TORONTO, Ontario, June 7, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After being released from prison on Friday, pro-life advocate Linda Gibbons is preparing yet again to challenge the injunction that has landed her in jail for nine of the last 17 years. But this time, she’s calling on other pro-lifers to join her campaign.
“I really feel if we’re going to turn this around, there has to be some kind of a mobilization,” said Gibbons, who spoke with LifeSiteNews from her temporary quarters in Toronto on Monday.
Pro-lifers, you have to ask yourselves: how badly do you want to win the fight for the unborn?
We all have jobs, we all have kids and mortgages. I get it.
But if we all abdicate from witnessing, then nothing will get done and the children will continue to die. We can't all say no.
I'm not saying that sidewalk counselling is the magic solution.
There are no simple answers. We need it all: sidewalk counselling, political activism, education, helping the pregnant women, etc. Nobody should question why one person is doing one thing and not another. It's all important.
But I see one lonely grandma taking all the garbage for counselling at this clinic. How is it that there aren't more pro-lifers taking up the cause?
Recently, Fr. Ted Colleton died. He was a guy ready to suffer anything for the sake of unborn children. He was a rare gem. I don't think we have enough of these kinds of activists in Canada. You hear of a Mary Wagner here, a Ruth Lobo there.
Do you really think we're going to win with the odd act of defiance? You think that's how civil rights legislation was won?
Yes, I'm as guilty as all of you reading this.
But how do you expect the pro-life movement to win without people challenging injustice and paying for it?
I remember Jim Hughes telling a Campaign Life meeting that there was a time when he thought the abortion issue could be turned around easily by voting in the right people and voting in pro-life legislation. I think maybe the pro-life movement had absorbed that belief. It's only natural. Who wants to think of their cause as being one for the long haul?
But now that we know that it's for the long haul, we have to realize it's not going to be just about voting in the right MP's (important as that is!) and just getting the right laws. There are structures of sin that need to be challenged, and the challengers will pay. There's no doubt about it. We can't think that we're just going to win this war by sitting at home writing emails to our MP's. We have to go out there in the streets and confront the evil itself. How do we confront the evil? Not just by denunciation, but by mercy as well-- bringing truth and assistance to the people who need it.
If Linda Gibbons remains the only one confronting the evil, I guarantee we will not win the pro-life cause any time soon.
The more we want to win, the more we are ready to suffer for it, the smarter we are in our strategy, the sooner we will win the fight for unborn children. If we don't have heart or guts, that victory is a long while away. Is that what you really want? To win this fight in a hundred years instead of ten? I wanted it won yesterday.
Perhaps the solution is that we need a ministry or a lay apostolate of single people dedicated to suffering for the pro-life cause: people willing to do whatever it takes to bring the pro-life message to clinics, and of course the support network for that cause: lawyers, donors, prayer warriors, messengers and so forth.
Imagine all the women we could help, all the babies we could save if such a group existed.
