The ordeal has ended for Linda Gibbons. The pro-life prisoner of conscience met friends and well-wishers in Toronto after her release from jail March 18.
She served four moths of a six month sentence which she spent in four different jails. This was her seventh time in jail since 1989 and she served almost continually since September of 1992.
“It’s great getting out of such an enclosed atmosphere,” said an elated Gibbons. “You do get jail fatigue with the noise and exhaustion.”
The charge against her was Obstructing an Officer but in reality she was breaking an injunction by standing outside the Scott abortuary. She says while she was in jail her spirits were buoyed by well-wishers of the hundred of pro-lifers.
Linda joins Mary Roberts, who gained freedom March 24. She served 30 days for trespassing when she witnessed for the unborn at the Choice In Health Clinic on Parliament Street in Toronto.
Linda’s stay in jail was more than a witness to the unborn. She also counseled a woman who was five months pregnant and who the guards were “steering toward an abortion.” The woman ended up having an abortion but Linda didn’t let the matter rest there. She went on a “silent protest” and a hunger fast. “My silence was protesting the murder of the baby,” she said.
Linda says she has not been scared off by her last tough sentence. She plans to stay out of jail long enough for a fundraising event for Aid to Women, a group which provides support for women in crisis pregnancy situations. She also planned to work for FCP candidate Louis Di Rocco who was running in St. George St. David provincial by-election.
But after these two events she intends on going back to the Scott abortuary. The injunction no longer applies there but because she would be breaking her probation by going back, she could face up to a year in jail.
She is relatively unfazed by the prospect of more time in jail. “I have 250 more bible verses to memorize,” she says.
