ver’s Pro-Choice Action Network. The report claims crisis pregnancy centres give
false information to women about the
dangers of abortion and that the centres
engage in such tactics as false advertising,
use of graphic videos, and breaching clients’ confidentiality – all untrue, according to the centres.
Trotter says the case challenges what
amounts to an ad hominem attack (an
unfairly personal assault) on the centres.
“When a woman googles ‘crisis pregnancy centre Vancouver’ it pops up right
on the front page.” In April lawyers for
the defendant argued the case should be
tossed out because the article in question
was not specific to Trotter’s clients. Judgment is currently being reserved.
Pro-life cases like this one are likely to
remain prominent for Trotter, who has
three young children and has practised
law for four years. He has already grown
accustomed to being a legal advocate for
those trying to stem the tide of abortion
in Canada. He recently started his own
practice, where he makes room for cases
that affect public policy in this area.
“The bottom line is that crisis preg-
nancy centres save lives,” he says, refer-
ring to this most recent case. “As a lawyer,
defending them is one way of ensuring
there is a legitimate option to abortion.
Ironically, the pro-life movement is now
the one presenting alternatives.”
But is there a professional cost to tak-
ing on these cases? Trotter believes the
forum provided by the court is somewhat
removed from life in the trenches. “I con-
sider my work to be the easy kind of activ-
ism. I’m not picketing and going to jail,”
he says. “I’m doing this in a professional
capacity, and I’m just trying to keep the
dialogue going. Lawyers have a strategic
role to play in keeping the public debate
about what’s right and wrong open.”
Sanctity of human life is also the cen-
tral focus in Carter v. Canada, an assisted
suicide-challenge in the B. C. Court of Ap-
peal, for which Trotter is currently acting
as counsel for the EFC.
Amid the complexities of the argu-
ments for and against assisted suicide,
Trotter eloquently summed up the EFC’s
beliefs before the court on March 19:
“The challenge before us as a society [is]
not to try to make the problem disappear
by making the person disappear, but to
respond to the unquestionably difficult
realities of both disability and dying by
caring for these people to minimize their
physical, and psychological, suffering as
much as possible, and to help them live
full, satisfying, and meaningful lives.
JEFF DEWsBuRy of Langley, B.C., is
a senior writer at Faith Today.
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