"Abolish Abortion", the Number One Wish for Canada

[SUZANNE]

Another article about the wish list contest....this time from BC Catholic



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July 9, 2007
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On a Wish List and a prayer
By Paul Schratz

The damage done to Canada's demographic landscape, and its population, from abortion has been largely the work of one person, Dr. Henry Morgentaler.

How fitting that the efforts of another individual, Dave Gilbert of Ottawa, has put the abortion epidemic back on Canada's discussion table.

It took Morgentaler years of criminal charges and acquittals from juries, courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as picking up support from sympathetic media, feminists, humanists, and other progressives, to lead the way for abortion becoming an uncontrolled event in Canada.

It took Gilbert a few weeks and Facebook to resurrect the topic; such is the power of the world wide web.

When the CBC launched its Great Canadian Wish List contest in May, it no doubt expected to generate some buzz and score a ratings coup along the lines of its other contests: The Greatest Canadian and the Seven Wonders of Canada.

Little did it expect to become the tool by which a single pro-lifer would return abortion to the public agenda.

Using the Internet networking site Facebook, through which the CBC was charting Canadians' top wishes and how much support those wishes were receiving, Gilbert posted his No. 1 wish: an end to abortion in Canada.

The Wilfrid Laurier University student, a Catholic, was able to strike a nerve - in fact, the nerves of 9,543 people - as his wish spread across the land and introduced Facebook to many people for whom the Internet had been merely an e-mail machine.

It also awakened a sleeping giant, the contented and comfortable pro-abortion movement, which quickly became as defensive as a selfish 5-year-old. It posted a blog entry critical of the whole campaign, proposed a pathetic alternative wish to keep abortion legal, and began rallying its troops from coast to coast, and probably beyond.

With histrionics more appropriate to fending off a home invader, abortion supporters began accusing the pro-lifers of misusing Facebook by promoting hatred, of not posting their photographs, of creating duplicate accounts, of having no other Facebook connections, of rallying Americans to the cause: all accusations that could equally be made of the abortion supporters. (In fact, a quick look at the abortion supporters' profiles reveals more than a few photographs of cats or blank images.)

In the interest of disclosure, I'll admit I'm guilty. I registered on Facebook solely because of the Wish List. I admit, I didn't put my picture, and not just because I don't have a cat. And it's to my dying shame that I'm a member of no other Facebook social networks.

To suggest, however, that this represents a "hijacking" of the process, an allegation that's being tossed about like confetti on various discussion boards, is like accusing viewers of Shrek 3 of hijacking the motion picture box office process.

In the end, more than 9,000 people used the Facebook/Wish List process for exactly its intended purpose, which was to build a network that would identify what's on Canadians' minds.

Now perhaps tuition-free schooling (the No. 5 Wish) is on Canadians' minds, or drastic action to protect the environment (No. 6), but obviously not to the degree that stopping abortion was, since together they don't even come close to No. 1.

If millions of tech-savvy students and environmentalists across the country were unable to, or chose not to, rally others to their cause, it suggests that perhaps we've been given a skewed impression of what's really important to people.

What Gilbert has managed to do is get the public's discomfort with abortion into the limelight, something that was preceded in May by a front-page article in the National Post questioning why abortion, an issue that so many people are passionate about, is never publicly discussed.

The embarrassment of the CBC was evident. It grudgingly accepted the baby it had conceived, clearly appalled that the No. 1 Wish didn't deal with something like global warming or health care. It downscaled its promised major weekend coverage to practically nothing, and unless you searched for it on YouTube, you probably missed it altogether.

No matter. Abortion is a topic for discussion again, regardless of the objections of those who are so wedded to the abortion cause that they will throw every accusation and insult at those who use legitimate means to oppose it.

So, a belated Happy Birthday to Canada, and may Dave Gilbert's fine effort help lead one day to the birthdays of hundreds of thousands of Canadian babies who would otherwise have been sacrifices to "choice."

And may all of us be reminded of just how much harm, or how much good, a single person can do.




http://bcc.rcav.org/07-07-09/editorial.htm

[Paycheck]

For rwebb....

From before he was Pope....

Yesterday, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned some 1,500 persons against what might well be the gravest danger facing humanity at present: the destruction of the image of God, by reducing fatherhood to a merely biological phenomenon. The Bavarian Cardinal addressed a congregation gathered in the Cathedral of Palermo, as well as students of the Theology Faculty of Sicily, during the inauguration of the Third Diocesan Week of Faith.

Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was invited for the occasion by Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi of Palermo, said that God himself "willed to manifest and describe himself as Father." "Human fatherhood gives us an anticipation of what He is. But when this fatherhood does not exist, when it is experienced only as a biological phenomenon, without its human and spiritual dimension, all statements about God the Father are empty. The crisis of fatherhood we are living today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity. The dissolution of fatherhood and motherhood is linked to the dissolution of our being sons and daughters."

However, there are examples, like Maximilian Kolbe and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who demonstrate how it is possible to live fatherhood and motherhood in the most real and profound sense, even without the biological aspect. The risk the Cardinal is concerned about, is intimately linked with our technological era. "At present, man has power over the world and its laws. He is able to dismantle this world and reassemble it."

Cardinal Ratzinger spent some time reflecting on the "name of God." "The Apocalypse speaks about God's antagonist, the beast. This animal does not have a name, but a number."

In order to understand what this means, he recalled the dramatic experience of the concentration camps. "In their horror, they cancel faces and history, transforming man into a number, reducing him to a cog in an enormous machine. Man is no more than a function."

This is a risk being repeated today. "In our days, we should not forget that they prefigured the destiny of a world that runs the risk of adopting the same structure of the concentration camps, if the universal law of the machine is accepted. The machines that have been constructed impose the same law. According to this logic, man must be interpreted by a computer and this is only possible if translated into numbers. The beast is a number and transforms into numbers. God, however, has a name and calls by name. He is a person and looks for the person."

To have a name means to have the possibility of being called, it means communion. If through biotechnology man becomes a laboratory product, along with the biological he will lose the human and spiritual relation with his father and mother. Then the threat mentioned by Cardinal Ratzinger will become a dramatic reality.

ZE00031501

[rwebb]

You are shifting the gound. In your earlier response, you were trying to come up with some kind of criteria to distinguish between those humans who have rights and those who do not.

On the contrary, I was trying to avoid that. I've had that discussion on this site many times before, and I didn't want to broach that thorny subject twenty-something pages into a discussion of a barely related topic.

I'm not "trying to come up with some sort of criteria". I'm trying to show that any such criteria -- yours, mine or anyone else's, whether absolute or relative -- are necessarily subjective, because moral judgements are value judgements, and values are subjective. One can no more prove that a fetus has rights than one can prove that a rose is beautiful.

I'm not the one who brought up a "soul". The whole point of me rebutting your point was to show you that if you have a soul, then so does the unborn child. Either way, you both either have dignity or neither of you do.

And you still have not told us what things you possess that an unborn child does not that would qualify you (and not an unborn child) for protection by the State from a "doctor" who wishes to terminate your life.

As I said, that's not a debate I especially want to get into right now. All I'm saying is that if you believe that an unborn child has a soul, or dignity or whatever else you want to call it, then that is your opinion, not an objective fact. As for my own opinion, and why I might see a significant moral distinction between an unwanted fetus versus a newborn child with loving parents, I'll save that for another discussion.

[Paycheck]

As I said, that's not a debate I especially want to get into right now. All I'm saying is that if you believe that an unborn child has a soul, or dignity or whatever else you want to call it, then that is your opinion, not an objective fact. As for my own opinion, and why I might see a significant moral distinction between an unwanted fetus versus a newborn child with loving parents, I'll save that for another discussion.

What if a human being is unwanted and unloved? Does that take away their dignity? There are millions of such people all around the world. Or have you not noticed?

It is easy to see how euthanasia finds fertile ground with ideas like yours, which are really very arbitrary.

How about this scenario to completely debunk your nice little package above. Let's say that the newborn child was UNWANTED and UNLOVED and the unborn child is WANTED and LOVED, what does that do to how you rank who is worth more?

Regarding the former, did you happen to read this thread?

http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=83808

[Theresa]

Paycheck wrote:

What if a human being is unwanted and unloved? Does that take away their dignity? There are millions of such people all around the world. Or have you not noticed?

Excellent point. I have an eleven month old baby in my home with such a situation. She has been with us three days, and has lived in maybe five homes already during her short life. It is unfathomable to me that this beautiful child and thousands like her, right here in Canada, have no home, mine is only temporary.

If our world becomes a rwebb/rsf world then one day they will kill children such as her. After all it is easier then dealing with the root cause, undisciplined sexuality.

[homeandnativeland]

As I said, that's not a debate I especially want to get into right now. All I'm saying is that if you believe that an unborn child has a soul, or dignity or whatever else you want to call it, then that is your opinion, not an objective fact. As for my own opinion, and why I might see a significant moral distinction between an unwanted fetus versus a newborn child with loving parents, I'll save that for another discussion.

What if a human being is unwanted and unloved? Does that take away their dignity? There are millions of such people all around the world. Or have you not noticed?

It is easy to see how euthanasia finds fertile ground with ideas like yours, which are really very arbitrary.

How about this scenario to completely debunk your nice little package above. Let's say that the newborn child was UNWANTED and UNLOVED and the unborn child is WANTED and LOVED, what does that do to how you rank who is worth more?

Regarding the former, did you happen to read this thread?

http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=83808

I don't want or love baby killing leftards, when can we start??

[Paycheck]

CBC Wish List Coverage Just Keeps Getting Covered
CBC Great Canadian Wish List: The Wish that keeps on giving....exposure to the plight of the unborn. And they say there is no God.

______________________________

Abolish Abortion wins top spot in CBC Wish list

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wish to Abolish Abortion in Canada topped the CBC's Great Canadian Wish List on Facebook with 9,543 votes.

But many pro-life voters, looking forward to promised Canada Day coverage of the winning wish on the CBC's all-news network Newsworld, were disappointed.

"I was looking throughout the day," said John Pacheco, a Catholic and Ottawa-based director of Social Conservatives United. He tuned into Newsworld every 15 minutes on July 1 to catch the newscast.

Selective emphasis

"If it was some kind of progressive cause like the environment or tuition fees, they would have been all over it."

Pacheco discovered the CBC did air a report by Toronto CBC television reporter Mike Wise at 7:35 a.m. Eastern time. Though not accessible from the CBC website, someone uploaded the report to You Tube. Pacheco provides a link at his blog http://socon-or-bust.blogpost.com.

"Social conservatives have been shut out of the CBC for decades."
- Suzanne Fortin
"Who watches Newsworld at 7:30 in the morning on a holiday?" said Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) executive director Joanne McGarry in a telephone interview from Toronto July 4. The report would have appeared hours earlier in the western time zones.

McGarry had sent out alerts to CCRL members urging them to join Facebook, a site originally designed to help university students network and stay in touch, and vote for the Abolish Abortion wish.

Kristen Van Houten posted the second place wish "that Canada would remain pro-choice," which garnered 8,008 votes.

Youth choice

"I would hate to think that anyone would think the youth of Canada were only pro-life," she said in Wise's report.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition also sent out an alert, and urged members to also support a wish to keep euthanasia illegal in Canada. The rules allowed people to support as many wishes as they wanted.

Also in the top 10: a wish "for a spiritual revival in our nation" and a wish to "restore the traditional definition of marriage." Other pro-life and pro-family organizations also urged their supporters to join Facebook and vote.

"The vote in favour of life is a significant one," McGarry said.

"It's a solid victory because whether the CBC wants to admit it or not, they had to cover it," said Pacheco. "It shakes up their assumption about where so-called Canadian values are."

Many who voted for the wish hoped for the kind of coverage the CBC gave to its "greatest Canadian" contest or its recent search for the "seven wonders of Canada."

"The pro-lifers were the most successful group in mobilizing," wrote Suzanne Fortin, a Catholic and Ottawa-based blogger who organized a campaign in support of the wish through her blog bigbluewave.ca. "We won fair and square. Social conservatives have been shut out of the CBC for decades."


http://www.wcr.ab.ca/news/2007/0716/wish071607.shtml

[SUZANNE]

Student gets his ‘wish’
Published July 18th, 2007 in News
WLU student’s anti-abortion Facebook group wins CBC contest; garners media attention nationwide

DAN POLISCHUK
NEWS EDITOR

For fourth-year economics student Dave Gilbert, getting the entire country’s attention was something he never intended to achieve in his graduating year at WLU. But a larger than expected contingent has responded to his initiative to bring the harmful effects of abortion out into the spotlight.

Using the CBC competition named the ‘Great Canadian Wish List,’ which used the Facebook website as its platform and culminated with the results being broadcast on Canada Day, Gilbert submitted his wish to ‘abolish abortion in Canada’. 9,945 votes later (as of yesterday at 8 pm), he was receiving interview requests from Maclean’s magazine, The Globe and Mail, CBC and CBC Radio as the outright winner in terms of overall support.


“I’m really surprised about the reaction it got from the public. I didn’t wish to be number one or even in the top ten. I was just hoping it would send the word out and educate people on the harmful effects of abortion – both physically and mentally,” said Gilbert.

“But, you know, I think it shows a lot of people think that abortion is a closed issue and, really, a lot of young people do want to talk about it,” he added.

Not surprisingly, Gilbert is one of those aforementioned individuals. The fact that his own mother considered abortion when she became pregnant with him as a teenager gave Gilbert a lot of resolve, taking the initiative to join the national debate after he came across the contest watching CBC one afternoon.

“I think this was a good experiment on CBC’s part,” he said. “I think it was interesting and it just shows that when you have an unmediated, open-forum debate it shows that abortion does come up to the top of the issues that people do want to talk about,” said Gilbert.

“A lot of people are surprised [with the support] because it doesn’t get the coverage in the mainstream media. But it just shows that, when you have uncensored discussions, this issue comes up in the front.”

Asked if he expects any real change to come from his intended efforts to improve what he classifies a ‘human rights issue,’ Gilbert was just pleased that “for the immediate short-term, it got people thinking.”

“It got the coverage from coast-to-coast of Canada and I hope it shows politicians out there that there are people who want to bring up this debate, want to talk about it and to not be afraid of where you stand on the issue because you will not lose votes – you will actually gain people’s support,” he theorized.

“I think that some people don’t want to talk about it because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, well you’re infringing on rights.’ … But people forget that abortion is infringing on other people’s rights as well.”


http://www.cordweekly.com/archives/2127

[TomFoolery]

NOW, the CBC made a promise....a contract. That was that it would give Canada Day coverage to the #1 Wish of Canadians as determined through a process the CBC itself designed and facilitated.

Then, they - the "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" broke that promise / contract.

There was a contract offered from CBC to the Wishlist Voters. By voting, the Wishlisters accepted the offer.

Now, the CBC has reneged on their contract, for political reasons, no less. That is a PUBLIC BROADCASTER PAID FOR BY TAXPAYER DOLLARS has defaulted not only on its obligation to the Wishlisters, but also defaulted in its mandate to reserve itself above its own issues.

I smell a lawsuit. My WISH is that the CBC get sued in a class-action suit by all the WISHLISTERS that voted for an Abortion-free Canada.

A smart lawyer will make all kinds of hay with this, and the gift of Life will keep on Giving.

CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST CBC !!!!