OTTAWA, May 14, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A priest from Nigeria, a trio of school girls from Toronto, a Christian school principal from Ottawa on maternity leave, a Lutheran for Life from Saskatoon, a feisty nun from Windsor. They all came together with 25,000 other pro-lifers on Parliament Hill today for the biggest ever March for Life because, as Campaign Life Coalition activist Emma Coates told LifeSiteNews just before it began, “It’s worth it.”
Gary Teske and Cliff Kyle, just two of 30 Lutherans for Life in the March, think it’s worth it too. Teske is the group’s national president. He came all the way from Saskatoon for the event, citing Psalm 139: “Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb,” and the Fifth Commandment, “Thou Shalt not kill.”
Monique Perry and Cecil Amikon, two middle-aged Catholics from St. James parish in Pembroke, drove two hours to join the March. Monique did the talking for both: “We support the unborn,” she said simply. “Cecil has several children and he loves them. I love life but I’ve never had children.
Amy MacInnis, Emma Coates and Catherine Sawchuk are three young women who became fast friends at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barry’s Bay. Catherine, now a nurse in Ottawa, “loves helping people” and sees abortion as a contradiction of her profession. Amy, who is a caregiver for her grandmother believes “life is the most fundamental right.”
Emma works with youth for Campaign Life Coalition, finding them “quite receptive” when presented with solid fact and argument. Until faced with solid argument and facts from the pro-life perspective, “They are just going along with what the media says or peer pressure.”
Alain Cayer, David Peters and Kevin Daudlin, three members of the Knights of Columbus Ontario executive stood and marched together in their dark blue blazers. Cayer explained how the Knights sold roses across the province to raise tens of thousands of dollars for single mothers, “so they have a chance to have their kid and get back on their feet and get a job or go to school.”
Rebecca Diba and Samantha Muhoza, two young women, both Ottawa University students but friends for much longer, were at the March “to defend the kids with no voice” according Samantha.
Father Anthony Ezeonwueme, administrator of St. Therese Catholic Church in Courtice, Ontario, came to the diocese of Peterborough from Nigeria five years ago and to his first March in 2012. “My faith teaches me life is sacred,” he told LifeSiteNews. “It must be protected, especially the weak ones.”
A few feet away walks Elizabeth Smith, pushing an empty baby carriage while its intended passenger, Zoe, lies asleep strapped to Elizabeth’s bosom. She walks with friends from Ottawa’s Jubilee Church and her three older children. She is on maternity leave from her job of principal at the church’s new school. The March, she says, is “incredible, overwhelming. So many turned out.”
Minutes later, the marchers come upon a series of graphic posters showing aborted and dismembered never-born babies. Beside each one is one or two people from a group called Show the Truth. One is Sister Linda Dube, an Ursuline of Windsor.
“I get a lot more approval than not,” she told LifeSiteNews. A few years back she considered withdrawing from the ministry, but heard a woman who had had an abortion testify at a pro-life meeting and asked her “if she thought I should stop. She said, ‘I beg you to continue.’” A sign like hers had led the woman, after an initial bout of rage, to face her psychological injury from the abortion. “It eventually brought her to healing.”
So Sister Dube continues.
