WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court blocked a California law requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to post information on programs to obtain and free or low-cost abortion on June 26.

VANCOUVER – Katherine Babcock was in college studying toward an arts degree when she found out she was pregnant. The child's father, her best friend of 10 years, could not cope with the news.

When Birthright first took root 50 years ago, little did the founders foresee it growing from its little office in Toronto to an organization spanning North America and even making inroads into Africa.

HAMILTON – A Catholic school board in Ontario has suspended a policy prohibiting students from raising money for groups that support activities contrary to Catholic doctrine.

Canada’s newest senator refuses to be bound by partisanship, so he doesn’t hold back when the subject is the Canada Summer Jobs funding policy that has unleashed much debate the last few months.

Do not be afraid, the angel said to the frightened women at the empty tomb. Do not be afraid, the risen Christ told His anxious disciples behind locked doors.

VATICAN – No physician should be forced to choose between violating his or her conscience and facing professional sanctions when defending human life, said the president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations.

Canadian Catholics should perhaps be upset with governments that trample on our basic rights. Whether our silence reveals resilience or indifference may be determined by the test of time.

Status of Women Canada exists to promote women’s equality and “full participation” of women in the economic, social and democratic life of Canada. Among its many worthy objectives is to encourage women to become community and political leaders, active players in shaping a just society.

Compare that mandate to what happened Sept. 26 when MPs from the Liberal and NDP parties aligned to publicly shun a 30-year-old woman who was properly appointed as the chair of the House of Commons standing committee on the Status of Women. They walked out en masse minutes into Rachael Harder’s first meeting for the sole reason that, in the past, she has exercised her Parliamentary right to vote in support of pro-life motions.

It was an act of public shaming, of bullying, to be expected perhaps in a schoolyard but quite undignified among elected members. A committee that, above all else, should exemplify fairness, accommodation and tolerance, instead opted to belittle and stigmatize a woman because of a sincerely held belief of conscience.

The explanation given by Pam Damoff, who led the shunners, was that the chair of the committee “should be someone who is representative of the Supreme Court decision that was made in 1988.” If the MP is going to cite Supreme Court decisions, she should perhaps first read them. Harder, not Damoff, very much reflects the spirit of the infamous 1988 Morgen-taler ruling. None of the justices back then advocated for abortion on demand. Although they ruled aspects of the law at the time were unconstitutional, they agreed unanimously that the State has a legitimate right to legislate limits on abortion.

But Damoff is not stumbling alone in the dark. The Prime Minister claims to be an advocate of equality for women but apparently not equality among women. He defended the public shaming because, he said, the committee chair should be able to “unequivocally” defend women’s rights.

“That’s sort of the point of the status of women committee,” he said.

Actually, the point of the committee is to defend women’s rights and advance women’s causes across a broad spectrum, not to be a tunnel-visioned advocate of abortion. The committee should respect and represent the views of all women, and it should be a pit bull when a women’s Charter rights of freedom of conscience, belief, opinion and expression are under attack. It should never become the attacker.

It should also never fail to encourage young women of all political stripes and beliefs to become engaged in the democratic process. In that regard, the committee should be ashamed of how it demeaned Harder, an accomplished female millennial.

She should be held up as a role model for other intelligent, young women, not cruelly branded with a scarlet letter and shunned in an emptying room.

OTTAWA – Thousands descended on Parliament Hill May 12 for the annual National March for Life as the Liberal government within the walls of Parliament was rushing a bill through that will legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.