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Let us learn from the Americans
By Fr. Alphonse de Valk
Issue:

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            On Monday evening, November 9, two days after the seven-hour late-night session of the House of Representatives on Saturday November 7, the word abortion suddenly appeared on CNN’s TV screen for the first time in six months. The same was true for the print media in the US and Canada. Toronto’s Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, National Post and The Sun all were coerced in acknowledging that abortion was now an issue in the struggle around President Obama’s Health Reform project. What happened to bring this so carefully disguised fact out in the open?

 

            Pro-life groups and their media agencies had been reporting everyday for months of the pressure brought to bear on both Senators and House of Representatives while the Democrats’ five separate bills (three in H of R, two in the S) were discussed and amended in their respective Committees.

 

            The pro-lifers kept providing proof from the ever changing, voluminous bills of a thousand and more pages each, that, yes, abortion was in each of the bills despite President Obama’s repeated declaration that no federal funds were to be spent on it, and yes, the homosexual agenda and indeed committees to consider euthanasia for the elderly were all there, in one or other disguise.

 

            In the end, pro-abortion majority leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic, had no other choice but to surrender to the 39 “Blue” Democrats who threatened to desert her and who insisted on having a separate vote before the final roll-call. So the Stupak (D)-Pitts (R) amendment which removed tax funding for abortions passed handily at 240-194 votes. Then the amended House version of the health care legislation passed narrowly late Saturday night, with 220-215 votes. The largest, most powerful opposition to abortion ultimately came from the American Catholic bishops, speaking on behalf of 70 million Catholics. They were prepared to fight the entire legislation on this issue.

 

            As most people know, the completion of health reform is still a long way off: the Senate wants different legislation; the pro-abortionists want abortion back in the final bill; and that final bill has to be a compromise merger between the H and S bills.

 

            In Canada government funding for abortion was slipped in by Justice Minister Turner 40 years ago in Trudeau’s Omnibus Bill of 1969, without any debate whatever. Both these gentlemen were Catholics. But they had no difficulties, even with half of Canada’s population being Catholic. Their bishops at the time were flush with post-Vatican novelties, they had already accepted contraception and divorce legislation as reasonable for non-Catholics, and they were not too interested in doing anything much about the forthcoming abortion legislation other than to note that the Church was opposed. That was then.

 

            Today, most bishops are aware that Catholic beliefs and Catholic culture are under massive attack, in North America as well as Europe. So let us simply begin anew.

 

            With the American battle against paying for abortions with tax payers’ money in mind, and in the news, let Canadians demand from the provinces that they cease financing abortions with health care funds; that they do not start financing In Vitro Fertilization either, as Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario is proposing to do; that they remove contraception and birth control promotion from their budgets; and that all levels of government—federal, provincial, municipal—cancel any further subsidizing of “gay” pride days and the homosexual agenda.

 

            Let us stop being the patsies we have become and start fighting back.

 

            Here are a few other items.

 

Polygamy

 

            In Canada, the B.C. government has referred its case against polygamy to the Court to see if it is constitutional, instead of resolutely following the Criminal Code which prohibits polygamy. We do not want judges to order the federal government to change the Criminal Code because of their individual private opinions that polygamy is O.K. It is not O.K.

 

            The Canada Family Action Coalition suggest we write Justice Minister Rob Nicolson to be prepared to apply Section 33, the “notwithstanding” legislation and overrule any judge who rules that polygamy should be legalized. Send copies of your letters to MPs, Prime Minister Harper and Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff, and to friends. Do not expect immediate results. PM Stephen Harper has not been willing to use Section 33 in past discussion. Let us begin changing his mind and those of his conservative MPs.

 

Euthanasia

 

            The euthanasia debate in Parliament (Francine Lalonde’s bill) has been postponed to December 1 and 2, 2009, enough time to write your MP and explain your opposition. [see also info@familyaction.org November 6, 2009]. A great many Canadians still do not understand the enormous dangers of legalizing euthanasia [see http://www.euthanasiaprevention.on.ca/]

 

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© Copyright 1997-2009 Catholic Insight
    Updated: Dec 15th, 2009 - 18:19:47 

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