At a press conference on May 6, Reverend Ken Campbell of Choose Life Canada announced his intention to lay charges against the Attorney General of Ontario, Ian Scott for obstructing justice by failing to close the Morgentaler abortuary. The move, which was made after consulting with “a top criminal lawyer,” was thwarted just 24 hours later when Justice of the Peace Gerald Vince rejected Campbell’s request. Vince, after meeting with a Crown Attorney, says he told Campbell that “he didn’t have a case.”
In citing an earlier decision by Judge David Scott, Campbell said that the Attorney General “is not above the law.” Judge Scott, in a 1983 bail hearing, ruled that Morgantaler and his two associates could go free without bail prior to their trial, but added that, should they recommit the offence, “I would detain them by a simple, straightforward detention order.”
Campbell was joined at his press conference by John Oostrom, Conservative MP for the of Willowdale. Mr. Oostrom said that the law “is flagrantly being disobeyed” and added that “the clinic should be closed.”
The unsuccessful bid to charge Ian Scott comes as no surprise. After all, who would expect a Crown Attorney to take up the case against the one man who oversees the judicial system in Ontario. Yet, while no Crown Attorney seems willing to bite the hand that feeds it, Campbell’s attempt does draw attention to a fraudulent justice system.
The Attorney General’s unwillingness to intervene on behalf of the unborn can only be expected, given that this is the same man who intervened on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in the celebrated case against the homosexual magazine The Body Politic. Scott defended the magazine’s publication of an article entitled “Men Loving Boys Loving Men” by claiming that laws prohibiting such publications were a menace to freedom.
