England Ends Puberty Blocker Treatment
The Story: Following a damning report, England’s National Health Service (NHS) will no longer allow access to puberty blockers for trans-identifying minors without a clinical study—a wholesale reversal of its previous policy which claimed that puberty blockers “are considered to be fully reversible.” The new statement reads: “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of [puberty blockers] to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
The NHS has been dealing with scandalous revelations from the soon-to-be-closed Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service clinic that the mental health history of the child was often not taken into consideration, that fertility issues were common, and that the long-term health of patients was largely unknown.
This decision comes just a week after the release of the WPATH Files, covered in last week’s Report.
The Significance: For years, the NHS policy on puberty blockers has been held up by proponents of gender theory as proof that their extreme position was actually reasonable and that opponents of transitioning children were the true radicals. The NHS decision, however, tears down one of the last vestiges of legitimacy to which the gender theorists are clinging.
This is not a complete victory, however. Not only are blockers still going to be available from private clinics, but the NHS and UK law still claim that people can change their sex. But most sobering of all is the realization that 9,000 children have already been maimed in only the last few years at Tavistock alone.
Gender ideology is slowly being unmasked and shown to be what it has always been: the ultimate rebellion against God the Creator. We must pray that the mask will be torn off soon.
Read More: Josh Parry, BBC, “NHS England to stop prescribing puberty blockers”
Manitoba Government Introduces Bill to Enforce Abortion Clinic “Buffer Zones”
The Story: Manitoba’s NDP Government has introduced legislation to prohibit protests outside abortion clinics in the province. Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine introduced the legislation by stating, “I think it’s important to recognize that governments have a responsibility to protect Manitobans that are seeking to access health care.” The bill would create a 50 to 150 metre “buffer zone” around abortion clinics, prohibiting abortion opponents from standing outside to pray, protest, or speak with women entering the facility.
The Significance: The so-called pro-choice movement began by fighting for a woman’s “choice” to either abort her child or carry the child to term. Today, however, the choice façade has given way to a fully one-sided defence of abortion. Not only must a woman’s “choice” be protected, she must also be shielded from hearing alternative viewpoints—even if they are true. This fear of truth should not surprise believers. Paul told Timothy that a time was coming when people “will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (1 Tim. 4:3-4). Turning and hiding from truth has been the habitual response of guilty sinners since the leaf-cloaked disappearance of Adam and Eve. Like the story of the first couple, these buffer zones are an attempt to hide those about to commit an unthinkable sin from the pangs of an accusing conscience.
However, moral guilt is real and cannot be assuaged by fig-leaves or truth-free buffer zones. Instead, freedom is only found in recognizing the horrors of our behaviour, repenting of our wickedness, and trusting in Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sin. This is the message that women considering abortion (and their associated men) desperately need to hear. However, the Government of Manitoba seeks to prevent these men and women from hearing this message as they prepare to shed innocent blood.
Read More: The Canadian Press, “Manitoba plans buffer zones to restrict protests near abortion clinics”
Quebec Court Denies Assisted Suicide Exemption to Catholic Care Home
The Story: A Quebec Court has denied a religious freedom exemption to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal after the Archdiocese requested that St. Raphael’s Home, an archdiocese-supported palliative care centre, be exempted from a provincial requirement that all palliative care centres offer assisted suicide. In her ruling, Justice Catherine Piché argues that, “When it comes to the right to chose [sic] medical care and to obtain access to medical assistance in dying, the public interest is fundamental. Despite the plaintiffs’ significant interest in protecting their religious beliefs, this interest has less legal weight than the right of Quebecers to access the care of their choice, including medical assistance in dying, at St. Raphael’s home.”
The Significance: The Court did not deny that the Archdiocese has a “significant interest in protecting their religious beliefs” nor did they attempt to dispute the veracity of their religious opposition to assisted suicide. Instead, Justice Piché stated that the right to religious freedom is simply outweighed by “the right of Quebecers to access…medical assistance in dying.” Justice Piché demonstrates a very important aspect of secular opposition to the Christian tradition: the secular mind is fully tolerant of alternative religious perspectives and traditional Christian morality—so long as those perspectives do not compete with progressive ideals.
The secular mind will not be offended so long as the God of the Bible is only one of many gods who may be worshiped in the public square. What the secular mind finds untenable, however, is the idea that the God of the Bible would dare infringe on the domain of progressivism’s supreme deity: bodily autonomy. As Justice Piché demonstrates, the right to religious freedom is culturally secondary to the right to do what you want with your own body. This is a primary tenet of the progressive religion. However, just as the god of bodily autonomy will not tolerate competitors, neither will the God of the Bible. The difference is that the God of the Bible is all powerful and will soon destroy all other “gods.”
Read More: Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press, “Quebec judge won’t exempt church-supported palliative care home from MAID law”
Alberta Father Attempting to Stop Daughter’s Assisted Suicide
The Story: An Alberta father is desperately attempting to halt his daughter’s assisted suicide after the 27-year-old daughter, who has autism, disclosed no reasons for her decision.
The Father, whose identity has not been disclosed in order to protect the identity of his daughter, was able to obtain an injunction that temporarily halted his daughter’s scheduled death.
The daughter has autism and had to approach three doctors in order to get two of them to sign-off on her application for assisted suicide. Now, her father is protesting, saying that her mental health challenges should prevent her from giving consent to her own death. He has also questioned what criteria she could have approved. The 27-year-old woman lives with her father and he has argued that, to his knowledge, she has no health issues causing either unbearable suffering or reasonably foreseeable death.
The young woman had applied under the condition that her death was “reasonably foreseeable,” however she was approved on “track 2” which indicates the doctors, while approving her application, did not approve her on “reasonably foreseeable death” grounds. So far neither the woman or her doctors have submitted the reasons she was eventually approved.
A judge is currently considering whether to lift the injunction and whether a judicial review should take place to examine how the young woman’s application was approved in the first place.
The Significance: One of the largest concerns to arise from this case is that, while the Liberal government backed down on their promise to approve assisted suicide for Canadians who suffer from mental health, doctors who believe in the cause will do so anyways.
Cases like this one should also spur us on to fight for not simply stopping the expansion of assisted suicide, but also fighting for its repeal. Those who oppose our belief that life should always be saved and never unjustly ended will not stop pushing for expansion simply because their political allies aren’t currently advancing the cause for them. Without significant pushback against assisted suicide as an option, our country will continue to expand its accessibility.
Read More: Meghan Grant, CBC News, “Father asks court to stop 27-year-old daughter’s MAID death, review doctor’s signoff”
Canadian Air Force Ends Training for Pilots
The Story: The Canadian Air Force has announced that it will stop training pilots within Canada, sending them instead to train in Texas, Finland, and Italy. The Canadian government is blaming the move on their inability to train Canadian pilots on the new F-35A Fighters. However, critics are pointing out that the military has been asked to cut nearly a billion dollars from their budget, which many Canadians are already concerned is too low.
As the world has grown less politically stable in the past years, more and more Canadians are voicing their frustration with the government not only failing to meet its NATO defense spending targets, but continuing to cut our military budget at a time when virtually all other budgets have been increased.
Columnist John Ivison wrote in the National Post this week that in the time the Liberals have increased the military budget from 13 to 18 billion dollars, they have increased the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development budget from 8 billion to 48.6 billion.
The Significance: Christian and conservative Canadians tend to be more supportive of our military than Canadians at large, but the significance of this story is not simply how chronically underfunded and supported our military has become.
The true significance is that this is a stark reminder of how governments show you where their values lie in how they spend their dollars. If governments are responsible for anything, it is the safety of its citizens. The abdication of this as a priority has gone far beyond federal levels of government. In Toronto, car thefts have become so frequent that Toronto Police have advised citizens to leave their car keys by the front door in order to have their cars stolen more safely.
The hard truth is that Canadians on a number of levels don’t have a government that understands their roles or responsibilities. It is not disloyal in any way to both expect and demand better.
Read More: John Ivison, The National Post, “John Ivison: Canada’s Air Force ends pilot training as Ottawa’s spending priorities grow more unbalanced”
Quick Hits
France adds abortion to constitution: France, spurred on by President Emmanuel Macron, has added abortion to its constitution. The amendment is seen as a largely symbolic reaction to the United States Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade but will have legal ramifications, the extent of which are not clear.
France’s fall has been as slow as it has been painful. The country that once fought a war to end human sacrifices on the altars of false gods has now enshrined, as a fundamental right, human sacrifices on the altar of the individual. Radical individualism—the grave error championed by the deist, anti-Christian French Revolution—continues to plague Western Civilization. France now kills 1 in every 3 preborn children. They will be judged for their actions, as they judged others.
Read More: Christina Grube, WORLD, ”France enshrines abortion in constitution”
Arrests made in targeted killing of young family: Five men are now in custody for the 2023 targeted murder of Rafad Alzubaidy and her husband Aram Kamel, both of Bowmanville, Ontario. Alzubaidy was six months pregnant but, due to a glaring hole in Canadian law, none of the men will face charges for the preborn child’s murder. Saskatchewan MP Cathay Wagantall has attempted to address this gap in the law twice, first with Cassie and Mollie’s Law in 2016 (named after murder victims Cassie Kaake and her seven-month pre-born daughter Mollie), and again last year in the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act. Both bills were defeated in Parliament.
It is to our national shame that preborn victims of crime have no possibility of receiving legal justice, but they will receive justice in the end. “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed” (Eccles. 3:17).
Read More: Chris Doucette, Toronto Sun, “Five men now accused of killing young Bowmanville couple in 2023”
A Truth To Consider
