Right on man give peace a chance turn on tune in drop out

I was walking through a church lobby yesterday when I noticed a mother taking a picture of a young dad with his little six-year old girl parked on his shoulders. She was flashing the classic peace sign (two fingers in a V) for the picture.

I immediately thought of the day I graduated from Queen's University, shiny new MBA in hand. As a newly minted Ph.D. student walked down the steps from the platform with his diploma he flashed the same sign. Of course, this was in 1970 when that gesture had become the visual equivalent of shalom. I wondered if that dear little girl in 2007 knew what it meant--or even whether her young parents did.

I don't hear a lot of the old rhetoric or see the old signs much anymore--trips to BC's Gulf Islands being the rare exception. Time has passed us baby boomers by. Two fingers have (regrettably) been replaced by one. Expressions have become coarser. Tempus fugit.

Another kind of change has occurred as well. Since those heady days when Prime Minister Trudeau announced that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, attitudes toward abortion have taken quite a ride. There was a time when calling oneself pro-life put you into what was perceived as a small band of religious bigots and fanatics who crowded the streets with signs while violently harassing women who were exercising their right to choose.

The pro-choice movement reached Nirvana (sorry, another old expression) when restrictions on abortion at any stage were removed, leaving Canada with open season on the unborn child. Women were no longer fetus incubators and could choose whatever form of reproductive freedom that suited their needs, all paid for by Medicare.

When I listen to the people of my era (politicians, leaders of some women's groups, many media people, and so on) still using the old talk about those who profess to be pro-life, I think that they are caught in the same time warp as the aging hippies on Gabriola Island. They are ignoring what is really happening in society, both here and in the U.S.

For several years now, LifeCanada has commissioned polls by Environics Research Group regarding the pro-life v. pro-abortion debate. Here are some of the findings from 2006:

1. Almost two-thirds of respondents (2021 people were surveyed) support laws to protect the unborn child.
2. Only three in ten are happy with the current law that allows for no protection at any stage of fetal development.
3. 70% support a requirement that women be informed about fetal development and all health risks and complications before they can choose whether to abort.
4. 55% supported a law requiring parental consent for minors under age 18 to have an abortion. Presently, no parental consent is required even if the girl is only 13.
5. 48% believed that abortions should be funded only in medical emergencies (e.g., threat to the mother's life, rape, and incest).

In a similar poll conducted in late 2005, also by Environics, 34% of female respondents supported legal protection from conception, and another 19% from the first trimester. The numbers for men, curiously, were 24% and 20% respectively. These numbers were more or less the same for 2006.

What that gives us is approximately one-third of Canadian women who would probably be pro-life in the classic sense (legal protection from conception), and about a third who prefer the Canadian status quo of no protection prior to birth. The final third favour legal protection at some stage of fetal development, the majority in the first trimester (source: www.lifecanada.org).

In the U.S. the trends are similar. Consider the findings below taken from Study Sees 'Turnaround' in Young Adults' Positions on Abortion by Kevin Mooney, CNSNews.com staff writer, July 10, 2007 (CNSNews.com)

Younger voters, especially women, are embracing a pro-life position in surprising numbers and in sharp contrast to attitudes that held sway 15 years ago, according to a new study.The study by Overbrook Research, a public consulting firm in Illinois, examines public opinion data from Missouri. With proportions of blacks, Catholics and union members in line with national averages, the state is viewed as "highly representative of the American electorate," the study says. Over 30,000 survey interviews were conducted in the state between 1992 and 2006.

Participants were asked: "On the debate over abortion policy, do you consider yourself to be pro-life, pro-choice or somewhere in between?" Those who gave a definitive answer were then asked how strongly they held their view.

Results in 1992 were largely in step with what study authors Christopher Blunt and Fred Steeper call the "self-interest hypothesis." Women and men under 30 were the most ardently "pro-choice" (39 percent) and the least likely to be strongly "pro-life"( 23 percent).

Today, by contrast, among the current generation of 18- to 29-year-olds, 36 percent say they are strongly "pro-life," while just 18 percent say they are strongly "pro-choice," the study authors said. The trend was particularly evident among women in that age bracket. Forty percent identify themselves as strongly "pro-life" and only 20 percent as strongly "pro-choice."The data reverses a two-to-one ratio that was evident in 1992, the study noted.

These are well-founded statistical realities that those political, media and special interest group baby boomers can't ignore. Give up the old rhetoric, my friends. Get real.