Fall 2007
Newsletter Fall 2007Walk for Life
Join Us!
On Saturday, September 29, 2007
for our annual Walk for Life
Purpose: To foster a greater awareness of respect for all human life and to raise funds for pro-life work.
Registration: 9:30 a.m. at St. Louis Adult Learning Centre
82 Beverly St., Cambridge – (enter from Kerr St.)
Every $10.00 turned into the Cambridge Right to Life after the walk-a-thon will entitle walkers under the age of 18 to a chance to
WIN a 10-speed bike and other prizes!
LUNCH will be provided at the end of the walk
Sponsor Sheets & Information Available at:
Cambridge Right to Life
519-623-1850
Refreshments and First Aid will be provided along the route.
Promoting the Sanctity
of All Human Life From Conception to Natural Death
From the President’s Desk
Dear Members,
I hope that your summer holidays were a time for refreshment of body and spirit.
In this issue, I am delighted to highlight Theresa Matters who is a new director for National Campus Life Network. Hers is a national pro-life group comprised of students who are committed to equipping other students in pro-life activism. While offering students training in apologetics and pro-life strategy, they also develop and provide resources free of charge, designed for the university context. Since many universities were showing an interest in starting a pro-life group, NCLN found it necessary to hire a second director. With great dedication, Theresa Matters decided to take that position. I hope you are encouraged by her testimony.
Isabel Smith
More Events…
Please Mark Your Calendars and Join Us!
L I F E C H A I N
Sunday, September 30, 2007
2 to 3 p.m.
Hespeler Rd. (from Bishop Street northwards)
on both sides of the road
Gather and pick up a sign in the parking lot by Sleep Country Canada.
Join us in this peaceful, public witness against abortion, which is observed nation wide.
ROCKTON WORLD’S FAIR October 5-8 Rockton Fairground
Volunteers are needed to staff the Right to Life booth there, so please call our office to lend a hand.
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING – Cambridge Right to Life
When: Thursday, November 22, 2007
Where: Knights of Columbus Hall- 333 Speedsville Rd., Cambridge,
7:30 P.M. Election of officers, refreshments.
Guest Speaker: Theresa Matters, Director, NCLN
NATIONAL PRO-LIFE CONFERENCE October 25-27, Moncton, New Brunswick
Theme: “From Sea Unto Sea – For Life!”
FIRST INTERNATIONAL EUTHANASIA SYMPOSIUM – Nov.30-Dec.1, Toronto – co-sponsored by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Please pray for the success of these conferences and call our office if you would like to attend.
** MEMBERSHIPS ** - $15 for individual or family per year
We need new members! Thank-you to those who have renewed their membership.
Also, we do not receive any government funding, so in lieu of flowers, please consider naming Cambridge Right to Life in the obituary notice when a loved one passes away or as a remembrance in your estate planning.
Committed to pro-life.
Ever since I can remember, I have been pro-life. However, I have not always wanted to work full-time for pro-life. Comfortable with having helped my mom with Halton Pro-Life activities and having joined the University of Waterloo pro-life club, I was content with my level of commitment.
That changed one year at the National Campus Life Network (NCLN) annual symposium when Stephanie Gray said something that stuck, “There are more people working full-time to kill babies, than there are working full-time to save babies”.
Following the Symposium, I was invited d to spend a weekend in BC for a training conference with Stephanie Gray and the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) in January 2005. It was made abundantly clear that there are challenges to be faced and sacrifices needed to work full-time in the pro-life movement. But I knew I needed to step up to the challenge in the face of the ongoing tragedy of abortion in our country. Full-time pro-life work was calling me. After all, what could possibly be more challenging and rewarding at the same time? I could no longer sit back in my comfort zone and ignore the ongoing injustice against pre-born children and women in our society. If I didn’t do something to change it, then I was supporting it.
The position of NCLN executive director had been on my radar for awhile before I neared graduation from the University of Waterloo and could seriously consider it. I believe the work of campus pro-life clubs is essential in our battle to defend the dignity of the human person. NCLN’s work is invaluable, especially given the renewed interest among my generation in defending life.
I weighed the pros and cons carefully, staying true to the practical side of my personality. The pay, entirely dependent on the goodwill of donors, would be just enough to cover bills and expenses, if I was careful. And, there would be the need to seek out ongoing financial support. However, the experience would be phenomenal! And the opportunity to make a difference in the minds and hearts of university students was calling me.
After much deliberation, I accepted the position for 2007-08. The month before I started officially, my car had to have repairs three different times, leaving a considerable hole in my wallet. This was certainly not in my plans when I worked out my budget, but, nevertheless, I continued to trust that I made the right decision.
I am now looking forward to making a full-time contribution to the pro-life fabric across Canada, particularly on university campuses where the pro-life message is often lost on academic liberalism of the post-modern age. I anticipate many obstacles, but even more accomplishments, as full-time attention to the university campuses across the country is sure to yield greater exposure of the pro-life message, which will in turn produce a brighter future for Canada.
At this time, I would like to ask you to consider financially supporting my work as executive director for NCLN. It is a constant struggle to be able to have enough money to do the work NCLN wishes to accomplish. With your help, in whatever way possible, we can inspire, educate and network post-secondary students across Canada. We can restore the dignity of the human person one campus at a time – with your help, we can.
Please consider passing this on to others who may be interested in supporting this valuable work. Thank-you for reading and considering,
Theresa Matters
Contributions can be sent to: National Campus Life Network, 120 Eglinton Avenue E., Suite 700 Toronto, Ontario M4P 1E2
by Will Johnston, MD, President, Physicians For Life Canada, Feb.14/07
You shouldn’t have to believe that surgical abortion is politely hidden barbarism, our last acceptable form of capital punishment, to question the new push for prenatal screening launched last week by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. The SOGC claims, in effect, that those who challenge the detect-and- destroy process for Down syndrome children want “the right to withhold this [prenatal] information from the women in their care.” Wrong. The problem is not the information but the moral vacuum chamber in which the new screening techniques are devised and promoted. We are going far beyond simply giving parents a helpful preview of their child in a value-neutral context. When Down syndrome fetuses are found, 80% are aborted.[2] Because there is a system in place actually doing this, the public mind is continually posed an insidious question – Are some lives best seen as avoidable errors? It is this inhuman attitude, and not the sharing of information with parents, which some of us lament. In Canada, the SOGC is the most respected and persuasive voice shaping our behaviour towards unborn handicapped children. The track record, it must be said, is worrisome. Even a healthy fetus, if unwanted, has no official friends at the SOGC. For the Down syndrome fetus, the SOGC proposes more powerful scrutiny – like Sauron’s eye peering out of Mordor – to expose it before it gets too far along the road to birth. To cull defective children, ancient cultures used the quality control technology nearest to hand, generally some variation on a pile of rocks outside the city wall. True to the same spirit but better equipped, the SOGC promotes various “choices” - maternal blood tests and ultrasound to guess at the baby’s faults before moving in with the amniocentesis needle and perhaps finishing off with an abortion. Replacing unconditional love with an intolerance for imperfections is one harmful side effect of this new eugenics. One recent study showed that maternal-fetal bonding may be weakened by participating in the blood tests which the SOGC is advertising.
Further, amniocentesis causes even healthy babies to be lost, as many as 22 a year in BC recently.[4] And even hardened participants in the abortion-on-demand system are given pause by late-term abortions for minor flaws like cleft palate, as has happened within my own medical community.
The progress of eugenic abortion into the heart of our society is a classic example of “mission creep”. In the 1960’s, we were told that legal abortion would be a rare tragic act in cases of exceptional hardship. In the 70’s abortion began to be both decried and accepted as birth control. In the 80’s respected geneticists pointed out that it was cheaper to hunt for and abort Down’s babies than to raise them. By the 90’s that observation had been widely put into action. Now we are refining and extending our eugenic vision, with new tests and abortion as our central tools. Yet there are ways to reduce the proportion of children born with Down syndrome by a more civilized approach than finding them and killing them before birth. The SOGC could begin by educating Canadians about the optimum age for childbearing – closer to 24 than the current average of almost 30 years old.[6] We could push for constructive changes in the workplace and in higher education so that young families could better participate. We all agree that making babies with younger eggs in younger moms means less Down syndrome and brings other health benefits. There is no logical end to the consumerism and utilitarianism which puts unborn children on a potentially lethal probation. Human nature allows no limit to our aspirations for our children, yet because of the screening mentality there will be no limit to our dissatisfactions with them either. Once the last Down syndrome child is gone, we will find a new focus for our anxieties. Without a profound change of heart, it is foreseeable that this whole project will end badly.