LifeCanada’s Monthly E-Newsflash

Friday April 15, 2005

This is LifeCanada’s fourth e-news monthly bulletin. LifeCanada’s Monthly E-Newsflash will appear on or about the 15th of every month. Please invite your friends or family members to sign up for this free bulletin which will provide important updates, action items and notices of upcoming events.

Statement from LifeCanada on the MasterCard Program

LifeCanada regrets the decision by the Bank of Montreal not to renew our affinity card program at the end of July 2006.

A small group of abortion advocates with ties to key media people launched a smear campaign against LifeCanada. The media did not report news in this case. (The affinity program with a pro-life group has existed for 15 years.) They created a story and colluded with our opponents to restrict our ability to raise money and present our message.

This campaign began with a series of emails circulating among a group of what appear to be radical abortion advocates. One of the people involved identified herself as a midwife with the “Victoria Midwifery Group”. Despite the obvious contradiction between midwifery and radical abortion advocacy, no one in the media apparently thought to report that a woman who assists women to safely give birth to their babies was one of the people behind this campaign. Nor did they think to ask her if her pregnant clients knew that she was an abortion advocate. It is disturbing to us that this is what passes for journalism in Canada today.

We take some comfort from the fact that perhaps the reason for this campaign is that LifeCanada has been doing some very effective work over the past three years.

Our public opinion polls on Canadians’ views on abortion have enlightened many about what Canadians think about abortion. They are not “pro-choice.” Even though not one English Canadian media outlet has ever reported the results of our polls, the information has cropped up in various columns, newsletters and on the internet over the past three years.

Our full-page ad in the National Post last year must have outraged a few abortion advocates. It focused on abortion statistics and the fact that taxpayers are forced to pay for them whether they agree or not. That one ad elicited over 2,000 responses from Canadians who disagree with this policy.

Just a couple of weeks before this smear campaign began, we gave all 308 MPs copies of the book, “Women’s Health After Abortion,” which documents the over 500 studies which look at the complications and side effects of abortion on women.

Did that provoke this campaign? Who knows? Certainly, none of the media reported what sparked the boycott 15 years after the program started.

It certainly wasn’t diligent reporting about controversial programs sponsored by Canadian businesses. There has been a boycott against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for months now over their aggressive support and promotion of homosexual marriage and gay pride events. CIBC’s Chairman, John Hunkin, is very open and voluble about his bank’s determination to advance this cause. And yet, even though a majority of Canadians oppose attempts to redefine marriage and to promote acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, no one in the media thinks that the CIBC boycott is a story worth reporting.

Similarly, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, Chapters Indigo, has an affinity-type program with Planned Parenthood. This group is an aggressive advocate of abortion and explicit sex information for teens and children. It gets funding from every level of government, has a charitable tax number and sponsors what many people consider to be offensive programs. Again, where are Canada’s objective journalists? Why no interviews with Canadians offended by Chapters Indigo for supporting this anti-life organization?

Again, we are disappointed that BMO has taken this decision.

But, from LifeCanada’s perspective, the villains in this situation are the bullies who began the campaign and the Canadian media, which supported and abetted them.

Our financial situation will be affected by this decision. The bullies will have won unless pro-life Canadians decide otherwise.

Our financial stability depended to some extent on this program. That left us vulnerable to assault, and dependent on an organization that was not supporting our goals and values.

If pro-life Canadians truly support our goals and principles, they need to ensure that we have the financial means to carry them out. Right now we do not. We appreciate all the cardholders who have been supporting us, some for many years. We hope that now that this program is coming to an end, those people will continue to support us financially by donating directly to LifeCanada, perhaps through our monthly debit program or our Partners for Life initiative.

The challenge, of course, is that the card was a relatively painless way to support LifeCanada. We earned money when you shopped. We have no charitable tax number so we cannot issue receipts for tax purposes. Your donations to us will have to come straight from your wallet and, probably more importantly, your heart. If they do, our financial stability will be secured by people who believe in our cause and are not afraid of the media.

We are not prepared to cave in to these bullies. We will continue to do our job and work to promote the dignity and sanctity of all human life. We hope you will be there with us and will ensure that we have the financial support we need to do the job.

What can you do?

Many people have contacted us to ask what they can do in response to this information. We would like everyone to know that our anger is directed at the media which colluded with abortion advocates to create a story where none existed. The affinity card program has existed since about 1990, first with Alliance for Life and then with LifeCanada.

We are angry because the media always censors our message, never covers our press releases, usually ignores our letters to the editor and never tells the truth about abortion.

After Heather Mallick's column ran in the Globe and Mail, they did not publish any letters responding to her, even though many pro-lifers wrote letters. I was emailing the paper daily because I had written an op-ed I wanted them to run. I was also asking them why they weren't printing any letters. Finally on Thursday, five days after the column, they ran a letter by Dr. Debra Zeni citing evidence about the abortion-breast cancer risk. The very next day, three letters appeared in the Globe criticizing Dr. Zeni's letter.

We are urging people to contact the Globe and Mail to point out the bias in Mallick's original piece (in addition, there were also several factual errors) and to ask when they have ever covered a pro-life story from a pro-life perspective. Her column was clearly a pro-abortion piece. Your letter should go to the editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspon, EGreenspon@GlobeAndMail.ca, and be copied to the Comment editor, Patrick Martin, PMartin@GlobeAndMail.ca, and whoever else you think it is appropriate to send it to. The Letters editor at the Globe is Philip Jackman, PJackman@GlobeAndMail.ca. We at LifeCanada, info@lifecanada.org, would love to see these letters so you can also copy us just so we know how many people are actually contacting the Globe.

Another person who should be contacted is Sue Montgomery from the Montreal Gazette who wrote the first column which was reprinted by a number of newspapers across the country. Sue Montgomery created a news story from the information forwarded to her by a pro-choice individual even though there was nothing new to report - the affinity card program with a pro-life group was almost fifteen years old. She chose to write about the Bank of Montreal boycott but continues to ignore the boycott against the CIBC for their overt support of homosexual rights. She can be reached at smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com Letters can also be sent to Andrew Phillips, the editor-in-chief of the Montreal Gazette, APhillips@thegazette.canwest.com

At some point, these people will get the idea that Canadians are monitoring what they write, what they ignore and the perspective that they are peddling to their readers.

Health Risks of Abortion

Life Canada’s new pamphlet, Health Risks of Abortion, is presently at the printers and should be available for distribution in a few days. Please contact the office if you would like to order a copy.

Last month’s e-news bulletin included the following information about the pamphlet:

The new pamphlet entitled Health Risks of Abortion will answer the question: Is abortion safer than childbirth? The pamphlet highlights the latest studies and shows that abortion can seriously affect not only a woman’s health but even her future pregnancies. For example, recent studies point to an approximately 85 per cent increase in premature births to women who have had a previous induced abortion. This risk increases sharply with every additional abortion that a woman undergoes. Premature infants suffer a very high rate of disability. Their rate of cerebral palsy for example, is thirty-eight times greater than among the general population. We believe that this pamphlet will go a long way in dispelling the myth that abortion is a safe procedure.

March for Life in Ottawa

Campaign Life Coalition’s annual March for Life is coming up on Thursday, May 12, 2005. The March through downtown Ottawa will be followed by a Silent No More Awareness Campaign on Parliament Hill at 3:00 PM, featuring the witness of women who have had abortions and a banquet in the evening. This year’s banquet speaker is Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. A one-day youth conference is planned for Friday, March 13, 2005. For more information or to order banquet tickets please call 1-800-730-5358.

Become a Partner for Life

We are actively seeking sponsors/advertisers for our newly-designed website (www.lifecanada.org) and for our bi-monthly newsletter. We do not have a charitable tax number yet but these ads can certainly be a business expense as you promote your business to our supporters.

Our rates for this project are reasonable. A business card ad in LifeCanada News will cost $125 per issue or $600 for the full year. Your sponsorship ad on our website will be posted for a year for a cost of $500. We see this as a great opportunity to build a pro-life network across the country and help to secure LifeCanada’s financial base.

For more information, please call LifeCanada’s toll free number 1-866-780-5433 or email us at carroll@lifecanada.org

Pre-authorized Giving Plan

LifeCanada is now able to accept pre-authorized monthly donations. This is a tremendous option for LifeCanada because it allows us to schedule our educational pro-life activities since we know in advance how much support is coming in each month. It is also easy for our supporters since they just complete a form, send in one cheque and then the pre-authorized amount is automatically deducted from their bank account. Donors maintain control of their donations by simply contacting us by phone, email or letter to let us know if they wish to make changes or cancel the plan.

If you would like to donate ten, twenty, fifty dollars or any other amount to LifeCanada each month, please contact us and we will send you the necessary form to complete.

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Please feel free to contact us at any time at:
LifeCanada,
376 Churchill Avenue N,
Suite 310,
Ottawa, ON, K1Z 5C3
Telephone: (613) 722-1552 or toll free 1-866-780-5433
Fax (613) 722-2201
Email info@lifecanada.org

Visit our website: www.lifecanada.org