Bad Choices: Trudeau’s 1969 Omnibus Bill

A good choice was made with Saint Matthias, in accordance with God’s holy will, and we may rejoice accordingly on this feast of the Apostle.

But the Good in this vale of tears always goes along with some Evil, the wheat and the tares inextricably linked unto the end of time. And a bad choice not in accord with God’s holy will was made on this day here in Canada in 1969. That was when Parliament, under Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government, with John Turner as Justice Minister (both professed Catholics) made into law the nefarious Bill C-150, thereby legalizing abortion, albeit under strict conditions: two doctors, for reasons of life and health – but these soon folded like a cheap deck chair.

This was an ‘omnibus’ bill, with a number of other laws instantiated at the same time, perhaps to hide the grave evil of legalizing the murder of the unborn. Trudeau Sr. also brought in gun control, as well as laws for drinking and driving (becoming respectively the invasive long-gun registry and RIDE program), while decriminalizing ‘homosexual acts’ (that is, sodomy) and the sale of contraceptives. Ironically, the bill also permitted widespread gambling (easy tax on the poor) and criminalized ‘harassing phone calls, misleading advertising and cruelty to animals’, signifying the hierarchy of values in the socialist Trudeaupian universe even fifty years ago. Hmm.

John Turner described the Bill, which passed after heated debate 149 to 55, as “the most important and all-embracing reform of the criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time in this country”. That’s one way of putting it. All the while Pierre Trudeau defended his own support, declaring that the ‘state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation’. It is not clear if he was referring to what homosexuals do in private, to contraception, or to abortion, or, perhaps, to all three. Ironically, now the State is very much in the bedroom, and all our rooms, declaring power over the most intimate aspects of our lives. Such, again, is the insidious evil of the socialist principles espoused by the Trudeaus and their blithe followers.

Trudeau Junior – the recently resigned Justin – has taken his father’s principles to their logical conclusion: Abortion has gone from being seen as a sad and tragic necessity in certain extreme cases (as argued in 1969), to a fundamental, private right, a choice reserved to the woman herself, for any reason whatsoever, between her and her conscience – or what is left of it – paid for by the state. Anyone who opposes this ‘right’ are branded as enemies of ‘freedom’, ‘choice’, even of the state and its encroaching power. Hence, ironically, government-appointed assassins are now permitted into the sanctuary of a mother’s womb, nay, even into our very conscience, the very ‘sanctuary of Man’, where God ‘speaks to our heart.

Trudeau’s successor – Mark Carney, our current Prime Minister – has declared his support for abortion ‘rights’, as well as ‘MAiD’, the elderly, sick and whoever else may want, or need, to be ‘euthanized’). They have made themselves prophets and guardians of the culture of death, accessories to an unhindered state-sponsored death cult, however aware they are of this status in their own darkened conscience. It seems odd, even scandalous if we were to allow it so, that neither Trudeau pere nor fils, nor Turner, nor Carney, have been brought to the carpet by our episcopacy for their advocacy of abortion, euthanasia, child mutilation and all the rest of it. There was nary a public rebuke, nor any ecclesial censure of Pierre Trudeau, the primary architect of all this. He was given a full Catholic funeral, all the bells and whistles, replete with eulogistic homily, and a panegyric by young Justin. No sign of repentance. All very emotional and trite, and everyone going to Communion. Now, Mark Carney is jetting off to attend the Pope Leo’ s inaugural Mass – and more on that, anon. One wonders what God must be thinking.

Light and darkness, good and evil. The walls of oppression are closing in, and we may all soon be called to be ‘witnesses’, with Saint Matthias and the rest of the Apostle and martyrs, in ways we might not have imagined. The good saint who replaced Judas received no state funeral, and an unadorned stone marks what might be the place where he was put to death for the Christ He loved. The Apostles are hidden, but their voice rings out through all the earth, and through the ages, unto the very end of the world, when all of us will receive the recompense for what we have done, and not done. As Pope Saint John Paul II warns his Evangelium Vitae, crimes against life do more harm to their perpetrators than their victims, words which should give us all pause.

Whatever the future holds, we must remain faithful to God’s holy will, and His commandments. Only so will we avoid Judas’ slavery to despair – whatever his final fate – but to a far, far better place, full of hope, light and ineffable joy, where we will be fully free.

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