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.)
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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| 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.
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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.
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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.
Motherhood is a gift that many women joyfully receive. Many women long for it, for but for various reasons are unable to receive. And it is a gift that many in our culture and society do not acknowledge as the utmost blessing that it is. 
