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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Obey God or Man? Canadian Pro-lifers Choose God

Canada's Shame: Pro-lifers get Prison while Canadians are Killed Seconds Before Birth

by Susan Fox
(Editor's Note: Mary Wagner was released from prison on July 25, 2015, after serving 7 months as a "prisoner of conscience" in the Vanier Centre for Women outside Toronto. Fellow Canadian prisoner of conscience Linda Gibbons went back to prison Sept. 2, 2015 after holding a sign outside an abortion clinic.) 
Pro-life Defender Mary Wagner in Poland
in better times.
She was imprisoned Christmas Eve in Canada
Poor St. Peter, he healed a lame beggar, and that’s when his troubles began.

“Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6)

And then the man
“jumped” to his feet, and began to walk.

So Peter and John were hauled off to jail for an act of kindness.

When they were released, the elders of Jerusalem admonished them to stop teaching or preaching in the name of Jesus. But who should they obey? God or man?

“Peter and John, however, said to them in reply, “Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20) 

Answer: Obey God.


So it is with Canadian Pro-Life Witness Mary Wagner imprisoned on Christmas Eve in a Maximum Security Prison in Milton, outside Toronto, for interrupting the “lawful enjoyment” of the business of an abortion clinic. We have  here special businesses that “enjoy” the murder of children, an act that many in the world call a crime against humanity.

In Canada, a child can be killed up to seconds before natural birth without any penalty. About 100,000 unborn Canadians are killed every year through surgical abortion out of a population of 33 million. It is estimated that four million have died in 45 years in a country in which all “persons” are guaranteed the right to life.

Welcome to the Civilization of Death.

Ironically, Mary Wagner did not try to interfere with the business of the abortion clinic: the doctors/nurses performing abortions, the bookkeepers keeping records, and the secretaries answering the phones.

But she did enter the clinic to influence mothers whose “choice” has been enshrined in secular society as a “human right.” Apparently that “human right” is only sacred if they intend to abort their child. Clearly, they are not allowed to change their minds.

Most of those women aren’t there because of choice anyway. They will tell you their parents, their boyfriends, their statutory rapist or their fears of career/financial insecurity is forcing them to have the abortion.

What is Mary’s crime deserving of a maximum-security prison cell on Christmas Eve, 2014? She politely entered the Bloor West Women's Clinic in Toronto two days before Christmas, handed out roses, cards and requested the mothers let their children live, offering real assistance in an attempt to remove their fear.

For similar acts Aug. 12, 2012, Mary Wagner was jailed and spent almost 2 years in prison. An abortion clinic worker testified in Mary’s 2013 trial that she caught her kneeling at the feet of a patient and offering her a rose. Oh my. That would frighten me too! As the ridiculous Queen of Hearts in Wonderland yelled, “Off with her head!”

Canada’s consciences have been lulled to sleep in the recent decades because of a law that says if you are caught and convicted three times trying to influence decisions of women in or near an abortion clinic, you go to jail for increasingly longer terms per each offense. “People have a sense of being defeated by this,” Wagner said in a Polish television interview.

Even pro-lifers standing on a public sidewalk outside an abortion clinic are arrested. “Canadians are used to the status quo,” Wagner said. “The sense of defeatism and apathy (on the subject of abortion) is widespread in the country.”

Canadian pro-life witness
Linda Gibbons
The poster reads:
 "Why Mom? When I have
so much love to give."
I have witnessed many times outside an abortion clinic on a public sidewalk in the United States, and by Canada’s law I should be in prison for life. We witnessed the largest protest in the history of the pro-life movement on Aug. 22, 2015 in 354 locations worldwide with total participation  greater than 78,590 people. But for the same “crime,” Canadian Pro-Life Defender Linda Gibbons has spent 10 of the last 25 years in prison.

“We don’t go there to be arrested,” Gibbons said in an interview with “Beyond the Talk.” “We go there to be the last opportunity to rescue a child from being decapitated, dismembered and disemboweled.” And to the mothers, she offers real assistance and one last chance to change their minds.

Police arresting Linda Gibbons.
Do they feel foolish handcuffing
a peaceful little old lady?
The other critical gift she offers is fetal development information. Gibbons has met many grieving mothers after the abortion. They often explain they were entirely ignorant of fetal development. One woman told her she had asked the abortion doctor what a four-month-old unborn child was like, and she was told, “It is a blob of cells.”

Gibbons showed her the model of a child at that stage of development and the now-childless mother was heartsick. The unborn child looks like a tiny human being even at eight weeks from conception. I saw my son Raphael at that stage right after his miscarriage, whole and entire. I recognized my husband’s long legs and face. He was our son! Reality is different than what the words “blob of cells” conveys.
Linda Gibbons and Mary Wagner
The two are good friends, and support one another
in and out of prison. 
Both Gibbons’ and Wagner’s rights have been violated because Canadian law also guarantees an individual “freedom of expression, conscience and religion.” And the Criminal Code says you cannot go to jail for using reasonable means to prevent an assault upon another person. At the heart of the issue is the Canadian government’s stubborn refusal to recognize a “person” in the womb. In Mary’s trial, the judge refused to hear testimony even from a non-Christian embryologist. No doctors, no scientists were allowed inside the courtroom.  
 
While largely ignored by big media in U.S. and
Canada, Mary Wagner's arrest is headline news
in Poland, where they are organizing a protest on
Jan. 8 outside the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw




Mary Wagner is a hero in the predominantly Catholic country of Poland. “Although it seems unbelievable that in Canada someone was sentenced to prison for Catholic beliefs, it unfortunately happens,” one Polish newspaper opined. Poles have created a petition to the Canadian Prime Minister, rightfully declaring Canada’s continued incarceration of Mary Wagner to be a violation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
 Article 19 of the Declaration states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

“The Canadian government takes great pride in boasting of its "human rights" positions - well, why is there another standard for our Angel for Life, Mary Wagner?” Toronto Catholic Witness blogger Barona pointedly asked. He has created a new Twitter hashtag, #RosaryforMary, inviting all to pledge to pray the Rosary for Mary Wagner.

So pro-lifers in Canada may not even defend themselves in court by saying they are there to protect the life of the child. In Wagner’s lengthy court trial, she tried unsuccessfully to use this reasoning to defend her actions in the abortion clinic. Her ultimate goal is to get the Canadian government to abandon its stubborn refusal to recognize the personhood of an unborn child. One of her judges angrily told Mary, “If you think you have the right to tell other women what to do you are wrong and your God is wrong!”

Both the judge and Legal Aid Ontario refused funding for her defense beyond the most basic charges. Crown counsel argued that when Wagner said she was trying to protect the child, she was “manufacturing” a defense to act as a guise for her political beliefs. That’s like the pot calling the kettle black!
 
Polish Facebook Page honoring Mary Wagner
Mary’s journey into witnessing for the unborn child began in Denver in 1993 during World Youth Day. “Pope John Paul II spoke to my heart: ‘Do not be afraid!’” Mary said. Saint John Paul II’s thinking very profoundly affected Mary throughout her trials because repeatedly in interviews she acknowledges that the Pope asked Catholics to disobey unjust laws.

Pope Saint John Paul II deeply
influenced Mary Wagner at World
Youth Day in Denver in 1993
“Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection,” wrote the prophet John Paul II in the Gospel of Life.

The second event that led Mary into pro-life witnessing was a trip to the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. At least 1.1 million people were killed in Auschwitz gassed with a pesticide, a very painful death. Ninety percent of them were Jews.

“That was a very profound experience for me to see a place where there was a complete disregard for a certain group of people,” Mary said. “And then I read the guest book – ‘May this never happen again!’ People had written that over and over again.”

“But I thought, ‘This is happening again.’” She said God was preparing her “for a greater commitment to give more of myself in the struggle to protect life.”

The third event that influenced her was a friend who was working in medical research and his conscience was troubled by what he was working on. She began to pray for this man, “and in that context, it was like God lifted the veil for me and I saw the reality of what happens in an abortion.”

She said she never wanted to see a film of an abortion because it’s disturbing, “but it was as though God was forcing me to see that reality.” And so He began to lead her to draw closer to where it was concretely happening – to the “times and places where our unborn brothers and sisters are being killed.”

Are you Christian? Pro-life? If you are living in the United States, you still enjoy unparalleled freedom to witness on the public sidewalk outside abortion clinics nationwide without fear of arrest. Perhaps the heroic witness of our Canadian pro-life brothers and sisters will inspire you to pray for and speak to people outside the clinics.

But in Canada many ordinary heroes are needed. “I would hope there are enough God-fearing people in Canada who are appalled that Parliament sees no limits on its own authority to pass whatever laws it wants,” said, Dr. Charles Lugosi, Mary Wagner’s counsel. 
 
Dr. Charles Lugosi, J.D.
Mary Wagner's Counsel
“Our Constitution talks about the supremacy of God … and the rule of law, which is based on natural justice … Parliaments cannot pass laws that include some human beings and exclude other human beings from the human family,” he added. “If it starts with the unborn, it will go to the disabled and elderly … This is the time to wake up, get aggressive and get active. Let’s see if people are prepared to sacrifice.”

Yes, it is as my mother warned in the 1960s, there is an ugly creature lurking in the human conscience. Once a man accepts the murder of the unborn, then he has prepared for his own murder. We had legalized abortion in my youth, and now, I and my generation are ripe for involuntary euthanasia in our old age.

In going to jail on Christmas Eve, Mary Wagner’s feet were firmly planted on the Rock of Jesus Christ. It was He, who invited Peter and John to make an act of civil disobedience to Jewish authorities -- authorities who unjustly demanded they stop speaking about Jesus Christ.

And what would have happened if they obeyed man, and not God?

This effort owes many thanks to Toronto Catholic Witness for their courageous reporting on Mary Wagner's arrest. 


Find out about the latest Planned Parenthood Protest on Aug. 22, 2015 here. Planned Parenthood Videos Spark Protest of Biblical Proportions


11 comments:

  1. Wonderful, wonderful, post. Very thoughtful and brilliantly articulated. God bless.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I live in Burlington, On, Canada, 20 minutes drive where Mary Wagner is held in a huge ,ugly,grey
      Building in Milton, Ontario. My youngest Grandson plays hockey there from time to time.
      Starting last month I have been thinking of Mary daily & at bed time.
      Christian, my grandson will be playing hockey in Milton March 12th.& 18th. I would like to visit Her. I have a gift for Mary- A cloth that wiped the water from wound of "Jesus Side "that flows out
      plentiful for all to soak up in Linnen Cloth with Gospa embedded.-from Medjugorje. I will contact Toronto Witness_ for derail.


      Delete
  2. Thank you for this post. ALL Catholics, Christians, people of God and defenders of freedom worldwide must put our rational heads together to expose, oppose and hold accountable these monsters of the judicial system that violate our Constitutions and basic rights on a daily basis. Barbaric acts of evil like this by Judges and prosecutors must be the subject of concrete, active opposition at Law -- as well as prayer. We must do both. Right now we do a lot of prayer and and not enough organized, thoughtful, well strategized opposition and holding accountable of the actual office holders committing these barbaric acts. The unfairness and hypocrisy of Canada's Judicial system is revealed by the case of Mary Wagner as truly abhorrent! The Canadian court made a purely political statement of their prevailing prejudices under the guise, color and unlawful application of legal pretenses. Many of us and me personally have not been informed of this - exactly what Canada is doing against anti-abortion free speech - until now. This article reveals Mary Wagner as a Political Prisoner and she must be set free,

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  3. The Canadian Judges and prosecutors involved in this case have abused the sacred judicial system of Canada to make a political statement of their own in this case. They acted unlawfully and committed crimes in the very prosecution. All People of Good Will must oppose this. Mary Wagner is a political prisoner, is imprisoned unlawfully and must be set free. The prosecutors and Judges who broke the law must be held accountable. We must Pray and we must Act. So I am all for the Rosary - We must also Act. Just as Faith without works is dead - Prayer without Action is also dead. WE must take wise concerted action against this false imprisonment. Please contact me through http://waytochrist.wordpress.com

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  4. God bless all of you. You speak the Truth. God have mercy on our nations. Susan Fox

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  5. We are now over one week after Mary's immoral, illegal and vile arrest and imprisonment by the neo-fascist Canadian authorities. Most distressing is the silence on the part of the "official" Catholic media. The archdiocesan newspaper, "The Catholic Register" has been contacted directly several times, but they are silent - placing banalities on their website, Facebook page and Twitter Feed. Likewise, Salt and Light TV (run by Thomas Rosica, CSB, also a minor functionary at the Holy See Press Office) is carrying nothing on its website; nor its various other social media outlets. Fr. Rosica is tweeting, but not on Mary's imprisonment. So, my Catholic friends, it is up to us to "shout from the rooftops" about Mary's persecution.

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  6. People complain about immigrants taking jobs away from Canadians, but with the Canadian government supporting abortion, immigration is necessary in large numbers because people from 'less' developed countries tend to have more children to fill the jobs these unborn children may have filled if the government only encouraged and financially supported life, we wouldn't have to rely on immigration to such a large extent to keep our economy viable. I am not against immigration, diversity is helpful and compassionate, but compassion for our nation's unborn is very short-sighted from a purely economic standpoint even.







    ReplyDelete
  7. Janet, yes it is short-sighted on the part of many governments to encourage abortion. Its own citizens are shut off from life itself, while they chase other living people to fill their shoes. And so the 4 million killed in Canada and the 57 million killed in the U.S. will NOT buy cars, will NOT buy my home, will NOT go to school, will NOT get their first kiss, won't get married, will never have children, grandchildren nor great-grandchildren. No wonder so many young people can't find a spouse. Their soul mates are dead! So it goes, people living under clouds of darkness. Our only hope is Our Savior Who can pierce the clouds with His grace. Susan Fox

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  8. The future belongs to the fecund.

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  9. Linda has spent more like 20 of the past 25 yrs in jail. Susan you may want to up date that number.

    I had the privilege of accompanying Linda as she was awarded the LifeCanada Mother Teresa Award in 2012. She is not Catholic but more so than many we know. She told me she has had some conversions of other inmates while serving time. Also, many women prisoners have learned the truth about abortion from Mary and Linda. They are truly sacrificial lambs doing God's work. Susan I really appreciate your writings.
    God bless you, Jennifer Snell

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  10. all about Mary Wagner's visit in Poland see here: https://www.facebook.com/marywagnerpolsce?ref=hl

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