By Tony Gosgnach
TORONTO, October 23, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – During a hearing yesterday in downtown Toronto a judge remarked that Linda Gibbons shouldn’t have been sent to the Mental Health Court in the first place to determine her psychological fitness to stand trial. The longtime pro-life demonstrator had been sent to the court during a bail hearing the day before by a justice of the peace, who had construed her failure to speak as evidence of a possible mental disorder.
The judge promptly sent her right back to where she came from – Room 507 at the Ontario Court of Justice at College Park, for the continuation of the bail hearing, scheduled for 10 a.m. this morning, regarding a charge of disobeying a court order. She has been held in custody at the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton after her arrest outside the Scott “Clinic” abortion site in downtown Toronto on Oct. 8.
Gibbons has made it a practice not to speak during court hearings out of solidarity with voiceless preborn human beings. That has resulted in her referral to the Mental Health Court on other occasions during her 14-year history of challenging court injunctions forbidding pro-life activity within specified zones around certain Toronto abortion sites.
Looking very haggard after about six hours in holding cells that she has in the past described as dirty and noisy, Gibbons took her seat in the prisoner’s box to the exclamation of Crown attorney Michael Leshner that she has “been before the courts for year and years on abortion-related issues.” That remark drew a stern rebuke from the judge, who chided Leshner for inappropriately putting on the official record past history that had no bearing on the issue at hand and may have had the effect of creating bias in the court.
Interestingly, Crown attorney Michael Leshner constitutes one half of “the two Michaels,” who in 2003 entered into the first civil same-sex “marriage” in Canada. Leshner was later heard characterizing arguments against same-sex “marriage” by churchmen such as Calgary Catholic bishop Fred Henry as “religious intolerance” and added, “I think the bishop has eaten too much mad cow … the Charter of Rights trumps the Bible.”
Gibbons, not represented by a lawyer, remained silent when consulted by the duty counsel lawyer assigned to the court. A psychiatrist then came forth to explain that Gibbons has told her on several occasions that her silence is actually elective and part of a strategy of protest. That was when the judge remanded her to the Thursday morning appearance.