Activist judges undermine democracy and morality.

As word spread on January 8 that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus had finally succumbed to cancer, faithful Catholics and Evangelicals throughout the English-speaking world united in mourning the passing of a great contemporary.

Even among liberal and secular critics, Neuhaus was renowned for his brilliant intellect, keen wit and profound Catholic faith. As the founder and editor of the ecumenical journal First Things (www.firstthings.com), he consolidated his reputation as an erudite champion of freedom, democracy, and the sanctity of human life.

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Neuhaus first gained international prominence in 1984 with the publication of The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America. In this often-cited book, he pointed out how judicial activists have undermined freedom and democracy in America, by divorcing law from morality and banishing the Christian faith from public life.

Neuhaus decried the proclivity of judicial activists to overturn democratically enacted laws grounded in Judeo-Christian morality in favour of judge-made rules based upon the "religion of relativity." And he warned that by banishing Christian faith from political discourse, these same judges subvert the ability of the Church to serve as a vital check on the totalitarian ambitions of the state.

Of course, this danger is not confined to the United States. When the Supreme Court of Canada was asked in the 1993 Rodriguez case to decide if Canadians have a constitutional right to assisted suicide, former chief justice Antonio Lamer responded: "In my opinion, the Court should answer this question without reference to the philosophical and theological considerations fuelling the debate on the morality of suicide or euthanasia. It should consider the question before it from a legal perspective ... while keeping in mind that the Charter has established the essentially secular nature of Canadian society."

The Charter does no such thing. To the contrary, the preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms plainly affirms: "Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."

Judicial activists like Lamer have flouted the supremacy of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ-the God plainly denoted in the Charter. And these same judicial activists have undermined the rule of law, by arbitrarily imposing their personal policy preferences from the bench. Thus, in Rodriguez, the Supreme Court of Canada came within one vote of farcically declaring that Canadians have a right to death, despite the right to life guaranteed in the Charter.

Neuhaus observed that no dispute other than abortion, "so clearly and painfully illustrates the problematic of the naked public square." For centuries, the common law of England, the United States and Canada upheld the plain meaning of the Biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill." By abandoning this fundamental moral rule and striking down democratically enacted restrictions on abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the United States Supreme Court cleared the way for the deliberate killing of literally millions of babies in the womb. And then, 15 years later, the Supreme Court of Canada perpetrated the same calamity with the unprincipled Morgentaler ruling.

Neuhaus emphasized in The Naked Public Square that Christians should not insist that abortion is wrong only because the Bible says so. Rather, we should try to win over our secular and apostate neighbours, by pointing out that anyone should also be able to understand on the basis of reason alone that the deliberate killing of a baby in the womb is an evil that can never be justified.

To this end, pro-lifers should emphasize that regardless of what the uninformed judges on the supreme courts of Canada and the United States said in their abortion rulings, there is no longer any scientific dispute over the beginning of human life: for every one of us, it is indisputable that life began at conception. In addition to driving home this point, pro-lifers should also underline that no one has ever come up with any compelling argument to suggest that human life can somehow be of no account at conception, yet acquire a sacred right to life at some later point either before or after birth.

In one of his last essays for First Things (The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s; January, 2009), Neuhaus noted that while pro-lifers are eager to engage in any rational discussion of the science and moral reasoning pertinent to abortion, the proponents of abortion are rarely willing to do the same. That is understandable. As Neuhaus observed, the more honest supporters of abortion must admit that there is no rational basis for justifying the mass killing of babies in the womb. Peter Singer, the notorious professor of philosophy at Princeton University, has frankly acknowledged that: "Liberals have failed to establish a morally significant dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus."

Quite so. There is no moral argument for abortion that would not also serve to justify infanticide. And that is the ugly truth which most pro-abortionists are anxious to hide, because unlike Singer, they are not eager to condone the killing of babies outside as well as inside the womb.

Neuhaus, in his final essay on abortion, urged pro-lifers never to despair, but always to affirm the math about the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. To those who might be tempted to give up the pro-life straggle in the aftermath of the election of President Barrack Obama, an implacable pro-abortionist, Neuhaus urged: "All of us would do well to ponder file wisdom in the observation that there are no permanently lost causes because there are no permanently won causes."

Rory Leishman is the author of Against judicial activism: The decline of freedom and democracy in Canada (2007) and a freelance columnist. Visit his website at www.roryleishman. blogspot.com