By Steve Jalsevac

TORONTO, March 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In its April national newsletter, Canada’s national pro-life organization, Campaign Life Coalition, has responded to what it calls the “blistering attack” made against it and LifeSiteNews (LSN) by Development and Peace in a document revealed by LSN on March 17.

The newsletter report states that the D&P document “attempts to demean LifeSiteNews.com, a legitimate news source” and observes that LSN was rebuffed in its attempts to engage in dialogue with D&P Executive Director Michael Casey who told LSN, “we are not at present prepared to engage in a dialogue as you propose.”

The pro-life organization writes that, “Perhaps that is because D&P views pro-life voices as illegitimate. The document states CLC and LifeSiteNews ‘create lots of noise, slander people and organizations and remain relentless in the pursuit of their attacks.’ It is worth noting that the reports exposing D&P’s partnering with pro-abortion groups was independently verified by at least four other sources.”

“Most disturbing about all this, though,” says the newsletter, “are not the attacks on CLC and LifeSiteNews, but the window into D&P’s thinking. It betrays its own left-wing ideology when it makes a distinction between being pro-abortion and supporting decriminalization of abortion (‘the principal advocacy issue which has spurred and fuelled the reactions of our attackers has been the issue of de-criminalization of abortion which remains a highly contentious issue in many societies’).”

In a March 25 Catholic Register article, Michael Casey finally admitted that his organization does partner with organizations that advocate for abortion.

The Register stated, “Casey pointed out the issue of how closely a Catholic development agency may work with non-Catholic partners that support the decriminalization of abortion is not entirely settled, either among the Canadian bishops or in bishops’ conferences around the world.” It quoted Casey as saying, “What we’re looking for is some guidance here. In our protocols, it is a fact that we do get involved in these situations, if you want to call them that.”

CLC says that the evidence from D&P’s statement about decriminalization of abortion and its behavior indicates a tolerance of abortion. It says, “We cannot fathom what D&P is doing here except exposing its own tolerance for legal abortion. This might explain why, when this scandal first broke, Development and Peace admitted that it does not look into whether the organizations it partners with are pro-abortion.”

The newsletter report concludes, “This latest development is very saddening. Why don’t they just clean up their own act instead of slandering the pro-life movement?”

Campaign Life Coalition, which specializes in the political side of pro-life work, is by far the largest and most active Canadian pro-life organization, with representatives in most provinces across the nation. It has a national office in Toronto and a national government relations office in Ottawa. CLC boasts the most experienced leaders in Canadian pro-life political activitism at the federal and provincial levels. It has also been among the the world’s first few pioneer groups in pro-life activity at the international level at UN conferences. CLC president Jim Hughes is vice-president of International Right to Life and regularly meets and networks with pro-life leaders from around the world.

LifeSiteNews was started by Campaign Life Organization in 1997, but last year became a separately incorporated non-profit Canadian organization, and the year before that was also incorporated in the United States.

See the April CLC National News