The surrogate, a mother of two, initially disagreed with the parents and decided to give birth to the child; however, she eventually decided to abort, according to the Post.  The parties had signed an agreement saying that the parents would not be responsible for their child should the woman carry the pregnancy to term against the parents’ wishes.

Dr. Ken Seethram, who oversaw the case, discussed the situation, which took place within the last year, in a presentation last week at a conference of the Canadian Society of Fertility and Andrology.  Seethram, who works at Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine, argued that the situation suggests there is no need for the government to oversee contracts between parents and surrogates.

Sally Rhoads, a former surrogate who runs a website supporting those involved in “third party reproduction,” told the Post that parents should be “protected” in the event of a disagreement over whether to have the unborn baby killed by abortion or not.  “The baby that’s being carried is their baby. It’s usually their genetic offspring,” she said. “Why should the intended parents be forced to raise a child they didn’t want? It’s not fair.”

However, Juliet Guichon, a bioethicist with the University of Calgary, said that children cannot be treated the same as any other product that might be created on an assembly line. “Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” Guichon told the Post. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”

According to Dr. John Shea, a leading Canadian bioethicist and expert on reproductive technologies, the situation highlights the dangers of Canada’s liberal laws concerning the beginning of life.  “When you break the moral law, you end up with a thousand different problems, foreseen or unforeseen,” he said.

“There’s so many basic things wrong here,” Shea told LifeSiteNews.com.  He insisted that the conceived child has “the ultimate right from God Himself to be allowed to be born.”  “Any of the shenanigans that go on between the would-be parents and this woman [the surrogate] is an irrelevancy,” he said.  “The moral law is the moral law.”

Dr. Shea also sharply criticized the practice of surrogacy, and artificial reproduction as a whole. He pointed out that in order for one embryo to successfully implant, doctors artificially conceive many more, which are discarded or frozen.  In Canada, they actually implant a few in the hope that one will survive. He also pointed out that the semen is taken from the man by way of masturbation.

He said that artificial reproduction has also been shown to be dangerous for the child, with, for example, a much-increased instance of prematurity and thus the corresponding health risks.

“The child should be conceived by sexual intercourse in marriage,” he maintained.  “It’s entitled to be conceived in that fashion.”

The students were arrested around 9:00 a.m. as they were preparing to set up signs in the university’s Tory Quad, a central outdoor location, for the Genocide Awareness Project, which compares abortion to past atrocities through graphic imagery.

“This will set the standard for how far pro-lifers are willing to go for their right to freedom of speech, and their right to talk about abortion,” said Ruth Lobo, a fourth-year student and president of Carleton Lifeline, after she and the others were released this morning.

The university had forbidden the GAP display in the location, and told them to do it in Porter Hall – a large, out of the way, room in the university’s student life building.  They persisted even after the students’ lawyer told the university that they were infringing freedom of speech.

After fruitless negotiations with the university, the students warned them that they would protest this morning by putting up their display in the quad.  The students planned a national protest, inviting students from campuses across the country.  The four Carleton students – Lobo, James Shaw, Nicholas MacLeod, and Craig Stewart – were joined by Zuza Kurzawa from Queen’s, who was also arrested.  Two students from the University of Calgary and Brandon University also came.

“As we all know, the purpose of doing this outdoor event is because no one wants to talk about abortion,” said Lobo.  “We want to challenge mainstream views.  I don’t think they would object if we wanted to do a Holocaust display outside.”

Jason MacDonald, Carleton’s director of communications, told LifeSiteNews that student groups are not normally permitted use of the quad for displays.  “In addition, the content of the Genocide Awareness Project has been found to be disturbing and offensive to some by the courts and human rights tribunals in other jurisdictions (BC for instance),” he wrote in an e-mail.

Canadian GAP leaders said they were not aware of any such cases, however. MacDonald did not provide examples by press time.

Lobo noted, further, that the quad is listed as bookable space, and that it has been used by student groups in the past.  MacDonald did not respond by press time when asked about the university’s criteria to determine whether students can use the quad.

Lobo said that when they were told this morning by campus security – who awaited their arrival along with the Ottawa police – to move to Porter Hall, security said they would escort them by a private route so that no one would see the signs.  “So they really were very adamant that no one see this thing, and very adamant that no one wants to see this,” she said.

The students were taken handcuffed to campus security services, where the Ottawa police charged each with 2 counts of trespassing – failure to leave property when asked, and trying to go ahead with a prohibited event.  They were each fined $130.

The students are now waiting to speak with their lawyer before deciding how to respond.  However, they are planning another display Tuesday evening before a debate at the University of Ottawa featuring Stephanie Gray of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

“It needs to remain clear that, while this seems like fair appeasement to many people, when you really look at why the university asked us to move, it’s clear censorship based on the topic of our material,” said Lobo.  “I think it’s the equivalent of telling Martin Luther King he can protest, as long as he does it in his church, and invites white people to come see it.  His message was considered to be disturbing and offensive to lots of people.”

“If we can’t freely express ideas on campus, we have nothing,” she added.

Before she arrived at the camp in April 1943, all the newborns of prisoners in the infamous Nazi concentration camp were drowned and allowed to be ripped apart by rats before his or her mother’s eyes.

But, as Matthew M. Anger reports in his article ‘Midwife at Auschwitz’, Leszczynska refused to carry out the Germans’ order to kill the babies – even opposing the infamous Dr. Mengele – and, amazingly, was allowed to carry on unimpeded.

During her time at Auschwitz, Leszczynska delivered over 3,000 babies.  Half of those were murdered and another thousand died from the horrible conditions in the camp.  But those with blond hair and blue eyes, about 500, were sent to be raised as Germans, and another 30 survived the camp.

In her ‘Raport from Auschwitz,’ Leszczynska described how the pregnant women were plagued with intense hunger and extreme cold, and faced a severe lack of medicine and water.  She and others had to work day and night to keep away the rats, which would gnaw off the noses, ears, fingers, and feet of the sick.  “Rats with their diet of human flesh grew to sizes of large cats,” she said.

During Leszczynska’s entire time at the camp, no mother or baby died under her care.  Asked by her supervising doctor to report on the death rate, she reported this fact to his astonishment.  “Lagerarzt looked at me in disbelief,” she recounts.  “Even the most sophisticated German clinics at universities, he said, could not claim such a success rate.”

While she suggested in her ‘Raport’ that “the emaciated organisms were too barren a medium for bacteria,” Anger reports that her children and other inmates called it a miracle.

Leszczynska was able to use a secret tattoo under the newborns’ armpit to help many of the families reunite after the war.  “As long as a newborn was together with the mother, motherhood itself created a ray of hope. Separation with the newborn was overwhelming,” she said.  “The thought of a possibility of future reunion with their children helped many women go through this ordeal.”

The cause for Leszczynska’s beatification in the Catholic Church is underway.  The Stanislawa Leszczynska Foundation, led by members of her family, is working on a feature film about her life.

The 5th World Prayer Congress for Life, organized by Human Life International and a number of other major pro-life organizations, will be held in Rome from October 5th to 10th, featuring many of the major figures in the worldwide pro-life movement and various high-level Vatican officials.

LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen will address the Congress on how to communicate the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexuality in a hostile culture.

Click here to register to attend the Congress.

If the unborn are not human, the 13-year-old Toronto-native explains in her ten-minute address, then abortion is simply a matter of personal preference.  But, she says, “if the unborn are human, then they have value and rights.”

She points out that textbooks on embryology clearly state that life begins at conception and human development begins at fertilization.  “At conception, a new life with its own unique DNA begins,” she explains.  “All of the body parts of the mother share the same DNA, the mother’s DNA.  But an unborn baby has an entirely different DNA.  He or she is separate from the mother.”

“It should be clear that when two living beings from the same species mate, the product will be the same species as the parents,” she adds.

Lia argues that all of the claims against the humanity of the unborn distinguish them from the born based on (1) size, (2) level of development, (3) environment, or (4) degree of dependency.  She goes through each one and points out that we do not devalue born people based on these differences.

To take the fourth, for example, she observes that many argue the unborn should not be given the same rights as others because they depend so completely on their mother for life and sustenance.  But Lia points out that a one-week-old baby is totally dependent on her parents, and the infirm are dependent on medical implements.

“Really if we take this argument to its logical conclusion, we should be able to kill those who are on welfare, because they depend on the government,” she asserts.  “We are all dependent on someone to a degree and no one goes around saying that those who are more dependent aren’t human or are somehow less human than others.”

In the end, she admits that abortion advocates now accept the humanity of the unborn, but rely instead on the claim that the unborn are not persons.  “They acknowledge the humanity of the unborn, but are now denying them their personhood, and thereby denying them their rights,” she says.  “Is it possible to be a human and not a person?”

Having shown the humanity of the unborn, Lia’s next video, which should be issued shortly, will answer the question “Are the unborn persons?”

See the video, ‘Are the Unborn Human?’ here.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

13-Year-Old Pro-Life Superstar Tackles Euthanasia
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/mar/10030212.html

12-Year-Old Pro-Life Prodigy Gives Moving Speech at Canadian March for Life
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09052210.html

“We have to dare to speak to the deep heart, where the Spirit of the Lord is touching people beyond what we can calculate,” he told Canadian Catholic News’ Deborah Gyapong.

During Cardinal Ouellet’s eight years as the archbishop of Quebec City and primate of Canada, he has become known as one of the country’s greatest defenders of faith, life, and the family.

This past spring he drew sharp criticism, from within and outside the Church, after he reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of unborn life, even in cases of rape. He later unapologetically reiterated his views on abortion in a press conference arranged to address the controversy.

Earlier this week the head of the Quebec Bishops Assembly, Bishop Martin Veillette, suggested in a critical interview that while Ouellet has desired to “emphasize certain points of view that he considers important,”  “There are times when it is more important to keep silent than to speak.

“There are things like that, sometimes, that you need to know how to manage,” he said. “It’s a bit delicate.”

But in the recent interview, Ouellet said that in addition to fearlessly preaching the teachings of the Church, bishops must embrace them deeply.  “Then you have the power of conviction,” he said.

“If you state it only formally and in the end you do not really want to see it applied because you don’t believe that it is possible that people accept it, you are in trouble for the transmission of the message,” he added.

The cardinal, further, said the Church needs what Gyapong called a “new intellectual dynamism” to “recapture the spirit of Christianity” and “create a new Christian culture.”

“We need intellectuals for that, theologians, philosophers, Christians who really believe in the Gospel and share the doctrine of the Church on moral questions,” he said.  “We have suffered from this mentality of dissent” that is “still dominating the intelligentsia.”

“There is no real discipleship there, real discipleship,” he added. “The discipleship that is emerging is from those who believe and who really love the Church.”

The former Primate of Canada and Archbishop of Quebec City celebrated his farewell Mass on Sunday, the feast of the Assumption, at Ste. Anne de Beaupre.  The church was packed with over 2,000 faithful, with hundreds others being turned away for lack of space.  After his homily, he was congratulated with a lengthy standing ovation.

In his new position as head of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Ouellet will assist the pope in choosing the next generation of the world’s bishops.

In that role, he told Gyapong, he will seek out bold “men of faith” with “the guts to help people live it out.”

The ACLU is supporting Ceara Sturgis, 18, a homosexual student who is suing Copiah County School District after, she claims, her school excluded her from the yearbook due to her decision to pose in a tuxedo for the photo.

The school, Wesson Attendance Center, reportedly told Sturgis that she must wear a drape for the photo in accordance with school policy.  The school remained resolute even after she complained.

Sturgis and the ACLU allege that the school violated the 14th amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.

The ACLU just wrapped up another case against a Mississippi school in July, after that school cancelled their prom instead of allowing a homosexual teen, named Constance McMillen, to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend as a date.  The school eventually capitulated, paying McMillen $35,000 plus legal fees, allowing the court to enter a judgment against them, and agreeing to follow a “non-discrimination” policy regarding homosexuals.

Bryan Fischer, Director of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association, warned at the time that the school district had “compromised the ability of every high school in America to defend natural norms of sexual expression.”

A representative of Wesson Attendance Center informed LifeSiteNews that they are not commenting at this time.

CCHD, the U.S. bishops’ domestic anti-poverty program, has come under intense fire in the last year after reports that they have been funding numerous groups that promote abortion, contraception, same-sex “marriage” or other activities at odds with Catholic teaching.

But the Chicago diocesan office “went on the offensive for reform” after director Rey Flores came on one year ago, said Mary Strom, executive director of the Women’s Center, which is a Chicago-based network of crisis pregnancy centers.  Flores committed himself to defunding any group opposing Catholic teaching, particularly on life and family issues, and to giving funds to local pro-life groups, contrary to previous CCHD practice.

“Rey actually reached out to his greatest critics,” said Strom, “and he challenged them to recommend groups that they felt met the goal of CCHD and were worthy of receiving grants.”

Normally, 75 percent of the CCHD funds collected in a diocese are sent to CCHD’s national office for distribution nationwide; but with many concerned about the use of funds by CCHD national, Flores has made it possible for people to mail in their donation and request that the funds stay in Chicago.  Donations can also be directed specifically to life and family initiatives, economic development, or human development.

Flores has been successful so far in reducing the national cut to 50%.

Cardinal Francis George, the Archbishop of Chicago and president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, has supported the changes, changes which are particularly significant in light of the fact that Chicago is where CCHD first started in 1969; Chicago also still receives the largest collection among the dioceses every year.

Through CCHD’s support, Strom’s Women’s Center will be upgrading to a 4D ultrasound machine.  “It’s such a great teaching tool,” said Strom.  “It gives the women the opportunity to know the truth before they make such a devastating choice.”

They have also awarded a grant to Aid for Women, which operates the only pro-life pregnancy resource center in the downtown area.  Susan Barrett, the center’s executive director, said they recently had a gathering of the Chicago CCHD grantees and she was impressed by the quality of the groups.  “It was very impressive, and definitely all the organizations seem to be in line with the values and teachings of the Church,” she explained.

In addition to pregnancy resource centers, they have also committed to supporting pro-life activism.  The Pro-Life Action League, which is specifically dedicated to witnessing and sidewalk counselling outside abortuaries, also received a $15,000 grant this year.  Founder Joe Scheidler, renowned as one of the pro-life movement’s pioneers, had nothing but praise for the reforms at CCHD Chicago, emphasizing that they are working to change their whole image.

Scheidler noted that his group has boycotted CCHD in the past, but said they are now intent on supporting Flores’ efforts.  While he realizes that Catholics will continue to be wary of CCHD, Scheidler said his group is “trying to publicize the fact that there’s been a big change [in Chicago].”

“Hopefully within a few years other dioceses will follow suit and clean it up,” he added.

All three pro-life leaders insisted that their work is fundamental to CCHD’s aim to “end the root causes of poverty,” pointing out that single motherhood is the greatest indicator of poverty.

Barrett explained, for example, that they offer a mentoring program through which they help women develop a plan for their future.  “Quite often there are economic reasons for why they are considering abortion, … and so we’re trying to address that,” she said.

Ann Scheidler, Joe’s wife and League vice president, explained that for women seeking abortion, sidewalk counselling is “almost the only place that they are treated with dignity.”  “The sidewalk counsellor gives her that dignity that she needs to be able to hold her head up and take control of her life and be empowered to make the choice for life,” she said.

“I hope that [the reforms] will spread to the national level and I think there will be a lot of good fruits that result,” said Strom.  “People need to be supportive of this type of effort. … [Flores has] taken a lot of heat on both sides, and I think he’s done a great job of really focusing on the whole picture.”

Michael Hichborn of American Life League, who has been a key member of the Reform CCHD Now coalition, said they are encouraged by the steps being taken in Chicago.  “Chicago CCHD is taking real reform seriously and has already taken steps to ban several pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, and pro-Marxist groups from funding,” he said.

“National CCHD would do well to follow Chicago’s lead,” he added.

LifeSiteNews.com did not hear back from CCHD National Director Ralph McCloud by press time.

In her NYT magazine cover story, journalist Emily Bazelon describes how abortion “rights” activists are working to “recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one.”

The piece, entitled “The New Abortion Providers,” claims that abortionists and the pro-abort lobby are trying to dispel the image of the “greedy, butchering ‘abortionist’.”  “The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s a seamless part of health care for women — embraced rather than shunned,” writes Bazelon.

The strategy, she says, aims at moving abortuaries away from stand-alone facilities into hospitals and encourages family physicians to offer abortions within their practices.

She describes two training programs for abortionists that are central to this strategy.  The first, called the “Family Planning Fellowship,” is a two-year post-residency program designed to further equip doctors for providing abortions and contraception.  She says this fellowship is now being offered at 21 university campuses.  The second is called the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program, which aims to supply medical schools with funds to train ob/gyn residents in providing abortions.  So far, this program has funded 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada.

Both programs are run out of the University of California at San Francisco, and both are directed by Uta Landy, the former director of the National Abortion Federation.  Bazelon spoke with Jody Steinauer, the associate director of the Fellowship program, but she said that Landy declines all interviews out of fear that publicity would scare off potential universities, or their lone donor.

“The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family,” writes Bazelon.  “The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy.”

But as the two training programs have grown, this anonymous donor has become more widely known, she says.  “In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation,” she wrote.

According to Bazelon, the Buffett Foundation’s tax records reveal that most of its spending is allocated to “abortion and contraception advocacy and research.”  The Foundation has given tens of millions to Planned Parenthood and Ipas, as well as millions to other pro-abortion groups like Catholics for Choice.  Buffett has pledged to give away 99% of his estimated $47 billion assets, with most of it going to the Gates Foundation, which is infamous for its avowed emphasis on population control.

Despite Buffett’s and the rest of the pro-abortion movement’s efforts to bring abortion into the mainstream of medicine, however, pro-life leaders insist that abortionists are by nature at the bottom rung of medicine, where debauched doctors end up when they are too incompetent for any other area.

“No one goes to medical school with the intent of working in a Planned Parenthood or some other abortion clinic,” said Mark Crutcher, President of Life Dynamics Inc., last month, after an Ottawa abortionist was disciplined for his incompetence in treating 25 of his clients.  “The wash-outs from the leftovers of medicine wind up working in these abortion clinics.”

The lower house had already approved same-sex “marriage” in May, and yesterday the Senate passed the bill in a vote of 33-27, with three abstentions.  President Cristina Fernandez, who has been supportive of same-sex “marriage,” is expected to sign the legislation on her return from a state visit to China.

The bill purports to give “wedded” same-sex couples the same rights and privileges as those afforded within true marriage, including adoption rights.

The bill was passed despite strong opposition among the populace.  Beginning on Tuesday, the country’s conference of Catholic bishops rallied a large crowd, estimated at between 50,000 and 250,000, to affirm true marriage outside Congress.

Catholics were joined by the Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches and the Evangelical Pentecostal Confraternity Federation.  A smaller number of counter-protesters were also present.

The country’s top Catholic prelate, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, called the bill “a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Komorowski, 58, defeated Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 61, the late president’s identical twin, garnering 53% of the vote to Kaczynski’s 47%.  Pro-life candidate Marek Jurek got only 1% of the vote and did not proceed to the second round.

Komorowski’s win gives the Civic Platform party full control of the government with party ally Donald Tusk already serving as Prime Minister.  Conservative commentators have warned that this situation could endanger the nation’s sovereignty, as the party is more favorable to foreign influence and cooperation with the European Union.

The election was called after President Kaczynski, his wife, Polish military leaders, and numerous high-level government officials were killed in a plane crash when trying to land in Smolensk, Russia en route to a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.  The cause of the crash, which killed everyone on board, is still under investigation by Russian authorities, under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Following the crash, Komorowski, who served as parliamentary speaker, was elevated to acting president.  In that position, he signed a law purporting to combat family violence that gives the state sweeping powers to intervene in family life.  Among other things, the bill outlaws “imposing one’s own opinions on the child,” “restricting the child’s social contacts,” and “criticizing the child’s sexual behavior.”

He also supports state-funded in vitro fertilization, and abortion for cases involving rape and fetal disability.

Komorowski had sought to portray himself as a conservative during his campaign, but conservative and pro-life commentators were quick to dispel that notion.

Komorowski “shows off as a Catholic with five kids. However, his Catholicism is very specific, as he supports the killing of embryos known as the IVF procedure,” journalist Lukasz Adamski told LifeSiteNews. “Komorowski treats as sacred the rotten ‘abortion compromise’ which excuses the killing of unborn babies just because they happen to be physically and mentally disabled, or were unlucky enough to have been conceived in rape.”

Jacek Sapa, a pro-life activist and current head of the National Day for Life Foundation, noted that life and family advocates saw Komorowski’s conservative presentation “as a superficial image,” and in their experience Komorowski “is not a true conservative, especially not on social issues.”

Pro-life commentator Joanna Najfeld compared Komorowski to former U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry:  He is “a ‘Catholic lite,’ with no views of his own,” she said.  “He can say anything depending on who he’s talking to.”

She added that, in her opinion, Komorowski “would even support abortion on demand and gay ‘marriage’ if that was the popular thing to do. Thankfully, these are not yet popular ideas in Poland.”

“I don’t trust the president-elect. His conservative appearance is just a PR trick,” said Slawomir Olejniczak of Krakow, head of the Polish branch of “Tradition Family Property.”  “I fear very much that from now on, whatever the EU tries to impose on us – wider abortion access, or same-sex marriage – that they will succeed introducing without any resistance on the Polish side.”

Mariusz Dzierzawski, organizer of the Polish branch of the Center for Bioethical Reform’s Genocide Awareness Project, said that the election of a president who supports abortion and IVF “shows that the actions of people of conscience cannot be limited to voting only. We have to actively and continuously shape the public opinion, so that immoral people can no longer prey on the ignorance of the voters.”

Tomasz Terlikowski, editor-in-chief of the Catholic online news service Fronda.pl, wrote in an editorial that “Christians and conservatives are the greatest losers in this election.”

He explained that this is not principally due to Komorowski’s victory over Kaczynski – though he believes the latter is more aligned with Catholic teaching on life and family issues – but because both self-proclaimed ‘conservative’ candidates bowed to the liberal lobby in their campaigns.

“Instead of clearly distancing themselves from liberal ideas, they either evaded clear cut answers (like Jaroslaw Kaczynski did speaking about “personally opposing” IVF) or straight forward supported liberal ideas (like Bronislaw Komorowski did supporting IVF, or signing a bill dangerous for millions of Polish families, or calling for gender quota),” he wrote.

“Sadly, neither the Church hierarchy, nor conservative pro-family leaders confronted this situation loud enough,” he added.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

“Unprecedented” Threat to Parental Rights in Poland
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/feb/10021506.html