Yesterday my husband and I were a part of the University of British Columbia's pro-life club's biannual large scale abortion protest. I left the kids with a babysitter, put on my long underwear and joined about 15 other people for four hours of peaceful protesting. What we do in the protest is set up 5 large signs that graphically compare abortion to past genocides in history. Our material all comes from the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform. You can see their US sister site here. The point that we are trying to make is that abortion takes a human life and our society is currently participating in the largest genocide in known history. We set up the display and then the volunteers distribute pamphlets that more clearly lay out our argument and answer and questions that people might have. I had a lot of good discussions and I probably handed out over 100 pamphlets.
As much as I enjoy protesting abortion (although I'd love to never have to do it again) I also found the experience very frustrating. During our protest we had to deal with a group of counter protesters. They wrote slanderous things about us on the area around the display and did all that they could to block our display with banners. Their goal is to have us banned from the campus completely or to marginalize us to the point that we have no voice. They attempt to silence us by encouraging the university to put restrictions on our club. It is very frustrating to deal with this because I know that the restrictions are unjust. If our club was more powerful and more organized we could have the restrictions overturned. The unfortunate fact is that not very many people are willing to help us. 15 young students don't have a very big voice. It's particularly frustrating because I know that this is the biggest, most important protest in Vancouver and it only occurs twice a year. I itch to have my voice heard, for people to know that babies are dying. I'd love to see the club stand up for it's rights rather then allowing itself to be bullied and repressed.
So where are the rest of you? I'm also a part of a weekly smaller protest. That group only has a pool of about 20 volunteers. Why in a city of 2 million people can we only find a group of 20 people who are willing to take this message to the streets? We're not wing nuts; we're simply try to educate the public about what abortion really is. If you call yourself pro-life I challenge you to evaluate whether you are doing enough to change the situation at hand.
Posted by rose at November 18, 2004 01:22 PM | TrackBack