On June 16, my former employer, the University of Western Ontario, will confer an honourary doctorate on Henry Morgentaler.

Dr. Morgentaler set up his first abortion clinic in Montreal in 1968; since then, he has expanded his business to six provinces.

Dr. Morgentaler has claimed at least partial credit for a drop in the incidence of violent crime in Canada since 1991; eliminate unborn babies, the theory goes, and you are not troubled by delinquents later on. The statement smacked of eugenics, a theory so discredited that one would think its espousal would disqualify Dr. Morgentaler from any significant academic honour.

In its official announcement, the University said it chose to honour "a humanist leader who has promoted the idea that persons have a right to control their own sexuality and reproduction, without interference by the State."

The recipient is an abortionist. He kills unborn babies. Western's public relations department, it appears, needs to study the works of George Orwell, who famously wrote that "political speech and writing has become the defence of the indefensible."

In University newspeak, Dr. Morgentaler may be "a humanist leader." But to roughly half of Canadians, according to opinion polls, he is a man whose hands are stained by the blood of innocents.

UWO Psychology Professor Paul Whitehead has decided to stand in silent protest outside Alumni Hall on Convocation Day, wearing full academic regalia.

Another UWO faculty member, Professor of Pediatrics Dr. Lawrence Jardine, expressed his opposition in the campus newspaper. "As a faculty member committed to the care and protection of children," he wrote, "I was deeply saddened and disappointed when I learned of the [awarding] of an honourary degree to a man who has spent his life in the killing of children and [who has] encouraged others to do likewise."

The University of Western Ontario has two (at least nominally) Roman Catholic affiliated Colleges, Brescia and King's. So far, neither has said or done very much. But since abortion is anathema to Catholic dogma, each must be discomfited by Western's decision.
At the London Free Press, letters have been running three or four to one against the University's decision. London Liberal MP Pat O'Brien has unequivocally condemned it, pointing out that many Canadians hold Dr. Morgentaler in "utter contempt."

So why did the university do it? It's hard to say: The deliberations of the UWO Honourary Degrees Committee are conducted in secret.

I suspect that Western chose Morgentaler in a pathetic attempt to appear bold and avant-garde, and to be cutting-edge. But if that was the University's motivation, they are about two decades late. That is often the fate of the would-be trendy: to arrive at the pier long after the ship has sailed.

It is the glory of great persons (like Pope John Paul II) that they do not mind being unfashionable. They do not "move with the times" because they know better; they know that all times fade away, but truth remains.+

In the more than two decades I spent teaching at Western, I discovered that nothing so terrified most of my colleagues as being out of step; they dreaded being thought dated, old-fashioned, or, the worst epithet of all, "conservative."

But abortion is the most divisive issue of our time. No university administrator should wish to alienate that significant portion of the population that accepts the evidence that life begins at conception. After all, such people procreate, and their children grow up and attend universities.

Oh, yes: And they are potential donors.

Those upset at the university's decision, whether inside or outside the institution, cannot change it; the decision has been made, and the University has publicly insisted it will not back down.

They have only one means of effective protest. That is to refuse to give money to Western. University administrators may be deaf to moral suasion, but they dance for coin.

Ian Hunter was a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario from 1974 to 1996. This article first appeared in the National Post on April 5, 2005. Reprinted with permission of the author.