National Campus Life Network

This post was written for uOttawa Students For Life by uOttawa Students For Life. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

This Thursday, January 24, Stephanie Gray will be presenting The Abortion Debate: A Scientific and Philosophical Review in Ottawa. The event starts at 7:30 pm and is at Dominican College, 96 Empress Avenue. Thanks go to Saint Paul Students for Life for organizing it. This is a great opportunity to hear an experienced speaker lay out the arguments surrounding abortion clearly and cohesively. See you there!

Read the comments at the uOttawa Students For Life website.

By Amber Miller

Amber Miller works for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. This post was originally published by CCBR at unmaskingchoice.ca.  It has been posted here with the permission of CCBR.

Before I understood and appreciated the eminence of having a vision, my days of “pro-life activism” were spent organizing meetings for my high school’s pro-life club. At the time, I considered myself to be a kind of pro-life “leader” in my school. This, of course, was before a speaker asked me: “What do we wish to accomplish as pro-life club?” And: “Were our projects bringing us closer to our goal?” Overwhelmed and embarrassed, I realized that I had spent four years doing projects that I didn’t even know were effective. In addition, I failed to inspire the other students because I didn’t see how I could make a difference outside the tiny parameters of the club I founded.

After graduating from high school, I joined McMaster University’s pro-life club, Lifeline. This group definitely had the structure my high school club had lacked, and thus accomplished more. Last February, Lifeline hosted a debate with Stephanie Gray. Watching her present for the first time, I remember being highly impressed with her professionalism and conviction. I wondered what her “club” was like. This summer, I got the exhilarating opportunity to find out. On the New Abortion Caravan, I realized that in order to EndtheKilling of pre-born children, pro-life organizations (and indeed the movement as a whole) need a unified vision for what we hope to accomplish. It is not enough to simply “be” pro-life. Each of us must make the conscious decision to “do” pro-life, and do it well.

As a former student, I understand the difficulties that come with doing part-time pro-life work while focusing on your studies. From scrambling for school supplies to cramming for exams, school in itself is a full time job. Does that mean that you can’t make positive change in the pro-life movement until you graduate or retire? No! It means that, because you’re time is divided, the time you set aside for pro-life work should be spent doing the most effective projects possible. As you get your club organized for the school year, I challenge you to ask yourself:

• What are our strengths as a club? What are our weaknesses?
• What are our long-term goals?
• What short-term projects will help us accomplish these goals? Are they feesable?
• What other pro-life organizations could we benefit from networking with?
• What challenges have we faced in the past?
• How can we invite and keep committed members this year?

One project I would recommend is “Choice” Chain: a relatively inexpensive, simple to execute project that can be taken virtually anywhere. Perhaps, instead of hosting a 2 hour after-school meeting every month, dedicate your lunch hour to doing “Choice” Chain in front of your school. Show those who are most susceptible to the lie of “choice” what abortion really looks like. Sound scary? So is the mass murder of our generation. If these tactics work (which they certainly do), then why not make the most of them for the greatest impact?

By Rebecca Richmond, NCLN Executive Director

Toronto has grown on me, I’ll concede, but this small town girl still dislikes the big crowds, achingly slow streetcars, and noisy post-game Euro Cup celebrations. Yet, I’ve never worried much about rates of crime and violence in Canada’s biggest city. I usually feel safe; reports of violence seemed to happen far from my part of town – until recently. It started with the gunman opening fire in the Eaton Centre food court. Following close on its heels was the College Street shooting, just across the street from where I frequently get gelato. All of a sudden, violence was too close to home.

A shooting anywhere is horrific. The loss of life anywhere is tragic. Yet, unless we’re connected to the people or place, it can be easy to disregard or ignore what is happening. It always has been. Throughout history, human society has been all too happy to focus on our lives and our problems and ignore the victims of great injustices. From slavery to the Holocaust to domestic abuse, people have looked the other way, allowing evil to destroy innocent lives. In Canada today, a shooting will be front page news, while the slaughter of 100,000 preborn children annually will be called a “woman’s right” and is paid for with our tax dollars.

This slaughter will continue as long as our fellow Canadians continue to ignore and avoid the issue.

So we can’t let them avoid it. And we can’t let them forget the victims.

On campuses and on street corners, the pro-life message must be proclaimed. In classrooms and in offices, abortion must be discussed and debated. In Parliament and in the courts, justice for all human beings must be upheld, regardless of age, development, environment or degree of dependency.

The New Abortion Caravan showed Canadians the truth about abortion and what it does to the most vulnerable and innocent in our society. The staff of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, along with student interns and volunteers, were on sidewalks with Choice Chain, in communities with presentations, on streets with trucks, and in neighbourhoods with postcards throughout the month long tour. They engaged the culture.

I don’t think any pro-lifer would disagree with the need to saturate our culture with the truth about abortion. But with the Caravan now on its way home, we must look to our own lives and activities, whether on campus or in our community: how often do we stand up and speak out? What sacrifices do we make regularly? It is essential that we, too, saturate Canada with the pro-life message so that no one can ignore abortion or pretend that ‘choice’ doesn’t kill.

What will it take to make us realize how close the violence really is to our own lives? Abortion does impact all of us and this violence is occurring in our very own communities. It is time for Canadians of all ages and all walks of life to turn pro-life convictions into pro-life actions. It is time to end abortion.

This post was written for uOttawa Students For Life by uOttawa Students For Life. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

The New Abortion Caravan is now in Ottawa. On Saturday, June 30th, they took graphic images of the reality of abortion and an infant-sized coffin to 24 Sussex Drive in memory of Canada’s millions of aborted children. Look for them near Parliament Hill on Canada Day, and don’t forget to head to their presentation at 7:30pm on Monday, July 2nd at Greenbelt Baptist Church, 839 Shefford Rd, to hear Stephanie Gray and Jonathan Van Maren speak on How We Will End the Killing in Our Lifetime. This Canada Day weekend, let’s commit to working toward making sure all Canadians, big and small, get to enjoy this beautiful country.

Check out Part 2 of the video posted last week on minds being changed:

Read the comments at the uOttawa Students For Life website.

This post was written for uOttawa Students For Life by uOttawa Students For Life. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

A week from today, on July 2nd, the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform’s New Abortion Caravan will be in Ottawa for the last stage of its cross-country trip. Stephanie Gray and Jonathan Van Maren will be giving a talk from 7:30pm – 9:15pm titled “Abortion: How we will EndtheKilling in our Lifetime” at Greenbelt Baptist Church, 839 Shefford Rd. All are welcome at this event that is sure to be highly informative and inspiring!

Check out this video for a taste of what the New Abortion Caravan has been accomplishing:

Read the comments at the uOttawa Students For Life website.

This post was written for uOttawa Students For Life by uOttawa Students For Life. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

Think there ought to be legal protection for preborn babies? The 2nd hour of debate on Motion 312 happens tomorrow, June 7th, and the vote is on on June 13th. See weneedalaw.ca and whenamIhuman.com for simple ways to take action. ***UPDATE: The 2nd hour of debate and vote will take place in September. Keep up your pro-life efforts in the meantime!

Read the comments at the uOttawa Students For Life website.

Coming soon to a neighbourhood near you:

Press release here.

This post was written for uOttawa Students For Life by uOttawa Students For Life. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

Coming soon to a neighbourhood near you:

Press release here.

Read the comments at the uOttawa Students For Life website.

This post was written for University of Toronto Students for Life by Blaise Alleyne. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

We’ve uploaded video from Monday’s debate between Stephanie Gray and Donald Ainslie.

Unlike Stephanie’s opponent at Dalhousie, Ainslie did not argue in favour of infanticide, and in fact argued against the notion that abortion should be a morally trivial matter. Professor Ainslie affirmed that, from the point of conception onwards, there are deep moral issues at stake.

He said in his opening statement:

We think of people as one of a kind, as irreplaceable. When an egg is fertilized there is a biological creature that’s one of a kind; there won’t be another one of those. And so the loss of that person, either spontaneously or… in an abortion, makes the world somewhat less. That’s one thing that the world doesn’t have anymore. . . . [it's] the loss of something with intrinsic value, something that’s irreplaceable, something that won’t be around again.

But Ainslie’s main argument was that, although the moral status of the pre-born is not insignificant, the pre-born doesn’t have the same moral status as you or I until some undefined later point in pregnancy (between conception and birth, which he labelled as two extreme lines to draw). Therefore, he argued that abortion is justified in some circumstances, that all abortion is morally significant but not inherently wrong. He argued that, though the pre-born has intrinsic value, that value might be outweighed by other considerations which justify abortion. Further, he argued that though there may be moral questions involved, the legal questions are separate, and since reasonable people could disagree on the moral question, abortion should be legal. In essence, he affirmed the intrinsic value of the pre-born, but put it on a sliding scale of lesser significance than the intrinsic value of you or I until some undefined point between conception and birth, of a lesser moral status meaning that some abortions are justified and that the law should leave the possibility of abortion open.

In one sense, Ainslie’s argument was weak insofar as he purposefully avoided making any claim of where or why or how the pre-born child would attain a greater moral significance at some arbitrary part along the human continuum of development between conception and birth. This is a classic case for the SLED argument.

But in another sense, I believe his argument is challenging because — despite avoiding the question of why size or level of development (essentially, our age) should determine our value — many people simply agree with this type of argument. They often can’t articulate a reason for it, but they’ll deny that abortion is inherently wrong in the first trimester while being uncomfortable or opposed to it later on, because they believe there is a greater moral significance as the pre-born child gets older.

To respond, I think we must highlight the fact that our age does not increase our value or our moral significance, and make the pre-born child more and more visible, using images of prenatal development that bring to light the undeniable humanity and intrinsic value of the youngest human beings, and images of first trimester abortions that bring into the light the horrible injustice and violence of abortion even at an early stage.

Well, that’s my take. Watch the debate for yourself on YouTube in two parts (an hour each):

Read the comments at the University of Toronto Students for Life website.

By Rebecca Richmond

These comments were made in Toronto by pro-choice activists at a rally, underscoring the importance and the impact of campus pro-life activism.  Watch the clip here.  In their own words: “We can’t let our guard down”

To better appreciate what they’re saying, I have included a transcript (with my own comments and corrections in line).

“They are heating up their end of things.  They are mobilizing wherever they can to challenge pro-choice forces.  And they are trying to do it a lot on campus.”

Is there any better place to discuss and debate controversial issues and challenge the status quo than on university campuses?

“There’s been a lot of stuff at U of T.”

Go U of T Students for Life! Keep up the great work!

“Coming up on March 14th, there’s going to be a debate at the University of Toronto.  The anti-choice is organizing with a woman from this group called the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, I believe it’s called.”

Yes, there will be a debate and I’m looking forward to it!  Stephanie Gray will be presenting the pro-life position and she is the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform .

“Basically it’s the GAP, the Genocide Awareness Project, what they call it.”

The Genocide Awareness Project is one of the educational tools that the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform uses.  However, the debate in question is not GAP but, as the title suggestions, a debate.  A debate is defined as a formal, regulated discussion of an issue with two opposing views presented.  This debate will, as such, present both sides of the issue of abortion: pro-life and pro-choice.

“Which is these big, monstr – you know, giant-sized signs that they display on campuses and that are so offensive and that are just so horrible.”

The signs are offensive and horrible, but that is because they accurately reflect the offensive and horrible reality of abortion.  To quote pro-choice feminist Naomi Wolf: “The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifers’ practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics….[But] how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy.”
-16 Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” The New Republic, 16 October 1996.

“So they’re going to have a debate on campus with a doctor I’ve never heard of, but I think, if people are interested (and we’ll send out an email about that), it’s on March 14th, I think pro-choice supporters should show up en masse and we should support anybody who’s on campus who’s standing up for choice. “

First off, the ‘doctor’ in question is Doctor Ainslie.  The speaker may not have heard of him but he’s certainly more than qualified.  Professor Ainslie is the chair of both the Department of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Graduate Department of Philosophy.  In January he was named principal of University College.  One of his major fields of study is bioethics.

Second, I hope pro-choicers show up with open minds and with respect for the debate.

“Because they’re trying just basically to populate the campus with their activities and their things.”

We’re trying to save lives and change hearts and minds.  Having activities, events and an active presence on campus are means to accomplish our goals.

“For many of us, we thought we had sort of won this battle many years ago and clearly it’s not, it’s not something we can ever let our guard down.”

Clearly.