Campaign Life Coalition says that there were more than 2000 people at the CLC Youth Defund Abortion Rally at Queen’s Park (Ontario’s provincial legislature) on Saturday. We are preparing our report for the dead tree edition of the paper and we’ll post it later this week. The speakers made two essential points: 1) abortion is not health care and should not be funded and 2) taxpayers do not want abortion to be funded by tax dollars. The crowd was about 70% youth, 15% families, and 15% veterans of the movement. Organizers told me they were happy with both the number of new and familiar faces.
There wasn’t a lot of media coverage of the rally — the pro-lifers were competing with socialist Occupiers and permanent adolescents dressing up like zombies for weekend coverage of their event — but there were fair news reports on both CTV and CP 24 and we’ve been told by supporters that they heard about the rally on the radio. Nothing in the newspapers.
About 40 counter-demonstrators showed up and NDP MP Peggy Nash spoke to them; it is notable that no pro-life politician showed up at the Defund Abortion Rally.
This event marks the beginning of a campaign by CLC to get abortion defunded. A petition was launched Saturday and CLC plans to educate MPs on the issue starting in November. We’ll keep you abreast of any developments in the upcoming weeks and check back for full coverage, including photos, of the rally later this week.
