Friday February 27, 2004
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Canadian Bishops Conference Undermines Pro-Life Movement Strategy on Stem Cell Bill
Explicitly refuses to give politicians direction on the bill
OTTAWA, February 26, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In one of the more bitterly disappointing hits for the pro-life movement in Canada, the representative of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), Bishop Terrence Prendergast, told the Senate Committee during final hearings on the deeply flawed stem cell Bill C-6 that the organization was taking a neutral stand on the bill.
With all major pro-life groups in Canada arrayed against the legislation, the political arm of the pro-life movement in Canada, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), was denied an opportunity to present before the committee since Senate clerks assumed the CCCB would present the same position.
The bill, as pro-life MPs in the House of Commons have stressed incessantly for over two years, is fatally flawed. Campaign Life Coalition, which has invested enormous time and resources over the past few years to research the complex legislation, has also concluded that the bill’s deep flaws require that it be defeated or at least substantially amended. The national organization, which is internationally respected for the quality of its work, has widely publicized its conclusions and has intensely lobbied Canadian politicians for many months to either defeat or substantially change the bill.
C-6 allows destructive research on human embryos ‘leftover’ from fertility clinics; it allows the specific creation of human embryos for the express purpose of research on IVF; it allows research on aborted baby body parts; it sanctions destructive in vitro fertilization and its allowance for homosexual couples, it contains loopholes which would allow for human cloning for research purposes, and more. While sanctioning all these anti-life measures in positive law, the bill does a few positive things in that it bans the sale of human embryos, bans paying wages directly to surrogate mothers for their “services” and bans paying for sperm and ova.
In the CCCB presentation, Bishop Prendergast noted the assault on human life that would be sanctioned by the bill, saying, “The problem with embryonic stem cell research is that while the research has the potential to benefit those living with disease, it actually harms the embryo who dies in the process.”
Among its many other arguments, CLC has pointed out that embryonic stem cell research is highly favored by eugenics advocates, has not resulted in any cures for any health conditions, consumes never-ending, large research funds and, unlike adult stem cell research, is coveted as a potential long-term goldmine for giant pharmaceutical firms since embryonic stem cell implants require the life-long use of costly anti-rejection drugs.
Nonetheless, the CCCB refused to give direction to Catholic politicians on how to vote on the legislation. “While Catholic politicians must always seek to protect human life and dignity to the fullest extent possible, there can be legitimate difference on how to achieve this objective. It is , therefore not our intention to tell Catholic Senators how to vote because it is their responsibility to discern the best way to protect human life and dignity after reflecting on all of the resources available to them. This discernment certainly includes Church teaching, but also the Senators’ own personal reflections on the political and social realities they face,” said Bishop Prendergast reading from a prepared text.
Jim Hughes, President of Campaign Life Coalition Canada told LifeSite, “Imagine the CCCB bureaucrats coming out with a similar statement if we were discussing the lives of Jewish people rather than embryos. In Nazi times, Hitler considered the Jews as less than human, just as our secular culture today falsely considers embryos as less than human. Would Catholic politicians in Hitler’s day be encouraged to discern based on ‘prudential’judgments, whether or not to support a law which allowed deadly experiments on Jewish people, or would they be warned that they must never vote in favour of a law that attacks human life.”
The CCCB organization does not speak for all bishops and other Catholic leaders in Canada on this issue. While the bill was being debated in the House of Commons, Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver issued a statement warning that Catholic and other pro-life Members of Parliament may not support the legislation. Archbishop Exner explained, “There is a moral difference between diminishing the evil in an already existing unjust law and positively to create such an injustice in law by the passage of an unjust law when no law had previously existed. To vote for Bill C-13 (now C-6), a legislator would involve himself or herself in the creation of unjust law-and not in its amelioration.”
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, an internationally respected author, thinker and the Editor in Chief of First Things magazine, concurred with the position of Archbishop Exner in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com last year. Fr. Neuhaus said, since the bill “would establish in positive law a grave injustice and would do nothing to provide protection for innocent human life threatened by abortion, but indeed would at least implicitly signal a codification of the existing abortion license”, it cannot be supported.
In a telling exchange as the Senators questioned various presenters, Senator Keon, a Catholic, asked what he would hear from the pulpits if this bill went through. That is, he asked for the Catholic position on the Bill. Bishop Prendergast responded that the CCCB had not taken a position on this Bill and that the Senate needed to “make the best of it.”
Campaign Life Coalition is asking all concerned Canadians to immediately contact at least the Senators from their province and insist that the bill be defeated or at least substantially amended. CLC stresses that Canadian Senators, who do not normally receive much communications from the Canadian public, are more likely than MPs to consider and respond to such personal, last-minute appeals.
Senators contact information
https://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/political_lists/canadia…
Calls are toll free via 1-800-267-7362
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Canadian Archbishop Says Catholic Politicians Cannot Support Stem Cell Bill C-13
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/jan/03013001.html
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus Comments On Canadian Stem Cell Legislation
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/jan/03013101.html
Pro-Life Leaders respond to ‘neutral’ stand of Catholic Bishops Conference on Stem Cell Bill
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/oct/031031a.html
See LifeSite’s Bill C-6 page
https://www.lifesitenews.com/features/stemcellembryo/c-13reprotec…
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