By which I mean “murder” — a charge upon which she had been convicted by a jury of her peers. But the judge effectively extended abortion rights to the fourth trimester.

The Wetaskiwin, Alta., woman convicted of infanticide for killing her newborn son, was given a three-year suspended sentence Friday by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge.

Katrina Effert was 19 on April 13, 2005, when she secretly gave birth in her parents’ home, strangled the baby boy with her underwear and threw the body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard…

Effert will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her newborn son.

Here’s what the judge had to say:

“While many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes… “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

Huh? The mother decided to kill her live child. A child that had been delivered. She was rightly convicted of murder by fellow Canadians. But we’re supposed to believe Canadians grieve for the murderous mother who chose to end her living child’s life? Either the judge is full of crap or Canadians are really screwed up.

Even pro-choice activists will readily concede that abortion “rights” don’t extend to aborting a legal, living child. How utterly screwed up is this judge?