'Buffoons of power'

Without actually saying the "A" word, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein warned the participants at the United Alternative Conference not to seek to impose any legal restrictions on abortions, but rather that the matter remain between a woman and God. What blasphemy!

Just as Ted Turner wants the Pope to take out the commandment against adultery, so Ralph wants politicians such as himself to take out the commandment against killing innocent human beings.

Politicians prompted by the media may try, but serious Christians won't go along. This is why Malcolm Muggeridge called politicians "buffoons of power."

Is abortion a dead issue? It keeps coming up, doesn't it? On July 13, 1917, Our Lady told the three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal - among other things - that Russia, then controlled by Czar Nicholas, would spread her errors throughout the world and that many nations would be annihilated.

When Lenin took power shortly thereafter, one of his first acts was to legalize abortion. Since then, and especially since 1960, abortion has become legalized all over the world. Western nations are annihilating themselves as the result of abortion and contraception.

The most effective punishment that God gives us for our personal sins and our social sins is to let us have our own way. If we do not wish to follow God's ways as set out in the Ten Commandments, God lets us have our own way and we usually suffer terrible consequences as a result. So it is with abortion.

Paul Vandervet
Brantford, Ont.

Surprised by hostility

I'm surprised by the hostility to Scott Klusendorf's position on pro-life strategy in the March Interim. All he advocates is that the basis for the pro-life position should remain the scientific fact that abortions kill children.

He does not oppose relaying the message that abortion hurts women. In fact, the truth that abortion takes a life bolsters this argument. Legal abortion has claimed the lives or physical health of some women. However, it psychologically hurts all women who have had abortions because it is the killing of their own children.

Klusendorf does not advocate reaching only the elite. Apologetics, by definition, is presenting a reasoned defence for what we believe in, to everyone. This defence does not have to be accessible only to the "intellectual." You don't need a PhD to understand that abortion stops a beating heart.

He does not think that all we should do is sing to the choir. But he says that in a world where truth is relative, people cannot ignore the truth that human life begins at conception. That's something my Grade 12 science book as well as my religious texts back up.

The essential message of the pro-life movement is that abortion is wrong, and therefore we have to find reasons to prove this. The fact that abortion takes a human life is central to our argument. It is therefore inevitable, regardless of how it is packaged for apologetics purposes.

If abortion does not mean death for a human being, then pro-choicers might be right. But if abortion takes a life, scientifically speaking, they have no proof for their position, and their arguments are useless. That's why it's no wonder they downplay the reality that life begins at conception.

The question Klusendorf asks is: why should we help them do that?

Jojo Ruba
Ottawa

Lessons from history

Each year, over 100,000 Canadian preborns are denied the right to life based on a denial of their rights to personhood. Will we never learn from history?

In 1857, African-Americans were denied the right to personhood in order to justify slavery. Canadian women were denied the right to personhood until 1929. In 1936, the supreme court of Germany declared that Jews were non-persons, which opened the way for the Jewish Holocaust.

At the international human rights conference held last year in Edmonton, Justice Minister Anne McLellan suggested a willingness on the part of Canada to look at its human rights record. Perhaps now would be a good time to press our members of Parliament for legislation that restores dignity to preborns by protecting their right to personhood and their right to life.

Mary-Ellen Robinson
Edmonton

Candidates, not parties

Not only was the March 1999 issue one of the most informative to date, it gave me the feeling that the tide is turning in our favour.

At last justice has been served in the case of the successful challenge of the bubble-zone law in Ontario. In B.C., we also suffer this challenge to free speech. The pro-aborts have turned their personal views into law.

Over and over in The Interim one reads articles by well-meaning persons saying we must attach our wagon to one political party.

I suggest there is a better way: find out who the pro-life candidate is in your riding and support him or her regardless of party affiliation. We have had fine people like Fr. Bob Ogle in the New Democratic Party and dozens of others in the old-line parties over the past 30 years who are our allies.

There was a pro-life caucus which used to meet regularly a few years ago; Karen Murawsky tells us it is starting to regroup. Her excellent work with CLC in Ottawa, and the change in the way bills can be handled by backbenchers, bode well for our cause.