Canada’s top court won’t hear Mary Wagner’s challenge to law denying preborn babies’ humanity

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OTTAWA, Ontario, February 19, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Canada’s top court will not hear a case involving a Charter challenge to Canadian law that currently denies the humanity of the child in the womb. The Supreme Court stated yesterday that it had “dismissed” pro-life heroine Mary Wagner’s case, providing no reason as is the custom.

Wagner’s lawyer, Dr. Charles Lugosi, said that while he maintains that their application to the court had “great merit and amply met the legal test for leave,” he speculated that there may be a few reasons why it was refused.

“Parliament retains the power to decide who is and who is not a human being,” he said in an email to supporters. “Parliament’s definition is based upon a political value judgment instead of biological and scientific reality.”

Wagner, who has spent nearly six years in jail for her peaceful attempts to save mothers and their unborn children from the violence of abortion and is the inspiration behind the burgeoning U.S. Red Rose Rescue movement, was challenging Section 223(1) of Canada’s Criminal Code. The code states that a “child becomes a human being within the meaning of the Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.”

Lugosi intended to argue that this violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms Section 7 that guarantee an individual’s right to “life, liberty and security of person,” as well as the Charter’s Section 15 guarantee that “(e)very individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law.”

The lawyer also wanted the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that in 2013 had quashed Wagner’s Charter challenge and rejected her legal defense. He had submitted his 155-page application to the Supreme Court in November.

Abortion was decriminalized in Canada in 1969 with the passage of Pierre Trudeau’s infamous “Omnibus Bill” that allowed a woman to abort her child with the approval of a hospital's therapeutic abortion committee. The Supreme Court struck down that law in 1988 as “unconstitutional” on the basis that it threatened a woman’s “security of person” — protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — because of the difficultly of her needing to go before a panel for her to obtain an abortion.

The Morgentaler decision, however, did not give women a constitutional ‘right’ to abortion. The court, in fact, left the “abortion question” to Parliament to “pronounce on and to direct social policy.” Abortion is now legally permitted throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason up to the moment of birth. Abortions are funded by taxpayer dollars in every provincial healthcare system. An estimated 100,000 surgical abortions are committed annually in Canada.

Lugosi said to supporters that future generations will look back on these times where babies were denied their right to life by those with power as “barbaric, selfish and unjust.”

“The inherent dignity of every human being in existence is violated daily by the greatest human rights abuse of all time: the mass killing of millions of innocent human beings who are at the mercy of those who hold the power of life and death over them,” he said.

“May God have mercy on those who silenced us and continue to ignore the muffled screams of the suffering dying unborn children. The guilt for the shedding of innocent blood falls upon not just those who directly participate in abortion, but upon all those who permit and perpetuate this horrific crime against humanity,” he added.

Wagner told LifeSiteNews that she was “saddened and disturbed” by the court’s refusal to “hear our plea for the most vulnerable members of our human family, whose own pleas are too weak to be heard.”

“Let us not lose hope, however,” she said.

“In reality, whatever any human court of law pronounces cannot change the truth of what the Supreme Judge has ordained. And, in his eyes, a thousand years are like one day … The same One who listened to the cries of his people and freed them after 400 years of slavery will one day grant Justice for all who are oppressed,” she continued.

“Let us not lose sight of this truth as well: beyond the call to build a just society, ultimately it is not perfection in law that we seek but perfection of heart, which can only come through the love that is not of this world. It is this love that can change hearts even to the point where the law is no longer needed to influence our actions,” she added.

Wagner thanked all those who contributed to the LifeFunder campaign to raise money for her challenge. The campaign, which has now been suspended, had raised $90,000 of a $150,000 goal.

“I would like to thank each person who has so generously contributed to the LifeFunder account, or through other means, especially through your prayer, in support of our efforts,” she said.

Jeff Gunnarson, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, Canada’s national pro-life organization, called the court’s decision to dismiss the case “untenable and unjust.”

“We are perplexed by the fact that it was the Supreme Court that struck down the last vestiges of a law protecting some children in the womb while indicating Parliament ought to come up a law protecting the unborn at some stage of their life. Yet, 31 years later, Parliament hasn’t acted, and the Supreme Court seems to be comfortable with the idea that unborn children still have no state protection throughout all nine months of gestation,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Gunnarson pointed out that the court’s criteria to grant cases “leave to appeal” is that, in the words of the court, the “case involves a question of public importance or if it raises an important issue of law (or an issue of both law and fact) that warrants consideration by the Court.”

Commented Gunnarson, “What is it about the killing of 100,000 unborn babies per year that does not fulfill the Leave to Appeal criteria?”

“We will continue, on our knees, to appeal the case of justice for the unborn to the Supreme God in Heaven while we agitate for human justice by our political and spiritual leaders,” he added.

Gunnarson praised Wagner for being a “stalwart defender of children in the womb and their mothers.”

“She has spent most of her adult life trying to awaken the conscience of mothers and our society at large. Her efforts remain in our prayers.”

Josie Luetke, Campaign Life Coalition’s youth coordinator, called the court’s decision to toss the case a “bitter” loss.

“Just like how our Members of Parliament refused to re-examine our Criminal Code's unscientific, outdated definition of 'human being' when they voted against former MP Stephen Woodworth's Motion 312, our Supreme Court has similarly once again refused to reckon with Canada's inexcusable failure to legally recognize all human beings as human beings,” she told LifeSiteNews.

“This willful negligence is almost unparalleled in its evil and shamefulness,” she added.