National Pro-Life Conference: Day 3 (Part 1)

The third day of our conference began with quite a nasty surprise from the Globe and Mail. Its front page article about the double life of a pedophile was illustrated by a picture of that man standing in the Life Chain holding 3 signs with pro-life messages. There was nothing about abortion in the article and the picture (completely unrelated to the text) was there just to create an impression that maybe all pro-lifers are just like that guy...

Could there be a better proof of what was told yesterday by John Henry Westen, that those running the mainstream media will do anything it takes to discredit the pro-life movement, just to be ok with themselves? But there was a silver lining in it too. Life Chain coverage rarely gets to the front page. The message on the signs - that abortion hurts women and kills children is clearly readable and may eventually touch a few hearts.

Our first speaker today was Dr. Clem Persaud, Professor of Medical Microbiology and Biotechnology, who provided us with information about the link between abortion, stem cells and breast cancer. Dr. Clem explained us what role do stem cells play, what transformations they go through during pregnancy and how disrupting the natural process through surgical abortion leaves women vulnerable to breast cancer. (While carrying pregnancy to term could actually reduce the risk even among those genetically predisposed to breast cancer.)

Dr. Clem mentioned that on average, 429 women get diagnosed with breast cancer each week and 102 women die each week from breast cancer. (This could be found on Canadian Cancer Society page.) There's more than enough evidence that abortion elevates the risk to breast cancer, but abortion is never listed even among the possible risk factors.

But what about all the organizations that protect women? Denise Mountenay was there to answer that question. She told us how the cancer society would admit that delaying pregnancy may increase the risk to breast cancer, yet they keep denying the link between abortion and breast cancer. Denise was one of many women who had an abortion and had to be treated for breast cancer.

It's been also mentioned that most of the major cancer research organizations engage in embryonic stem cell research. Among the very few that run moral research and do not experiment on unborn babies is The Cancer Research Society.

Then the Reverend John Ensor, the Executive Director of Heartbeat International told us about the importance of working within the community to combat abortions. Churches must preach the sanctity of life to their own people, since over 50% of those who have abortions, identify themselves as Catholics or Born-Again Christians. He gave us a personal example of how a poor family, unnoticed by the community was about to turn to abortions, since they had no money to raise another child; and what difference does it make when neighbors and the church turn to help.

The speech was titled "cross-bearing for child-bearing" and by bearing the cross Reverend John meant making sacrifices to help those in need to raise another child. Believing is good, but not enough, he said. Action and sacrifice is required. Everybody else makes peace with death.