A gut-wrenching example of the lengths to which men will go to silence the voices of conscience recently played out in an Ontario Court of Justice. There, Judge S. Ford Clements sentenced pro-life advocate Mary Wagner to 92 more days in jail, on top of the 88 days she’d already spent behind bars, all because she has been walking into the waiting rooms in Canadian abortion clinics and sharing hope with the women who are waiting to have their babies killed.
And the story gets worse. Clements was so outraged by Wagner’s passion for life that he lashed out at her in front of the court:
You don’t get it, do you? What’s the rule of law? You’re required to abide by it … You’ve lost the right as a citizen to be anywhere near an abortion clinic or to speak to an employee.
You’re wrong and your God’s wrong. You have complete contempt … There is a right to (abortion) in this country … You don’t have a right to cause (abortion-seeking women) extra pain and grief the way you do.
There are many ironies in Clements’ angry words, not the least of which was the fact that he equated Wagner’s message of Christian hope with “extra pain and grief” for women preparing to have an abortion. Yet Wagner has not been going into the waiting rooms to cause extra pain and grief but to impart good news which may, God willing, lead some women to walk out of the waiting room instead of having an abortion: thereby sparing a child’s life.
Note, too, Clements’ bombastic proclamation of “Your God’s wrong.” Most obvious is the fact that it’s not a judge’s business to make such a pronouncement. But ever since Adam and Eve stood in the Garden of Eden, man has been trying to prove God a liar or a heavenly miscreant. This judge in Canada is no different.
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The good news is that Wagner was not intimated by Clements’ verbal outbreak, nor was she swayed by his low opinion of God’s judgment on matters of life and death. Rather, when asked whether she would stop going to abortion clinic waiting rooms and ministering to women for a period of three years—three years being the length of probation for having gone to the waiting rooms in the first place—Wagner said she would not stop going.
So Clements has tucked Wagner back into a cell for 92 more days.
I guess the message is: If you can’t beat the truth, silence it.
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