OTTAWA, May 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At a press conference on Wednesday before the National March for Life on Parliament Hill, the event’s organizers called out the Harper government over its role in shutting down debate on abortion in Parliament, highlighting their recent scuttling of a motion to condemn sex-selective abortion.
The theme of this year’s March, which begins Thursday at noon, is ‘End female gendercide!’
At the National Press Gallery in Ottawa, Campaign Life Coalition’s Alissa Golob highlighted a 2011 poll by Environics finding that 92% of Canadians backed a ban on sex-selective abortion.
“Yet our Prime Minister continues to stifle the outcry of the people he is supposed to govern, by suffocating any debate or discussion when the ‘a’ word is brought up,” she said.
“Abortion – a practice proclaimed to liberate future generations of women has become the preferred means of eradicating them,” she added. “A woman’s right to choose has literally resulted in women choosing there be no more women.”
“If our Prime Minister cannot publicly condemn the practice of killing preborn baby girls purely because they are girls, we have no other reason than to assume he supports it. This reason alone should outrage and activate women across the country to stand in solidarity against this public declaration against women.”
Golob was joined by CLC’s Matthew Wojciechowski, as well as Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights without Frontiers, who is the headline speaker at the March for Life Rose Dinner on Thursday evening.
Littlejohn told the reporters about her organization’s work in China reaching out to women who are expecting baby girls and offering them support to carry their child.
“The words ‘it’s a girl’ are the deadliest words on earth,” she explained. “According to one U.N. estimate, up to 200 million women are missing in the world today due to ‘gendercide,’ the selective abortion, abandonment or deadly neglect of baby girls just because they are female.”
“In China, the birth ratio of girls to boys is the most skewed in the world: approximately 100 girls born for every 119 boys,” she said.
Yet she noted that gendercide is an issue in North America as well.
A sting investigation by CBC in June 2012 found that almost three quarters of the twenty-two “entertainment ultrasound” businesses they visited in Canadian cities were willing to do a scan solely to determine the sex of an unborn child, some as early as 14 weeks gestation.
In January 2012, the Canadian Medical Association Journal raised the alarm about the reality of sex-selective abortion and the gender imbalance in some of Canada’s Southeast Asian immigrant populations.
Golob said the March for Life is an essential way for Canada’s pro-life movement to send a message to politicians.
“This year’s March for Life gives Canadians an outlet to have their voices heard at the steps of Parliament Hill, when they are being silenced not only in some of their constituencies, but by a government that prides itself on freedom of speech and human rights,” she said.
“Every year, tens of thousands of young people gather on Parliament Hill for this historic pro-life March,” she continued. “We’re young, we’re dedicated and we’re in it for the long haul. We are the next generation of parents, tax-payers and voters and have no plans on backing down until all human life is protected – from the womb to the tomb.”