At a concert put on by friends, a song brought me back to another time and place, as only songs can do: "This land is parching, this land is burning. O healing river, send down your waters."

Hang on for dear life.

Unfortunately, the dearness of life seems to be dying a not-so-slow death.

OTTAWA - Campaign Life Coalition has announced “Let Life Win” as the theme of the 2015 National March for Life to be held May 14 in Ottawa.

EDMONTON - Jo-Anne Paquette’s three-month journey with Martha Shephard as she died from a brain tumour was both physically draining and a spiritual gift for Paquette.

In the end, after 70, 80, 90 years on the planet, chances are the people you will have known best, longest and most thoroughly will be your brothers and sisters. They are the people who came with you into the world out of the same womb.

A number of voices have called on the federal government to trump the Supreme Court’s assisted-suicide decision with the notwithstanding clause — the controversial section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which allows Parliament to pass laws contravening some rights and liberties for up to five years before legislators have to re-vote on the matter or craft new legislation.

OTTAWA - McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville has called for a Royal Commission on “physician-assisted death” as well as for the federal government to invoke the notwithstanding clause to trump the Supreme Court's recent ruling on the matter.

TORONTO - With a federal election scheduled for this year, Campaign Life Coalition has launched the #No2Trudeau campaign to foil the Liberal leader's victory plan.

In the 33-year life of the Charter of Rights and Freedom the federal government has never invoked the notwithstanding clause to override a court ruling. But Canada has never faced a decision quite like the Feb. 6 edict by the Supreme Court that will usher in assisted suicide and euthanasia.

OTTAWA - With one year to come up with a solution after the Supreme Court struck down Canada’s laws against physician-assisted suicide, there are any number of options being bandied about on all spectrums of the political divide.

And so it begins. The Supreme Court of Canada decision to legalize assisted suicide (and by extension euthanasia) is chilling but no surprise. Poll after poll has shown Canadian public sympathy moving steadily in favour of some form of state-sanctioned killing.  

VATICAN CITY - Less than a month after saying Catholics don’t have to multiply “like rabbits,” Pope Francis on Wednesday (Feb. 11) once again praised big families, telling a gathering in St. Peter’s Square that having more children is not “an irresponsible choice.”

OTTAWA - Disappointment, indignation and calls to invoke the notwithstanding clause followed a historic Supreme Court of Canada unanimous decision that struck down a ban on physician-assisted suicide and opened the door to assisted death for people who may not have a terminal illness.

TORONTO - The coming months will be critical for Canada’s pro-life movement as the country faces the potential legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig (W. W. Norton & Company, 409 pages, $32.95 in print, $16.05 on Kindle).