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By Steve Weatherbe
NEARLY 2,000 British Columbia pro-lifers marched through the tourist-thronged
streets of Victoria May 14, to rally before the provincial legislature.
They cheered the passion for life of young mothers Rachel Daniels and Sarah
Hudson; listened with horror to a Kelowna man’s story of losing his child to abortion; listened patiently to historical
comparisons to the British evangelical-led crusade against slavery; happily
accepted the blessings of a trio of Catholic bishops; and chanted “We are winning,” along with American Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
The second annual march was inspired by a similar march on the federal
parliament buildings in Ottawa held yearly on this date for more than a decade,
and was matched by rallies there, in Edmonton and elsewhere.
According to one of the organizers, Natalie Hudson, “it doubled the numbers we got last year. I’m very pleased with that.”
Most of those present were apparently Catholic, the bulk attending a mass at St.
Andrew’s Cathedral concelebrated by three bishops – who were joined on the altar by 17 priests in their colourful vestments, and
escorted into the church by an honour’s guard of Knights of Columbia in cockade hats, sashes and tuxedos.
Though several Protestant churches refused to participate, a supportive service was scheduled at the last minute, at Emmanuel Baptist
Church.
Emmanuel Baptist pastor Rob Fitterer was not the only one that day counselling patience.
Opting for an informal affair when only seven showed up at his spacious suburban
church, he expressed confidence that “many more will come next year,” and reminded his audience of the long struggle – led by British parliamentarian William Wilberforce – to end slavery in the 19th century.
“Wilberforce had the character to stick with the moral call he heard, for the
long haul,” said Fitterer, who later joined the march and ended the day hosting a
fundraising dinner at his church for the Victoria Right to Life Society – which more than 100 attended.
At St. Andrew’s Cathedral, packed to the first balcony with more than 1,000 people – many from up-Island and the Mainland – Bishop Richard Gagnon preached a sermon on Jesus’ declaration that there is no greater love than to give up one’s life for a friend.
He called on his listeners to fight for the unborn and also to be loving to “those human beings caught up” in abortion as well.
Most of the congregants then regathered at Centennial Square beside Victoria’s City Hall, where others joined them for the march to the Legislature. There,
they heard Archbishop Michael Miller of Vancouver defend the right of
Christians and other religious Canadians to bring their moral values to bear on
public policy.
Abortion, he said, “seriously, very seriously affects the common good of us all . . . and government
is accountable and responsible to God for individual human beings, all of whom
are created by him in his image and likeness.”
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Sarah Hudson, west coast director of Campus Life Network, told the crowd that abortion was claiming
more lives than AIDS or any other disease or current war – but worse than that, was an attack on the fundamental human right, the right to
life. Governments no longer see themselves as protectors of human rights, she
continued, but as the source and “distributor of those rights.”
Bishop Gagnon called abortion “a great wound in our culture” that the nation’s legislators “had lost the will to resolve.”
A young Victoria couple, Robin and Rachel Daniels, also spoke. He noted that
Mother’s Day had taken on a new significance, in a Canada that allowed 300 abortions a
day. “We are grateful to have passed the first test . . . Smile, your mother chose
life.”
Rachel Daniels told of her discovery that her Old Testament namesake is always
associated with “weeping for her children,” and how she “began spiritually adopting” the unborn children of acquaintances she knew were threatened by abortion.
“I’ve wept for too many,” she said. She called for “a new feminism. It would be pro-mother, pro-father, pro-children. To be feminine
is to be a bearer of life.”
Rabbi Lapin, a Washington State-based producer of inspirational books and tapes
based on Old Testament wisdom, closed the event by leading the assemblage in a
rousing cheer – and by quipping that he knew the pro-life movement was winning, because “we have all the beautiful women.”
Later, at the fundraising dinner, Lapin asserted the superiority of “Western civilization,” which he said was “just the politically correct way” of saying Judeo-Christian values. He termed Western Europe and North America “the Bible lands,” with cultures rooted in the Old and New Testament, and asserted they were
responsible for “98 percent” of humankind’s material progress.
But, he maintained, just as a jet plane will fall to earth when its high octane
fuel runs out, so will the peace and prosperity enjoyed by Western civilization
disappear when it abandons its biblical values.
Without them, he said, our societies will fall back into the kind of “brutish” existence displayed by the youthful characters in William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.
Lapin added that abortion was actually the normal policy of humankind: only the
places and times where Judeo-Christian values prevailed, he asserted, has
abortion been condemned.
June 2009
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