TORONTO, July 26 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A study of major Canadian libraries undertaken by Report newsmagazine reveals that they demonstrate abortion advocacy in terms of their selection of items to stock. The magazine surveyed the catalogues of six of the country’s largest public libraries -Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto and selected four very popular pro-life books and four corresponding pro-abortion books.
The survey found that the six libraries contained 59 copies of the pro-abortion books, but only 14 copies of the anti-abortion books, a ratio of four to one. To broaden the scope of the research project, a subject search was done on the word “abortion” in two of the libraries, which found that the ratio of pro-abortion to pro-life books was to three to one.
While library officials protested that their selection processes were unbiased, Ted Gerk of the Pro-Life Resource Centre in Kelowna, B.C. told the magazine that an imbalance found in only one or two libraries might be attributed to any number of factors, but he thinks something is wrong with the system when the same disparity is found in all six major libraries. “Either librarians are stoolies for the pro-abortion side, or they’re not doing their jobs.” David Curtin, editor-in-chief of The Interim, a pro-family, pro-life newspaper based in Toronto, says his publication has had first-hand experience with overt bias on the part of Canadian librarians. “We have trouble getting public libraries to accept our publication,’’ he reports. “They complain that it’s oriented towards a special interest, or that it’s too political. This from libraries that accept a remarkable amount of gay and feminist material, some of which is pretty radical.”