Firestorm Erupts Over Attempt to Honor Notorious Archabortionist

On Canada Day 2008 a firestorm of protest was set off when Governor-General Michaëlle Jean announced that the abortionist Henry Morgentaler would receive the Order of Canada. Millions of Canadians were incredulous that someone who has personally aborted more than 100,000 children, not to mention tens of thousands more put to death at his chain of “clinics”, would be given the country’s highest civilian honor.

Even the federal government distanced itself from the decision; and over 100 MPs openly denounced it. Numerous distinguished recipients of the Order, including New Brunswick’s former lieutenant-governor Gilbert Finn, said they felt they must now return their medal rather than be associated with such a notorious individual. 

As of press time, the ceremony conferring the medal had not yet taken place.

Comments From Media, Political and Religious Leaders

Political Leaders

"My preference, to be frank, would be to see the Order of Canada be something that really unifies, that brings Canadians together...I have to say this clearly: This is not a decision of the government of Canada."  - The Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister

“If Dr. Morgentaler becomes a member, the Order of Canada for me has decreased in value. I cannot be a member of the Order of Canada with a man of such a reputation.”  - The Hon. Gilbert Finn, former lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, saying he planned to return his award.

Note: More than 100 Members of Parliament have expressed opposition to the Morgentaler appointment (vs. 35 in favor). To view the list go to: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008_docs/MPsreactiononMorgentaleraward3.pdf

Religious Leaders

“Canada's highest honour has been debased. We are all diminished.... A community's worth is measured by the way it treats the most vulnerable, and no one is more vulnerable than in the first nine months of life's journey. No person may presume to judge the soul of Henry Morgentaler, but it cannot be denied that the effect of his life's work has been a deadly assault upon the most helpless amongst us.” - Most Rev. Thomas Collins, Catholic archbishop of Toronto

Note: Other religious leaders and groups who have spoken out include the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, at least 13 Catholic bishops individually,  the Traditional Anglican bishops of Canada, Canada Family Action Coalition, 4My Canada, the Catholic Organization for Life and Family, the Catholic Women’s League of Canada, and the Knights of Columbus of Canada.

Media Commentary

“The furor over Henry Morgentaler's appointment ...is about abortion. In honouring him, we are honouring it, normalizing it, stamping it with the seal of approval.”   

- Andrew Coyne, McLean’s Magazine.

"Here's someone whose life's achievement is in enabling women to abort their children and justify it to themselves as something other than what it appears to be. One or two other people in history have deliberately set in motion the mass termination of so many helpless lives, but outside of war they aren't treated with high regard."   - Karen Hawthorne,  The National Post

"When Canada honours someone who took the Hippocratic Oath and has wreaked such hurt, havoc, sorrow and grief, something is wrong with the Canadian government commission that grants medals and a Governor General who, claiming Catholic roots when convenient, shows herself to be spineless, politically correct and without respect for human life.”  - Fr. Thomas Rosica, The Toronto Sun

"Heroes rescue people. Morgentaler, who has helped make it open season on the unborn, has rescued no one and condemned thousands ..”  - Naomi Lakritz, The Calgary Herald

"The point here is that the real reason for supporting his award isn't that [Morgentaler's] controversial, it's that he's an abortionist. And it's no excuse for pushing it through that he's unwell and it cannot be given posthumously. If there is no afterlife there's little point rushing to collect attractive coffin decorations and if there is, that little white lapel pin will not help him face his accusers on the other side.”  - John Robson, The Ottawa Citizen

"Like many, many, many Canadians, I took the appointment of Henry Morgentaler to membership in the Order of Canada - proclaimed on 'Canada Day' - as a stick in the eye for everything we believe in. As a gratuitous insult to the memory of three million aborted babies.”        - David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen

"One could hardly imagine a more divisive gesture ... Why, then, would a majority of the order's advisory council and the Governor General herself choose to mark a day celebrating national unity by deeply offending half the country?"  - Editorial,  The Calgary Herald

"As a caller to my talk show put it, anyone who gets an Order of Canada should be able to have a school named after them. Henry Morgentaler High? Hmmm." - Michael Harris, The Ottawa Sun

“‘For his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations.'  That's the brief citation explaining what Morgentaler's qualifications are. Notice anything missing? The man's name is synonymous with abortion; one doesn't drop into a Morgentaler clinic for a bad back. He does one thing, and one thing only, and yet Rideau Hall could not bring itself to even mention it¼Why not tell us what Morgentaler did? Even in his moment of triumph, the eyes need to be averted.”   - Fr. Raymond de Souza, The National Post

Like so  many teenage mums, Elizabeth Cameron doesn't like to talk much about the father of her toddler daughter. She was conceived on a cold December evening when Elizabeth  - then a 16-ear-old virgin  - was dragged into the back of the van and raped.

That Phoebe exists at all almost defies belief. Practically everyone who knew exactly how Elizabeth had fallen pregnant  - doctors, siblings, even her own father  - urged her to have an abortion as soon as possible. The only person who pleaded with her to at least consider having the child was her mother Sarah.

Today, Elizabeth and Sarah are together to tell their remarkable story to The Mail. 

Elizabeth is still only 19 and about to start university to train to be a primary school teacher.  “Everyone, save for mum, thought I should have an abortion,” she says.  “My dad even made an appointment at the clinic, and they showed me the little blob on the scan, I presume, to convince me that it was just a mass of cells and the whole thing would be over quickly. But I couldn't go through with it.

“Every time I look at Phoebe, I know I made the right decision. I never wanted to end my baby's life just because of how she came to be.”

To most women, the thought of carrying their rapist's baby would be unthinkable. Elizabeth says that she, too, would once have shared that view.

To her amazement, though, the first sight of that “mass of cells” on the screen triggered waves of tenderness rather than revulsion.  

”During the pregnancy, I had nightmares about the attack and I worried myself sick that seeing my baby would immediately bring on flashbacks of that night.
She did not remind me of that night, and I knew then that having her was more important than what had happened.”

Her mother shakes her head. “Most people don't know the gory facts.  To them, she is just a silly girl who got herself pregnant.

“We had always been regular churchgoers in our community before this. But we faced so many barbed comments from people at church that we stopped going there and went somewhere else. Sometimes, it has felt like me and Elizabeth against the rest of the world.”

Elizabeth's astonishing story began in December 2005, when an ordinary day at college took a dreadfully violent turn.

“Everyone, except Mum, said I should

have an abortion”

Her mother Sarah, arranged to pick her up in a supermarket car park.  Unfortunately, Sarah was delayed by an hour, and her frantic phone calls to Elizabeth's mobile went unanswered.

When she arrived at the car park, there was no sign of Elizabeth, so, thinking that she must have caught the bus home, Sarah drove to the family home.

There, to her astonishment, she found Elizabeth in her bedroom, in floods of tears on the floor.

“When I tried to put my arms around her, she pushed me away. She just kept on crying, making me feel completely helpless.”

Elizabeth says, “I didn't tell anyone because I thought they would think it was my fault, that I was somehow asking for it. I was so ashamed and embarrassed by what had happened, I couldn't even say the word ‘rape’.”

It was, in fact, several days before Elizabeth cracked and blurted out what had happened.  

That night, Elizabeth was adamant that she did not want her father James, 57, to know what had happened, but her mother could not condone any such cover-up.

 “I told her the men who did this were dangerous  - that we had to go to the police. I was just horrified that she could even think of not reporting it.”  

Together they told James. He exploded with anger. He called the police.   

“I thought they were going to kill  me”

     
Elizabeth herself takes up the story. “I had to go over it all and it was awful. I told the police that I'd been so terrified. I thought they were going to kill me.

After I got into the van, they drove away. I was sure I was being kidnapped. They could have taken me anywhere  - abroad even  - and I was so scared I was never going to see my family again.

“In the back of that van, I was raped by all three of them as they drove around, stopping occasionally. I closed my eyes. I couldn't bring myself to look at them.”

“When we followed it up,” says Sarah, “they said the supermarket car park had no CCTV trained on the part where Elizabeth was taken.” Because Elizabeth  couldn't bring herself to report it until a few days after the attack, there was no real forensic evidence either.  A month later, however, her period was late.  

“When the test was positive”, says Sarah. “I told her I would be there for her, whatever. Her father immediately said she should have an abortion.”

It was at this point that the story took the most astonishing turn.  Elizabeth says she had always held very strong views on abortion  - believing it wrong, whatever the circumstances. And she couldn't shake off that feeling, not even while lying on the examining couch in the abortion clinic.

Although an appointment had already been made for later in the week to have the actual procedure, Elizabeth asked her mother to cancel it.

“I can't explain why I felt so strongly  - but I did. I also couldn't even consider adoption. My mum had been abandoned at a London railway station as a baby and adopted, and it had affected her deeply.

“I think mum understood. When I finally said: ‘No, I want to have it’, she stood by me. ”

On September 15, 2006, little Phoebe arrived weighing a healthy 8lb 4oz.

As Sarah puts it: “People may wonder how it is possible to love a child conceived in this way, but believe me, I love her even more because of it”.

“Because of the way she was conceived,

I love her even more”

Elizabeth concurs.  “I have never, ever blamed Phoebe for what happened.”

She is the first to admit that it has not been easy. Phoebe is almost two, and it took a long time for Elizabeth to make peace with peace with her father. “I didn't want him near her at first. I remember shouting at him: ‘You wanted me to kill her!’

“While I would like to see them [her attackers] punished, I would not ever want them to find out about Phoebe,” she says, forcefully.

“They didn't treat me as a person  - just a piece of meat. I would not want the man who made me pregnant ever to have a claim on her. 

“If I have to, I will say that she was the good that came out of something bad. And I will tell her that, however she came to be, I have never ever regretted having her, and I would not be without her for the world.” 

Note:  The family's names have been changed for legal reasons.  

Families of Murdered Pregnant Women Decry

Government Move to Squash Fetal Rights Bill

We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest

By Richard John Neuhaus

Edited from his closing address to the 2008 convention of the U.S. National Right to Life Committee.  

Editor’s Note: It’s been a discouraging summer for pro-lifers, with the Morgentaler fiasco (pp. 2-3) and a government attempt to squelch fetal rights (p. 6). The following article is offered in an attempt to bolster our weary spirits.

The pro‑life movement that began in the 20th century laid the foundation for the pro‑life movement of the 21st century. We have been at this a long time, and we are just getting started. All that has been and all that will be is prelude to, and anticipation of, an indomitable hope. All that has been and all that will be is premised upon the promise of Our Lord's return in glory when, as we read in the Book of Revelation, "he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be sorrow nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away." And all things will be new.

That is the horizon of hope that, from generation to generation, sustains the great human rights cause of our time and all times‑the cause of life. We contend, and we contend relentlessly, for the dignity of the human person, of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined from eternity for eternity‑every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or how inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.

We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until all the elderly who have run life's course are protected against despair and abandonment, protected by the rule of law and the bonds of love. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every young woman is given the help she needs to recognize the problem of pregnancy as the gift of life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person‑of every human person.

Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman's dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love.

As Pope John Paul the Great wrote in his historic message Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) the culture of death goes all the way back to that fateful afternoon when Cain struck down his brother Abel, and the Lord said to Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" And Cain answered, "Am I my brother's keeper?" And the Lord said to Cain, "The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground." The voice of the blood of brothers and sisters beyond numbering cry out from the slave ships and battlegrounds and concentration camps and torture chambers of the past and the present. The voice of the blood of the innocents cries out from the abortuaries and sophisticated biotech laboratories of this beloved country today. Contending for the culture of life has been a very long journey, and there are still miles and miles to go.

The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called "A Life Worth Living." He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one's potential.These were among the measures of what was called "a life worth living."

And I remember vividly, as though it were yesterday, looking out the next Sunday morning at the congregation of St. John the Evangelist and seeing all those older faces creased by hardship endured and injustice afflicted, and yet radiating hope undimmed and love unconquered. And I saw that day the younger faces of children deprived of most, if not all, of those qualifications on Prof. Montagu's list. And it struck me then, like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of lightning that illuminated our moral and cultural moment, that Prof. Montagu and those of like mind believed that the people of St. John the Evangelist ‑ people whom I knew and had come to love as people of faith and kindness and endurance and, by the grace of God, hope unvanquished‑it struck me then that, by the criteria of the privileged and enlightened, none of these my people had a life worth living. In that moment, I knew that a great evil was afoot. The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed.

In that moment, I knew that I had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.

The contention between the culture of life and the culture of death is not a battle of our own choosing. We are not the ones who imposed upon the nation the lethal logic that human beings have no rights we are bound to respect if they are too small, too weak, too dependent, too burdensome. That lethal logic, backed by the force of law, was imposed by an arrogant elite that for almost forty years has been telling us to get over it, to get used to it.

We do not know, we do not need to know, how the battle for the dignity of the human person will be resolved. God knows, and that is enough. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta and saints beyond numbering have taught us, our task is not to be successful but to be faithful. Yet in that faithfulness is the lively hope of success. We are the stronger because we are unburdened by delusions. We know that in a sinful world, far short of the promised Kingdom of God, there will always be great evils. The principalities and powers will continue to rage, but they will not prevail.

In the midst of the encroaching darkness of the culture of death, we have heard the voice of him who said, "In the world you will have trouble. But fear not, I have overcome the world." Because he has overcome, we shall overcome. We do not know when; we do not know how. God knows, and that is enough. We know the justice of our cause, we trust in the faithfulness of his promise, and therefore we shall not weary, we shall not rest. [We trust in] the words of the prophet Isaiah that "they who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint."

The journey has been long, and there are miles and miles to go. But until every human being created in the image and likeness of God‑no matter how small or how weak, no matter how old or how burdensome‑until every human being created in the image and likeness of God is protected in law and cared for in life, we shall not weary, we shall not rest. And, in this the great human rights struggle of our time and all times, we shall overcome.

Concern about New Push for Legalized Euthanasia

MP Introduces Bill in Parliament

On June 12, 2008 Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde introduced Bill 562: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (right to die with dignity). The bill would legalize both euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.

Ms. Lalonde, 67, who has been battling cancer for the past 2 years, seems determined to pursue this issue: In 2005 she unsuccessfully brought forward the almost identical Bill 407.

In an interview with Canadian Press April 13 Ms. Lalonde did not seem overly concerned about creating a slippery slope that would lead to the unwanted death of vulnerable sick, elderly or disabled people dying as has occurred in Holland. She said that, “I am not worried about abuse, I am worried, however, about what is going on in Quebec. People are suffering and can’t find help and they are putting moral pressure on people they know to help them die."

She noted three Quebec cases. In 2004, Marielle Houle helped her 36-year-old son, who suffered from a degenerative disease, to cut short his suffering. The following year, Andre Bergeron of Sherbrooke gave in to the wishes of his chronically ill wife and helped her.