply with an order to turn Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) displays inward. GAP is a graphic exhibit which includes photographs of unborn babies who have been aborted.

U of C lawyer Paul Beke addressed a letter to pro-life club members which said, "The university has the right to control what people do on its private property," and stated that the university wants the display set up so "passersby could avoid the displays if they were to wish."

.... Stephanie Gray of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, commenting on the university's attempt to censor the pro-life club said, "There is an important principle of free expression on campus at stake here. Universities should not be allowed to censor controversial, unpopular or minority viewpoints. If the University of Calgary can censor GAP (on the basis of anonymous complaints from people claiming to be offended), this will have direct implications and consequences for all persons on university campuses throughout Canada (not to mention the state of free expression off-campus)."

"Can you imagine them making this demand (turning the displays inwards) of animal rights activists or those who protest the genocide in Darfur?" Gray asked.

Read entire...

Related:

Calgary Herald - "No good reason to squelch this debate"

World Net Daily "College threatens pro-life students with arrest"

Calgary Campus Pro-Life Club from where you can download pdfs of the threatening letter sent to the club and the club's response.

Center for Bio-Ethical Reform which sponsors the GAP Project.

View the 24 signs which make up a GAP display.

Quotes from people who have viewed the display.


Is there anything the layperson can do about this? Since education is a provincial responsibility, you might want to contact your MLA (if you live in Alberta):


- Search for your Alberta MLA by postal code

- Write the appropriate government minister

If you'd like to write your member of parliament (federal) find out who your MP is and the contact information here.

editorial symposium on morgentaler order of canada appointment

Editorial opinions from across Canada:

National Post:

Conferring this award on Dr. Morgentaler was a mistake - one we expect will be greeted by many long-standing Orderholders returning their medals and pins. One wonders whether the Order of Canada will ever reclaim its former prestige.

***********

Winnipeg Free Press:

Recipients should not be people whose views are anathema to half the country. They should not be the kind of Canadians whose conduct alienates and offends some of the best citizens and institutions in the country.

***********

The Montreal Gazette:

Almost all members of the Order have accomplished things that are uncontroversially worthwhile. . . . By this measure Morgentaler does not qualify.

**********

Regina Leader Post:

. . For its part, the public should consider the possibility that this controversy will so galvanize pro-life groups that they will mount a renewed political offensive to end the public health-care system's coverage of abortion.

Given the new strength of conservative forces in Canadian politics, the eventual outcome is anything but certain.

************

The Calgary Herald:

Anecdotal evidence suggests the advisory council was not unanimous. That the award was made anyway is itself a departure from customary practice, and is suggestive of heated discussions behind closed doors, and the fierce determination of those who insisted on it. They have their victory, and Morgentaler has expressed his satisfaction with it.

As they have returned the A-word to the public agenda, they must now expect those who don't agree with them to resume their own advocacy.

*************

Read the entire article as it appeared in the Vancouver Sun, July 2.

To make a formal request for the termination of Appointment to the Order of Canada of Dr. Henry Morgentaler write:

Ms. Emmanuelle Sajous, Deputy Secretary,
Order of Canada Chancellery, Rideau Hall,
1 Sussex Drive,
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A1

canada honors abortionist

Canada is abuzz with the newest appointment to the Order of Canada. Henry Morgantaler (champion of abortion rights for women) has been selected to receive that honor. Along with thousands of others, I'm outraged -- but not that surprised. After all, abortion has been legal in Canada since 1969. And politicians of every stripe refuse to revisit the issue knowing that this is one issue which still has enough traction to jettison their political futures.

The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR) is attempting to change the public perception of abortion. In a June 30th open letter to Fellow Pro-life Laborers, Stephanie Gray, Executive Director of CCBR says:

To give Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada is simply to be consistent with what's going on in this country....

We can look at Morgentaler's award and blame the selecting committee. We can blame the government and its politicians. We can blame others -- because that's easy. But what's difficult is to blame ourselves....

Know this: abortion advocates have made "choice" look good and as a result that makes pro-lifers look bad. We as pro-lifers ultimately make ourselves look good by exposing the deception of the pro-choce claims. Rather than directly changing what people think of us, we need to change what they think of abortion. The effect of that shift will be a change in their perception of pro-life organizations.

Think of it this way: did social movements in history (such as those led by William Wilberforce, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.) focus on changing how the public perceived their organizations or on how the public perceived the injustices? It was the latter. And when that transformation occurred, people naturally gravitated towards these people and their movements.

CCBR is exposing abortion in a multi-pronged way.

1. With their web site. Study the site and you will begin to understand the horror and immensity of this state-funded 'medical procedure' - even first trimester abortion.

See photographs of what a first trimester fetus looks like. Why as early as seven weeks tiny fingers and toes are discernible.

Watch a video of an actual abortion being performed. (Disturbing images!)

Find out how to get active. (Note: CCBR condemns all abortion-related violence against property or against persons).

Learn how to defend the pro-life view.

Be encouraged by the success CCBR is having - evidenced by the testimonials of dozens of real Canadians (many of them women) who have changed their minds about abortion.

2. CBBR runs public awareness programs like the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) and the Reproductive Choice Campaign (RCC)

Could Dr. Morgantaler's appointment be a blessing in disguise? For once again Canadians are having conversations about abortion. As people who are pro-life, we have a powerful message of which we do not need to be shy. CCBR helps us communicate that message.

As Stephanie Gray says at the end of her open letter, "Abortion may be legal, but you and I have the power to make it unthinkable."

(Thanks to Joyce for forwarding the CCBR open letter to me.)

euthanasia debate

Conjoined-at-the-head twins Tatiana and Krista Hogan-Simms are now seven months old. Should they have been allowed to be born, debate Michael Coren and Dr. Ken Walker (alias Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, who writes a medical column carried by about 500 newspapers).

Michael Coren says "YES":

"...There is an absolute that we have to tackle. Life is either sacred or it is not. If it is, preserve it at all costs. If it is not, we might as well destroy it at will. It is terribly expensive to keep the sick alive and wholly impractical to prolong the life of an ill person who will die anyway.

No civilized person or society, however, considers expense and practicality to be more important than goodness and humanity. If it did, it would immediately wipe out, for example, drug addicts, the homeless and people with AIDS.

Gifford-Jones says "No":

"...They will never walk, joined at the head in such an abnormal position. Physically they are destined for ill health, lying on their backs forever. They will become obese and develop the myriad of diseases that accompany this problem. Their lives will be a living hell.

This should be a wakeup call for us to prevent unimaginable future cruelty of this kind. We are a compassionate nation and we routinely remove children from parents who abuse them. I would ask this question. Is there anyone among us who would want to be born this way or willing to trade places with these conjoined twins?

...Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, believes that children with major deformities of this kind should have life terminated within 28 days of their birth. But in my opinion it would have been a greater kindness to terminate this pregnancy in the early weeks of gestation.

Chilling stuff, coming from a doctor! (The family of the twins thinks so too.) When someone else's parameters about quality of life become the measure of whether we live or die -- are any of us safe?