My morning at the abortion facility yesterday did not go as planned. For some reason, the staff did not come in. The centre was not open, but the Campaign Life Coalition team still decided to pray across the street. Seeing the empty staircase and closed doors made me wonder what would happen once we end the killing. What would we as pro-lifers do? Would there still be a need for peaceful witnessing and other activity?

I imagine that the answer is yes. However, I’ve never known, let alone stopped to consider, what a world without abortion would be like. (I was born four years after Canada’s abortion laws were struck down in the Morgentaler decision.) Here are some of my theories.

 My biggest hope is that society will be more people-oriented. We will no longer be afraid of new life, devoting our time to our growing families. Instead of surrounding ourselves with material things and claiming that we are connected because we have 369 Facebook friends, we will take more time to get to know our neighbours and have personal relationships with them. We will be acquainted with the young girl in school or church well enough to open our home to her if she is rejected because of an unexpected pregnancy. Those of us who can’t do that will be knowledgeable about local support resources, if unable to help them another way.

We will be more concerned with our society’s past. Abortion would be cast into “the dustbins of history,” as the saying goes. The average person will be more cognizant of the damage it caused and the lives it destroyed, in the same way that we remember other evils like slavery today. Perhaps there will be memorials – a few abortion facilities whose buildings are emptied but not repurposed, as a testament to the barbaric acts that once took place inside and the injustice we will no longer tolerate.

Finally, there will still be a place for public pro-life education and legal advocacy. Just because a bad law has been reformed does not mean that the change is permanent. Education will become even more important if there is ever a Canadian youth who experiences the opposite of what I have. If all he knows is a culture that protects the innocent, then he must be even more prepared to defend what is good and true when these ideas are challenged. As this paper’s editor, Paul Tuns says, the issue is never going to be “settled” because the other side isn’t going to give up and go away when legal protection for the unborn is finally won.

I know that right now, it is hard to imagine an abortion-free Canada. It is only possible with the efforts of pro-life individuals like you and me. The need for our work will not simply stop, so in a way, it may not seem like much will change. In the meantime, we must keep the faith. Our hearts will one day be at peace, or at least closer to it, with the knowledge that – as Gregg Cunningham puts it – no more blood will run in our streets.

Taylor Hyatt is a summer student at The Interim.