Paul Tuns:

On May 14, thousands of Canadians took part in the largest annual demonstration on Parliament Hill, the National March for Life, organized by Campaign Life Coalition.

Before participants marched through the streets of the nation’s capital, they heard pro-life speakers including Ottawa-Cornwall Archbishop Marcel Damphousse, Save the 1 president Rebecca Kiessling, Christian Heritage Party leader Rod Taylor, Aleš Primc of the Slovenian Movement for Children and Families and Euthanasia Prevention Coalition executive director Alex Schadenberg, among others.

The theme of the 2026 National March for Life was “Follow Me,” a reference to Jesus’s call to His disciples: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matt 4:19)

March for Life organizer Debbie Duval told the crowd, “We march on a Thursday, in Ottawa, because that’s when our legislators are sitting in the House of Commons. We want them to hear us. We want them to know we’re here.”

Campaign Life Coalition vice president Matthew Wojciechoski said, “We are here to call upon the members of Parliament to enact legal protections for all human beings from conception up to natural death. To remind parliament of four simple words, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”

CLC national president Jeff Gunnarson, asked the crowd to pray for former CLC president Jim Hughes, who was in the hospital with pneumonia. Gunnarson said, “Jim devoted decades of his life to the unborn and building this movement in Canada. Many of us are standing here today because of sacrifices he made long before we arrived.” Hughes would die four days later.

Speaker Rebecca Kiessling, founder of the organization Save the 1, a reference to the one per cent of babies conceived in rape, spoke against rape and incest exceptions to abortion bans. She spoke of being conceived in rape and said, “I did not deserve the death penalty for the crime of the man who raped my mother.” Her mother tried to abort her baby daughter but Kiessling said “I was protected” and survived.

Aleš Primc led a series of “hellos” to everyone from unborn children to “people with gray hair like me.” Primc said, “Saying ‘hello’ is the start of recognizing our shared humanity.”

After the march, there were testimonials from Silent No More Awareness and a closing prayer service led by the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute.

The day before the march, there was a candlelight vigil at the Canadian Human Rights Monument and the day after the march there was a youth summit. On the evening of the march was the Rose Dinner banquet with guest speakers and a panel discussion about euthanasia.

During the panel discussion, Primc described how Slovenian voters nixed euthanasia in a national referendum last year.

On May 12, CLC held a press conference with six representatives of the organization.

CLC spokesman Pete Baklinski said that “abortion is the greatest human rights violation of our time, it is an injustice, it is evil, and it must be abolished.”

Baklinski said that this year marked the 29th annual National March for Life and Canadian pro-lifers remain in their demand that all human life from conception to natural death be protected in law.

Josie Luetke, CLC director of education and advocacy, said that the day before the march marked the 57th anniversary of the passing of the Omnibus Bill which began the decriminalization of abortion in Canada. She noted that nearly five million abortions have been committed since then.

Luetke said that originally abortion was available under limited conditions, such as the health of the mother, when approved by a therapeutic abortion committee. She said that likewise euthanasia was originally legalized in 2016 under so-called limited circumstances, but with both abortion and euthanasia the circumstances under which the lethal medical practices were allowed have expanded.

Luetke further connected abortion and euthanasia. She said, “Once we accept that killing before birth is permissible, we will inevitably accept that killing after birth is permissible, too. Why? Because birth is only a change in location.” She said, “if you undermine human dignity at the beginning of life, you undermine human dignity at the end of life and for everyone in between.”