The Anti-Christ

WHY PRO-LIFE IS NO CHOICE

Whether by design or miscalculation, Stockwell Day and the Alliance Party dragged the pro-choice/pro-life debate back onto centre stage during the 2000 federal election campaign. This alarmed many, who fear Canada's permissive climate will come under attack. (A parallel anxiety is occurring in the United States, where there is growing pressure to overturn the Roe vs. Wade ruling sanctioning abortion.)

In Canada, the Alliance strategy was not to move directly upon such matters, but to hold referendums whenever some threshold number of Canadians signed a petition. The government could then claim to be responding to the public’s 'express will'.

Of course, since referendums do not always yield desired conclusions, this process may need repeating - a requirement, and a tactic, Canadian separatists are familiar with. Although this looks like grass roots empowerment, Mr. Day has publicly commented that his government would not be bound by the results of any such referendum This means that, with petition-driven, judiciously-catalysed referendums as a resource, governments could enact legislations more or less arbitrarily, in ways more or less immune to political fallout.

There is probably no way to avoid sovereignty referendums -- at least until a clear question yields an answer satisfactory to the separatists. However, reviewing the Christian credentials of forbidding ‘morally objectionable’ behaviours may be more fruitful.

The 'poster child' of morally objectionable behaviour is surely abortion. What is ironic is that passing ‘laws forbidding’ flies in the face of the most central tenet of Christendom. Should any future government successfully prohibit abortion - a place holder for a long list of suspect behaviour - this would create a circumstance wherein moral choices have been removed from people.

What could God do with such untempered, untested souls? It would be as if they had never lived, or at least had not lived long enough to become moral agents.

In other words, pro-life fundamentalists are recommending legislations that would undermine the purpose of human life, as described in Holy Writ.

What, then, are Christians to make of Stockwell Day? As I recall my catechism, it is the devil who wanders the world scheming to undermine God's hopes.

Doubtlessly, the suggestion that he might be an instrument of Satanic mischief would come as a surprise to Stockwell Day. However, we are also told that Satan is extraordinarily subtle. On Mr. Day’s own premises, his soul may have been co-opted - and long before the Reform Party was a gleam in Preston Manning's eye.

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