Alan Keyes, the strongly pro-life Republican candidate for President of the United States summed up the abortion issue recently when he thundered that there is no right to do wrong.

The Canadian Abortion Rights League (CARAL) held a banquet on a cold and blustery evening in a restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown to honour Norma Scarborough, a former school secretary, and Michelle Landsberg (Stephen Lewis’ wife), a newspaper columnist. Both are well known pro-abortionists.

Six hundred pro-aborts braved the nasty weather paying $50.00 a plate to hear speakers disguise the Gospel of Death as a new breakthrough for all mankind. The people attending were snappily dressed—mostly middle-aged women and mostly dressed in black (how fitting).

Among those attending was Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall who never met a flaky movement she didn’t endorse. Henry Morgentaler (who was sneaked in the back door) found many of his admirers there, including June Callwood and Doris Anderson, (the former editor of Chatelaine and one of the earliest purveyors of death to the preborn).

The police were also there with their paddy wagon just in case some pro-lifer fell down in front of the entrance and blocked it. At one time there were three police officers on the landing in front of the steps leading up to the restaurant giving the impression to the people attending the banquet that they were entering a war zone. It didn’t appear to dissuade any ticket holders.

The police left and two of them watched the pro-lifers from a police car a few feet away. I guess the pro-aborts must have had a conniption when they saw the twenty-five sign holding pro-lifers out front. One spokesperson for the pro-life group urged the ticket holders to “repent and seek God’s forgiveness” but there were no takers (definitely no St. Pauls on the road to Damascus).

Pierre Berton arrived in a limo with his wife to be greeted with signs that somebody knows—even if they don’t—that abortion is a euphemism for killing a preborn child.

Darned if Pierre’s wife’s hat didn’t blow off and end up in an icy puddle. But there was Jim Hughes on the picket line—pulling a Sir Walter Raleigh. Hughes fished the hat out of the slush and handed it to Pierre’s grateful wife. Berton ignored this goodwill gesture and proceeded to badmouth the picketers, saying: “I’m not going to stand being pushed around. If anybody pushes me around—I’m going to sock them!” The picketers were amused. No one so fit. (I think I’ll take my copy of The National Dream and use it for my next barbecue).

A picketer approached Maureen Forrester, whom he knew, and wondered why she was there and she informed him that her daughter had bought her the ticket and she was only going for that reason and would report back to him what went on. Oh, yeah, sure. (In her biography she admitted having an abortion when she was married). And this may be the story of many people attending the banquet. They have come to defend their indefensible acts.

Apropos this—in a letter to the Globe & Mail recently, Kay Stockholder, President of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, coined a new word for “abortion.” She calls it “medical attention to which they have a legal right.” Since when is going into an abortuary to kill a child within the womb called “medical attention”? Any physician will tell you that birthing is not a medical procedure but a normal healthy process. Pregnant women who are ill, or high risk, go to a hospital or a health clinic for “medical attention”. An abortuary is the last place that you would go.

I guess Ms. Stockholder is in that large group of civil libertarians who would die protecting a baby one second after his or her birth but not a second before. (She has just won a free video of Eclipse of Reason for the asking).

June Scandiffio, president of Toronto Right to Life watched with her husband a television series a few years go on William Wilberforce and his long struggle to eliminate slavery in the colonies and wondered aloud that if it took 61 years to defend the inalienable rights of a slave who you could see and talk to—how much longer would it take to have people rise up to defend the preborn who they did not see?

But I guess there will always be people who can see the trunk of the elephant but can’t see the elephant. And they were all at the CARAL dinner.