Wednesday, December 04, 2013

The Reform Act: The Pro-Life View

Some quotes from a vvvvery interesting Lifesite piece:

Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition, said that while he saw positive aspects of the bill, it could hamstring a good leader from working towards pro-life-and-family legislation.

And, my favorite:

Though Chong is deemed “not supportable” by Campaign Life Coalition because of his support for abortion up to 20 weeks gestation, the bill could come as a boon to pro-life-and-family advocates seeking to run as candidates.

Outspoken pro-life advocates have a history of being rejected from the top as candidates for a riding.

In 2007 Conservative party brass in Ottawa cut off Heather Stilwell’s run for the Conservative nomination in a B.C. riding. Stilwell had launched her campaign prior despite warnings that the Conservative Party would not allow her to run due to her history as a prominent advocate for the right-to-life and the traditional family. The party’s decision was reversed days after LifeSiteNews.com broke the story.

Harper rejected the candidacy of outspoken social conservative John Pacheco, organizer of the 15,000-strong March for Marriage on Parliament Hill in 2005, during the Ottawa West nomination that same year in a move to protect the party’s preferred candidate John Baird, a staunch proponent of homosexual ‘marriage’.

Pacheco, an unflinching pro-life advocate who runs the blog Socon or Bust, welcomed the news of Chong’s bill.

“Since the political culture in Ottawa is firmly rooted in the culture of death, any structural change that lessens its grip and gives more influence and leverage to the pro-life movement and pro-life MPs is a good thing,” he told LifeSiteNews.com.

“Time and time again, whether it's abortion, gay ‘marriage’, or euthanasia, we see that the people are against these totalitarian and destructive ideologies, yet the political class and the power-brokers behind the scenes ram it through anyway.”

Pacheco sees the bill as benefiting the political effort to protect unborn life.

“It stands to reason that anything we can do to saturate government's power is a good thing for the pro-life movement. This measure and any others like it should be strongly backed by people who value family and life,” he said.

So, Andrew Coyne, whose totally hot for Chong's bill, doesn't have any truck with the worry that extremists might use The Reform Act to infiltrate and undermine mainstream political organizations and, well, bring in Reform Party-style legislative changes.
But this may be because he doesn't think extremists will bother to even attempt a take-over.  But now I think its obvious that they will bother.  Perhaps this fact will cause Andrew to reconsider...

PS.  Welcome back Flanders!  Love you, crazy dude!

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