National Campus Life Network

This post was written for Youth Protecting Youth by YPY Info Officer. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

At the beginning of this school year, we talked about what was new with YPY. So what have we accomplished since then? As with all pro-life activism that engages people, the results of our work can’t fully be determined or quantified. Who knows how many students reconsidered their position on abortion after reading a pamphlet, seeing a picture, or talking with someone who treated them with respect? But it can be useful to review quantifiable activities, so here’s this year in review:

Activities

Club members gave about 25 man/woman-hours of “Choice” Chain and pamphleting, handing out over 2700 pamphlets. They chalked 20 chalkboards for about 20 weeks during the semesters. The club added more than 30 new people to the regular email list, and our president gave four presentations to classes. We held three apologetics workshops which were attended by all active members at one point or another.

Events

Events included two successful open houses with a total of about 30 curious students attending and many good conversations. Over 130 bought tickets for the Gala fundraiser. The club sent a representative to the NCLN (National Campus Life Network) symposium in Toronto. YPY’s annual $1000 bursary was provided to a young mother from Campbell River. The club showed the documentary “It’s a Girl,” which addresses the issue of gendercide.

Online

We also held a blog-writing workshop to equip our members to contribute to the blog. We published 12 (now 13) blog articles since September 2012. The blog received over 5000 views in this time, making for a total of over 28,000 views. 237 facebook users “like” our page and if every one of them posted an article, over 92,000 people could see it.

In conclusion, we’d like to thank everyone who’s contributed to this year’s success, especially the executive members. We would love to have you join YPY in our life-saving efforts. With your help, next year will be even better.

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

This post was written for Youth Protecting Youth by YPY Info Officer. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

“Choice” Chain is a pro-life activism activity that involves engaging passersby in dialogue while holding photographs that show what abortion does to a baby. I participate in Choice Chain in hopes that fewer abortions will happen as a result. Sometimes people assume that condemning women who have had abortions is the goal, but it’s not at all. Showing the pictures is an effective way to spread the life-saving truth: abortion kills a human being. I’ve seen tons of positive interactions and changed minds; I’ve even met a child who was saved from abortion when his mother saw the signs.

But during “Choice” Chain a few weeks ago, it was my turn to learn about abortion. A few women have told me that they had abortions. When that happens I try to listen compassionately to their stories, which are tragically so common. But as soon as we began the display on that Saturday, I got the chance to learn from someone with a different kind of experience.

At first I assumed the man who approached me was being rude. He pointed to the picture of the aborted fetus: “I’ve cut up thousands of those.” But I sensed a sincerity that belied his words. “What do you mean?” I asked. He is a pathologist at Victoria General Hospital. He had indeed cut pieces from thousands of aborted babies for samples. I didn’t ask his name, and I don’t think he would’ve given it. He thought we might be interested to hear what he had to say because we’re not likely to get such information otherwise. He was right. I’ve known for a while that approximately 300 abortions happen every day in Canada but I’d never heard about it firsthand from someone who deals with the aftermath.

“Some are quite a bit older than that” he said, pointing to a sign showing an 8-week old aborted fetus. He had obtained tissue from thousands of dead babies every year, some of which were at least as old as the 2^nd-trimester neonatal preemies that, instead of being aborted, were treated with delicate care. He described gently and carefully obtaining blood from preemies that could just as easily have been aborted, sampled and thrown in the trash. He said “I used to be more on the pro-choice side, but seeing so many of these makes you think about it.” When you take samples from aborted fetuses you can see the body parts. It makes you think twice “when someone drops a jar and the abortion falls on the floor and blood goes everywhere and everybody can see what it is.” [this is a graphic video showing "what it is"]

He thought we’d be interested to know just who gets abortions. In one sense, the age of the woman doesn’t matter; situations surrounding abortions are often complicated, but every innocent death is tragic. Apparently it’s most common for young women to have abortions. Not surprising. But then women from 20 to about 35 don’t get many. The 2^nd most common group is women of about 35 and up. That was surprising. He suggested they’d had enough kids and didn’t want larger families, or they didn’t want the higher risk of complications associated with pregnancies near the end of childbearing years.

He really didn’t like how “just anybody can get an abortion for any reason” but he didn’t say he was pro-life. He was adamant to discuss it with “ideology aside.” He didn’t get behind religious or other “ideological” oppositions to abortion. Instead he told me that he just wants people to know the truth. I should’ve pointed out that many of us who call ourselves “pro-life” have the same straightforward, untwisted aim.

He said that everyone is sent down to Victoria to get abortions; none are performed up-island. He attributed this to pro-life activism in some communities on Vancouver Island. I’m not sure if that’s common knowledge or not but I hope this is encouraging to those activists. He also noted that whenever a medical study comes out that is not in favour of abortion, even in the interest of the health of the mother, it is shouted down. “Ideology aside” again, he was frustrated that, as a medical person, you can’t even discuss these possibilities.

He thanked us for being out on the street and said that people need to see the pictures. I offered him a business card for “Silent No More,” thinking that their healing mission might help him. He said he didn’t need it – “I’m fine.” Despite his confidence, I think he wished, with some bitterness, that everyone knew what he did for a living. He seemed easygoing, confident and friendly. Looking back now I wonder why he opened our conversation so candidly: “I’ve cut up thousands of those.” What do you say to that? I first thought he was trying to get a rise out of me so I was calm. But maybe outrage would have been better – maybe outrage would have validated his experience. Because abortion is truly outrageous, and this man knew it firsthand.

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

This post was written for Youth Protecting Youth by YPY Info Officer. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

Monday, January 28, 2013 marks the 25^th anniversary of the Morgentaler v. The Queen decision, in which the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s last law restricting abortions, effectively declaring open season on pre-born children and leaving them to defend themselves. Since that time abortion has been fully legal in Canada through all nine months of pregnancy, from fertilization until the child “has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother”. But who has been paying for what the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada calls “reproductive freedom”, and what has it cost them?

Pe-born children have been paying the price for this supposed fundamental human right. According to Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, at least 2,263,482 pre-born babies have paid for our “right to choose” with their lives since the Morgentaler decision. Many more deaths are unaccounted for, due to lack of reporting. Because of their age and level of development, they don’t have a voice of their own, and their silent screams have gone unheeded; the horrific images of their broken bodies are their last cry for us to stop paying the bills with their lives. But even with all of their blood, there have been expenses yet unpaid, and others have been forced to cover the costs that remain.

Next on the list of people who have paid for the consequences of this court decision are the women and men who have been affected by abortion. Though organizations such as Silent No More Awareness Campaign have been established to support those who now regret their abortions, countless women and men have been forced to silently endure the pain of realizing what abortion meant for their pre-born child.

Lastly, we as taxpayers have by and large been the ones to front the money for abortions in our respective provinces. With the exception of Prince Edward Island, where abortions are not performed, Canada’s provincial governments pay for abortions with taxpayers’ money, and it is conservatively estimated that $80 million is spent each year to pay for the one hundred thousand or so abortions that are performed nation-wide annually.

Bearing these things in mind, let us critically consider whether or not the purchase has been worth its price, because the cost will keep rising unless we change things, and we know who will have to keep paying the tab.

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

This post was written for University of Toronto Students for LifeUniversity of Toronto Students for Life by matthewcram412. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

Hey guys, first of all Happy Holidays from your friends here at UTSFL. Now onto the main topic: a few weeks ago the always brilliant Margaret Summerville made a speech here at U of T on the subject of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, a topic which is of great relevance to us today because, at this moment as many of you know, the Supreme Court is reviewing a motion from British Columbia about whether to revisit legalizing euthanasia, on a flimsy legal technicality that would overrule an earlier 1993 case which held that Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia were constitutionally illegal. Dr. Summerville also mentioned similar cases going on right now in Belgium where they, after legalizing euthanasia a number of years ago, are at this moment in discussion about whether to allow euthanasia in cases of minors below the age of 18, an extremely troubling concept I will get to later on.

However, as I was doing my research for this topic, I found that euthanasia was not a debate that was limited to Canada and Belgium. A brief Google search revealed a powerfully worded article from New Zealand condemning euthanasia on demand (citing, who else, Margaret Summerville) in regards to a euthanasia on demand bill proposed by an MP; a report from the French government’s president Francois Hollande recommending that French law continue to prohibit legal euthanasia, and a newsbyte from  Ireland indicating a grassroots movements to challenge those countries’ laws on the subject, and that was without even scrolling to the bottom of the page! It seems that all over the world people and governments are grappling with the issue of whether or not doctors, or anyone else for that matter, have the right to kill other people, and whether or not that decision should be effected by whether they wanted to die or not.

It seems ironic therefore that with all the worldwide debate on this issue that I found the best articulation of my feelings on the issue right here at home in the pages of the Globe and Mail from an article written 2 months ago (I know I am seriously behind on blogging but bear with me). Okay it wasn’t the Globe and Mail itself, but rather the Globe’s recitation of the argument made by the government in regards to the British Colombia case. In it, the government argues the case for the slippery slope that could lead people to taking their own lives in a moment of weakness. We often hear the slippery slope argument maligned in our society, and indeed it is often used irresponsibly, but in this situation, in my mind at least, it rings true.

After all, we all remember those people who said (and still do say) that abortion would, once legalized, be used in the vast majority of cases for pregnancies that resulted from rape or incest or those pregnancies that risked the mother’s life, despite the fact that these cases represent the tiniest fraction of the actual uses of abortion. These cases appeal to the sense of compassion that we have, and indeed should have, when we are confronted with cases of people in awful situations that they didn’t ask for, trying to do the best they can. We as pro-lifers know the arguments, we know that the life that is about to be taken is valuable, that an innocent child should not held accountable for the crimes of its father, and that abortion will not undo the incredible trauma the women experiences, but will only make another victim. But for all of this, we should have a hard time being strong in our convictions for that person, just as we should have a hard time holding the hand of a person with advanced ALS and telling them that their life is valuable, that their worth comes, not from what they can do or how much pain they are in, but from who they are, even when the pain in their lives makes that life seem like they are not worth living. These situations don’t mean we are wrong, it means we are human.

However the question to me that this watershed moment of euthanasia debate worldwide evokes is, what next? What will be the consequences of this debate; where are we headed in terms of euthanasia? If indeed we do legalize euthanasia, in twenty years will the average patient asking their doctor to kill them look like a terminally ill patient in great pain with only hours left of life, or will they look like someone else? One of the article I looked at mentioned the possibility of “euthanasia counselling” in Belgium for those over the age of 80, where the government sends people to talk about whether euthanasia is right for them given their advanced age. Will the new face of euthanasia look like a terminally ill person, or an octogenarian convinced that their life has no value by people who don’t want to pay for their medical bills. Such pressure might seem absurd now, but the idea of one person legally killing another person seemed absurd not too long ago.

And then there are of course people with disabilities, particularly those with mental health issues who would, in my mind be particularly vulnerable. One of the key definitions of a person with mental health problems who needs society’s immediate help is intent to harm themselves or others, but what do we do to help these people if harming oneself becomes such a fundamental right that others must help you in your self destruction? Will the new face of euthanasia be a person in chronic unendurable pain or a person with a disease of the mind, a person with clinical depression who, in a moment of weakness brought about by a chemical imbalance, decides to ask a doctor, a person whom society sees as a trusted lifesaving professional, to take their life, but who, with the right medication, could live a normal life like the rest of us. This might seem like something that society would never allow, but are we are really so confident in our justice system and the will of our governments to take on controversial topics, that we can be certain that they will make a legal code so airtight as to remove all the loopholes? Or will the government, as they have done so often before with problems that were made without their consent, ignore the problem and hope it goes away?

And finally there are children: not only is there the disgusting examples of the Gottingen protocol in the Netherlands which allows a grace period to kill disabled children after they are born (believe me I couldn’t make this stuff up) but there is the example I cited earlier on in this post, about extending euthanasia to minors, which to me is a colossal problem in its own right. As of course you all know, children and particularly teenagers have a reputation of seeing the world through the lenses of, shall we say, the melodramatic. I certainly did, and I’m betting that if you look back at your own experiences you will find an instance or two of drama in your teenage years as well. Everything seems like it matters so much more when you are in high school, getting a date can make you feel like you are king of the world, but a bad grade, a stinging comment, a failed relationship, all of these things can make you feel like the world has just come to an cataclysmic end. Now imagine that there was someone there at your lowest moment of in life, someone telling you that there was a way to end it all, that death wasn’t a big deal and that the romance of dying young would teach everyone who had laughed at you how wrong they were. Now imagine that person was a doctor, someone whose job and status made you trust them implicitly, a person for whom your life long attendance at his appointments and your disclosure to him or your most personal medical secrets made you feel that you had a deep personal connection with them. Quick what would you do?

Because that’s the dirty little secret about the face of euthanasia if it was made legal on demand, it’s all of us. All of us have moments in our lives when we are low, not just those with incurable excruciating physical diseases. And that’s why we don’t as a society have doctors who make their money from providing the service of murder, convincing those among us who feel low that they have nowhere to go but down. We are at an unprecedented watershed, my friends, a point where we decide internationally the value of human life and whether those who help save it should also have the power to end it. The choice, like all choices in a democratic society inevitably falls to you.

Anyway this is my opinion about the issue, but I’m infinitely more interested in yours. What do you think the new face of euthanasia will look like? Will it be confined to only the small number of terminally ill patients in pain or proliferate to others? What do you think of the issue more broadly? Pro assisted suicide? Against it? Somewhere in between? Never really thought about it? Tired of the maniac on the message board asking you how you feel about these things? Please leave a comment in the comment section. Anything you have to say about the issue from any point of view (even if it’s to tell me that I am 100% wrong on everything, not the least of which being my atrocious grammar) is greatly appreciated.

Read the comments at the University of Toronto Students for LifeUniversity of Toronto 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.

by Kelden Formosa

On Friday, the BC Supreme Court moved Canada one step closer to legalized euthanasia.

But legalizing euthanasia won’t solve the real problems.

Instead of making it easier to kill the weak and the vulnerable, we should recognize all human beings as having dignity and value and start making serious efforts to ensure their needs are provided for.

That means making serious investments in palliative care and strengthening the institutions of the Culture of Life.

To learn more, or to take action, please visit our friends at the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and check out their press release.

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.

Not according to the evidence:

A peer-reviewed study published last week examines 50 years of data and concludes that the trajectory of maternal mortality in the South American country has consistently declined, decreasing from 293.7 in 1957 to 18.2 in 2007 (per 100,000 live births). That’s a decrease of 93.8%, which constitutes a major success story measured in women’s lives.

Yet Chile outlawed abortion in 1989.

Chile didn’t just place small restrictions on abortion — it outlawed abortion without exception, including in instances of rape or for the health of the mother. And since many neighbouring countries also restrict abortion, there’s no real reason to believe Chilean women are travelling outside Chile to get abortions.

Even so, maternal mortality continued to decline after the abortion ban, including deaths related to abortion.

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.

Not according to the evidence:

A peer-reviewed study published last week examines 50 years of data and concludes that the trajectory of maternal mortality in the South American country has consistently declined, decreasing from 293.7 in 1957 to 18.2 in 2007 (per 100,000 live births). That’s a decrease of 93.8%, which constitutes a major success story measured in women’s lives.

Yet Chile outlawed abortion in 1989.

Chile didn’t just place small restrictions on abortion — it outlawed abortion without exception, including in instances of rape or for the health of the mother. And since many neighbouring countries also restrict abortion, there’s no real reason to believe Chilean women are travelling outside Chile to get abortions.

Even so, maternal mortality continued to decline after the abortion ban, including deaths related to abortion.

Read the comments at the uOttawa Students For Life website.

This post was written for University of Toronto Students for LifeUniversity of Toronto Students for Life by matthewcram412. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

Hey guys! This is my first official post as your new co-webmaster and we are starting on a high note here. In our focus on euthanasia I am sure many of you are aware of the Rasouli case. For those of you who are not, this case was started by 2 doctors, right in Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, who filed an affidavit because they “saw no medical purpose in keeping Mr. Rasouli on life support” after an infection resulting from surgery for a brain tumour left him in a persistent vegetative state. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where many believed it would be a new precedent setting case for euthanasia.  The decision to pull the plug however was opposed by Mr. Rasouli’s family, who long said that they saw improvement in his condition. At this point let me say how disturbing I find this. This is not a case of a person asking themselves for the right to take their own life, or even a family member of a vegetative relative asking someone to pull the plug on their relative, but a doctor, with no consent from anyone, unilaterally making the decision of life and death over another human being. I have always had the greatest respect for doctors and their efforts to save the lives of others, but in my opinion and I think the opinions of many others, this puts a troubling amount of power in their hands. But there is good news to report in this case. It seems that Mr .Rasouli is, although not completely, recovering. An article in the Globe and Mail on Tuesday reported that Mr. Rasouli is able to voluntarily control certain gestures, including the ability to give a thumbs-up gesture to communicate (although not yet completely) with loved ones, answering verbal requests from his wife. Doctors report that, at the moment, Mr. Rasouli is conscious of the world around him and suggest that far from being in a persistent vegetative state, only a step away from brain death, he may be, at least partially, conscious but paralysed. This to me is a reminder of the incredible mystery of the human body and medicine, that we can say that someone will absolutely never get better, and that term persistent vegetative state is always one that you hear connected with that, and then the next day someone is communicating with their thumbs to their wife. Who knows what ways Mr. Rasouli will surprise us all if we give him a chance to heal his body. We simply do not know. However, shockingly, this new development have not caused doctors to stop their calls to pull him from life support, saying that they “remain of the view that the standard of care does not require continuation of mechanical ventilation given his condition.” Now there is no doubt that this is a horrible situation for Mr. Rasouli and his family to be in. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to be paralysed, with almost no way to communicate with my loved ones. The pain and fear would no doubt be unimaginable. However, like all life issues, to me it comes down to the issue of who has the right to make that call? What right do doctors, who have already misdiagnosed him once and admitted that they are as yet unclear about what his prospects are, have to tell him that his life does not have value, that he does not give meaning and hope to his family and loved ones crouched around his hospital bed. What right does any human being have to tell another living, conscious, feeling human being that his existence means less to the world then the bed he is occupying and that they are better off dead?  That’s what it comes down to for me anyway. What do you think my friends? Please comment, whether you are for or against this issue. I would love to talk to others and get their opinions about this issue.

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

This post was written for Youth Protecting Youth by ypyvicepresident. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

The responses to “Choice” Chain were numerous and varied. Images of aborted human beings are not something we are generally confronted with on a daily basis. The question “What do you think about abortion?” is not something we often hear. Some people chose to ignore us. Some people chose to answer quickly and walk away. Some people chose to swear at us. Some chose to make their own posters expressing their views, or chant slogans.

So the big question must be: do we think it was worth it? Yes. Absolutely. Because among all those responses, there were countless people who were open to discussion. Some quite openly disagreed with us, but were nevertheless willing to ask and answer questions and generally carry on a very rational conversation. Some came up and said something along the lines of “Ok, give me your pitch, tell me why you’re out here.” And some of the people we spoke to had never really thought about abortion before. Whether they knew about the issue but had not put enough thought towards an informed decision, or if they hadn’t really though about what abortion really was in the first place, they left having seen the truth, and having been encouraged to spend more time thinking about abortion. Good, interesting, challenging conversations were had throughout both days.

To those who were offended and upset by the display, we can only stress that while we recognize that it is controversial, we also see it as a legitimate way of sharing the truth with people. We believe in judging actions, not judging people, and thus we value people just as much whether or not they agree with us, and regardless of the choices they may have made.

To those who stopped to talk: thank you. It was so good to see openness to considering views outside the mainstream and a willingness to discuss things even though we may have strongly disagreed.

We share with you some quotes that occurred throughout the two days:

 “Wow. I never really thought about this before. These pictures really make you think. I need to think about this more. Thank you.”

“These pictures really put it into perspective. I never thought of it this way before. We’re killing a child.”

Images of aborted human beings AREN’T something we are generally confronted with on a daily basis, but abortions happen nevertheless, at a rate of about three hundred per day in Canada alone. To those who think our tactics are the wrong way of going about things, I ask: if you honestly believed that three hundred human babies were being legally killed in your country on an average day, what would you be doing about it?

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

This post was written for Youth Protecting Youth by ypyvicepresident. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

One of our club execs has an opinion piece in the current issue of the Martlet. Check it out!

http://martlet.ca/martlet/article/language-choice/

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.