Silhouettes against the snow.

On January 28, 2005, Nicole turned 17, and I did not forget to congratulate her on her birthday. In fact, I called her first thing in the morning and luckily found her home. I am notorious for forgetting birthdays beyond the immediate family circle. Nicole is my niece's daughter and my sister's grand-daughter, and when she was born on January 28, 1988, we called her "our child of hope".

Supreme Court

January 28, 1988, was the day Canada had its hypocrisy stripped away. The Supreme Court of Canada that day sided with Henry Morgentaler, Canada's leading professional killer of preborn babies, that the existing abortion guidelines found in section 253 of the Criminal Code were unconstitutional because it offended the "equality" section of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms (one hospital committee taking longer to approve an abortion than a committee in another hospital). This ruling stripped away the legal facade by which successive Canadian governments had pretended that somehow they were still "protecting" the unborn when, in fact, abortion on demand had been the rule for years because of Justice Minister John Turner's insistence "health" could be interpreted under the broadest of standards, including having a headache.

The Supreme Court itself also tried to rebuild the hypocritical facade by allowing that the unborn child merited some protection in law. It charged Parliament with the responsibility to make a law that would balance the right of a woman to kill her baby with the rights of her unborn child, an impossibility. Hence in the feeble attempt of Brian Mulroney's PC Government in 1990 to re-establish the facade with Bill C-42 instead of directly calling for a reduction in abortions, it was defeated in the Senate; so Canada continued with abortion on demand, for any reason, at any time, during the nine months of pregnancy.

Since 1988, abortion statistics have risen to around 110,000 annually, for a grand total of over three million murdered babies by 2005. Although the federal government forbids private health care and fulminates against it, privately owned abortion clinics, operating solely for profit at the expense of taxpayers are accepted and tolerated.

Statistics and Education

Since 1988 any pro-life education has fallen by the wayside, because there is no longer any discussion. Canadians as a nation simply accepted the status quo and, as far as men like former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Liberal party were concerned, the discussion was, settled and there is "social peace".

For dedicated pro-lifers however, there is no "we are beyond abortion" to think of; after all we are talking here of the taking of innocent human lives at the request of their mothers and fathers by men and women originally dedicated to life and healing.

Social peace?

What, then, has come after abortion? Has there been "social peace"? Whom are we kidding? Today we have, in addition to abortion, heated discussions about embryonic stem cell research versus adult stem cell research; there is a new attempt to extend the killing to the sick, the elderly, and the willing, i.e., euthanasia; there are the controversies about the Morning After Pill (MAP) and, indeed, about the contraceptive pill itself; about surrogate motherhood; about cloning human beings; and now, hotter than ever in Canada, same-sex marriage! All are efforts to dehumanize God's greatest creation, the human being.

Is the abortion controversy gone? Hardly. Take, for example, the small Ontario city of Cambridge. This year pro-lifers there collected over 1,000 signatures in Catholic parishes, petitioning the Ontario government to defund abortions. Pregnancy is not a disease, hence abortion is not a medical necessity. Taxpayers should not be made to pay for the deaths of unborn babies. Cambridge MPP, Gerry Martiniuk, P.C., signed the petition and read it into the record at Queen's Park. This is a small testimony to our ongoing struggle, and it will be a testimony to history and future generations that the opposition to abortion never died.

January 28, 2005

This week of January 28, the media are full of Auschwitz and the holocaust. Was there nobody to cry out for these victims? History reveals that there were many voices, though largely ignored or silenced. Meanwhile in Canada, in Cambridge, apathy and indifference have not stopped us from protesting.

We trudge through the snow, some 20 of us, mostly silent. We have said everything there is to say over and over already.

A storeowner wants us to go away; we are bad for business, he says. Passersby honk their horns, some for us, others against us.

Although we are champions of life, we are not very popular. A great puzzle!

Last year (see picture) we made the front cover of the local paper. The headline "Kids standing up for kids" raised somebody's objections (she did not want the unborn called "kids", in her mind, they are "fetuses"), resulting in a letter to the editor, followed by a very lengthy debate over abortion.

The two young girls are again in this year's picture, veterans already, and today yours truly is also in the picture, a veteran pro-lifer since 1977.

Every time a baby is saved by our witness, the angels sing.

In 1988 after the Morgentaler decision, there was a call from a grandmother, who had saved her granddaughter with our help. She said, "I know this is another black day for you, so I want you to know that I am looking at my brand new granddaughter, and I want you to take comfort in the thought that she is alive".

The future

Only God knows what lies "beyond" for Canada. Some think that our young people are becoming more cautious and conservative. Pray God, be it so, because the "old guard" is getting tired. Even as Fr. John Powell, S.J., said years ago, "See this pro-life bracelet? They will bury me with it!"

"Each newborn baby is a sign from God that life should go on."

A 17-year old girl by the name of Nicole is my child of hope and God's promise that some day this savage killing will come to an end. Believe it or not, we are a progressive country and our leaders are always looking "beyond".

To some of us, however, time has stood still, in a sense. The pain we felt at the first "legal" abortion--the killing of an unborn baby--has never left us. Although we too had to get on with life--raise our children, feed our families, dust under beds--we have never given up on them, the precious unborn!

We love them, we pray for them, and we continue to protest the injustice, indifference (shrug--what can I do?), so-called tolerance, so-called women's "rights". Year in, year out, we come and picket on this day, January 28, at our Cambridge MP's and MPP's offices. We are "the Silhouettes against the snow," as Grace Petrasek's book of 1991 called pro-life picketers.