Beauce County Pro-Life Week, September 22 to 28, was no ordinary pro-life week. It was the first-ever large-scale pro-life event in the area, and it provided most of the people of this huge region with their first opportunity to hear the pro-life message – which they received enthusiastically.
On opening night, The Silent Scream was shown to a full house in the largest cinema in the area, whose owner had donated the use of his theatre for the occasion. Mme. Lucille Lavoie-Gordon, president of Coalition Pour la Vie, Quebec, who launched the week’s programme, spoke about the urgent need to build a political pro-life organization in the province and asked for support for a petition now being prepared for presentation to the Quebec Government. Local M.L.A., Herman Mathieu (Lib), welcomed Mme. Lavoie-Gordon to the district and strongly endorsed her appeal for pro-life involvement and support for the petition.
In the following days, The Silent Scream was shown to each class in the three local high schools. One school had at first refused to admit the film – because of objections by one parent – but the students demanded that it be shown, and the authorities relented. It was also shown in the local college, CEGEP St. Georges, and Mme. Lavoie-Gordon has been invited to return in November for another presentation.
Two community T.V. channels showed the film during the week. The medical and nursing staff of the two local hospitals met to view and discuss it at Notre Dame de Beauce, and the staff of the Local Community Service Centre, (a department of Social Affairs medical treatment facility), also viewed it, but unlike all the other viewers, they refused to sign the petition.
Mme. Lavoie-Gordon was guest on a local radio ‘hot line’ show, together with a local pro-life doctor, and they got overwhelming support from the listeners who phoned in. The news media in the area, radio, television, and newspapers, gave full and supportive coverage to the week’s events, and the owner of three cinemas in St. Marie, St. Joseph and Valley Junction has offered the use of his theatres for showings of The Silent Scream. A local committee is also making arrangements for a showing at College Lac Etchemin, about twenty miles away.
The pastors of 47 parishes in the surrounding districts met to see the film and to discuss how they can be of assistance to a new pro-life group which was formed during Pro-Life Week. The new group, Coalition-La Beauce, intends to be involved in both educational and political pro-life action. It is under the direction of what must surely be the most highly-qualified executive committee in the Canadian pro-life movement. All nine committee members, seven men and two women, are medical doctors.
