Last Updated: Tuesday - 01/04/2011

Pro-lifers want unborn seen as a person

OTTAWA — Pro-life speakers from across Canada joined in calling for an end to discrimination against the unborn at the fourth annual March for Life rally on Parliament Hill May 11.

"The laws for the unborn are atrocious," said guest speaker Adrian Dieleman, chaplain at McMaster University's Medical Centre in Hamilton and a record-holding wheelchair athlete.

He said there were two million abortions since 1969, when Parliament legalized abortion. "We need to continue to show not just the elected officials but the people of this country that we will not stand or sit for this," said Dieleman.

Police estimated the crowd at about 2,500, the largest of the four annual marches to date.

Many Catholic organizations, including Priests for Life and the Catholic Women's League, took part in the march, but unlike previous years, religious leaders did not speak to the crowd.

As well, none of the three co-chairs of the Parliamentary Pro-life Caucus were present at this year's event. Instead, they held a news conference the previous day to voice their support.

However, several members of the pro-life caucus made brief appearances, offering words of encouragement to the placard-carrying demonstrators.

Former caucus co-chair, Canadian Alliance MP Jason Kenney, a Catholic, told the crowd that democracy is not just about majority rule. "It's about a system of government based on the inviolable dignity of the human person," he said.

The annual March for Life "reminds me and all of our colleagues that we are not a nation that is fully democratic in the most complete sense unless and until we secure those basic rights to life of every human person," said Kenney.

Campaign Life Coalition, which organized the March for Life 2001, said the march is held in remembrance of "the millions of babies in Canada whose lives were ended by abortion."

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