Dear Editor,
My name is Berenda Helmus. I am 14-years-old. I live in rural Alberta on a dairy farm. I go to school in Neerlandia. I am a sheep farmer, that is interested in politics, and education. I love science and mathematics, along with fine arts, and history.
I would like to thank you for all your hard work and dedication in the past, and hope you continue working hard in the future. I can honestly say that I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a Member of Parliament. It’s a heavy responsibility and it is a huge task. Making sure that constituents are happy and listening to concerns and reading letters. I want to thank you for doing this task.
I try to stay up to date with politics and so today I would like to address the issue of the lady in Red Deer that gave a presentation to Ecole Secondaire Notre Dame High School. She received a lot of backlash from the government, and I would like to voice my concerns.
She was asked to give a presentation related to abortion. I watched the video, and what she said was factual. If we want to see the scientific angle of life taught in our schools, it will tell us that life is life from conception. I have been to the doctor many times. I’m clumsy and tend to hurt myself, and every single time I go to the hospital I end up in an examination room. In that room, there is a poster, in the hospital bathrooms, there are posters, those posters say something along these lines; “Don’t smoke when pregnant, it can harm your baby.” This says something. They’re children. As I said earlier, I live on a farm, and when a cow is expecting, it’s expecting a ‘baby cow’ or a ‘calf’. When a horse is expecting, it’s a ‘baby foal’, or ‘baby horse’. So why is it that with humans it’s referred to as a ‘clump of cells’. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I really do want to know.
One thing that I’d love to be is a vet, and as I work my way through education, I try to learn more about it. Once I got the opportunity to visit another farm where they did ultrasounds. We could see the calf moving inside the cow. With humans you can see their eyes, their hands, their feet, their body. When my mom was expecting my sister, she was sucking her thumb on the ultrasound. We can see that they’re babies, they’re children.
The questions that the lady asked in her presentation at Ecole Secondaire Notre Dame High School really made you think, she asked them why it would be okay for a woman to kill her baby before it’s born, if it’s wrong to kill them after they’re born. It’s the same child. I completely agree with her. I had a friend that said, if it’s not a baby, why do people say they’re pregnant. The definition of pregnant is as follows; (of a woman or female animal) having a child or young developing in the uterus. Science proves that it’s a child.
The last thing I’d like to address is fundamental freedoms. I like a lot of things, and another is politics. I even learned how to properly say it a few years back because my friend was getting tired of hearing me talk about it and saying it wrong. I’ve attended conferences and met with MP’s, MPP’s and Senators. I’ve heard question periods at both the provincial and federal level. And this year in Social Studies we learned about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Fundamental Freedoms; the freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of thought, opinion, expression, and communication, the freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association.
Freedom of Religion and conscience. If a school board asks someone to come in and give a presentation, they approved it. If the board of my school asked someone to give a presentation, it’s allowed. I think personally that the school board should be allowed to decide these things. If we have freedom of religion and conscience we are allowed to decide what we believe, and what we follow. If we want to believe that abortion is wrong, that’s allowed. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the highest law in all of Canada.
It is important to me that the School boards and the parents can make these decisions. I wish you all the best in the year ahead. I hope that God will be with all members of Parliament and legislatures and direct their decisions so that they are the right decisions. May God strengthen you for the work that you have to do.
Sincerely, Berenda Helmus
Neerlandia
