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OTTAWA, Ontario, 24 September, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 64 year old Grandmother who has spent the last 18 years peacefully protesting Toronto’s abortion clinics – spending a little less than 10 of those years behind bars for doing so – appeared on national television last week to tell her countrymen how freedom of expression in Canada is being trumped by the abortion issue. 

“People when they are talking to me will say, ‘well, what did you do [to go to prison]?’ And I say: ‘I was on a public sidewalk, I was offering women help to save their babies, offering them referrals or places to go.’ But you’re not allowed there. They’ve made up injunctions that you can’t be there. And people are astounded.”

Linda Gibbons, 64, who is hailed as Canada’s most often imprisoned pro-life sidewalk counsellor, spoke with Brian Lilley from SunNews in Ottawa during prime time on Friday.

Viewers of the show learned how three abortion clinics in Toronto have an injunction that prohibits any pro-life activity within a defined bubble zone. The injunctions make it impossible for any sidewalk counselors to offer alternative information or assistance to abortion-bound women without risking certain arrest and heavy penalties.

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Gibbons said that she has been jailed “many times” because of her refusal to obey the injunctions in her eagerness to reach out to pregnant women entering the clinics for abortion.

Gibbons, who herself has suffered the experience of having an abortion, said that the trauma women suffer from abortion arises not only from killing their unborn babies, but also from “trying to reconcile yourself with what you’ve done the rest of your life.”

“Often [when] women [are] going into the clinic, you’ve got seven seconds to make an appeal to her, something that would make her aware of the child within her, or to just let her feel that ‘you’re not alone,’ and that ‘there’s somebody here who cares for you,’” she said.

Lilley highlighted during the interview the “double standard” that exists in Canada when it comes to the issue of abortion, pointing out that Canadians, because of freedom of expression, can protest right outside the Prime Minister’s office with “megaphones and large crowds blocking the doors” but that the same Canadians cannot protest outside of certain abortion clinics in Canada – even silently – because “you will be arrested.”

“If [Gibbons] were an anti-globalization protester who had spent one night in jail for violent protest, she’d be a hero to the consensus media. If she called for the release of terrorists, she’d be granted much more airtime, more column inches in the newspapers, and be treated better than she is now.”

“Where is the media outrage over the treatment of Linda Gibbons?”  Lilley said.