The Prince George
Citizen
TUESDAY, JULY 4, 1989
50 CENTS
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GROUPS SPLIT ON EFFECTS HERE
U.S. abortion ruling stirs pot
by SHERYL THOMPSON Staff reporter The federal government may use Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling to throw the abortion issue into the laps of the provinces, local pro-choice spokesmen say.
“I don’t think the decision will mean our Supreme Court will change its decision, but perhaps the federal government will put tne onus on the provinces to make the decision,” Prince George North NDP MLA Lois Boone said in a telephone interview today.
The U.S. decision gives each state greater power to limit abortions. Canada has been without an abortion law since the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the law in January.
“Given our current provincial government — with a premier and a health minister who seem intent on forcing their own personal moral views on everyone else — it leaves me with a great deal of concern as to what would happen in this province,” Boone, the former NDP health critic, said.
Local pro-choice spokesman Chris Leischner said the federal government has been waiting for “someone else to make a move” and giving responsibility to the provinces would be “an easy out.” She predicts the federal government will “wait a little longer to see what some of the ramifications will be and if it isn’t too radical, our government may very well see it as an avenue for them to utilize,” she said.
“If the federal government hands it back. . .it will be time for women to go back under the butcher’s knife. In this province we will step back hundreds of years. I don’t think there is any question about that,” she said.
But Prince George Pro-Life Society member Louis Matte called the decision “a step in the right direction.”
“I think all pro-lifers would be elated with the decision but we don’t consider it a victory,” he said.
“We don’t think it is like some of the feminists are saying that it is setting them back. It will set women ahead. . . because those women who have been turning to abortion and degrading themselves and humanity by killing their unborn are creating a barbarious civilization.”
Matte said “women should realize their choice is before and not after they are pregnant. We have to protect it (the unborn).” Although Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision didn’t overturn the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, it restored key provisions of a Missouri law that a lower court had invalidated for unduly interfering with women’s constitutional right to abortion.
The ruling is a significant setback for abortion rights advocates because other states now may follow Missouri’s lead.
The U.S court ruled that states may ban the use of tax money for “encouraging or counselling” women to have abortions not necessary to save life.
“That’s something this government has tried to do. When the (Canadian Supreme Court) decision first came down the premier decided no money would be spent on abortions, then they had to change that decision after receiving legal advice that it was illegal given the current court decision,” Boone said.
Boone was critical of the way this decision treats women.
“It is treating women in an abominable way. . .saying the wealthy can afford abortions and the poor can’t.
PROTESTERS NABBED AT CLINIC
VANCOUVER (CP) — Police began arresting anti-abortion protesters shortly after about 50 people began demonstrating this morning outside the only private abortion clinic in British Columbia.
“The Constitution says God is supreme,” shouted one unidentified protester. “God says rescue the babies. We’re just upholding the Constitution.”
Eight people had blocked the front doors of the Everywoman’s Health Centre — the only entrance to the clinic in southeast Vancouver. Two of the eight were chained to a large concrete block with bicycle locks around their necks.
The rest of the demonstrators sang hymns behind police barricades.
The action came a day after a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing each state to impose its own restrictions on abortion.
About 120 anti-abortion protesters have been arrested at the Vancouver clinic since it opened last November.
RCMP section competing with CSIS?
TORONTO (CP) — A division of the RCMP called the National Security Investigation Section appears to be competing with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the intelligence-gathering field, a newspaper reported today.
RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster confirmed the existence of the 131-member section, which he called a directorate, at a Parliamentary justice committee hearing last month, the Toronto Globe and Mail said in a dispatch from Ottawa.
The directorate, the highest designation given to a special unit in the RCMP, is led by Chief Supt. Pat Cummins.
CSIS has the mandate to gather intelligence on groups in Canada with links to foreign revolutionary organizations. The RCMP is supposed to receive intelligence from CSIS and become involved only when it has evidence of criminal activity.
But there has been bad blood at various levels between the two organizations since CSIS was set up to gap the old RCMP security service, which had resorted to illegal activities in the name of national security.
The newspaper says that on May 26, two RCMP constables bearing NSIS identification cards visited the Vancouver offices of a Salvadoran information group — ostensibly to ask about a demonstration in front of the U.S. consulate.
But a spokesman for the group said most of their questions weren’t about the demonstration, but the group and its fund-raising activities.
“In other words they were collecting information on us,” said Brent Anderson.
WILLIAMS LAKE DEATH
Hit-run vehicle found?
Williams Lake RCMP say they have a damaged vehicle in their possession that appears to be the one that struck and killed a 62-year-old woman in the Cariboo community at about 2 a.m. Saturday. r
Adele George, from the Nemiah Valley in the Chilcotin, died in the hit-and-run accident.
Several people stopped to see if they could assist at the scene of the accident. One of them, Deric Bifllock, 39, of Williams Lake, died after being struck by a vehicle driven by Eric Brigden, also of Williams Lake.
Brigden faces criminal charges from the accident, which occurred at about 2:15 a.m.
Two hours earlier on a different stretch of Highway 97, a car driven by Ronald Lynds, 39, of 150 Mile House, struck Ronald Michel, 52, of Williams Lake.
“Alcohol involvement on the part of Lynds was not a contributing factor,” unlike the accident involving Brigden, the RCMP said in a news release.
Williams Lake police had a busy weekend due to the annual stampede, which ended Monday, a police spokesman said.
Needle
exchange
proposed
OTTAWA (CP) - The federal government has asked the provinces to help set up a national needle exchange project for intravenous drug users at risk of getting AIDS, Health Minister Perrin Beatty said today.
Ottawa is willing to contribute $750,000 annually for a two-year, cost-shared pilot project with the provinces, which are responsible for providing health services, Beatty said.
“It’s a program that’s proven highly successful in some jurisdictions in other parts of the world,” the minister said in an interview.
Needle exchange programs allow, drug users to trade in used syringes for new ones to cut down on the sharing of dirty needles.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is transmitted through the exchange of blood, semen and other body fluids.
Although the proportion of drug users with the fatal disease is still low in Canada, experts fear it will spread quickly the way it has in the United States.
“If we move quickly now we can help to head off that second wave of AIDS coming through drug users,” Beatty said.
Research has shown needle exchange programs don’t encourage drug use, Beatty said.
“Our goal must be to save lives and that’s the priority above all else.”
Ottawa would pay half the project’s operating costs and pick up the tab for a later evaluation, he said.
There have been 2,800 cases of AIDS reported in Canada, including 1,615 deaths.
Opposition installed in Poland
WARSAW (AP) — An independent opposition entered an East bloc legislature for the first time since the late 1940s as Solidarity and Communist-backed legislators today took a common oath of office.
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of the governing Polish United Workers’ party (Communist party), watched the ceremony from seats near the front of the Sejm, or parliament. The ceremony was broadcast live on state television.
“We are starting the term of the Sejm, which may pass into history as a great one. It can fulfill the expectations of our society,” said Zbigniew Rudnicki, the 60-year-old senior member of the chamber who presided over the session.
“The eyes of 38 million Poles that live in the country are directed to our changes. More lively still beat the hearts of Poles all over the world from Chicago to Kazakhstan,” he said.
Rudnicki called on each deputy by name. They promised to work for Poland’s good in a oath that deleted a reference to its “socialist development.”
Solidarity supporters claim 161 seats in the 460-member Sejm.
Nola Wilde, 8, gets help fastening her lei from adventure playground leader Kerensa Medhurst during today’s “Hawaiian Day” Taste of Hawaii at summer adventure playground program at Malaspina elementary school. The parks and recreation program has a different theme each day for elementary school-aged children to explore. Citizen photo by Lisa Murdoch
"The first number... is ... five."
injuries were not life threatening.
“His life, at the moment, is not in danger,” said Dr. Jacques Fran-coeur, the neurosurgeon treating Valcourt at l’Enfant-Jesus hospital.
“He is not in critical condition.”
However, the doctor said many bones in Valcourt’s face had been broken.
“It’s very hard to tell whether he is in a coma or not because he was heavily sedated for the trip from Edmundston, Francoeur said.
Valcourt, 37. who is. minislpr of.
Minister hurt in chase
consumer and corporate affairs, was flown here because the Quebec City hospital has agreed to handle major neurological cases for the community hospital in northwestern New Brunswick.
The minister arrived in Quebec City at 6:30 a.m. aboard a Quebec government aircraft. His wife and two young daughters were at the hospital with him.
Police said Valcourt was driving his motorcycle through the northwestern New Brunswick city of Edmundston at about 2:30 a.m. when police officers tried to pull him over.
“The police cruiser was ordered to check the driver of the motorcycle moving side to side across the lane,” said deputy chief Del Pellit-er. “When the cruiser turned on its lights, he accelerated away from them, turned on to a boulevard and lost control.
“He’s hurt pretty badly in the head.”
Pelliter said Valcourt’s helmet came off when he hit a curb and then a fence.
First elected to the Commons in 1984 for the New Brunswick riding of Madawaska-Victoria, the fluently bilingual Valcourt has been viewed by many as a rising star in federal politics.
V
QUEBEC (CP) - Federal cabinet minister Bernard Valcourt is in hospital in Quebec City with head injuries after falling from his motorcycle early this morning in his hometown of Edmundston, N.B. while being pursued by police.
Police in Edmundston, who said Valcourt sped away after a cruiser tried to pull him over at about 2:30 a.m., at first said the cabinet minister suffered severe head injuries.
However, doctors said later his
BERNARD VALCOURT