Josie Luetke:
Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey
Parliament Hill has been cleared, but the memory of the Freedom Convoy and the extreme actions government took to crush it will remain.
Snapshots of the move by the police against peaceful protesters were splattered across social media with proclamations like, “This is not my Canada.” Except it is. Anyone who was surprised hasn’t been paying attention to the treatment of the pro-life movement.
Rewind to the fall. I almost didn’t blink when the unvaccinated were barred from theatres, arenas, restaurants, international travel, and many avenues of education and employment.
I’ve become so accustomed to a subtler discrimination as a pro-lifer that even though I warned fellow pro-lifers that it would only get worse if they didn’t stand up then, when confronted with a more explicit segregation, I just shrugged. It felt like such a natural progression.
I didn’t have to worry about my job this past year, because I already worried about it half a decade ago. I knew my prospects of being hired as a teacher in a public board or advancing in academia were dim as a simple Google search of my name would provide a surplus of excuses to cancel me. God closed one door, but opened the one to Campaign Life Coalition.
For quite a while, pro-life advocates have been making these choices – to shut up, or to abandon hopes of pursuing certain careers. The Canada Summer Jobs program attestation and the fading assumption of conscience rights in the medical field and other professions have only made this inequity worse.
This experience is why the events of February 2022 did not shock me.
Just as the fundraising platform GoFundMe withheld millions from the convoy, so they withheld almost $3,000 raised by anti-abortion organization Choice42 for mothers in need in 2020.
It was chilling to see peaceful protesters arrested in Ottawa, but such treatment is all too familiar to Joe Borowski, Mary Wagner, Linda Gibbons, Fr. Tony Van Hee, and countless other pro-lifers who have been jailed for their peaceful witness.
The no-go zone established on Parliament Hill thanks to the Emergencies Act may now be gone, but just a few blocks away, a permanent bubble zone prevents any pro-life protest—nay, expression—within the immediate vicinity of the Morgentaler Clinic. Identical bubble zones, now law in most provinces, speckle Canada from coast to coast.
I’m grateful for the truckers. I’m glad more Canadians have awoken to the deterioration of democracy in our nation and the extent of Justin Trudeau’s fascism, even if the signs were already glaring to anyone with eyes. Our rights and freedoms are not something we can take for granted.
For your sake, be vigilant – “constant vigilance!” as Mad-Eye Moody of the Harry Potter series purportedly recited.
We must also be vigilant about not becoming distracted, about keeping our priorities in order.
The need to end unjust COVID-19 restrictions is pressing, and one that I hope will be met soon, but when it is, we’ll still be far from restoring justice in Canada.
The prejudice towards pro-lifers will continue. More importantly, while I complain about our selection of occupations narrowing and companies denying us service, the prejudice towards the preborn continues. Every day, almost 300 innocent human beings lose their lives – not their jobs.
See, it’s not pro-lifers who are the proverbial canary in the coal mines, the communists in Martin Niemöller’s adage “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist…” It’s the most vulnerable, those who cannot defend themselves, the least of our brothers and sisters – in this case, the preborn.
I know a groundswell of opposition to pandemic measures, drawing international attention and racking up victories, is attractive, but we must be careful about diverting resources—time, funds, manpower—away from an already-stretched-thin pro-life movement.
If we lose the right to free speech, to demonstrate, etc., we also lose the right to speak and demonstrate on behalf of the preborn. So, I’m not advocating that we operate in a silo.
I’m cautioning against becoming enamored with other, seemingly more “winnable” causes, and losing sight of the cause that united us in the first place.
Pierre Poilievre, once green-lit by CLC, voted against Bill C-233, the Sex-Selective Abortion Act (about as uncontroversial a pro-life bill as you can get). He’ll fight for your rights while sacrificing the rights of others.
As the years go on and abortion becomes more entrenched, our fervour and resistance to compromise may weaken, but the urgency of ending the killing of the preborn only heightens.
Be vigilant, for their sake.
