Amazonian feminists felt they deserved a licence to kill. The high court issued one to James “Henry 007” Morgentaler, who sallied forth to fight the fetal menace. The Order of Canada celebrates the 20th anniversary of this joyful event.
“It’s difficult not to write satire,” remarked the Roman author, Juvenal, nearly 2,000 years ago. It still is. Take Canada honouring someone for exactly the same thing it jailed him for 32 years earlier. What turned a 1975 crime into a 2008 virtue? Public opinion? Hardly. Abortion is as divisive as ever. Has God said something new? If so, I missed it.
Would I jail abortionists? No. I’d just refrain from decorating them. I think abortion is an abomination, but I’ve no urge to jail people for everything I abominate. I leave that to my “liberal” friends. I actually believe the state has no business in the bed-chambers of the nation, not even when they turn into death-chambers. Putting unborn children to sleep is a family matter. Maybe even born children — but let’s not go there.
Actually, let’s go there for a moment…
PLUS: (my co-defendant) Jonathan Kay pens my favourite paragraph of the year so far:
In my early days as a National Post editorial board member, my colleagues and I would marvel — “snicker” was often a more appropriate description — about how Jonas could take any subject and bring it back to Joseph Stalin in four paragraphs. His archenemy, then as now, has always been the creeping tendrils of the busybody, bureaucratic state — and the Soviet-style oppression that can result if free individuals do not beat those tendrils back.
Over time, I’ve learned to stop snickering, because so many of his warnings have come true.
