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TORONTO, December 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Pro-life prisoner of conscience Mary Wagner remains in jail after a bail hearing on December 13, but details of the hearing cannot be released because of a publication ban.

Wagner, 42, was arrested December 12 at the Bloor West Village Women’s Centre, an abortion facility on the fourth floor of an office complex at 2425 Bloor West Village in west Toronto.

She was charged with breach of probation and mischief.

Don Bellehumeur, Wagner’s court-appointed duty counsel, asked for a publication ban of the bail hearing under Section 517(1) of the Criminal Code. Because the ban is mandatory, Justice of the Peace Donald Buchanan was obliged to grant it.

According to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Toronto Star v Canada, a Section 517 publication ban “only prohibits the publication of evidence adduced, information given, representations made, and reasons given by the justice at a bail hearing.”

The media “can publish the identity of the accused, comment on the facts and the offence with which the accused has been charged and for which the bail application has been made, and report on the outcome of the application,” notes the ruling.

A Section 517 ban does not prevent journalists from “informing the public of the legal conditions attached to the accused’s release,” according to the Supreme Court ruling.

In the past, Wagner has not agreed to conditions that she stay away from abortion facilities where women and unborn children will suffer the violence of abortion.

Because of the ban, the reason Wagner remains in custody and was not released cannot be published.

The ban on bail process hearings remains in place until the accused is released or after the preliminary inquiry or trial, subject to any other court orders.

A Section 571 publication ban on bail hearings, according to the Supreme Court ruling, is intended “to protect the accused person from the effects of pretrial incarceration and unsatisfactory conditions of detention, and to ensure that they were not punished at a time when they should be presumed innocent.”

Linda Gibbons, a longtime pro-life activist who has spent 11 years in jail for peaceful pro-life witnessing outside Toronto abortion centres, was present with about nine other supporters at the Tuesday proceedings.

“Mary remains the round peg in the square hole,” she told LifeSiteNews.

Wagner, a Catholic, chose December 12 to attempt to rescue unborn children because it is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the unborn.

She had prepared a letter to give to the abortion facility staff.

“If this were a normal workplace, if these rooms, disguised as a medical facility, were indeed providing women and girls with healthcare, I would not be here today,” reads Wagner’s letter.

“However, this place is not about healing; what occurs here is not a medical procedure.” she wrote.

“What goes on here is the killing of the tiniest human beings, the daily massacre of children whose frail cries will never be heard, whose broken, bloodied bodies are thrown in the garbage or treated as objects for research.”

“Now is the time to realize that a human being is a human being, and that no human being can treat another human being as their property, as a thing to be used or killed at will,” Wagner wrote.

“Now is the time to stand by women who are pregnant and in need of support — not by killing the children growing under their hearts but by making room for them in our own, by welcoming and loving them both.”

Wagner will appear from Vanier Correctional Centre for Women at Old City Hall Court, Courtroom 111, at 2 p.m. Friday via video for what is believed to be part of her bail process.

Those who want to write to Mary, her address is: Mary Wagner, c/o Vanier Centre for Women prison, P.O. Box 1040, 655 Martin St., Milton, ON, L9T 5E6.

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