TORONTO, March 20, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – More than 300 people braved wintry mid-March conditions to descend on the front of the Ontario Legislature Tuesday afternoon and demonstrate against the squandering of tens of millions of dollars in public monies yearly to pay for tens of thousands of abortions at a time when the province carries a multi-billion-dollar deficit.
The second annual Defund Abortion Rally saw a series of speakers rail against a provincial government that refuses to fund essential services such as eye exams and help for autistic children, yet opens the vaults for abortionists and related entities such as Planned Parenthood. They also highlighted the fact that the McGuinty-Wynne regime has quietly passed an amendment to Freedom of Information legislation that effectively censors the release of any public information on abortion in the province.
First up to the platform was Joe Dickson, MPP for Ajax-Pickering, who spoke briefly because of other commitments, but pledged to present collected petitions to defund abortion and urged those assembled to “keep up the good work.”
Alissa Golob, youth co-coordinator for Campaign Life Coalition, said those gathered in front of the Legislature had come to say, “Enough is enough. We have been silent long enough. We have been ignored long enough … We cannot stand silent any longer.” She charged that the provincial government is trampling on citizens’ rights and said that while Health Minister Deb Matthews claims she is determined to improve the quality of health care, she is doing anything but in continuing to fund abortions.
Golob noted that since the start of the abortion defunding campaign in 2011, more than 80,000 pamphlets have been distributed, 44 mini-rallies have been held in front of MPPs’ constituency offices and over 25,000 petitions collected. “With our passion and perseverance, we will win this war,” she concluded.
Matthew Wojciechowski, a project manager with Campaign Life Coalition, said that “people all across the province are concerned about this issue … Taxpayers across this province are frustrated by the blatant abuse of our tax dollars.” He referred to an Angus Reid poll that revealed 51 per cent of Ontarians oppose the status quo on abortion, while another survey found 61 per cent of Ontarians oppose the status quo of funding abortion in all cases.
“Now is the time to act … We have popular support, but we need action,” he said. “Our government tries to hide stats and information from us, because they know if Ontarians were to find out … they would revolt … If even one dollar is spent on killing unborn human life, that is a huge problem and we need to change that.”
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Another speaker, Sharon Milan, was a primary caregiver for her mother, who had a bout with cancer and received little OHIP funding to cover basic costs. She said she was at the rally “to stand for the women of Ontario who are being abused by our provincial government that is providing them with a service that physically, mentally and psychologically harms them. I'm here to stand for women whose lives will never be the same.” She said post-abortion trauma is a serious health concern to women across Ontario, yet the government is ignoring such facts.
“Women are killing themselves after undergoing a procedure we are forced to pay for … The government is forcing blood on our hands by making us pay for these acts of homicide.” She said dealing with the side- and after-effects of abortion on women is estimated to cost half a billion dollars annually. “Think of what the province could do with half a billion dollars … We must continue to fight not only against taxpayer-funded abortion, but abortion in general.”
Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Coalition, who has worked on abortion defunding initiative since 2011, urged the crowd to make its voice heard. He said MPPs were known to have heard the protesters at the last such rally, even though the politicians were inside the walls of the Legislature. “We want abortion removed from the list of services covered by OHIP … Ontario MPPs have the power to delist abortion as a procedure that is not medically necessary … Killing unborn children is not legitimate healthcare.”
He went on to address several falsehoods spread by politicians about the alleged necessity to fund abortion and read a letter from MP Gary Breitkreutz, who said he received no responses from health leaders to his queries for proof about the medical necessity of abortion. Breitkreutz commended the protesters for taking up “a noble cause.”
“Funding abortion is against my religious convictions and is against my rights and freedoms,” said Rondo Thomas, vice-president of Canada Christian College. “We should not have to be paying for what we don't believe in.” He harkened back to ancient times, when the cost of worshipping the god Moloch was to sacrifice one’s babies.
“We have another religion today, it's called secularism and their god is the god of mammon … We are sacrificing our babies to the god of money … It is wrong, it is immoral and it is against my religious beliefs. I should not have to pay for their sacrifices to their gods and I should not have to pay for their babies' lives to be taken.”
Jonathon Van Maren, communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, offered some graphic descriptions of abortion as a way of making clear just what the citizenry is paying for. He described abortion as “a tool by misogynists to dismember preborn humans in the womb just because they're girls. Abortion is being used for eugenics … to preserve their own lifestyle and preserve their own selfishness. This is nothing less than barbarism.”
He attacked the pro-abortion defence that most abortions are committed in the first trimester of development as equal to suggesting that barbarism is permissible just because its victims are young. “Dismembering unborn baby girls because they're baby girls is nothing less than savagery … Crushing skulls is not the work of medicine, but the work of genocide.”
Faith Goldy, a reporter and social-political commentator, recalled how as a 14-year-old, she confronted pro-life priest Father Tony Van Hee on Parliament Hill during a school trip to Ottawa. She attacked him at the time with the common pro-abortion chants — “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries” and “You don’t have a uterus, you can’t tell me what to do with mine.” But when she returned to Parliament Hill last year, she had “seen the light of life,” apologized to Van Hee and realized that “all liberty depends on life.”
“There is no right more basic than life … abortion involves killing an innocent human being and that is murder.” For the benefit of “pro-choice” activists, she noted that 64 per cent of women who undergo abortions feel pressured to do so by others. The act also carries numerous risks, including for infection and other complications, as well as suicide. “The promise of safe and legal abortion has failed,” said Goldy. “There has thus been a war waged on women … As it stands, my government is taking my money to pay for murder.”
Closing speaker, Mary Ellen Douglas, national organizer for Campaign Life Coalition, observed that the day was Henry Morgentaler’s birthday and urged the demonstrators to pray for him, as he and others in the industry are “victims of their own ignorance.” She then counselled attendees to “not just go home and forget it … make an appointment to see your MPP and give him the same message that we will not continue to fund the killing of unborn children.”
As the crowd slowly dispersed into the cold, one woman grabbed a bullhorn and spontaneously broke into a sung rendition of Amazing Grace — in honour, she said, of the hope that Morgentaler would convert from his errant ways.
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