OTTAWA, May 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At the close of an evening pro-life Mass at Ottawa’s St. Theresa of the Child Jesus Parish — packed to standing room only — an enthusiastic crowd marched to the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights Monument in downtown Ottawa for a Candlelight Vigil where 1,600 young and old honored the victims of abortion with prayer, songs, and speeches.
“Every single person here is put here by God. And every single person here has gifts from God. And every single one of you right now are using those gifts to be the voice for the voiceless,” said Alissa Golob of Campaign Life Coalition Youth, which organized the event.
Golob told the crowd of mostly young people not to be discouraged by Canada’s total lack of restrictions on abortion for all nine months of pregnancy, despite great efforts by the pro-life movement throughout the years.
“There’s only one thing that you have to remember when you feel really down and that is: we have truth on our side and we have God on our side and there is no way that we can fail with those two things.”
Vigil participants were joined by the 25 women who had just finished walking 200 kilometers from Montreal to Ottawa as a witness to life. Their journey was not only a protest against abortion, but to raise awareness that many women who abort their babies feel coerced into making that “choice.”
“I believe we are on the winning team. Truth always wins in the end. If we don’t quit, we win,” said Faytene Grasseschi, organizer of the Back to Life Walk. “If we will continue to do the right thing, there will come a time in this nation when not only is abortion illegal, but it is simply unthinkable.”
Pro-life activist Ruth Shaw from the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform gave her gripping testimony of being put up for adoption in India by her mother who could have easily aborted her instead.
Shaw said that in reflecting on her adoption experience, she had often thought that had she been conceived and born in Canada, things may have turned out for the better for her and her mother.
“Unfortunately I realized that this was a fanciful hope that I had. The reality is my life would have been in as much danger here as it was in India, because as we know abortion is a widely accepted practice here. And on top of that we know that the practice of killing girls is becoming more and more common.”
“[Sex-selective abortion] is not just a practice left to barbaric countries that don’t know what they’re doing. We do it here [in Canada] in a sophisticated, educated country.”
Shaw, reflecting on the argument of pro-abortion advocates who see limiting sex-selective abortion as a strike against women’s rights and freedoms said: “The very hands that are empowering girls in this country are stained with the blood of their sisters. The very bond that unites them — being a girl — is now used as a tool of death against them.”
Fr. Bradley Markus, a young priest of the Diocese of Hamilton and a Priests for Life Canada board member, spoke as it began to rain and called the crowd to “rejoice” even as they got wet.
“This [rain] is the purification that God is giving to us tonight, the outward sign of what we believe is coming to our country, the washing clean of this stain [of abortion].”
“Let the rain fall,” he said, as the crowd cheered.
Sheldon Harrison, a grade 11 student from Mississauga, ON, challenged his peers to think of abortion in the same way that one would think about a murderer being loose on the streets killing people as they walked by.
“What do you do? Do you close your blinds [in your house] and walk away? Or maybe you say that if the murderer wants to do that, then let him because it’s his choice.”
“The gruesome fact about abortion is that 100,000 of the unborn are taken from us each year in Canada alone.”
“I don’t want to be part of the generation that closed the blinds and walked away,” he said.