As a Canadian, this news saddens me deeply:

In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it "within a pro-choice realm," and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance. [Source: National Post]

Apparently everyone has the right to free speech … as long as it's not the "wrong" speech. (See the link above for the full story of how this happened and the school administration's response; Hat tip to the STR blog for noting this article.)

I've posted on abortion before, though it's important to note that my objections to abortion are not due to "religious" reasons. The case against abortion (although of course also mandated biblically) is based on logic, science, and shared "common ground". Unfortunately, the arguments in favor of the pro-life view often get lost during emotionally-charged debates on the subject.

For anyone who is interested in pro-life issues, two great websites are:

• Life Training Institute
• Stand to Reason's Bioethics section

And two highly recommended books on the subject are:

• Pro-Life 101 A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively by Scott Klusendorf
• Common Ground Without Compromise by Stephen Wagner

This is not a trivial topic: Over one million abortions occur each month. This is 15x the number which perish from all STDs combined including HIV/AIDS. Something to think about, anyways … though not at York University, and perhaps soon not anywhere else in Canada either? From the same article:

Meanwhile, similar controversies are unfolding across Canada, with anti-abortion groups at Capilano College, the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, Lakehead University and Carleton University stripped of official club status and funding, at least once by fiat of a single member of student council. Some clubs have regained status, while others appealed their cases to human rights commissions.

I'm not sure how accurate its numbers are, but this "World Clock" purports to give you statistics on a number of different worldwide metrics, updated dynamically, including:

• Population
• Births
• Deaths (sorted by method)
• Abortions
• Number of cars, bicycles, and computers produced
• Etc …

You can also click the Year, Month, Week, Day, and Now buttons at the top to limit the results to a specific period of time. For example, since I started writing this post, 200 abortions have occurred. In the last week, the number of abortions that occurred was approximately 258,000, compared to 17,000 from all STDs including HIV/AIDs. Now, all of these figures are sad and alarming, and I am in no way trying to belittle the AIDS epidemic. In fact I regularly support the blood:water mission in their efforts to provide clean drinking water and clean blood to help battle the HIV/ADS crisis in Africa.

However, although the shockingly large number of abortions does not itself prove anything about the ethics of abortion, it should lead us to think seriously about the morality of this issue: Year-to-date nearly 31 million abortions have occurred. If abortion does take the life of a human person, that is 31 million murders.

• For more on this subject, please see my previous post Abortion = Profits?.

(Note: I originally posted this blog entry on TheLife.com's Talk Blog, and it's a bit outside the usual scope of my blog here, but felt it was important enough to post here anyways. I've also made some edits to the post for my own blog … have to be a bit more non-partisan on the Talk Blog …)

Planned Parenthood (whose services include "family planning, gynecological care, STI/STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, and abortion") reported some shocking figures for their 2005-2006 fiscal year:

Total abortions performed: 264,943
Total income: $902.8 million
Total profit: $55.8 million

Of that $902.8 million gross income, $305.3 million came from taxpayer dollars, an increase of $32.6 million from the previous year.¹

The glaring number of 264,943 abortions (roughly equivalent to the number of people who live in the city of Buffalo, New York) should encourage us to take a calm but serious look at the issue of abortion.

That, of course, is the big question: What is the unborn? As Greg Koukl says, "If the unborn are not human, no justification for elective abortion is necessary. But if the unborn are human, no justification for elective abortion is adequate." Irregardless of my Christian faith it is my contention that abortion is morally wrong and therefore should no more be allowed than any other crime. Of course, this doesn't make the issues surrounding abortion any easier, but moral decisions are rarely easy.

Related reading:

• Confessions of an Ex-abortionist – Why Dr. Bernard Nathanson, MD, who performed over 75,000 abortions, now campaigns against abortion.
• Can I Destroy This? – Greg Koukl asks the important question in the abortion debate: What is the unborn? All other questions are secondary.
• "Active Euthanasia" or Infanticide? – A previous post on Why Faith regarding "infanticide": Is it a logical outcome of legalized abortion?

If a respected British medical school has its way, British doctors will be routinely killing babies born with serious disabilities. The Times of London reported in a page one story this weekend on the shocking proposal from Britain's respected Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology. The College has called on doctors to consider permitting infanticide in the case of seriously disabled newborn babies. According to the paper, geneticists and medical ethicists supported the proposal – as did the mother of a severely disabled child – while a prominent children's doctor described it as "social engineering." (Source: NewsMax)

The issue is, of course, who decides who lives and dies under such a proposal? What qualifies as "severely disabled"? Steve Wagner of STR gives his thoughts on the issue here: Ob/Gyns in England Want Debate about Killing Newborns. As one commenter notes, "I'm curious who gets to decide what an appropriate level of "pain, distress, and discomfort" is necessary to make a baby a candidate for killing. What if the family is just poor? There's a certain level of distress and discomfort that come from that."

I was thinking of this issue and that comment as I read the following news story today, found on Google News Canada's front page:

A 16-year-old girl is facing a charge of second-degree murder as well as six other criminal charges after her newborn boy's body was found in a wood north of Montreal. The girl gave birth to the baby over the weekend at the home of her mother's boyfriend in Ste-Sophie, about 50 km north of Montreal. (Source: Ottawa Sun)

Under the proposal of legalized infanticide, would the above act be considered a crime? The idea that inconvenient babies should be killed is immoral and should not be tolerated; here is an issue in which tolerance is not acceptable.

Further reading: Greg Koukl's articles regarding abortion