Jakki Jeffs, former president of the Right to Life group and the organizer behind the garden, said it is intended as a place for mothers who have lost their babies to grieve; until now “their children haven’t been given a place of rest.” The garden is meant to serve as a place for women to know that their children are valued, not forgotten.

Calling it a Garden of Grace shows the intention behind the garden – a sense of peace, forgiveness, and hope; however, it is not being taken that way by abortion advocates. Abortion advocates are outraged that abortion is being included with miscarriage loss, claiming it shames women who have had abortions and tells them they made a poor choice. They fear the public and prominent nature of the space gives it unnecessary attention, and are arguing that the church should not allow their land to be used in this way and the city should not allow the statues to be erected, despite the fact that the Right to Life group is fully funding the project.

The very fact that people are outraged over a space to mourn lost unborn life is a sad, if accurate, reflection of a culture that has tried to sweep those lives under a rug. Many women are forced to mourn quietly and privately, because their grief makes others feel uncomfortable.  Miscarriage loss is coloured by abortion politics’ refusal to recognize the value of pre-born children, and abortion loss is shadowed by guilt and cultural pressure to take pride in your choice.

For the Guelph and Area Right to Choice group to start a change.org petition calling the Garden of Grace a Garden of Guilt is to admit to a level of discomfort with abortion that the author or organizers have not faced or dealt with. Guilt is not something anyone else makes you feel if you are genuinely confident in and comfortable with your decision.

This attempt to drum up protest shows that Guelph and Area Right to Life couldn’t be more accurate in their claim that there is a need for a space like this, a space to grieve lost life and the memories associated with it.

One specific area of vengeance that is sure to come up is that of some women toward men.  Men who, whether out of courage or naïveté, think they can join the abortion conversation in a reasonable way soon find out otherwise as virtually all female commenters zero in on this poor easy target.

The retaliation is swift and certain as it is predictable: who are men to tell women what to do with their bodies?! Men can’t have babies, men abandon women all.the.time, men live lives free of consequence and responsibility, men are controlling, overbearing, anti-feminist, likely even downright abusive and dangerous.  In short, who are men to have an opinion on whether a baby lives or dies?

Let’s take a moment to release some of that anger in a big ol’ breath.  Because ladies, we actually really like men. If it weren’t for men and our dealings with them, we wouldn’t be talking about abortion at all, would we? Maybe we hate that they can walk away without taking responsibility for their child, and maybe we hate that we have to carry a baby for 9 months before its ready to come out (and preferably abstain from alcohol, sushi, unpasteurized cheese and other fun things during that time), and maybe we hate to be held to the same standard of beauty we were before having babies while our bodies have undergone so many changes we no longer recognize parts of them.  But does all of this mean we hate men? Even more, does it mean we hate men willing to take a principled stand on a major issue?  I think we should be grabbing those men and marrying them and having their babies on purpose.

Men who are willing to enter the abortion debate should theoretically be the same men who would not leave a pregnant girlfriend without financial support, the same men who would not leave a wife for a newer model and never send a child support check, the same men who would have principled ideas on the value of women and on how a woman should be treated.

The men willing to join the abortion debate are men with principles.  These principles, in the men I know, extend far beyond an online debate about abortion. These are men who are willing to care deeply, and willing to stand behind decisions and responsibilities even when the going gets tough.

To attack a man for having an opinion on abortion is to say we can only have opinions on things that directly relate to our own life experiences. I have never been homeless, so who am I to have an opinion on homelessness? I have never murdered someone, so who am I to give an opinion on whether murder is right or wrong? I will never have prostate cancer, so how dare I have an opinion on whether treatment for it should be publicly funded?

Personally, I think more men should have an opinion on abortion. Too many women who find themselves pregnant also find themselves with a man who tells her it’s “her decision” when that’s the last thing she wants to hear. That, really, is the ultimate excuse for a man: “It’s your decision” says “I don’t care – about you, your health, our baby, or my role in this.” She actually wants support, someone to talk to, and likely the assurance that she and her child will both be supported, loved and wanted regardless of the circumstances.

If men want to support choice, they need to support women. If men want to support women, they need to have principles. Principled people take a stand regardless of how popular that makes them (hint: usually not very.)  Ladies, stop attacking men just because they don’t get pregnant. Instead, engage them on what their opinion really means. Find out if they’re men of principle who genuinely oppose the killing of pre-born children, whether their own or someone else’s, or really the authoritarian, paternalistic control freaks you fear.

While we all continue to ponder who those other uterus owners might be, exactly, it is important to note that the local newspaper tied the event to a free speech debate. The flags represented the approximately 100,000 abortions happening every year in Canada – not a small number, and something we all contribute to with our tax dollars, so why the reluctance to talk about it?

The focus on appropriate free speech, and the related pro-censorship attitude of staunch pro-choicers, is a familiar paradox. The pro-abortion view can be spread freely and loudly, while the pro-life view is something to be quickly silenced. This shows the lack of confidence pro-abortion activists have in their position, as they are not even willing to talk about it openly and reasonably. If they really thought about it, how could a common, publicly-funded medical service possibly fall under something questionable to talk about, especially at a university which encourages debate and the open exchange of ideas?

I cannot think of any other common medical procedure that would be considered inappropriate for discussion on a university campus, or anywhere else for that matter. There are heated debates in some forums about, for example, the value or vaccinations for children, yet no one fights to silence those debates or threatens action based on stigma or discrimination. We have major community and national events organized around our hearts, breasts and colons, among other things. Surely our uteruses are not so different.

It is great to see the UFV administration firmly promoting intellectual liberty as well as UFV Life Link standing up so openly for the human rights of children in the womb.

The federal Liberal leader has endorsed the P.E.I. Liberals in the upcoming provincial election and was campaigning with P.E.I. Liberal leader Wade MacLauchlan this week in Summerside when he came under attack from the federal NDP. The reason it seems is because Mr. MacLauchlan has indicated that if elected he would continue to support the status quo. Currently abortions are not provided on the island and women travel off the island to have their pre-born child killed.

An article on the official NDP website reads:

“He claims his party ‘defends rights,’ yet fails to do so. Will Mr. Trudeau stand by his convictions and tell Wade MacLauchlan that women’s right to choose is non-negotiable, or does he support this anti-choice Liberal policy? Canadians deserve better.”

It is a pretty sad indictment on the status of our culture if in the game of politics the lusting after power is carried out by seeing who can be most supportive of the legal killing of human beings.

Proponents of taxpayer funded abortion on demand are selfish and it’s about time they were called on it.

Ms. Mrozek says,

“If I had gotten pregnant when I was in my 20s, I would have felt that my career was more important. Today, I realize how problematic that philosophy can be. It’s a philosophy that allows women to trample on others — including their own children — to pursue other goals. It’s a philosophy that tells women and men that they have the right to put themselves at the centre of the universe.

In short, it’s selfish. We are told that such selfishness is a virtue. Finishing university offers the virtue of making a real contribution to the world, which, we are implicitly told, having children is not.”

You can read the rest of her piece here. 

“I don’t think a late-term abortion law would prevent any abortions because abortionists would simply lie about the age of the pre-born child. And, aren’t late-term abortion so rare anyway?”

Such a statement is not uncommon to be heard from the mouths of those opposed to saving some when saving all is not achievable. 

Granted, abortionists may employ deceptive techniques to find ways around such a law, but we can’t be so presumptuous as to use this as a reason not to enact legislation. We do not abolish laws just because we can’t guarantee they will always be successful in preventing certain actions from taking place.

A late-term abortion law would in fact be a major deterrent, as abortionists who lied about the age of the pre-born child and committed illegal abortions would risk fines and/or a prison sentence that would most likely be associated with such a piece of legislation.

We have to be careful in dismissing laws just because they are more difficult to prosecute or the crimes they address are rarely committed.

If it becomes problematic to prosecute certain crimes we don’t decriminalize them. We work doubly hard to find ways to ensure they are prosecuted!

As for rarely committed crimes, think of child labour laws. Imagine the outcry if there were a move to de-criminalize the practice of child labour simply because it rarely occurred? Regarding late-term abortions, the fact is they are common in Canada.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information statistics indicate that of all the abortions reported in Canada in 2010, only 22% of them included the gestational age of the fetus at the time of abortion. Even with such a small percentage reported, there were 537 abortions in Canada after 20 weeks gestation. Assuming we can project that ratio onto the 78% of abortions which did not record gestational ages, there may have been over 1,900 abortions after 20 weeks!

A law that would introduce a new injustice is certainly not one that should receive support. On the contrary, everyone ought to be working towards the implementation of laws that limit an already occurring injustice. A law we should support then, is one that would limit abortion to a certain gestational age, thereby restricting the existing injustice and saving hundreds if not thousands of babies per year.

The three stupidest things Canadian abortion activists have said (lately)

I’m guessing that most Canadians wouldn’t identify with this polarizing style of debate. It’s high time these abortion activists realized that women’s freedom ought to be achieved on its own merits rather than on the corpses of aborted fetuses.

One person at a time, one interaction at a time, we’ll change the way this country thinks about abortion.

Turns out the theme of Stephanie’s talk was that everyone can do something about abortion. Andrea highlights a couple of keys in changing people’s hearts. Very important for any pro-lifer! As you can guess, one of them involves asking questions.

Andrea has more to say over here. Check it out for yourself.

Postmedia News reported several days ago that an Ontario woman, identified only as “L.B.,” was given a “reduced” sentence of infanticide for smothering her two infant children. This followed on the heels of the recent decision of an Alberta judge to sentence a woman who had strangled her newborn to a suspended sentence. Joanna Birenbaum of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund defended the sentence as “in line with the community’s sense of justice” in light of Canada’s sixty-three-year-old infanticide laws.

George Orwell once wrote that, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Elaborating further, he stated that, “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

In Canada today, these statements describe with chilling accuracy the concept of the “unwanted child” and “the woman’s right to choose,” polemics which are increasingly moving past the government funded in-utero infanticide of abortion to include newborn children, who, according to Canadian law, are simply not as valuable as older human beings.

What “every child a wanted child” actually means, of course, is that every unwanted child should be a dead child. Canada’s Pro-Choice Action Network, which often features prominent fetal-death advocate Joyce Arthur, stated some time ago on their website that a common “anti-choice” lie was that,

The ‘abortion mentality’ leads to infanticide, euthanasia, and killing of mentally disabled and elderly persons. This ‘slippery slope’ argument has no merit. In countries where abortion has been legal for years, there is no evidence that respect for life has diminished or that legal abortion leads to killing of any persons. Infanticide, however, is prevalent in countries where the overburdened poor cannot control their childbearing and abortion is illegal.

First, it is erroneous to claim that infanticide happens due to abortion being restricted, as was evidenced by a TIME magazine article last year which inquired “Why are French Women Killing Their Babies?” Secondly, further evidence of the “abortion mentality” can be found in the increasing rates of the abortion of disabled children, as well as the spread of euthanasia abroad. Finally, however, when murder is “downgraded” to the “lesser charge” of infanticide, feminists are first in line to confusingly defend what seems to be a direct attack on the emotional capabilities of women—something that was once one of the fiercest battles of the suffragist and feminist movements.

Canada’s infanticide law states the following,

A female person commits infanticide when by a wilful act or omission she causes the death of her newly-born child, if at the time of the act of omission she is not fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child and by reason thereof or of the effect of lactation consequent on the birth of the child her mind is then disturbed.

To boil it down, this law (incidentally drafted in 1948 to avoid having juries hand down the death penalty to desperate unwed mothers) states that the natural process of pregnancy—and specifically “lactation”—can cause a woman’s mind to be “disturbed” to the point of causing her to murder her own offspring. The claims of feminists throughout the last century—that women were the intellectual and psychological equals of men—are thus completely discarded by the pro-abortion feminists in a hasty attempt to justify yet another category of killings. Thus the rhetoric of “choice” slowly encroaches on the precious lives of yet more innocent Canadians.

It is clear that the defenders of abortion, infanticide, and gendercide are experiencing a curious lack of reading comprehension or perhaps an inner ideological conflict. They simultaneously claim that abortion is not a “slippery slope” leading to infanticide and a more all-encompassing Culture of Death, but are willing to strenuously defend these atrocities once they reside safely at the bottom of said slope.

Canada is beginning to see the full results of a society that lacks a worldview with intellectual consistency and has no dedication to universal human rights. First, we decided that a woman’s “right to choose“ was a right that included the right to dismember her sons or daughters in utero, as if this “therapeutic” procedure was somehow equivalent to her right to choose a specific diet. Then, Canadian judges began to notice the fact that Canadian law did not place the value of human life on an equal plane and that as such, they could begin to “downgrade” certain groups of Canadians based on age—starting, of course, with those who could not speak out for themselves.

It is up to us, Canadians with a voice, to shift our society away from this moral quicksand. It is up to Canadians who believe human life is intrinsically valuable to begin draining the poisonous swamp of the Culture of Death, and to extend our hand to our pre-born neighbours and give them the justice that they so desperately need. Can the wholesale slaughter of the most vulnerable Canadians be stopped? The choice, as it were, is yours.

This article first appeared at unmaskingchoice.ca and is published here with the author’s permission.

I don’t have a lot of spare time, and yet I feel convicted to follow certain passions. One day I decided to just go out and pursue one. Maybe this was simply a bucket-list item, although more likely it was God putting it on my heart: I challenged myself to find time to go door to door in my neighbourhood with the pro-life message. A fundraiser for the Langley Pro-life Society was coming up and I dared myself to ask my neighbours for donations to help bring attention to the plight of pre-born humans.

I think I went to 10 houses. I expected some hostility and received a little of it. I expected some ignorance and someone did ask me, “Sorry, what is that, ‘abortion’, again?” One person suggested adoption instead of abortion (I agreed). The challenge I posed to myself brought on some great discussions!

I rang yet another doorbell. The kind, older lady politely smiled and, when she heard my request, she said that she was pro-choice.

We talked a bit more, and I explained there were no laws at all in Canada regarding abortion. When I told her a woman could have an abortion up to 9 months she hesitated. She asked me to wait a moment, and then she returned with a donation. Yes – a pro-choicer had just donated to the pro-life society. I was shocked and yet so encouraged. This was exciting!

Well, this IS exciting. We need people to bravely have those quick chats. I mention “bravely” because I admit it took a lot of courage (and prayer) to actually get my feet out the door. I realized that even as a stay-at-home mom I could find time to walk through my neighbourhood, either with my kids during the day or after they were in bed in the evening, and still be on the “front lines” of the pro-life battle.

I am sharing this story as an example of how hearts can be changed. When we engage people, minds can be opened to the pro-life message and lives can truly be saved. Let’s keep working, keep trying, keep active, keep praying, and keep the discussions going, one step down the sidewalk at a time.

(Jessica Wildeboer is a pro-life mom in British Columbia)