Focus on Ontario
By Jakki Jeffs and Tom Kelly

Alliance for Life Ontario celebrated its 12 th year of service to the 65 educational pro-life groups currently operating across our province. It seems a long time since October 1989 when the groups of Southwestern Ontario took the courageous step to fund a provincial office in the hope that it would help unite them more fully with their colleagues in Eastern and Northern Ontario. Within a couple of years, this new level of educational, pro-life work was assisting our local groups, researching, preparing and presenting briefs at provincial and national levels of government, and spear-heading the annual conferences which have been a key part of our Ontario pro-life tradition since 1985.

United under the umbrella of Alliance for Life Ontario, the educational pro-life voice has resounded in the halls of our governments at both federal and provincial levels-protection of unborn life, informed consent, abortion legislation, presentations to the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technology in 1990 and 1997, and responses to destructive stem cell research guidelines (June, 2001) and assisted reproduction legislation (2002). Working together, the educational pro-life groups in Ontario have made their presence known and felt. In 2000, they funded the production of a 20 minute video entitled "Life" which provides a clear overview of abortion in Canada.

Euthanasia has also been tackled and position briefs presented in 1993, 1995, and 2000, including oral presentations to the "Of Life and Death" committees set up by our Federal Government. Through television and radio talk shows and in the printed media, Alliance for Life Ontario has addressed the pro-life issues raised by Sue Rodrigues, the murder of Tracy Lynn Latimer and other children with disabilities, the provision of the so-called "exit bag," the actions of Dr. Jack Kervorkian, the Netherlands and Oregon assisted suicide policies, and most recently, Diane Pretty from the U.K. as she takes her "assisted suicide" case to the International Human Rights Tribunal.

Provincial strategies have been developed to assist in educating our medical professionals on the abortion/breast cancer link and the post-fertilization effects of the "morning after pill" (MAP). The latter issue will be forefront again in June this year as the pilot project, "to increase women's access to emergency contraception," sponsored by the Ontario Women's Health Council, comes to an end. With the recent peer reviewed study by Dr. Chris Kahlenborn and his colleagues, we have more proof than ever before that "an after-fertilization, early abortion effect of these drugs is probably a more common event than is recognized by most physicians or patients."

A key area of our developing strategy will be to challenge those who would hand these pills out like candy to women, to prove that girls/women will be properly and fully informed of the abortifacient nature of these medications as well as the adverse reactions of irregular bleeding, nausea, vomiting, headache, migraine, distended veins, and the possibility of allergic reactions. We will also ask just how the pharmacists will ensure tests have been conducted prior to handing over these drugs-tests to ascertain whether or not the client has a genetic susceptibility to breast or ovarian cancer or thromboembolic disease.

The question of liability is another issue that is raised by MAP. If a girl/woman is harmed by these drugs, to whom would she go for compensation? Pharmacists may just be in the firing line. We wonder how that will go down!

From 1990 until 1995, we followed and addressed, in written brief and oral presentation, Ontario provincial legislation which gave legal force to living wills, instituted substitute decision making in our province, sought to protect privacy of health care information, stripped the age of consent from the Health Care Consent Act, and legally blocked parents from being included in the medical treatment decision-making process of even their minor children. This is an area which needs revisiting by our association as the majority of parents in our province remain wholly unaware of this situation.

Our office has just updated the pamphlet "Ways of death" which has statistics of abortion up until 1997 compared to drownings, road death toll, and warfare. Call our office to order!

Our most recent provincial wide co-operative venture is our "Reaching Minds Through Media" project which is entering its second campaign. We raised $250,000 for our 2000 campaign which saw television ads airing for a period of seven weeks in the Fall of 2000 and four weeks in January/February, 2001. The effect of our television advertisement campaign was to increase the number of calls from our province to the 1 800 national crisis pregnancy hot line by over 600%!

In order to customize our 2002 campaign, we purchased the services of a company which conducted a poll across Ontario in July, 2001. ( See sidebar below.) The researchers first asked respondents about their attitudes towards abortion. Then the researchers gave people some facts about abortion and life in the womb. The percentage who were opposed to abortion after being given the facts rose from 36% to 44%, and most of the converts were people who had been unsure. The percentage that found abortion to be an unacceptable solution to an unplanned pregnancy rose to just above half.

So what are we waiting for, Canada? We have been handed a battle plan for the conversion of people to the cause of the unborn. We just have to take advantage of what we are being told.

On behalf of Alliance for Life Ontario, we would like to welcome LifeCanada, to the pro-life community. We hope that our educational efforts in Ontario will assist in strengthening the national pro-life presence across Canada.

For more information contact:

Alliance for Life Ontario
phone (519) 824-7797
fax (519) 824-8714
email: aflo@mgl.ca
web: www.allianceforlife.org

Jakki Jeffs is Executive Director of Alliance for Life Ontario. Tom Kelly is media consultant.