Is the Human Embryo a Person?

2nd Edition (2024)
Author: John Gallagher, CSB
Publisher: The DeVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research
Cost: $15.00
Those devoted to protecting the unborn act on a belief that the child in the womb is a human person. Believing that passage from the womb does not change the infant from non-person to person, they presume that the developing fetus is a developing human being, just as the newly-born infant will continue a development to maturity, being a human being all the while.

Advocates for abortion may challenge this position. To deal fairly and convincingly with these challenges requires a thorough consideration of the issue. This book presents such a consideration.

Is the Human Embryo a Person examines the notion of what it means to be a human person and the validity of these notions. It explores the question of when human personhood begins studying the nature of living organisms and evaluates different criteria proposed to define personhood.

Complications: Abortion’s Impact on Women

2nd Edition: Revised and Updated (2018)
Author(s): Angela Lanfranchi, Ian Gentles, and Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy
Publisher: The DeVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research
Rigorously researched and scientifically documented, Complications: Abortion’s Impact on Women, Second Edition: Revised and Updated examines the role of abortion in almost every aspect of women’s health: depression, infertility, autoimmune disease, cancer, and intimate partner violence, to name a few. Each of the 21 chapters explores an issue in depth, thoroughly examining published studies from across the globe to find the common threads that might be missed otherwise. This book uses language that is accessible to the lay person, but in a comprehensive way that will be useful for any professional working in women’s health issues: health care professionals, counsellors, policy makers, teachers, government officials. Any woman who has experienced an abortion or who might be contemplating one needs to read this book.

It’s Not That Simple: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Today

Type: Book
Author(s): Jean Echlin and Ian Gentles
Publisher: The deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research
Cost: $20.00 +Shipping/handling

It’s Not That Simple: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Today presents the reader with the knowledge and understanding of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia and how it will greatly impact our society. The book focuses on the Supreme Court’s decision on assisted suicide, the state of the law around the world, jurisdictions which have legalized assisted suicide or euthanasia, why patients request euthanasia and assisted suicide and the effect this change will have on our society.

Women’s Health After Abortion: The Medical Psychological Evidence

Type: Book
Author(s): Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy & Ian Gentles
Publisher: de Veber Institute (April, 2003)
Women’s Health after Abortion is based on over 500 articles that have appeared in medical and other journals, chiefly during the past twenty years. Much of the information has been extracted from papers whose primary focus was not abortion. Some of the consequences of abortion do not surface until long after the procedure, or, as in the case of infertility, remain undetected until the woman wishes to bear a child. Yet at present many studies rely on short-term findings; furthermore, researchers often minimize the significance of their findings, and sometimes even arrive at conclusions that flatly contradict their data.

The difficulties surrounding the study of abortion have only increased with the dramatic rise over the past decade in the number of procedures performed in clinics, where follow-up of patients is minimal or non-existent. Nonetheless, what research there is, shows that abortion is the source of serious physical and psychological problems for a significant number of women.

Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide: The Current Debate

Type: Book
Editor(s): Ian Gentles
Publisher: Stoddart Publishing (1995)
The signs are everywhere: the final taboo has been breached; death has come out of the closet.

In recent years, euthanasia has become a subject of passionate debate. Questions have been raised about health care, about pain control, about assisted suicide and about the implications of the legalization of euthanasia. Nowhere is the more apparent than in the Sue Rodriguez, and Robert and Tracy Latimer cases.

One thing is certain: the issue is not going to go away. Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: The Current Debate is a an important and timely overview of the problems of palliative care of the terminally ill, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and the law, written by major Canadian contributors, including: Ian Hunter, Ian Gentles, Dr. John Scott, and Robert Nadeau. This will form an essential part of any collection on bioethics and contemporary legal and social issues.

Going It Alone: Unplanned Single Motherhood in Canada

Type: Book
Editor(s): J. Ajzenstat, E. Cassidy, E. Carter, G. Bierling
Publisher: deVeber Institute (1994)

An original research study documenting significant aspects of unplanned crisis pregnancies that ended in single parenting by the mother. A wide range of Canadian women, as well as service agencies, were surveyed. This work looks at important components in the single mothers’ lives, including their support network of family and friends, and the role of the baby’s father, and examines the decision-making process in these women’s lives and determining factors.

The results of the research were sometimes surprising. Very few of the mothers felt they needed more government programs for housing and day care and most were not dependent on welfare. However, a significant percentage identified prejudice against single mothers as a problem, and a long-term concern in their lives.

This report is formed out of the words of these women and the agencies that serve them and will be of great interest to anyone personally or professionally connected to single mothers.

A Time to Choose Life:Women, Abortion and Human Rights

Type: Book
Editor(s): Ian Gentles
Publisher: Stoddard Publishing (1990)

The great abortion debate in Canada has often produced more smoke than fire, with pro-abortion and anti-abortion forces lobbing ideological epitithets at each other without adequately clearing the ground for responsible discussion.

Nevertheless, because the abortion issue is at the heart of our view of life and hopes for society, the best minds on both sides have been developing more sophisticated thinking and writing. Here, argued clearly and dispassionately, are essays on women, abortion and human rights. Eminent scholars and doctors George Grant, Samuel and Janet Ajzenstat, Heather Morris, Ian Hunter, Ian Gentles, Denyse O’Leary and others review the ideological issues and examine the medical implications and consequences of abortion. They also critique the legal decisions that made Canada unique in placing no restrictions on abortion.

Women’s Health at Risk – Abortion and Informed Consent

Type: DVD
Author(s): Dr. Deborah Zeni
Editor(s): Purple Cloth Productions
Publisher: The deVeber Institute
Cost: $20

Speaking from the extensive research in Women’s Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence and her own experience treating young post-abortive women in her practise as a family physician, Dr. Deborah Zeni shares her expertise in this deVeber Institute public lecture.

This DVD includes factual and statistical information about the medical and psychological risks associated with abortion.  Dr. Zeni also shares how women are affected, and what this research means for health care professionals.

A Medical Detective Story; What You Felt Before You Were Born

Type: DVD
Author(s): Dr. Paul Ranalli
Cost: $20

A neurologist reveals surprising facts about prenatal development that have only recently come to light. Dr. Paul Ranalli, MD, FRCPC, explains the science and politics of fetal pain during this deVeber Institute annual public lecture.

Compassionate End of Life Care; For Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Type: DVD
Cost: $20

Learn about end of life care from:

  • Susan Morgan, MDiv, Community chaplain for Saint Elizabeth Health Care, York Region, Ontario, Canada.
  • Paul Zeni, MD, Family physician and palliative care consultant for North Halton, Ontario, Canada.
  • Jane Powell, graduate of a certificate program in grief and bereavement and co-facilitator of a grief group for members of L’Arche Toronto with developmental disabilities.