National Campus Life Network

By Rebecca Richmond, NCLN Executive Director

 I should not have been looking at my phone as I walked down the stairs, for I nearly slipped and fell when a text message popped up on my screen: “Morgentaler died.”

My heart dropped.  As long as there is life, there is hope, and I sincerely hoped that Henry Morgentaler, Canada’s most prominent abortionist and abortion advocate, would experience repentance and conversion.  I held onto that hope because of what it would mean for the cause of life in Canada, but also for the sake of his own life and soul.

 I was shaken.  Morgentaler has always been a larger-than-life figure and often on my mind.  His biography sits on my bookshelf and, every time I see it, I recall the stories of his life that I read in those pages: the activist upbringing, the suffering of the Holocaust, his complicated relationships with women, his imprisonment, the Supreme Court decision, and the expansion of his clinics.  He remains an icon for abortion in Canada and the builder of a dark and blood-stained legacy that lives on, though he does not.

Like the rest of my generation, I  grew up in the shadow of the 1988 R. v. Morgentaler decision. The 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court case this past January 28th was a personal one for us.  It has defined us as survivors for, in a quarter century, a quarter of our generation has been wiped out by abortion.

We, as young people, have never known our nation without the dark shadow of abortion and the decision that allowed that shadow to persist.  We have never known Canada without Morgentaler.  He, now, may be gone from this earth, but abortion is not.  

 There has been, as was to be expected, a flurry of activity in the media as everyone weighs in on his legacy.  But let us not forget that unrestricted abortion in Canada has been the result of more than Henry Morgentaler.  It is the result of many committed activists, committed financial donors, judges, and politicians; but society is also complicit.  We began to lose in the court of public opinion before we lost in the court of law.

So, for us, Morgentaler’s death must not be simply a time for analysis.  It cannot be a time to sit back and merely approve or condemn his actions.  It must be a time when we recommit ourselves to action and transforming society.  We need to build a legacy of life that goes beyond having convictions and actually ends this injustice.   Being pro-life should be less of a label and more of a lifestyle.  

We have our work cut out for us, but we cannot shrink from the task we face.  A quarter of our generation is dead because of abortion and we cannot and will not abandon the next generation to the same fate.  I have said it before and I will say it again: Twenty-five years of R. v. Morgentaler is twenty-five years too long. This culture of abortion on demand may be a stubborn shadow, but we can cast it out if we shine all the brighter with the light of truth, love and life.

Here’s what’s in store on the campuses over the next couple of weeks!

Over 15 campuses will be hosting public screenings of the ‘It’s A Girl’ documentary.  The film talks about the impact of gendercide and sex-selective abortion, specifically in India and China.  Mark Warawa (MP – Langley) will also speak on Motion 408 following the B.C. screenings.   

Here are the screenings dates coming up in the next few week with links to their Facebook event page.  Check one out at a campus in your area and keep coming back to this page for screenings being added!  

Brock Life-line promoting their upcoming screening of It’s A Girl on Friday, March 8th.

Thursday, March 7th

• University of Manitoba, MPR Room (210 Killarney) 2nd floor University Centre, 7:00pm

 Friday, March 8th

• Brock University, Thistle 247, 7:00pm

 

Tuesday, March 12th 

• UBC, Woodward 6, 6:30pm

 

Wednesday, March 13th

• Trinity-Western University, Northwest Auditorium, 4:00pm
• Simon Fraser University, Burnaby C9001, 6:30pm

 

Thursday, March 14th

• University of Waterloo, RCH 308, 7:00pm
• University of Guelph, Mackinnon 029, 7:00pm
• McMaster University, Mills L115, 7:30pm

Monday, March 25

• University of Toronto, Sidney Smith 2135, 6:00PM
• McGill University, SSMU Ballroom, 9:00PM

Thursday, March 28

• Carleton University, Tory Bldg Room 447, 7:30PM

Wednesday, April 3

• York University, Student Centre 307, 4:30PM
• Tyndale University College, Chapel, 6:30PM

 

The DefendGirls campaign  has gotten off to a great start, with more campuses using these resources to raise awareness on sex-selective abortion, gendercide, and to build support for Motion 408.

 

Members of Queen’s Alive during their DefendGirls Awareness Week

Queen’s Alive distributed DefendGirls materials last week, screened, ‘It’s A Girl’, and will be hosting a Euthansia Debate on March 13th, featuring  Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Dr. Udo Schuklenk, a philosophy professor.  They will address the question, “Should assisted suicide and/or voluntary euthansia be decriminalized in Canada?”

 

University of Waterloo Students for Life will be doing a number of events for their Life Weeks, including having the Silent No More Awareness Campaign give personal testimonies on the hope and healing found after having an abortion, and inviting  Stephen Woodworth (MP, Kitchener Centre) to speak on Motion 312 on March 13th.  Check out the details on the outcome of this event here.

 

NCLN’s Executive Director, Rebecca Richmond, will be speaking to Brock Life-Line in St. Catharines on the impact of sex-selective abortion and gendercide in our world and our country. She will also expand on Motion 408 and what campuses can do to raise awareness and build support for the motion.

 

We are excited for all these events, and more!  Further details to come on the  ’It’s a Girl’ documentary screenings and other events!  Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

 

     

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

As president of Youth Protecting Youth I am often asked why I do what I do. Why do I spend so much time preparing for club meetings when other people in a similar position would be studying for their mid-terms? Why do I bother designing posters and writing blog posts to articulate the pro-life message? And why do I organize events like “Choice” Chain on campus, when it creates so much controversy?

Sometimes I answer these questions with some explanation about how every day in Canada approximately 266 pre-born children are killed by abortion, and how these pre-born children are genetically unique individuals. Often I’ll include an explanation as to why there is no ethically significant factor that makes a pre-born child any less valuable than a born child, and sometimes I’ll simply say that my taxes pay for abortions, and that because of this I should be doing something every day to save these children.

Although these answers resonate with some people, I have started to respond differently. Now, when people ask why I do “Choice” Chain, I say that I do it because they are valuable, regardless of what I think of them, what they think of themselves or what they are capable of doing. I do it because you are valuable, even if your human rights , which depend on your right to life, are undermined. If I am to stand for anybody’s human rights, then I must stand for everybody’s human rights.

- Cam Côté

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

Press Release

PRO-LIFE CLUB BANNED AT TRENT UNIVERSITY IN PETERBOROUGH

PETERBOROUGH, ON (February 7, 2013) – Students applying to form a pro-life club at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario were rejected by the Trent Central Student Association (TCSA) last week on grounds that such a club would be ‘exclusive’. Trent Lifeline has secured legal counsel and is demanding that the decision be reversed and club status granted.

“The purpose of Trent Lifeline is to engage with the student body regardless of what someone’s position is on abortion,” said Heather Anne Robertson, President of Trent Lifeline. “Anyone can bring their ideas and opinions to the discussion. To exclude us in the name of being inclusive is absurd.”

In response to its application, Trent Lifeline received an email from the TCSA Club & Group Coordinator informing them that “campaigning for pro life or pro choice is not allowed on campus as well since there is [sic] so many opinions to this it can lead to a very exclusive group, while all clubs at Trent University must be inclusive.” After requesting more information on the policies upon which this decision was based, Lifeline was informed that a policy could not be sent “as there is one working under way.”

“The student association is supposed to serve its members and not selectively exclude one group of them who take a position on a controversial human rights issue,” stated Rebecca Richmond, Executive Director of the National Campus Life Network, an organization that exists to support pro-life students in Canada. “The fact that the TCSA may be re-writing its policies to justify its discrimination against this club is also disconcerting.”

A letter from Trent Lifeline’s legal counsel, John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, was sent to the President of TCSA on February 6th. This letter calls for a reversal of the decision to reject Lifeline’s application, and explains why and how the student union’s conduct is illegal.

“We hope that the student union will reverse its decision, thereby removing the need for court action. However, if necessary, we will seek a Court Order to uphold the free speech rights and freedom of association rights of these students,” stated Carpay.

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For media requests, please contact:

John Carpay, President, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, 403-619-8014 or jcarpay@jccf.ca

Rebecca Richmond, Executive Director of the National Campus Life Network, director@ncln.ca, 416 388 0461.

Heather Anne Robertson, President of Trent Lifeline, lifelinetrent@gmail.com, http://trentlifeline.ncln.ca

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.

By Rebecca Richmond, NCLN Executive Director

Gavin Richmond, 1897-1917

My great uncle was several years younger than I am now when he died, only one week away from his 20th birthday.  Gavin Richmond’s name is inscribed on the Vimy Ridge Memorial and his life is counted among the 62,820 Canadians who were killed in the First World War.  He was part of a generation decimated by the war.

They fought for our freedom and are rightly commemorated for it. But we have not used that freedom responsibly; we have failed to protect the most vulnerable and innocent in our society from a violent death. Today we mourn a shameful anniversary that has made possible the extermination of the lives of a quarter of our generation, but these deaths have no Remembrance Day. They largely go unnoticed and unmourned and, even more horrific, the slaughter continues day after day.

Ours is a generation of survivors. We, the remaining 75%, made it out alive – though some more narrowly than others. I have worked with students whose parents chose life when facing pressure to abort and others whose parents aborted their siblings. Many of us are probably unaware of the twisted legacy abortion has carved in the branches of our family trees.

Dr. Morgentaler’s oft-repeated mantra – still used on every Morgentaler clinic website – is: Every mother a willing mother. Every child a wanted child. This must make us, I suppose, the “wanted” generation that Morgentaler spoke of. Our parents could have aborted us if they had wanted. They were given, in neo-Roman fashion, the power of life or death over their children – death that was, of course, sanitized, state-sanctioned, and even funded by the public’s own tax dollars.

Abortion on demand, made possible through the Supreme Court’s ruling 25 years ago, changed our society with ‘wantedness’ determining whether we live or die for the first nine months of our lives. Yet we do not choose life or death for born humans according to whether or not they are ‘wanted’ or ‘unwanted’. The thought of classifying human beings in such a manner is profoundly disturbing – or ought to be.

When my own grandmother was pregnant with my father in the 1950s she did not decide to go forward with it based on whether or not he was wanted. (What decision would she have made, I have to wonder, if abortion on demand had been offered to her?) She carried a new life within her and looked out for his best interest by deciding to have my father adopted and raised by a couple who wanted a child. Despite Dr. Morgentaler’s classification of children as ‘wanted’ or ‘unwanted’, the fact is that children are children regardless of how we feel about their arrival. What is up to us is how we treat them.

Those of us who survived now have the opportunity and the obligation to secure the freedom of the next generation. We grew up in the shadow of R. v. Morgentaler with one quarter of our generation missing, but we are now capable young adults: we cannot abandon the next generation to such a fate. Twenty-five years of R. v. Morgentaler is twenty-five years too long. This culture of abortion on demand may be a stubborn shadow, but we can cast it out if we shine all the brighter with the light of truth, love and life.

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

“If you build it, they will come.” This saying held true for Ray Kinsella in the movie “Field of Dreams”, and it certainly held true for us at our YPY Spring Semester Open House. After putting together a comprehensive timeline detailing YPY’s events and activities since its establishment, we chalked our invitation in classrooms across campus, made a couple of announcements before classes started, and hoped the smell of lasagna would draw people to our informal information night.

 Over 25 students ended up coming to the open house, and many of them got a chance to talk with one of the many club members while they ate, before signing up for our email list and heading on their way with a couple of our pamphlets. This event was an incredible success, and I’d like to thank everyone who helped out!

So now what? Well, building on this turnout, we’ll be having our first full club meeting of the semester on Wednesday, January 23^rd from 5:30-6:30pm, and you can look for a email about location as soon as we have a room booked! We’ll be doing a short presentation on what the pro-life message is and what our mission is as a club on the UVic campus. Though we won’t be doing a full dinner, we’ll provide a bunch of snacks and there will be lots of time for discussion. We’ll end by talking about some of the exciting plans that we have for this coming semester and how you can get involved with our life-saving work.

 If you have any questions, or if you weren’t able to make it to the open house but would like to join our email list, just shoot us a quick message at youthprotectingyouth@gmail.com and you’ll be added so fast it’ll make your head spin. Thanks again to those who helped out, and we look forward to seeing you out on Wednesday!

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

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

One hundred thousand. For some people this number is a reminder of the number of minutes from now until they graduate at the end of this semester. For others, this number is a reminder of approximately how many people live in their hometown, be it Lethbridge or Chilliwack. Personally, this number reminds me of the approximate number of pre-born children that will be killed this year by abortion.

As someone who tries to answer the silent scream of these innocent victims, I sometimes find myself sitting behind Youth Protecting Youth UVic’s Clubs Days table (happening today and tomorrow) inviting my peers to join me in taking a stand for the most vulnerable members of our society. Sometimes I find myself organizing fundraisers to support local crisis pregnancy shelters, or filling out UVic’s application form to submit our $1000.00 bursary for single mothers on campus. And still other times I find myself behind a 3’x4’ “Choice” Chain sign, engaging passers-by in conversations about abortion. What would it look like if our pro-life activities were in direct proportion to the injustice being committed?

What would it look like if for every child that will be aborted this year we had someone sign up for our club? Well, we’d have every UVic student register for our club at least five times, and the line-up at our table would stretch around ring road multiple times. What would it look like if we offered a bursary for every family that will abort their child this year? We’d give away over one hundred million dollars. And what would it look like if there was a “Choice” Chain sign held for every child that will be aborted this year? Unless things change, there would be a consecutive string of unique signs stretching from Victoria to Nanaimo. You would need to drive for almost two hours to see each child’s image.

These statistics are not meant to intimidate those who are considering joining the pro-life movement, nor are they stated to discourage those who are already active within it. These facts should remind us that we have work to do, and that if we work together we can end abortion. Let 2013 be the year you choose to help end this injustice.

Read the comments at the Youth Protecting Youth website.

This post was written for Saint Paul Students for Life by frkenmikulcik. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

Date:    January 24, 2013

Read the comments at the Saint Paul Students for Life website.

This post was written for Kwantlen Protectores Vitae by Kwantlen Protectores Vitae. It does not necessarily represent the views of NCLN.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kwantlen Student Association Rescinds Earlier Decision and Grants Pro-Life Club Status

LANGLEY, B.C. (December 6 2012) – In the midst of preparing to file a lawsuit against their student association for discrimination, the pro-life student group at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in B.C. has been granted full club status.

The Runner, the Kwantlen student newspaper, reported that the Kwantlen Student Association (KSA) reversed its earlier decision during a two-hour in-camera session on December 5th, and has now granted Protectores Vitae (Protectors of Life) formal status as a campus club. The specific content of any motions from the meeting was not made available, nor was the record of how the individual board members voted. Oliver Capko, the president of Protectores Vitae, was contacted later that evening by Christopher Girodat, the Chairperson of the KSA Executive Committee, who informed him of the decision.

“I am relieved that the issue has been resolved,” said Oliver. “After working towards this all semester, it is great to finally be accepted and treated like other clubs on campus.”

This decision by the Kwantlen Student Association was a reversal of its November 9th decision, which rejected the group’s application on the grounds that it conflicted with the student union’s pro-choice policy on abortion. Protectores Vitae secured legal representation from the Justice Centre, and demanded that the student association rescind their decision and, when the KSA did not, Protectores Vitae prepared to file a lawsuit.

“The Justice Centre has invested a lot of time in legal research and preparing the court documents, but we are happy that it will not be necessary to commence a court action against this discrimination,” stated Calgary lawyer John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

“This has not been the first time such discrimination against pro-life groups has happened on university campuses,” commented Anastasia Pearse on behalf of the National Campus Life Network. “We hope that other student associations will learn from Kwantlen’s example so that this won’t happen again.”

The students of Protectores Vitae, who are currently in the midst of exam season, plan to begin club activities on campus in the New Year.

“Now that we no longer have to fight against discrimination, we can actually focus on why we wanted to start this club in the first place,” said Oliver. “It’s important that bioethical issues, like abortion, are raised on campus and we look forward to being part of that conversation here at Kwantlen.”

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For media requests, please contact:

John Carpay, President, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, 403-619-8014 or jcarpay@jccf.ca

Anastasia Pearse, National Campus Life Network, westerncanada@ncln.ca, 604 365 3484

Oliver Capko, President Protectores Vitae, kwantlenprotectoresvitae@hotmail.com, http://kwantlenprotectoresvitae.ncln.ca/

Read the comments at the Kwantlen Protectores Vitae website.