Interim Staff:

Campagne Quebec Vie, the Quebec arm of Campaign Life Coalition, announced that on June 1, for the first time, a march for life will be held in the province, in Quebec City.

CQV president Georges Buscemi said the decision to bring a regional march to the province was based on the success of the U.S. March for Life buttressing the American pro-life movement for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“This is really a reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the idea that this can this happen in Canada.” Buscemi told LifeSiteNews. “At the same time the progressive left in Quebec was thinking, ‘how do we stop this from coming into Quebec?’”

Buscemi said holding the Quebec March for Life in early June means it will not impede the March for Life in Ottawa on May 9, an annual demonstration for life that has been organized by Campaign Life Coalition since 1998. Provinces further from the nation’s capital generally hold a regional march for life the same week as the national march in pro-life solidarity.

“There might be some overlap between the two marches in terms of people,” said Buscemi, “but not a lot because first of all they’re not that close together, they are not literally the same day or the same week (and secondly) they are pretty far away from each other geographically.” He said, “There may have been 500 Quebecers going to the March every year roughly, and so if maybe half don’t show up there’s only 250 people less on the hill out of 20,000 it may not show too much.”

Buscemi said holding the Quebec March for Life on a Saturday may also be more convenient for people unable or unwilling to get time off during the work week.

Buscemi set a goal of 1500 pro-lifers taking part in the Quebec march, numbers similar to recent marches against euthanasia and a March for Jesus held in Quebec City.

Although abortion is mostly a federal issue, provinces fund and regulate the practice, so Buscemi said that march intends to send a signal to both levels of government that pro-abortion progressives do not speak for many Quebeckers on the issue.

The format of the Quebec march will be similar to the one held in Ottawa and other provinces with speakers preceding a march through the downtown, which will be followed by post-abortion testimonials.

In a blog post announcing the march, Buscemi said that politicians seeking votes in Quebec often play up their pro-abortion credentials, pointing to Pierre Poilievre’s wife declaring on a Quebec TV interview that the couple is “pro-choice.” Buscemi said, “That, in a nutshell, is the problem pro-lifers face in Quebec: a culture that has forsaken key elements of its past, those very things that made it possible for it to exist today. For if it weren’t for the very large families populating Quebec, and their piety and tenacity over the decades, there would simply be no francophone Quebec to speak of today.” Quebec, Buscemi noted, has a fertility rate of 1.49 children per woman of child-bearing age, which is well below the “replacement-level” of 2.1 children. There are between 20,000 and 25,000 abortions in Quebec annually.

“We believe we must start a March for Life in Quebec,” he said. “Making a moribund, abortion-stricken culture into a Culture of Life requires events that literally breathe life into the body politic.” Buscemi wrote, “Quebecers need to see that pro-life is the future.”