A couple of weeks ago an article appeared in one of the daily newspapers under the title “Abortion protester limit to be reviewed.” According to this article, “Anti-abortion protestors might be able to resume picketing three Toronto clinics if Ontario’s new Attorney-general decides a court injunction against them violates free speech.”
To refresh the memories of readers, former Attorney-general Marion Boyd got an injunction forcing anti-abortion demonstrators to stay to least 18 metres away from two Toronto clinics and 9 metres from a third. The injunction also bans protests within 150 metres of the homes of nine doctors in London, North Bay, Brantford, and Kingston. Mr. Harnick, the present Attorney-general, opposed the injunction when he was opposition critic.
“What Is Truth?” (Pontius Pilate)
The newspaper article continues, “Canada’s largest pro-choice group yesterday warned Harnick not to drop the injunction, saying that it could cost lives.” The writer quotes the Director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League as follows, “He’s talking about freedom of speech, but we are talking about safety.” The lady in question Ms. Marcia Gilbert, continues as they tried to get inside abortion clinics and doctors had their homes vandalized and even their children picketed on the way to school. One clinic was blown up and attacked by a protestor with a knife.”
The truth
Whatever truth is, those statements are very far from it. I have been rescuing and picketing for over 20 years, chiefly outside the three abortuaries mentioned in the injunction. I am quite prepared to swear on the Bible that I have never seen even one act of violence at any one of these “clinics” as they are erroneously termed. When we were having rescues some years ago, all the rescuers were first assembled in a hall. Each one had to sign a document promising that he or she would not commit any violence either verbal or physical. Anyone who refused to sign would not be allowed to take part in the rescue. I have often heard picketers imploring women and girls not to have their baby killed in the abortuary but there was never any abusive language and certainly no physical violence from the pro-life picketers. May I add that I myself – as a priest – have been surrounded by a crowd of pro-abortion people and berated with the vilest and most blasphemous language I have ever heard.
Abortuary Blown Up
Yes, it is true that the Morgentaler abortuary on Harbord St. was destroyed. But by whom? The police have never accused anybody of the crime and they have no evidence whatsoever that pro-lifers were involved. I challenge Ms. Marcia Gilbert to produce one whit of evidence that any pro-lifer had any part in the action. If she cannot, she should withdraw her accusation. The statement that the clinic “was attacked by a protestor with a knife” is untrue, meaningless and irresponsible.
Ms. Gilbert says that she and her cohorts are “talking about safety.” So are we on the pro-life side. She cannot produce one statistic to prove that any person entering an abortuary was hurt or harmed by picketers. We can produce statistics to prove that in 1992 more than 40,000 babies were murdered inside the “clinic” and hospitals of Ontario by doctors – whose vocation is to preserve life not to destroy it for money.
The lady’s reply might be that the baby in the womb is not a human being. I have before me a number of statements from the highest authorities attesting to the humanity of the baby from the moment of conception. I shall quote three:
- H.M. Liley M.D. in Modern Motherhood. “From the moment of a baby is conceived, it bears the indelible stamp of a separate, distinct personality, an individual different from all other individuals.”
- First International Conference on Abortion, Washington D.C., 1967, “The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of the sperm and the egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of an infant, ay which point we could say that this is not human life.”
- Life Magazine, April 1965, “Drama of Life before Birth.” “The birth of human life really occurs at the moment the mother’s egg cell is fertilized by one of the father’s sperm cells.”
If these statements are scientifically true – and I challenge any doctor to appear on TV and deny them – then abortion is the killing of an innocent human being and that has always been the definition of murder. So, about whose safety is the director of CARAL concerned? As far as I am aware, no woman in Ontario has ever been harmed or her safety threatened outside an abortuary. But every baby who is taken into an abortuary and an abortion is performed leaves, through the back door, dead and sometimes in small pieces depending on how the abortion was performed. And on average, 50% of these babies are female. So what of women’s rights!
1000 babies saved
On June 17, we celebrated the Tenth Anniversary of the founding of “Aid to Women,” the office of which is situated beside the abortuary run by Dr. Buruiani on Gerrad Street. Rev. Ken Campbell, the original founder presided and gave us brief but fascinating account of the many steps which went into this baby-saving project.
Joanne Dieleman, the present Director, was able to demonstrate from her files that at least thousand babies have been saved from abortion in the past ten years. These are only the ones whose mothers came back whose mothers came back to say “Thanks.” There are probably many more who did not return and so are not in the files.
How were these babies saved from death? The answer is that they were saved by their mothers being persuaded to spare the lives of their babies by the picketers, who daily sacrificed themselves because of their convictions regarding the sacredness of human life and the evil of abortion.
In conclusion I suggest that Ms. Gilbert and the members of her society (CARAL) face up to the truth that abortion is murder and that, in their anxiety to protect what they term “The Rights of Women” they are forgetting the rights of 20,000 little women who annual sacrificed in Ontario as part of the most unholy holocaust in human history.