Archbishop calms conflict inside pro-life movement

By Deborah Gyapong

Canadian Catholic News

OTTAWA (CCN) — A Sept. 7 statement by Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller clarifying whether Catholics can support so-called “gestational legislation” has helped calm growing tensions within the pro-life movement.

Over the past year, support in pro-life circles across Canada has grown for a law that would prohibit abortion at later stages of pregnancy or gestation. Campaign Life Coalition, the national political arm of the movement, however, has remained staunchly opposed as have several other groups.

Both positions, for or against gestational legislation, are morally licit, the archbishop said.

Each side has accused the other of not being Christian or Catholic enough — either for not saving those babies some believe can be saved through having at least some restrictions on abortion, or for not sending a clear enough message about the value of all human life from conception.

The archbishop’s statement, quickly endorsed by Cardinal Thomas Collins on the Archdiocese of Toronto’s blog and now posted on the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (CCCB) website, urges co-operation in the pro-life movement but stresses: “Co-operation does not always mean unanimity regarding a given strategy; open and civil debate about the wisdom of any specific strategy is healthy.”

The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF), co-sponsored by the CCCB and the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus, welcomed Miller’s intervention.

“The division within the pro-life movement is very preoccupying, especially when leaders and members of pro-life groups point at each other and criticize each other’s approach to protecting the unborn,” said COLF director Michele Boulva. “All this hinders our chances of obtaining a law that would protect the most vulnerable of Canadians — its unborn citizens.”

She applauded the bishops for taking leadership in the pro-life arena. “As Catholics it is essential that we turn to our bishops when confusion arises regarding the church’s teaching. Christ has empowered them to teach in his name.”

Miller wrote it is “morally licit” for Catholics to support “gestational” legislation, i.e. legislation that would allow abortion in the early weeks of the unborn child’s development, as an incremental step aimed at reducing the harms of “an unjust legal regime that permits abortion.”
“At the same time, it is also morally licit to withhold support for gestational legislation — and other incrementalist legislative strategies intended to limit access to abortion — if, after prudent reflection, one is convince that it is an unwise legislative strategy,” he said.

Based on Blessed John Paul II’s teachings in Evangelium Vitae, “legislation which intends to limit the harm done by a pro-abortion law is not itself co-operation with unjust law but rather ‘a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects,’ ” the archbishop wrote.

The absence of any law restricting abortion in Canada is a “de facto legal regime that permits abortion with almost no restrictions,” the archbishop said.

“Legislation intended to restrict access to abortion would not create a new legal situation in Canada which would authorize abortions, but instead would intend to limit the number of abortions already authorized under law,” he said. He also reiterated Catholic teaching against abortion at any stage, noting that “no law can claim to legitimize abortion.”

“By clarifying John Paul the Great’s teaching in Evangelium Vitae (73), (Miller) has hopefully opened the door to more respectful relations between pro-lifers, “Boulva said.

Two major pro-life groups on either side of the issue also welcomed Miller’s statement.

Campaign Life Coalition president Jim Hughes said the archbishop makes it clear we have a de facto law by having no restrictions on abortion.

Priests for Life Canada (PFLC) is one of the many pro-life groups that would support gestational legislation. PFLC board chair Rev. John Lemire, a parish priest based in New Liskeard, Ont., said he is pleased the archbishop’s statement has clarified the issue of gestational limits.
PFCL has “supported the idea that a Catholic, a Catholic politician, can in good conscience support gestational legislation,” he said, noting his organization has used the same paragraph 73 in Evangelium Vitae in consultation with moral theologians to inform its position.

Lemire says no one who knows his organization’s work can say PFLC does not stand up for the rights of the unborn.

The archbishop’s letter may have helped shore up some of the unity within the pro-life movement that has been fragile since its inception, Lemire said. The movement is made up of political, educational and pastoral groups that do counselling and support mothers with unexpected pregnancies.

“Campaign Life Coalition has been accused of being ‘all or nothing’ and that’s not true,” he said, noting that since its first questionnaire in 1978, CLC has “always had an incremental question as part of its strategy.”