PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU’S GREAT BETRAYAL Book Review

PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU’S GREAT BETRAYAL

By: C. Gwendolyn Landolt, LLB and Patrick Redmond, PhD
Published by The Interim Publishing Company, 2017, 217 pages

http://www.realwomenofcanada.ca/book-review-pierre-elliott-trudeaus-great-betrayal-reality/?fbclid=IwAR0F5rOYqb7X5DXugrgiGt2H6NU2kz1CevSoO0fybskL7tr3OYqGV5X8mhk

Cost: $20.00 paperback.

REALity  Volume XXXVI Issue No. 9 September 2017
Book Review

For those who have championed the legal rights of unborn children in Canada, this book is a powerful record of their valiant attempts to include pro-life amendments to diminish the harm in Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Omnibus bill in 1969, and his flawed Charter, when repatriated to Canada in 1982.

Appropriately titled Trudeau’s betrayal, the book is essential reading for the army of new recruits to the pro-life pro-family movements in Canada, and around the world. Its 240 endnotes, extensive sources, bibliography, references to publications and websites, and comprehensive index, open the door onto a world rich in heretofore hidden information. Excerpts from UN declarations, Church documents and parliamentary debates help clarify the issues at hand.

Charter Myths Shattered

The book shatters popular Charter mythology with facts. Predictions that exclusion of the unborn in the Charter would not lead to abortion on demand can be viewed side by side with warnings to the contrary from pro-life Canadians. Key quotations from Prime Minister Trudeau, Justice Minister Jean Chretien, the Ministry of Justice, Members of Parliament, legal advisors, medical associations and human rights advocates clearly reveal the battle fought to ride the wave of change against Judeo-Christian traditions. Pre-charter times were inclusive of the unborn, the family, property rights and the supremacy of God. The book does not spare deserved criticism of weak religious leadership, juxtaposed with strong religious statements from well-informed clergy.

Behind the Media Storyline

In contrast to a character worthy of media adulation, Trudeau’s flawed humanity is revealed in choice quotations: “If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat I’d make sure I cut their throats first.” “…the shameful incompetence of the average Liberal MP from Quebec was a welcome asset to a government that needed no more than a herd of performing donkeys to file in when the division bell rang.” “The party of the people -socialism, communism – will eventually come out the winner.”

The book reveals how the Liberal government deceived powerful Canadians who didn’t understand that the Charter would transfer power from Parliament to the courts. However, it did not fool Canadians informed by the pro-life network. Thinking themselves progressive, Liberals ignored scientific progress while Campaign Life and Toronto Right to Life built their defense of the unborn on the latest scientific facts.

Previously unpublished correspondence between pro-life advocates and elected officials in Canada and the United Kingdom, and clergy representing various religious bodies, uncovers the behind-the-scenes action, with names fearlessly revealed. A bright light is shone on those in favour and those opposed.

Pro-life pioneer Gwendolyn Landolt, warned: “abortion on demand has been locked into the proposed new Charter of Rights,” but few would listen. She also predicted the loss of special recognition for women in employment, equality with men regardless of physical difference leading to combat duty, loss of parental rights over minors, homosexual marriage and adoption, loss of property rights, and more. She wrote in 1981 “Under the Charter of Rights, Canada officially becomes a secular state with government being all powerful and the source of all ‘justice’ without resorting to a Higher Being.”

Court Supremacy Over Elected Parliament

Improper use of evidence in the Morgentaler case is exposed. The Cardinal Carter reversal on the Charter is parsed. Feminist taxpayer funded complicity is noted. We are reminded of Trudeau’s creation of a centralized dictatorial Prime Minister’s Office and 114 agencies and commissions working independently of Parliament. The truth about Prime Minister Mulroney’s Conservative Bill C-43 on abortion is put on record. Tabled are REAL Women of Canada’s court interventions for the unborn every time Court Challenge Program funded activists tried to bypass Parliament via the courts.

The authors opine that Trudeau and Chief Justice Bora Laskin “thought MPs were impressionable, uninformed and ignorant, and the elite, knowledgeable judges were better able to make decisions on human rights.” They call the pro-life battle with Trudeau a deadly game of poker and claim that his imposition of constitutional changes was carried out through a bloodless revolution. They point out that many capable legal minds did not foresee that the Supreme Court, given supremacy over Parliament, “could and would wield the Charter as a bludgeon to eliminate traditional values in Canada by declaring some laws as being unconstitutional, not only in regard to abortion, but also on the issues of physician-assisted suicide, prostitution, traditional marriage, medical marijuana and drug-injection sites, religious rights, etc., to name a few of the values tossed aside by the Court in subsequent years.”

Did you know?

Charter and Constitution aficionados will appreciate newly revealed factoids in this judicial and Parliamentary drama over life and death:   What is the link between the constitutional debate and the Rebellion of 1838 in Upper and Lower Canada? Who noted that an unborn child would have representation before the courts by the Official Guardian were his inheritance rights in question, whereas the unborn child before an abortion committee has no personal or legal representation? Which MPs referred to abortionists appearing before a House of Commons committee promoting legalized abortion as “distinguished lawbreakers” and “the biggest gathering of criminal abortionists ever held in Canada”? Which Jesuit accused Trudeau’s Omnibus bill of renewing political colonialism in Canada and why? Who quoted Dante in the House of Commons during an abortion debate: “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintained their neutrality?” Which Parliamentary report did Trudeau “throw immediately into the trash” and why? Which anglophone provincial premier stated that he preferred Rene Levesque’s vision of Canada to Trudeau’s? Which MP refused to remain seated while Campaign Life defended the unborn before a parliamentary committee on the constitution and threatened to sue if anyone revealed his behaviour? How many provinces took the federal government to court over Trudeau’s attempt to unilaterally repatriate the Constitution? Which former Supreme Court Justice observed that special interest groups weighed in on what should go into the 1982 constitution but “Canadians were never consulted on the basic question of whether they wanted a charter or not.”? Which MP said: “It’s not a constitution; it’s a prostitution, an 11^th hour, 55^th minute mishmash thrown together by the premiers…” and cited three objections: “no protection for the unborn, no protection for Anglo-Quebecers, and no protection for property rights.” Which MPs and Senators introduced amendments, all defeated, giving the unborn child a right to life equal to the rights of those who are born? Only the keen minds of our authors could pack so much information into this must-read page turner.

This is a sad tale of enthusiasts guilty of betrayal, conniving revolutionists, timid fence-sitters, pro-lifers abandoning their courage. It is also the portrait of the on-going saga involving the highest levels of politics and religion. It is the story of pro-lifers valiantly following a rightly formed conscience to the end in their defense of the unborn and the incomparable Judeo-Christian truly just society.

Canadians were and still are deceived about the Charter but the book is full of confidence for the future, listing the many organizations and individuals who selflessly, and without state funding, continue to defend the unborn, the traditional family and the way of life which results when men and women build a society that acknowledges moral order.

Picture not part of the book

President Trump Announces MASSIVE PRO LIFE Declaration in Ameri...

a Unitive Proposal : Gestational abortion laws are a trap (for the movement)

Bloggers note: a U N I T I V E  Proposal for 2019 and beyond.
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Extract from Article :   Incremental strategies

First, defund all abortions. The Canadian health care system is increasingly expensive and public money must be directed towards necessary health care. Canadian taxpayers ought not to be funding elective procedures at all, especially those that constitute destruction of human life.

 Even believers in the right to abortion don’t necessarily believe that abortion should be publicly funded. 

Second, protect the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who refuse to perform, prescribe or sell abortions and who won’t refer patients to abortion providers. Is it unrealistic to set as a goal the establishment of a chain of pro-life pharmacies or a public database of pro-life doctors across the country once these conscience rights have been secured and are respected
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Gestational abortion laws are a trap

January 16, 2019

Why abortion pills have changed the future of pro-life activism in Canada
 https://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/hot-news/id/461 
by Marie-Claire Bissonnette
 
(Republished with permission of LifeSiteNews.com)
Mifegymiso is the Canadian brand name for an abortion drug called RU-486, which was brought into Canada in January of 2017 after approval by Health Canada in 2015. Not yet two years since its introduction and it has already begun to alter the entire landscape surrounding abortion practices and attitudes in Canada. 

The pro-life movement will struggle to keep pace with these changes as they accelerate, and so I write this as a warning and an injunction to all pro-life individuals and organizations in Canada, who risk greater marginalization and even irrelevance if they don’t reassess their strategy in light of this evolving situation.


Chemical abortions are much less offensive to our sensibilities than surgical abortions such as suction and aspiration, dilation and curettage, saline abortion, and partial birth abortion. Whereas these procedures expose their true murderous nature with the resulting lifeless bodies of butchered or burned babies, Mifegymiso is portrayed as a clean, convenient and easy abortion method, consisting of a two-pill combination ingested by the mother, who then discards her pregnancy at home, concealing her child’s visible humanity under a toilet seat. 

The first pill, Mifepristone, blocks the flow of progesterone and starves the embryo to death. 24-48 hours later, the second drug, Misoprostol, causes severe muscle contractions in the uterus, relaxation of the cervix, and shedding of the endometrium. 

Along with much blood and other tissue, the baby is flushed down the toilet, often denied even the dignity of being gazed upon by human eyes. What the mother might see, had she the courage to look, would be her baby’s tiny body in the pregnancy sac, with visible fingers and toes that can be counted at Mifegymiso’s current off-label legal gestational limit of ten weeks.

It’s no less heinous than any other form of abortion of course, but the brutality is more easily ignored, and this is encouraged by the media, who distort the truth, omitting several important facts about Mifegymiso. 

Leaving aside the obvious—that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being—the first thing everyone should know, but what most women will not be told, is that after the first pill, Mifepristone, has been taken it is possible to reverse the effects and save the baby’s life should the mother intake progesterone. 

Second, Mifegymiso can have serious side effects, which include nausea, vomiting, cramping, fever, dizziness, hemorrhaging, loss of consciousness, salpingitis, arrhythmia, bronchospasm, infection, septic shock, future infertility, future ectopic pregnancies, and even death due to infection, blood loss, or future ectopic pregnancy. 

Third, the media’s claim that the pills cost between $300 and $550 ignores the cost of the initial pregnancy assessment and counselling with a physical exam, infection check, blood test, and ultrasound; any further blood tests; and finally, follow-up appointments, not to mention the on-average 1 in 20 chemical abortions that will fail and thus be followed up with either a second chemical abortion or a surgical abortion. (Overall success rates for Canadian trials of Mifegymiso were between 92.9% and 97.3%).

The facts are that Mifegymiso is both dangerous to women and expensive, but also that its effects are reversible within a limited window. The media won’t report any of that, however, because chemical abortions are just so convenient. (Also because the concept of “pro-choice” apparently doesn’t extend to a woman’s choice to change her mind.)

RU-486 was invented in 1980, since which time its use has become widespread across Europe. This can give us a glimpse of the future of abortion in Canada, where, as recently reported by the National Post, Mifegymiso has already been prescribed more than 13,000 times. 

According to a public report by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, in Scotland in 1992, one year after RU-486 was introduced, 16.4% of all abortions were chemical. By 2016 that figure had risen to 83%. The numbers are even more startling in Scandinavia. In Norway, 87% of all abortions are chemical abortions; in Sweden, 92%; in Finland, 96%. This is what we have to look forward to in Canada: a future where nearly all abortions take place at home, discreetly, with a couple of pills.

Pro-life goals in light of chemical abortions 

But it’s worth considering how an analysis such as this can hinder as well as help the pro-life cause. Focusing on the side effects and the public cost is ultimately beside the main point. The reduction of both ought no less to be in the interests of the pro-abortion movement; these should be areas of common ground between us and pro-abortion organizations that are ostensibly committed to women’s health and value to the taxpayer. It’s possible that, by highlighting these issues, I could be furthering the pro-abortion cause. 

If, in five years, the next version of RU-486 is a fraction of the current cost and has no side effects, will these arguments against the drug have helped to save any preborn lives?

This brings me to two long-standing divisions within the pro-life movement. The efficacy (to say nothing of the morality) of gestational laws and graphic images is hotly debated, and although the two disputes don’t directly map onto each other, they do cut across one another. 

On the one hand, gestational laws and graphic images might help to save lives in certain circumstances, but on the other, they may also play into the abortion industry’s hands simply because the sophisticated pro-abort probably doesn’t like late-term abortions or bloody fetuses either. The introduction of Mifegymiso puts an abrupt end to this whole argument and the nays, as they say, have it. But this point may require further unpacking.

Many pro-life campaigns use graphic images of dead babies, post-abortion, to show the grisly, gory reality of surgical abortion. It’s an obvious and bold tactic. Abortion is sickening, bloody and shocking. Surely, by exposing this in public it will change minds. Indeed it does. But that’s not all it does.

The pro-abortion movement, conceivably, also might be opposed to the gore. It is not impossible that there are some pro-abortion activists who may find surgical abortion methods unpalatable and see such images as motivation to “clean up” the procedures.

 Supposing Canada responded by doing away with the gruesome surgical abortion methods and then introduced what abortion activists would bill as a clean, bloodless procedure that left no dead baby’s body behind—a method that somehow vaporized or disintegrated the child, painlessly and quickly? 

With Mifegymiso, we aren’t far away from this reality, in which gruesome images are far less powerful because abortion is no longer visibly gruesome. And the abortion activists would say, problem solved.

In the short term, if graphic images have helped a woman to rethink her decision and choose to carry her child to term, they have done an unquantifiable good. But in the long run, such images may also provoke abortion activists to clean up the business of killing preborn babies so as to take away the firepower of this useful pro-life tool.

Gestational laws – a trap 

Canada’s lack of a law on abortion is staggering and leaves our nation with fewer legal restrictions on abortion than any other developed country in the world. The obvious response is that we need a gestational law of some kind. But supposing we got one? What if the government merely legislated what is already common practice and introduced a law that makes abortions legal until 24 weeks? 

Assuming Canada takes its lead from Scandinavia, and Mifegymiso becomes the abortion method of choice for over 90% of abortions, will a gestational law make any difference at all?

Consider the situation in Denmark. Denmark’s abortion law is quite restrictive, relative to other Western countries. Abortions are legal only up to twelve weeks; however, this is not an example of some mysterious social conservatism, since Denmark is certainly one of the most leftist countries in the world. (It was, for example, the first to allow same-sex "marriage," and the first to legalize pornography.) 

And where Denmark goes Canada tends to follow not far behind. I believe that such an early gestational law is, in fact, the situation Canada would eventually reach, even if we all were to abandon the pro-life agenda entirely right now. 

It’s tempting to think that a twelve-week limit would be so much better than no law at all, that it would be a sort of stepping stone, that the logical sequence of events will inevitably have to go from no restrictions to some restrictions before a full ban can be even contemplated. But this is a fallacious argument, as Mifegymiso proves. For as we attempt to reduce legal limits, the abortion industry is simultaneously working to provide abortions earlier. These two efforts prove to go hand in hand.

Reducing the legal gestation limit for abortion doesn’t protect any preborn children at all. Think about that for a moment. The only hope is that some lucky fetuses might slip through the cracks by becoming too old to be aborted; a gestational law still targets all preborn children because all babies pass through the same stages of gestation. It merely narrows the scope to target them when they’re young enough so that it’s easier not to think of them as human beings. 

The Nazis dehumanized the Jews in order to make it easier to kill them. A gestational law does the same. 

A preborn child old enough to kick and to resemble a newborn baby has the advantage of eliciting an emotional reaction, hence why ultrasounds have been so effective in counseling women to choose life. A younger baby doesn’t have this advantage. A first-trimester fetus is tiny. It doesn’t look as “human”. It doesn’t feel pain. The abortion that kills it appears less violent. It is, therefore, more vulnerable than an older preborn child. 

But hasn’t this always been the challenge for the pro-life movement? 

That it’s more difficult to defend preborn babies than born babies because their human appearance is less obvious? The same applies at each stage of gestation. 

The younger the fetus, the easier it is to deny its humanity. And some in the pro-life movement are in danger of unwittingly contributing to this trend, which, in the long run, will lead to little progress and possibly much damage.


Sure, Danish law requires women to make the decision at an earlier stage, as does Mifegymiso, but with enough propaganda and encouragement, that won’t prevent many women in such an affluent and educated country from carrying out their decision to have their child killed, especially if it involves nothing more than a couple of pills. (A further effect is that many women rush into the decision to have the abortion, only to regret it later.) 

And once the law has entrenched itself, and passed itself off as an acceptable and civilized alternative to the laws of other countries, what chance is there of ever reforming it?

If, in our zeal to restrict abortion access, we are able to arrive at the same kind of law that Denmark has, we will have done a great disservice to the preborn, in strengthening the legal status quo by bestowing upon it a perceived but false level of modesty and reasonableness. 

If the pro-abortion movement were to start pushing for a twelve week limit, we might think they’d taken leave of their senses, and begin celebrating such a remarkable development, but the ultimate result would be a law that appears so eminently reasonable, and which would carry such widespread support, that it would be all but impossible to change. 

We would have replaced an unacceptable situation where all preborn babies are under threat, with an equally unacceptable situation where only younger preborn babies are under threat (and therefore, still all babies until they grow old enough), which merely marginalizes them further and moves the issue further from people’s minds. 

Our new law would then, effectively, be targeting only the most helpless, minimizing the emotional tug on many of those who might come to their defense. It is a fact that of those countries with gestational laws, almost none have budged from their original parameters; there is very little evidence to support the claim that a gestational law can lead to greater protection of preborn life. A gestational law prunes the weed of abortion while nourishing its roots. It’s not a stepping stone. It's a trap.

Pro-life tools becoming obsolete 

But my chief point here is that Mifegymiso makes this whole argument a waste of our time. 

Already in Canada, over 90% of abortions take place within the first trimester.

 In Finland, 96% of all abortions (not including the abortions from contraceptive use) not only take place within the first trimester, but are performed with RU-486. When Mifegymiso takes off, there won’t be any need for a legal gestational limit because unwanted preborn babies won’t survive to the age of protection. And there won’t be a need for the most graphic of images because abortion will be carried out with chemicals and household plumbing instead of knives and forceps.


The remaining 10% of Canadian abortions that occur after the first-trimester likely consist mostly of terminations of once-wanted children due to later-revealed health conditions, and of abortions for women who may not have had ready access to abortion in their first trimester. Mifegymiso will solve the problem of access and, even if passed, any potential gestational legislation in Canada would almost certainly grant exceptions for fetal abnormalities and disabilities, as is the case in other states with gestational laws, ensuring the continued legality of these abortions.

 Even in Denmark, late-term abortions are legal in cases of low income, rape or incest, expected birth defects, and physical or mental health risks to the mother, essentially covering nearly all reasons for late-term abortions.

Let's remember that the situation that’s existed in Canada for thirty years is the result of political cowardice surrounding a hot-button issue as much as anything else. Denmark’s situation is the result of an actualized and considered anti-life ideology. Abortion isn’t a hot-button issue there. It’s no wonder that such a liberal country has greater restrictions on abortion. They know what they’re doing.

 If Canada were fully to embrace that ideology, we’d certainly have a law. The fact that we don’t indicates that we’re not that far gone. With no law, those of us in the pro-life movement have more weapons at our disposal to make a rational as well as an emotional case to the reasonable citizens of this country. 

These weapons have included showing that certain abortion methods are harmful to women, that abortion is gruesome and bloody, that an absence of legal protection for the preborn is a national travesty. I’m not arguing that these facts are unimportant. Insofar as they are truths, they ought to be exposed. 

But we must not forget that they're peripheral to a more important truth, and only useful insofar as they support that truth. With Mifegymiso, however, all these tools are fast becoming obsolete.

Campaigning for an end to messy abortions will result in a no less barbaric practice and campaigning for women's health and safety will result in a practice that merely hurts women in a subtler way, perhaps only psychologically. Campaigning for a gestational law will result in an accompanying erroneous moral defensibility. In all cases, the slaughter of the innocents continues. 

Mifegymiso is a much more formidable enemy than abortion methods of the past and whatever comes next will be even more so. We don’t have the luxury to deviate from our core purpose in order to make short-term gains. 

But perhaps arguing solely for a complete abortion ban remains too grand an objective and some kind of incremental strategy is needed. If gestational laws are irrelevant and graphic images no longer efficacious, what smaller, more achievable goals are there that don’t play into the abortion industry’s hands? No doubt those in the pro-life movement in Canada have many ideas of where to direct our efforts. Here I will suggest two.


Incremental strategies

First, defund all abortions. The Canadian health care system is increasingly expensive and public money must be directed towards necessary health care. Canadian taxpayers ought not to be funding elective procedures at all, especially those that constitute destruction of human life.

 Even believers in the right to abortion don’t necessarily believe that abortion should be publicly funded. Second, protect the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who refuse to perform, prescribe or sell abortions and who won’t refer patients to abortion providers. Is it unrealistic to set as a goal the establishment of a chain of pro-life pharmacies or a public database of pro-life doctors across the country once these conscience rights have been secured and are respected?

These are achievable, reasonable, though by no means easy, goals, which can be pursued alongside political advocacy and public education. There are many others. There is nothing (adequate funding and inter-organizational drama notwithstanding) stopping all Canadian pro-life organizations from collaborating in order to accomplish them, building public support and persuading courageous politicians to take them on as policy objectives.


But whatever strategies in defense of the preborn are conceived, let them take shape with a recognition of the new predicament facing the preborn in Canada: a chemical holocaust administered from a prescription pad and a final resting place in a mess of blood and excrement – better known as Mifegymiso, “the World Health Organization’s gold standard of medical abortion.”

Marie-Claire Bissonnette is Youth Coordinator for Campaign Life Coalition.