Henry Morgentaler looks on before being awarded the rank of Member in the Order of Canada by Governor General Michaelle Jean at the Citadelle in Quebec City in this Oct. 10, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Mathieu Belanger/FilesAs a Roman Catholic I am obliged to forgive people and even to pray for their souls. I have to say in all candour and humility, however, that it is genuinely difficult to do so in the case of Henry Morgentaler, who died on Wednesday. He lived to be 90 years old, and enjoyed a life composed mostly of wealth, comfort and prestige. Tragically, hundreds of thousands of babies were never allowed to be born, slaughtered in the womb, because of his personal and political actions. What a grimly evil legacy to leave to the world. He was a proud man, relishing the adulation of the foot soldiers of the culture of death. I do not mean average people who have no clear view of the abortion issue and are even, sadly, passively supportive of it. No, I mean those zealots who regard the right to kill unborn children as a sacrament of modernist, left-wing theology. I have seen their distorted faces, screaming at the very idea of life and love. He also made a great deal of money as an abortionist, far more than he could have accumulated as a hard-working doctor, helping to prolong life rather than obsessing about ending it. Do not be misled by horror stories of rape, incest and a mother's life being in danger. The vast, overwhelming majority of abortions are given to middle-class women who have the flimsiest reasons for wanting to kill their children. Not, of course, that any reason would suffice. This is not, primarily, a religious issue. Christians might be the most vehement in opposing abortion, but that is because they have a particular appreciation of natural law, social justice and the role of creation. But it's really about science and morality. At the very point of conception, the unborn child has a totally distinct DNA and genomic character, unlike any other person who has ever lived, unlike any person who will be born in the future. This is the starting point for human life, and there is no other objective beginning. Three-months gestation or after a baby leaves the womb are arbitrary, superstitious and anti-intellectual definitions. That a baby in its earliest stages doesn't resemble a child is irrelevant. A newborn doesn't look like a five-year-old, a 10-year-old doesn't look like a middle-aged man. So what? As for survival outside of the womb, a baby will die very quickly after birth if it is uncared for. Autonomous survival is a digression, a distraction from the genuine arguments. Lionized Morgentaler worked tirelessly to produce a society where we all pay for the elective surgery of abortion, which is not to make people well but to make people dead. For this he was given awards and lionized by the usual suspects in consensus media. While people plead to adopt children, we pretend there are unwanted babies. While we claim to protect the handicapped, we abort the vast majority of babies who exhibit the likelihood of serious disability. While we say we care, we are, in fact, indifferent. As I say, I will try very hard to pray for the man, but sometimes the flesh is weaker than the spirit.
By Michael Coren ,QMI Agency 