The recent Alliance For Life Ontario provincial conference certainly lived up to the promise of its theme: “Facing a changing world - making the case for the future of humanity.” This intensely educational conference delved into issues that underpin the culture of death, abortion and calls for legalization of euthanasia, and ended with a message of hope.

Reports on the papers will appear on this Halton Pro-Life website in coming weeks. Until then, here is a brief summary.

False science on sexuality corrupts laws, education

Three papers presented by Dr. Judith Reisman were disturbing in revealing how the false research into sexuality by Albert Kinsey has been accepted as reliable science. It has corrupted laws and education, stripping women and children of protections.

Kinsey studied prisoners and Second World War draft dodgers, observed and participated in sexually-deviant behaviour, paid men to abuse children to discover children’s “sexuality,” and distorted his findings. The culture of sexual irresponsibility he fostered has been promoted by Playboy magazine and its copycats, which intersperse “soft” pornographic pictures with cartoons and illustrations that mock rape of women and sexual abuse of children.

 Dr Reisman said, “Once you sexualise children in this way, abortion becomes so much easier.”

The Pill, abortion and breast cancer

Another trend that devalues children is contraception, which has given rise to the concept of “unwanted” children.

Oral contraceptives increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, said Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, who has studied the epidemiology of breast cancer in relation to abortion and oral contraceptives. Factors that are contributing to an increase in breast cancer include:

• Women having fewer children - each child reduces the risk of breast cancer by five to 10 per cent;
• Women delaying their first pregnancies;
• Women starting on the pill early in life, especially in teen years.

Studies revealing the risks are seldom if ever reported in the media.

Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a breast surgeon and assistant professor of surgery, cited a study by the National Cancer Institute that indicated a 50 per cent increase risk, but this has been denied and suppressed by the NCI itself. The pharmaceutical industry has actively distorted data in papers that influence the way doctors prescribe and treat patients.

Ending abortion with compassion

Dr. David Reardon of the Elliott Institute, in a talk titled “Ending abortion with compassion,” addressed the need for pro-lifers to fight abortion by considering the plight of the woman in a crisis pregnancy as much as the child in the womb. Even with the best of intentions and sympathy for women in crisis pregnancies, we can easily say things that cause women to conclude that we are unwilling to listen and understand the pressures that lead them to consider abortion.

Dr. Reardon recounted the devastating effects of abortion on a woman’s emotional health, rendering her virtually emotional “dead.” She is not beyond healing, however, he said.

Vicki Thorne, founder of Project Rachel for post-abortive healing (click here for Project Rachel in Ontario), in her talk on “Wounds at the very heart of abortion,” also spoke of a need for understanding. In this modern age of fast social developments, there are no “elders” who have experienced what young people have experienced. She also noted the change in attitude towards children from the birth control pill. The significance is stark when contraception fails and the child who is born is told he or she was unplanned and, by implication, unwanted. Among the results of major social changes over recent past decades that she spoke of are:

• The breakdown of family life robbing children of support systems;
• Children conceived by in-vitro fertilization with donor sperm know nothing of their fathers;
• Children who intuitively know if siblings have been aborted.

By contrast, natural family planning preserves family happiness, said Mercedes Wilson, of the Family of the Americas Foundation, in her talk on “Love and Fertility.” Couples who practice NFP hardly ever divorce, she said. NFP has been taught successfully to illiterate women in developing countries and is being adopted by thousands of young people.

The human right to dignity

A major social change is declining fertility, the dangers of which Barry McLerran explained in his talk, “Demographic Winter - The Decline of the Human Family.” There has never been prosperity with a declining population. The intact family is the strongest unit of society by any social science measure, but is being attacked by the destruction of marriage and by sex outside of marriage. Even in the developing world, often touted as over-populated, birth rates are falling faster than in the developed world. Yet pressure continues to control population.

A major reason for the decline of birth rates is a denial that humans are different from other species, Wesley Smith said in his presentation on “The Threats to Human Exceptionalism.” This tendency has come from three ideologies that undermine human dignity:

• Utilitarianism, which has given rise to euthanasia as a means to end suffering and to ration healthcare;
• Hedonistic views of entitlements;
• Scientism and radical environmentalism.

Denial that humans are special negates the concept of universal human rights. It makes it possible to separate some people whose right to life is lessened. Mr. Smith warned of two activities:

• “PVS bodies” — people in persistent vegetative states are regarded as sources of organs for transplant, to be killed when the organs are needed.
• “Fetal farming” - in which cloned cells are implanted into fetuses to grow organs for transplant.

Dinner speaker, Dr. Margaret Somerville, of the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law focused on how pro-lifers can combat legalization of euthanasia not by arguing individual cases, but by presenting the dangerous effects on society, such as the distortion of the role of doctors given the duty to kill rather than preserve life. Without religion, she said it is hard to argue against euthanasia as a means of relieving suffering, but people who ask for euthanasia do so not out of fear of suffering but of loneliness and abandonment.

Film maker Ann McElhinney echoed Wesley Smith’s remarks on radical environmentalism. As an international journalist, she has seen environmentalists spreading untruths based on the false premise that there are too many people. Environmentalism is inhumane, she said: “to environmentalists, to feed a starving child is to exacerbate the environmental problem.”

And finally, the good news . . .

Final speaker, broadcaster and journalist Michael Coren, brought the good news that the media are more open to publishing pro-life articles than before. Since they influence public opinion and politicians, he urged attendees to seize the opportunity to make their views known. Pressure MPPs to cut funding to abortion clinics, he said. When funding ceases, abortions decline.

To sum up the conference: we know where our culture has been going wrong, and now is the time to take steps to put it right again.