At an Oct. 28 protest demonstration organized by the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, Campaign Life Coalition was denounced as one of “the intellectual authors” of recent acts of violence against abortion providers.
Representatives of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, AIDS Action Now, the Ontario Federation of Labour, and the International Socialists joined OCAC at the noisy protest outside Campaign Life Coalition’s national headquarters on Dundas Street in downtown Toronto.
Pro-abortion activists there, as elsewhere, were capitalizing on the Oct. 23 murder of Buffalo abortionist Barnett Slepian, pouncing on it as a golden opportunity to smear the pro-life movement as violent and extremist.
‘Bloodthirsty dreams’
Apparently referring to the Slepian murder, AIDS Action Now speaker Tim McCaskell railed against “the intellectual authors of these attacks, like Campaign Life.”
OCAC fundraiser Cherie MacDonald, shouting furiously up at the windows of Campaign Life Coalition’s offices, told protesters, “This is the building they come slithering out of with their tracts … Inflaming the bloodthirsty dreams of some of their (most extremist) supporters.” Later on in her speech, Ms MacDonald called on the police to “get after the people who are the real criminals.”
Earlier in the week on Michael Coren’s new Crossroads Television Systems show (see article on page 23), Ms MacDonald tore into pro-life groups for “demonizing” their opponents.
Pro-lifers who observed the OCAC protest from the periphery said the out-of-control language was typical of how abortion supporters use incidents of violence against abortion providers to their advantage.
Abortion supporters know that the pro-life movement is consistently and remarkably peaceful, but they’re reluctant to miss a chance to distract the public from the violence of abortion itself. To this end, they claim that pro-lifers are to blame for such incidents, because their “inflammatory rhetoric” inspires some people to take the law into their own hands (see editorial on page 4).
Apart from hyperbole, speakers at the OCAC rally also indulged in remarks that many would consider blasphemous. The first speaker called on God to give a sign that He really wants to end abortion. “Transport all unwanted pregnancies to the bodies of you anti-choicers, including you men … God can do it, can’t He? Isn’t He all-powerful?”
Ms MacDonald began her remarks by inviting the crowd “to pray to God, if you’re a Christian, or to the goddess, or to the power of Canadian women.” Later in her remarks, she suggested praying “to our own power.”
