The following article was published in the Guardian PEI on Oct 11th, 2019
Thanksgiving is a Pro-life Holiday
Opinion Piece by Pat Wiedemer, Executive Director, PEI Right to Life Association.
Oct 8th, 2019
One has to admit that everyone likes Thanksgiving! In all stages and phases of our station in life everyone likes to be thanked. Being taught to be thankful and say thank you is one of the earliest things we learn from our mothers and society. We thank each other, we thank friends and family, salespeople, bus-drivers, teachers, doctors and plumbers and even our pets get a pat-pat for a job well done. To thank is a fundamental human trait. It is part of our DNA so to say. No other creature gives thanks like the human person does. We possess the ability to know I am part of a greater community and my and other’s health and happiness are integrated into that social network. We express this knowledge in acts of kindness, worship, care for others, care for the environment, care for self. It is part of natural law that the human person can understand the needs and vulnerabilities of the other, because I am needy and vulnerable as well. We thank because someone has made my life better and lessened my burden.
Thanksgiving this year falls shortly before our national elections. It is a time when we can use this moment of thanksgiving to discuss with family and friends the future of our nation and how we wish to live. What is the value of human life in our Canadian society as it stands? Do we seriously desire to protect this gift of life that you and I so eminently enjoy? Do we uphold and promote the dignity of all human life in our country: The life of the child in the womb, the children in the dysfunctional family, the woman or man struggling with addiction, loneliness, lack of employment or education, and the elderly suffering with age or illness? Science has always proven that human life is unique and unrepeatable from conception on. Universal Bills of Rights, historical and actual, declare human life deserving of protection; that this right to life is inalienable and self-evident. Scientifically and politically we know that all human life is deserving of protection.
I challenge you to ask yourselves, ask your political candidate, ask your employers, ask your pastor and family members this Thanksgiving season where do you stand on protecting life as the highest good we have? What other alternatives are you prepared to work for so that women do not see ending the life of the child in the womb as a solution to their future security, so that youth and troubled adults do not see suicide as the better choice to social isolation, that the elderly and ill do not see euthanasia as the “optimal end” to financial, social, familial and/or medical insecurity when faced with life-challenging situations?
We live in such a rich country with such blessings. Be thankful for the gift of being Canadian, for the gift of living in peaceful PEI. As a first-world country it is unacceptable that we offer death as a solution and the fact that we have a national holiday for giving thanks means that we do indeed cherish life. It is time we hold each other accountable and uphold the dignity of all human life. PEI Right to Life stands for educating all on the inestimable worth of every human person from conception through to natural death.
