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By Deborah Gyapong
TWENTY years ago -- on January 28, 1988 -- the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada's abortion law.
The so-called Morgentaler decision -- named after Montreal family physician Dr. Henry Morgentaler -- paved the way for abortion on demand, leaving Canada one of the only countries in the world with no restrictions on abortion.
The pro-choice movement sees the decision as a watershed in women's rights and Morgentaler as a hero who was willing to risk jail for their cause.
Supporters will celebrate the 20th anniversary with clicking champagne glasses, law school lectures and symposia, and the odd small but colourful demonstration at various venues across Canada.
Pro-life organizations will mark the anniversary through mounting low-key awareness campaigns. In Canada, according to Statistics Canada, over 100,000 unborn babies are aborted every year; two million abortions in the 20 years since Morgentaler.
Joanne Byfield, president of LifeCanada, a national educational pro-life umbrella group, said the estimates may be low, since the previous law's reporting requirements were struck down with the law.
"The more people know about the factual information about abortion in Canada, the more likely they are to realize we need restrictions on abortion," she said. LifeCanada has had Environics conduct yearly polls that show about two-thirds of Canadians want to see some restrictions on abortion. Yet, the media and political establishment treats the abortion debate as "settled," and ignores the issue, except for some rare exceptions such as a series in the Sun newspaper chain last November.
LifeCanada has mounted a billboard and poster campaign, hitting 50 billboards and 25 transit shelters across Canada. They show a pregnant woman with an image of a baby superimposed over her belly. The poster says, "9 months. The length of time abortion is allowed in Canada." Then: "Abortion. Have we gone too far?" It includes the address of a website that offers the latest statistics and information.
LifeCanada executive director Gudrun Schultz said the billboard and poster campaign is intended to get people to "question the situation." She said she hoped it "counters the media spin" that the Morgentaler anniversary is a milestone to celebrate. The campaign will include newspapers and radio, as well.
While LifeCanada hopes to reach people outside the churches and the pro-life movement, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), a national umbrella organization for political pro-life groups, has placed advertisements in Catholic and Christian papers. "It's actually appalling the number of people in the Christian community who aren't on side because of ignorance," said CLC president Jim Hughes. "They don't know there are absolutely no restrictions on abortion."
Hughes said those ads will "ask people to join us," and "let them know we're there for the duration."
A veteran of the movement, Hughes said he sees many hopeful signs. "We've become stronger in the last 20 years. Adversity does that to you," he said.
Hughes said Pierre Trudeau's 1969 omnibus bill, which legalized abortion with the approval of a three-person committee, was far more damaging than the Morgentaler decision.
"The original legalization was a surprise and a shock," Hughes said. "Those people involved right from the beginning were so small in number, they would be delighted to see the number of people involved now."
Though numbers are hard to pin down, they are in the tens of thousands, and belong to groups in small towns and big cities across Canada. REAL Women alone has a membership of 55,000. The Catholic Women's League has consistently supported life and family issues and its membership is over 90,000. It is a movement that has become increasingly sophisticated and prepared, whether through the use of new media or in fighting battles in the courts.
When the Morgentaler case was argued in court in 1987, however, nobody from the pro-life side intervened. REAL Women of Canada's executive vice president Gwen Landolt described the cold February day in 1988 when she read the Morgentaler case files as "the saddest, loneliest, most difficult day" of her life. She found "not one single pro-life word in the entire proceedings."
She vowed that never again would a pro-life or pro-family case go before the Supreme Court without pro-life involvement. REAL Women intervened in some cases on its own, such as the case involving Chantal Daigle, whose boyfriend Jean Tremblay wanted to prevent her from aborting their unborn child.
Knowing they would not win, Landolt said they intervened to create a "paper trail" for two reasons: so "history will know there was organized, determined resistance to abortion in Canada," and the "court will never be able to exonerate itself, saying no one argued for the other side."
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Now REAL Women has joined forces with a network of other groups before the courts, not only on life issues but on defending marriage and family. It has gained experience. REAL Women celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. So does The Interim, the newspaper CLC set up as a Canadian pro-life information vehicle.
Out of The Interim came the Web-based LifeSiteNews, which reaches thousands around the world with its daily news updates. LifeSiteNews will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year.
While the established groups grow older, their membership is growing younger. In addition, pro-life groups are proliferating on university campuses across the country.
"I love these campus groups," said Byfield. "I love hearing when they get shut down by the students' union because of all the attention it gets."
Campus groups affiliated with LifeCanada are using Facebook, a web-based social networking tool, to mount their awareness campaign, using the same billboard image.
Schultz said younger people see the issue from a social justice standpoint. They use the slogan, 'Join the human rights movement of the 21st Century.' Hughes, who uses a clicker to hand count participants in the annual national March for Life, estimated about half of the more than 6,000 marchers last spring were under 35.
Landolt said she has noticed a major difference when she speaks in high schools now. The students are "spellbound," and she experiences none of the hostility she met in the '70s and '80s when young people were being systematically "indoctrinated" to radical feminist viewpoints
The whole movement has grown in size and complexity. Landolt said she imagines sometimes, as she flies over Canada, "little flickering lights" representing the pro-life movement, lights for "hope and life flickering in every town and village" across the country.
When the movement began nearly 40 years ago, it was predominately Catholic. Then evangelicals came on board. Now nonreligious women are joining forces. On January 15, a new, non-religious pro-life organization was launched in Ottawa. ProWomanProLife founder Andrea Mrozek described the group as nonpartisan and nonreligious.
"We have no hidden agenda here but a very open one: to eradicate abortion in Canada, not by legislation or force, but because that is what women choose," said Mrozek in a January 15 statement. Mrozek also stressed the freedom of speech aspect to the battle.
"Pro-lifers are told what they can and can't say in politics, and pro-life clubs are currently being banned on our university campuses," she said. "No Canadian should be comfortable with this suppression of dialogue, irrespective of how they feel about abortion."
Byfield applauded the new group, and agreed with the importance of trying to change the culture rather than focusing only on changing the laws. "It's unrealistic to expect politicians go where society isn't ready to go," she said.
In a post-Christian society, Byfield urged using factual information and language "people can relate to and understand."
Hughes also stressed the power of prayer. "You have to feel sorry for Morgentaler and pray for him," he said, noting that people in the United States prayed for former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who realized the wrong he was doing and became a major pro-life advocate.
"It's only a matter of time before truth prevails," Hughes said.
-- Copyright Canadian Catholic News; please do not reprint without permission.
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The Day Humanity Became Cheap
At the heart of the abortion dilemma is the question of what it means to be human. In this new century, that problem will challenge us again and again and again. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from human intelligence, we will have to wonder: Can a machine become a "person"? As a new generation of environmentalists stake bolder claims for animals, we will have to consider: Are human rights only for human beings? And as the science of human genetics advances, we will encounter opportunities to reshape our very species. Ahead of us, in other words, await some of the most difficult and awesome moral questions ever faced by human beings. And as those questions intensify, the answers offered by R. vs. Morgentaler will look more and more inadequate, shallow, short-sighted and obsolete.
David Frum, National Post, January 22
20 years of silence
The squeaky wheel gets the grease on abortion, it seems, and not the 68% of Canadians who in a 2004 poll said they wanted legal protection for fetuses at some point in their development. Most Canadians are uncomfortable with the complete ban on abortion (including cases of rape, incest and severe fetal deficit) advocated by ardent pro-lifers, and as well with the complete lack of constraints on abortion we now "enjoy." Canadians should be informed that the Morgentaler decision produced disturbing outcomes. But there is no public forum to discuss them.
Barbara Kay, National Post, January 23
January 24/2008
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