I am a health professional and have chaired medical research and related initiatives. My training included spending hundreds of hours in anatomy, neuroanatomy and embryology labs. Here are some observations and questions.

Science is Important. Activist Greta Thunberg has said; Listen to the scientists. Science in 2020 says the fetus is a human being. When dealing with horses or hummingbirds, biologists accept that the new being begins at fertilization. From that moment on, the organism merely unfolds the capacities that belong intrinsically to the kind of creature that it is. These same scientific facts apply to human babies. Virtually no credible professional scientist denies that life begins at conception. The embryo is biologically human. A human being.

Questions:Why are we not willing to follow the science?Why are we not listening to the science of embryology?

Doesnt Everyone Begin as an Unborn Child?At some point, every human being currently living on the planet was a living unborn child. This should be obvious and self-evident. This is not a feeling and not an opinion. Its another scientific fact.

Questions: If we were afforded to human right to live by our parent(s), why wouldnt we extend the same basic human rights and opportunity to other unborn children?

What makes you or me, or qualifies either of us, or any other person, to be the arbiter of life and death, the yes or no to the existence of another human being?

What If We Dont Like Science?If you or I dont like or care for science and believe that feelings are more important than facts, then at the very least we might consider the voice of Grammy Award-winning black hip-hop artist, Lecrae Moore. Moore publicly admitted the role he played in persuading his girlfriend to abort their child and admitted that he selfishly choose his life over hers. In his song,Good, Bad, Ugly,he says;I was too selfish with my time/Scared my dreams were not gonna survive/So I dropped her off at the clinic/That day, a part of us died.

What Kind of Culture and Community Do You Want? Lecrae is correct. The consequence of an abortion procedure is death. Another scientific fact. That is the cold forceps and needle to the brain and the suction tube reality. That ewww, gross science stuff that arts majors and journalism students studiously seem to avoid. Just like anatomy, biochemistry, physics and embryology labs. To abort the baby is not to save it. It is to kill the tiny person and to perhaps later auction off its vacuumed parts to the highest bidders.

Questions:What kind of culture and community do you want? A life culture? A death culture?What community evil is greater than taking a human life? Losing a job? Dropping out of university? A tight financial budget? Social stigma? Losing a boyfriend?

As you are aware, Canada currently has no federal law governing the abortion procedure. As we are the only civilized country without any legislation, and embryological science has confirmed the humanity of the unborn baby, MP Garnett Genuis is correct in soliciting feedback from his constituents and Canadians. He should be commended and not condemned. And for the sake of the 3.3 per cent late-term abortion figure that you quoted, our community and country desperately needs debate, legislation and regulation.

Listen to Greta. Just follow the science.

Brent Kassian

A big thanks to editor Lindsay Morey for standing up for womens rights in her editorial regarding the recent survey put out by MP Garnett Genuis. This is issue should have been put to bed yearsago and yet a few reps in the House of Commons, Geniusincluded seem hell-bent on making this a talking point. Looking at some recent polls I see that 77 per cent of Canadians support abortion rights. If thats the case then how can this be in Genuis top issues in his survey? Ive used the word survey here in quotes as I find the definition of the term to not be accurate with what came in the mail from our MP. Heavily biased answers and limited choices, along with zero chance for a respondent to add comments is hardly data gathering.

I consider the question on Genuis survey to be an attack on womens rights. The idea of controlling what a woman can do with her body is flat out, just another attempt at rolling back the clock and locking women in the mold that conservative men seem the need to have them in.

Genuis has said that people keep bringing the issue up to him. Really? When Genuis was campaigning this year and his people came to my door I asked what his main goals for his term would be if elected. Jobs. They were adamant that jobs were the number one issue. Nothing else. We spoke for about 15-20 minutes and I listened to the whole spiel. I clearly recall nothing about abortion in the conversation. The fact that Genuis has endeared himself to hardcore pro-life groups is extremely disturbing to me. Antiquated beliefs and archaic viewpoints such as those do not belong in the HoC and I certainly hope they are not what the folks of Sherwood Park believe. Having lived here almost my entire life I can say that while being, for the most part, conservative the people of this hamlet have a fairly solid streak of progressiveness on social issues.

So why does Genuis continue to beat this drum? Look at his past. Genuis was a founder of the Parents for Choice group that sought to move public education dollars to private religious schools. This was also the group that recently campaigned hard against GSAs in schools and pushed for a change of sex-ed curriculum. Put that together with the Coalition for Life group that heartily endorses him and you have a large and influential base. I would be very curious to know just how much influence these groups and their agenda have over our MP. These groups are well known to financially support, sometimes directly and sometimes by way of individual contributions, MPs who fit their ideals.

Plainly, Genuis has trouble with a separation of church and state. His constituents would be far better served if he lead with a real mandate from them in his hand than with a cross.

Joe Belohorec, Sherwood Park resident

(In the column) editor Lindsay Morey argued that Canadians in general, and the people of Sherwood Park in particular, favored legal abortion. Furthermore, she held that the government had no right to criminalize abortion after the R v Mortgentaler Supreme Court decision in 1988. Because of these two factors, she believed that her Member of Parliament, Garnett Genuis, should not be asking his constituents for input on the issue.However, she is factually wrong on both points. The latest polling indicates that Canadians are overwhelmingly uncomfortable on the current state of abortion law in Canada. Over 90 per cent of Canadians believe that sex-selective abortion should be made illegal. Approximately 60 per cent of Canadians dont support third-trimester abortions, with similarly overwhelming opposition to abortion once the pre-born child can feel the pain of being killed.Canada has no abortion law to ban any of this. Clearly Canadians do not want their politicians to shirk their duty to discuss uncomfortable moral issues. They were elected to lead, not to hide. Genuis could have ran from these issues, instead, he chose to be a leader and to get feedback from his constituents. That is what a good MP does.Finally, there is the issue of the Mortgentaler Supreme Court decision. Far from making it possible for no criminal laws to regulate abortion in the country, the court actually found that while the tangle of abortion laws that existed in 1988 was not constitutional because of technicalities, that the government had both the authority to draft criminal abortion laws. No right to abortion has ever been found to exist by our Supreme Court.All of this leads me to one last point: abortion should not be a right because it is actually a human rights violation. It is the direct and intentional killing of a pre-born human being. Biology tells us that at fertilization new organism of the species homo-sapiens comes into existence, and because all human beings have human rights, the direct and intentional killing of the pre-born must be a human rights violation. Ultimately, we should be ashamed that pre-born children can be legally tortured to death in this country, and we should have more MPs who demonstrate the leadership necessary to start regulating this trade in human blood. Stephanie Fennelly, The Wilberforce Project executive director

Kudos to The News for setting out the issues raised by MP Garnett Genuis recent survey of constituents, and highlighting the underlying bias in the survey. Just as an MP has the right to ask for input, he has a right to his personal opinion on all matters. He does not have the right, however, to hide or obscure his position from constituents, nor impose it on constituents. Conservatives did not do well in the federal election not so much because of Andrew Scheers views on abortion and civil rights, but because he was less than upfront about them and the effect his personal views would have on government policy. He could not answer a simple question honestly, because he knew that in most of the country, there would be considerable political fallout.

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada invited Parliament to draft new laws concerning access to abortion, as they saw fit, but without violating the Constitution. To date, Parliament has been unable or unwilling to fulfill that mandate. Access to abortion is a human right. It is seen by Alberta Health Services as being a component of any womans access to a complete slate of reproductive and health services. Getting an abortion or not continues to be a decision that must be made by the woman herself, taking her own circumstances into consideration. Simply put, it is no one elses business.

It is especially not the business of a group of men who use abortion as a political crutch. #keepyourpoliticsoutofmyuterus indeed!

Genuis needs to turn his attention to matters that confront Albertans today climate action, jobs, childcare, healthcare. As the editorial said fighting lawful access to abortion will not put food on your constituents kitchen tables.

Maureen Towns, Sherwood Park resident

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Letters to the Editor - Sherwood Park News