Free speech will soon be as dead in Canada as the right to life is for an aborted baby, because of our silence and apathy.
By our inaction, it’s obvious: Canadians care little for life or liberty. I guess, as Clint Eastwood said in a western movie, it’s because “It ain’t them doin’the dyin’”—or being thrown in jail. At least, not yet!
Three hundred innocent pre-born babies died today in Canada at the hands of irresponsible parents and paid killers euphemistically called “doctors.” But most troubling, it was all sponsored by a corrupt government that has long since lost its moral authority to govern. They use our tax dollars to pay and protect abortionists and pervert the law to persecute and criminalize the very people who are doing their primary God-given responsibility as civil government for them: to protect the weak and innocent (pre-born). Our government has done the opposite for forty years. The result: 4 million innocents killed; their murderers paid and protected.
Meanwhile, a saintly grandmother, Linda Gibbons, languishes in an Ontario prison-and has done so for years, all for “loving her neighbours as herself,” meaning the most innocent and helpless among us: babies and their mothers. She has been jailed for offering a loving, life-giving alternative to girls in crisis-women often being coerced by partners or parents to do what they know they will regret.
Few visit or write Linda. Still fewer petition the courts and government for her release. Meanwhile the government hands the Order of Canada to our most prolific mass murderer! This is moral and legal insanity!
At the same time, the Crown in BC is seeking a 3-4 month sentence upon my conviction for being in a bubble zone, merely passing out copies of the “bubble zone” legislation while wearing a sign warning the public that they can be arrested under Bill 48-and having a piece of duct tape over my mouth. This all happened the day after the Supreme Court of Canada abrogated its responsibility to uphold my free-speech rights as “guaranteed” under the Charter, by refusing to even hear my constitutional challenge.
Some guarantee! Some Charter rights! Some useless, politically-correct court!
Does anyone care? Precious few! Do the media care? Nope! They only care if it is them or their own reporters or columnists being unjustly hauled before a court or phony human rights tribunal. The media, like most Canadians, care only about their own rights and interests, “hoping that the alligator of tyranny will eat them last,” to paraphrase Ronald Reagan. Tyrants always start with the most weak and voiceless. Have we learned nothing from history? Don’t we know by now that when we appease tyranny, it only encourages more of it, until it one day reaches us?
Most of all, I’m alarmed by a silent church and pro-life movement during this rapid slide down the slope into tyranny. Sissy Von Dehn and I received little support in our lonely peaceful and non-violent rear-guard battle to preserve the right to speak up on behalf of the oppressed, as the Bible commands us, especially at the time and place of the unborn babies’ demise. Most pastors and pro-lifers are content to look down their long noses from the safety of their church spectator stand; and if they say anything at all, they probably criticize us for walking the talk, which embarrasses them.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said during the civil rights struggle, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Where are the friends of life and liberty in Canada? It seems they are selfishly looking out for Number One, while the enemies of life and liberty are sawing off the very limb they are sleeping on!
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” -Thomas Paine
USA Justice William O. Douglas said, “The struggle is always between the individual, and his sacred right to express himself, and… the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression and obedience.”
In Canada, it’s a lonely battle for freedom for the few fighting it. If more don’t soon join in the cause of life and liberty, we will have neither, and our chains will be of our own making!
This article by BC pro-life activist Don Spratt was originally offered to Maclean’s Magazine as a letter to the editor April 4, 2010. If you see it published, please let us know.—CHP Canada
N.B. Mary Wagner is also serving time for counselling women at abortion clinics. You can send letters of encouragement to both of these courageous women, Linda Gibbons and Mary Wagner, at: Vanier Centre for Women 665 Martin St. Milton, Ontario, L9T 5E6