In the September 2005 issue of The Rose , Will Andries of Three Hills has a column about the warnings on cigarette packages that implicitly recognize the humanity and rights of babies in the womb. It is but one example of the utterly hypocritical approach we take in Canada towards the unborn.

This summer, the conflicting attitudes about pregnancy and abortion collided several times and oddly enough made it into the pages of newspapers and broadcast reports.

The first event was the death of Liana White, the Edmonton mom who was four months' pregnant when her body was found on the outskirts of the city. Her husband has been charged with her murder. The police spokesman commented that it was unfortunate that you couldn't charge someone for the murder of the unborn child. Since the child is not considered “human” until it is born, killing the baby is not a crime.

The comment was widely reported and set off much debate. The Calgary Herald ran an editorial urging a change to the law to protect babies from this kind of violence. Letters to the editor appeared in many newspapers.

Of course, almost everyone agrees that this baby was human. Most people were appalled that Michael White killed his wife and baby. They weren't for a minute swayed by the legal definition of “human.”

The notable exception, of course, was the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, a tax-funded pro-abortion lobby group, which dismissed calls for changes in the law as a sneaky way to restrict abortion. They would argue that they are pro-choice but Liana White wanted to be pregnant. She “chose” to have her baby but her husband “chose” to kill it. NAC is in the ridiculous position of supporting his right to kill the baby.

Of course, NAC is not alone. Our current government is not interested in changing the law either because it would indeed open up the whole question of the humanity of the unborn child. If you are going to protect a baby in the womb from violence that would harm or kill it, how do you continue to support and pay for abortions, in which mothers and doctors take violent action to kill those same babies?

Speaking of doctors, they waded into the hypocrisy game in August. The deputy registrar of ethics with the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons got very exercised about a kit that was being sold over the internet that claimed it could identify the sex of a baby at five weeks' gestation. He said he was “horrified” and thought that sex selection was “immoral.”

What outraged him was the thought that women or parents were using this test to identify the sex of the baby in order to abort if they wanted a baby of a different sex. Most often, girls are the unwanted sex. The thought of aborting babies based on their sex challenged Dr. Peter Seland's “ethical” standards. He'd rather that the over 15,000 abortions that occur in the province under his group's watchful eye, occur because the women just don't want any babies. That apparently squares nicely with his “ethics.”

The final hypocrisy erupted in late August with the appointment of Francis Fox to the Canadian Senate. Mr. Fox was a cabinet minister in the Trudeau government during the seventies. He was forced to resign in 1978 because he forged another man's name to get an abortion for his married lover. At that time, a committee had to approve all abortions and Mr. Fox pretended to be the husband in order to meet the criteria to kill his baby. He was Solicitor General at the time, the man responsible for upholding the laws of the country.

Do you suppose he would have been appointed to the Senate if he had made a racist or sexist remark? What if he had vocally opposed gay marriage? What he did do involves a crime—fraud—and raises serious doubts about his character. These are more serious given his position at the time. But because it was abortion, it doesn't really matter that he committed fraud. He's still, apparently, an eminently respectable person to sit in the Canadian Senate.

What was interesting and surprising about this last event was that every story I saw that reported on his appointment mentioned the abortion incident and his resignation from Cabinet. (He was reappointed two years later.) The CBC ranked the scandal as the fourth biggest one in Canadian history. That was encouraging to me. And an MP I was speaking to last weekend said that everyone he spoke to in Ottawa remembered and mentioned the incident.

These hypocrisy eruptions are like pebbles in the shoe. They emerge periodically, and sometimes in bursts like this summer, and the irk people. They remind us, all of us, not just pro-life people, that something is awry in our society. It's easy to live with such hypocrisy when you aren't reminded about it. But when it is in your face, the way it has been this summer, it's uncomfortable.

Eventually, the lies will have to be dealt with. Our job is to keep pointing them out and force the public discomfort to a head.