OTTAWA, September 18, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In its October national newsletter, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) emphasizes as its lead story the importance of continuing political pressure to ensure the defeat of the federal government’s reproductive technologies Bill C-13.
The Liberal elite has been hampered for several months now in arranging enough support to pass the controversial bill and has postponed voting several times. With the new parliamentary session underway this week it is expected that another attempt will soon be made to bring the bill forward. CLC notes that over the summer, the Toronto Star reported that Liberal MP Paul Szabo is the “MP to watch in the same-sex marriage debate because he was so successful at rallying support for the reproductive technology battle that some say he is single-handedly responsible for forcing the Liberal leadership to put off the vote on that bill because of lack of backbench support.”
The Globe and Mail also reported that “Ottawa fears revolt on embryo legislation.” C-13, reminds CLC, “is multi-faceted. It regulates fertility treatment (IVF), surrogate motherhood, stem cell research and human cloning (among numerous other issues). The idea behind this wide-ranging bill was to try to sneak some immoral practices such as the destruction of human embryos to harvest stem cells for research by promising to ban human cloning. At best, this ‘Hobson’s Choice’ would have pressured MPs to vote for a bad bill because it claimed to do a good – namely ban human cloning.” Through the work of American researcher Dr. Dianne Irving, CLC Medical Advisor Dr. John Shea and CLC Research Director Hilary White, the national pro-life organization discovered huge loop-holes in the supposed ban on cloning. “This fact, combined with other inherent problems in the bill, may be leading to C-13’s defeat”, says the organization. Many Liberal backbenchers have criticized the bill. Liberal MP Paul Szabo has predicted it could go down to defeat (in no small measure because of his fight against it). “C-13 is in trouble” says CLC, “although we never underestimate the ability of the Prime Minister’s Office and Liberal Party House Leader Don Boudria to ram through what the federal government wants. (Boudria has suggested that there will be no free vote on C-13.)”“No amendments will make this bill supportable” says CLC. “It must be voted down.” See LifeSite’s Stem Cell page which contains many past stories and detailed information on the reproductive technologies issues and Bill C-13. https://www.lifesitenews.com/features/stemcellembryo/index.html