When I first became a member of the Right to Life Speakers’ Bureau, I was warned that I should not use the term “murder” when referring to an abortion. It was too “judgmental,” I was told. I did not agree but, being the subservient creature that I am, I obeyed.
I euphemistically spoke of “the killing of the unborn.” I admit that the word murder did sometimes escape from my lips when speaking in the pulpit – when I threw discretion to the winds and decided I had to do something to wake up the congregation.
Courage from the bench
But now – for the first time in Canadian history – a judge has had the courage to call abortion exactly what it is – murder. We have become accustomed to speakers of almost every ilk – doctors, lawyers, social workers, pro-abortionists, politicians – engaging in semantic calisthenics in order to avoid being trapped in legal jargon.
They call abortion “the expulsion of the fetus,” or “the emptying of the uterus.” The child is referred to as “an unwanted pregnancy.” In other words, call it anything but what it is – the murder of a human being. It is something like calling a spade “an instrument for digging,” or defining rape as “the releasing of sexual tensions through the instrumentality of an unwilling female person.” Call a spade anything you wish, but it still remains a spade. Call rape by any other name and it is still rape. Euphemize murder by the use of any semantic gymnastics you can conjure up, but it is still murder.
Deliberate killing
But is abortion murder? Of course it is! If murder is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being, then abortion is murder and the abortionist is a murderer. How he or she stands subjectively in the sight of Almighty God is not for me to judge. But objectively speaking, and that’s the way I am speaking, an abortionist deliberately takes the life of an innocent human being and, in doing so, he commits first-degree murder.
The attorney general
I think what prompted me to write this column (on the morning of the 25th September) was a radio announcement, quoting the Ontario Attorney General, Ian Scott. He was reported to have said words to the effect that Judge Meen will not be criticized officially for his statement that abortion is murder. The Supreme Court will decide that question.
So, abortion could be murder in one country and a simple operation in another. God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is obsolete and Supreme Court judges take the place of the Creator.
If I were to commit murder it is possible that a clever lawyer could succeed in having the court declare me innocent by some technical point of law. But I would still be a murderer with the blood of a human being on my hands. And, like Lady Macbeth, “All the perfumes of Arabia” – and certainly not all the courts of Canada – could not remove the stain of blood from my hands.
Judge Meen
And so, Judge Meen, although I never heard of you until the other day and although I know nothing of your views on other matters, I salute you as a just and honourable judge and a man with the courage of his convictions. We need more like you.
