My mother is no slouch. She will be 87 in September.She lives by herself in her own apartment, cooks great meals daily for herself, drives her often younger friends and neighbours to church, doctor appointments, cultural events and to her twice weekly bridge games at the local golf club.

Each summer, she makes the day-long trip from her home in Sarnia, Ontario, to Alberta to visit with us. That arduous trip involves a bus or plane ride to Toronto, then another plane, sometimes with stops along the way to Edmonton. It’s a killer trip that wears me out but she dutifully makes it to reconnect with her four grandchildren and my husband and I.

She astonishes all of us with her drive, stamina and nurturing ways. (I’m ashamed to confess that her days here see my freezer stocked up on buns and pies, often cherry pies she makes with the huge pail of frozen cherries she picks up at a local fruit farm and packs lovingly with newspapers and freezer packs in her carry-on luggage during the trek out here.)

There are a couple of other salient facts about my mom. She is a lifelong pro-lifer. I remember that she would sometimes be gone for the entire day when I was a kid, volunteering for Birthright. Sometimes she would pick up a newborn baby at the local hospital and take it to its new adoptive parents in a nearby city. In the late sixties, I attended a public meeting with her where the new proposed legislation to legalize abortion was being discussed and protested. I’d like to think I came to my pro-life viewpoint all by myself, but if I’m honest, I’m quite certain that it was, as they say, bred in the bone.

She is also a lifelong Liberal Party member, supporter and worker. She’s worked for the federal and provincial Liberals at election time for as long as I can remember. I don’t agree with her party politics and she doesn’t agree with mine. Many of us would object that a Catholic pro-life Canadian should not support the Liberal Party of Canada.

Of course, there is no federal party represented in the House of Commons that supports the right to life of all human beings, even though it is enunciated in Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They all refuse to acknowledge that babies in the womb are human beings (except in the federally-ordered warnings on cigarette packages). Human rights in Canada are not considered inalienable. Rather, in Canada, our official belief (not necessarily reflective of what people actually believe) is that rights come from governments and judges. If the government or courts haven’t said it is a human right, then it isn’t a human right. It’s an absurd position, of course, because it means governments or judges can—and do—create and deny rights on a whim.

There are people in all the mainstream parties who are pro-life, but officially the parties all support the status quo, which is that abortion is legal, healthy for women, and paid for by taxpayers through the publicly funded health care system.

I was on the phone with my mom this week and she told me that she had written a letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty complaining that taxpayers had to pay for abortions. She opposed that and wondered why she was paying for abortions while at the same time, the McGuinty government was closing a model palliative care unit at the local Catholic hospital supported by private donors. The unit had helped many of her friends.

Two months later, she noted, she had just received her reply from the premier. He thanked her for her letter and her concern about abortion. (Do all governments have the same letter writer on this subject? It must be one of the few things they can coordinate.) He then referred to the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1988 Morgentaler decision. He said: “The court ruled that a woman in our country has the legal right to a timely accessible abortion as an insured service.”

Mom was steamed. I must admit I might have raised my voice and yelled into the phone that what her premier was telling her was a lie. I may have used a cruder term for “lie.”

I don’t believe for a minute that Dalton McGuinty is stupid. He’s a lawyer and must know what the Morgentaler decision said. The old abortion law, which required hospitals to set up therapeutic abortion committees (TACs) to decide when an abortion was appropriate was struck down by the court. The majority decision found that the law was unconstitutional on procedural grounds because it was not applied equally across the country and because it required that abortions all be done in hospitals. A majority of the court also concluded that protection of unborn human beings from abortion was a valid legislative objective and that Parliament was within its constitutional jurisdiction to pass a Criminal Code law restricting abortion. The issue whether or not abortions must be paid for under the public system was not even mentioned in that case. So, on both counts, Mr. McGuinty’s letter was wrong. The court didn’t say women had a legal right to a timely accessible abortion and it didn’t say it was an insured service.

I’d be willing to bet Dalton McGuinty never even saw my mom’s letter or his own “signed” response. I’m appalled, however, that he, and most other politicians I’ve heard from or about, treat electors so badly. These pat responses assume the person, in this case my mom, is stupid. I can almost imagine them telling their underlings: “Let’s send them some legalistic claptrap about constitutional requirements and Supreme Court decisions and they won’t have the wherewithal to reply or object. It might be a lie but it will shut them up.”

It won’t shut my mom up. She’s not easily intimidated or patronized. She will send another letter to Premier McGuinty challenging the lies in his letter. She might even tell her friends that the premier lied to her.

I may not agree with her politics but I’m proud of her and her tenacity.

I can only wish that all Canadians, whatever their age, would be as determined and interested in defending human rights for all human beings..