Alliance for Life Ontario believes that the pro-life movement in Canada exists to serve God, by helping to build a society that respects and protects individual innocent human beings from their biological beginnings until their death.
We accept the truth that every pre-born child is a human being and deserves total protection from societal whims and political ambitions and unjust laws.
However, many of us have sometimes been challenged when it comes to using this truth as a basis for public policy.
We have been told that we are “absolutist” or simply do not understand politics, and that to seek protection for every baby is to be socially and politically irrelevant.
Do we no longer believe that every human being is created in the image of God?
Do we no longer believe that a human life has a biological beginning before implantation in the womb?
Have the lives of our pre-born brothers and sisters been reduced to a political commodity?
Have we forgotten our goal of total protection for all innocent human life?
Yet, what will happen to the pro-life movement if we stray from the Truth we say we believe, and work for a law which will allow for some abortions?
We sincerely believe that pro-lifers are the only voice that helpless pre-born children have. These children depend on us to be their defense, to affirm their right to life, to defend their very lives.
Unfortunately, the temptation to compromise the lives of pre-born children has a firm grip on many pro-life individuals, organizations and even church communities.
We have already been presented  with ”compromised” pro-life gestational legislation that
- allows for exceptions,
- defines the tiniest of human beings as “fertilized eggs”,
- denies their existence, or right to life
- requires counselling that must be proved by certificate,
- ensures that the little one is less than 13 weeks old,
- then the mothers are free to abort their child.
The very children we are told will be saved are the very ones who are most likely to be aborted after 13 weeks, and the exceptions in this legislation allow for:
- rape, incest, or danger to the health or life of the mother.
How many times do physicians have to tell us that induced abortion is not medically indicated for any illness, injury or disease, yet the previous legal gestational experiment supported by some pro-life organizations has accepted and supported these untruths, it seems, in order to get something?
If we forsake the pro-life principle of personhood, or indeed humanity, for even one baby, because of a Leger or Angus Reid poll result informing us of what the public will tolerate, or bow to a politician’s whim, what will happen?
The answer is obvious. We will have taken an unjust incremental road, and rather than defending the personhood of every pre-born child, we will have discriminated against some of the most vulnerable of these babies – those conceived because of rape or incest, those with congenital disorders or those who perhaps are viewed as a threat to the mother.
Alliance for Life Ontario encourages you to look at the recorded abortion statistics from France, Germany and Spain, all countries we are told we should emulate, by those supporting a gestational approach. “Canada is way out of line with our international counterparts when it comes to protecting human rights”
We could write an essay on that statement alone. However, we will refrain from doing so and just present the international statistics for you to judge. We have also added in the United Kingdom statistics. Each of these gestational legislative approaches has caused, abortion numbers to rise almost every single year, many skyrocketing. One is hard pressed to find any complement to these countries regarding the “protection of pre-born human rights.”
If saving the lives of some pre-born children is the ultimate goal of gestational laws then that has failed miserably in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Why on earth would Canada want to imitate these countries?
Lastly, we must ask how this effects our mission in the pro-life movement, if we are only focused on what “pro-life” politicians are prepared to present, seemingly based on what a majority of Canadians will tolerate?
Are we impatient with God? Have we forgotten that He is the author of life?
Do our actions match our mission? Are we not committed to the protection of every innocent human life?
As this opinion piece was almost complete, Alliance for Life Ontario received correspondence which now brings Poland to bear in this discussion. However, Poland has never, ever had a gestational law, but all its legal approaches have been ground-based. The difference is only that gestational laws say When an abortion may legally occur and grounds-based state Why the abortion may legally occur. We have prepared a graph for Poland, and you will note that in order to get back to the situation it had in 1932, Poland has sanctioned 6,395,198 abortions!
Canada’s 1969 Law was also a grounds-based law with abortion legal only if the mother’s life/health were threatened, a committee of three doctors provided verification, and the abortion was procured in a hospital. This law was struck down in 1988. From 1970-2024 Canada has sanctioned the killing of 4,680,696 of its tiniest Canadians with legislation and without, and the pro-life movement has fought all the way. Why now instead of demanding full legal protection for the lives of our pre-born children are some in the prolife movement willing to sacrifice them on the altar of compromise? Surely, the idea that this is all we can possibly get, has no teeth in 2024, yet massive encouragement is being given to religious and pro-life people to sign on to this travesty of a strategy?
We may be considered failures for opposing what we believe are unjust legislative strategies, but the abortion figures show that neither a gestational legal strategy nor grounds-based laws, save lives, they just state when and why these children’s lives may be lawfully destroyed by abortion. Canada managed to kill 1,011,986 during the period in Canada’s history, when we had a grounds-based law. Do we really want another 4,680,696 to be killed while we are working this out?
These strategies only establish a system, now backed by some in the Canadian pro-life movement, that continues discriminating against human beings, by age, convenience, sex, habitat, disability or manner of their conception.
Our movement sets the standards for what it means to be pro-life. After more than five decades of legal abortion, now more than ever we need to send a strong message to Canada!
Pre-born children are not a commodity that can be sold at a political price. As pro-lifers, we must defend them – without exception, without compromise.
Respectfully submitted, (with grateful appreciation to Judie Brown and American Life League)
Jakki Jeffs
Executive Director
