Abortion Caravan Rolls into Thunder Bay

I cannot conjure up the words to describe the horror and anger I still feel after seeing the images of aborted babies shown to me by the members of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform who visited Thunder Bay on Saturday.

I cannot conjure up the words to describe the horror and anger I still feel after seeing the images of aborted babies shown to me by the members of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform who visited Thunder Bay on Saturday.

These 26 young prolifers have left their homes and their families to visit cities throughout Canada in the New Abortion Caravan. They began their tour in Vancouver on May 29 and will end in Ottawa on July 2. They are travelling in cars and vans and are staying in the homes of sympathetic people. They must raise their own financial support. They are people of faith, Catholics and Protestants, committed to doing God’s will.

Caravan members are trained in the use of logic. They are well informed and know how to counter the faulty logic of “prochoicers.” But it’s the pictures that best expose the horrible and ugly truth of abortion, which no argument can refute and no words can adequately convey.

The police protect the constitutional right of caravan members to display the images, but they cannot adequately protect them from the hateful taunts and insults from some people who are “offended” by the pictures. At stops during the tour, caravan members set up “choice chains” where they display large pictures, hand out anti-abortion tracts, and dialogue with the public. Their two large trucks, with graphic pictures on the sides, drive along the streets. In Vancouver, one of the trucks was vandalized. In Kelowna, eggs were thrown at members. In Thunder Bay, a man was charged with four counts of assault after he emptied a large container of chocolate milk on four members at their “choice chain.”

Just what did he, and people like him, find so offensive? Often, they say they want “respectful dialogue” and “intelligent argument” and do not want to see “repulsive, graphic images.” Yet, would these same people say that it is wrong to show images of Jews murdered by the Nazis? Or blacks lynched by the Klu Klux Klan? No doubt, they would say that in these cases, graphic images need to be shown, and widely, so that these evils are never again committed.

Why not then in the case of aborted babies? I believe it is because abortion is the great evil of our time, and people do not want to be reminded of it in graphic terms. They do not want to see what the ultimate expression of their sinfulness looks like. (And we are all, at least to some degree, complicit in the sin of abortion.) One could expect the same reaction from many of the Southern whites during the era of legalized segregation, if someone publicly showed pictures of lynched blacks in their Southern towns.

Everyone, on both sides of the abortion debate, should feel anger and revulsion when seeing the pictures. But that anger should not be directed at the young heroes taking part in the New Abortion Caravan. Hopefully, someday soon, that anger will translate into a persistent demand by the great majority of Canadians to end 24 years of unrestricted war on the unborn.

 

You can see the video highlights of the choice chain event organized by CCBR here.  You can also click on the image above for a hi-res version.  CCBR’s website is https://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/