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Stephaniuk
Priest
Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit
Wadena
Saskatchewan
Canada
Hope in the Face of Loss: Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform and the End of Abortion in Canada
My endorsement of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform has been two years in the making. I first encountered graphic abortion imagery in 1994, but have only had a frame of reference with which to understand their value since 2009. That is when I was given a CD on which Center for Bio-Ethical Reform founder, Gregg Cunningham, explains the rationale for this anti-abortion protest: at any given point in its development, the early human embryo is already a baby, and is exquisite and unique in its individual identity, even in the first trimester. Its death by abortion is an unjustifiable act of violence. The graphic imagery campaign of CCBR exposes the lie of abortion as an abstract solution to a woman’s problem, confronting people with the question, “Is this what you mean by choice?”
I am the priest on a team of the post-abortion healing retreat, Rachel’s Vineyard, which has reached the same conclusion as that made by CCBR. The secrecy of abortion is addressed in a powerful manner of healing during these retreats, where the vulnerable and powerless now have someone to believe them, believe in them, and give them permission to grieve what previously was a "forbidden grief." What has been aborted is no longer politicized into insignificance, but rather is now seen for what he or she has been all along, another human being; a child, my child. As Dr. Theresa Burke proves through Rachel's Vineyard, and the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform explains in the courtroom of public opinion, abortion "is wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being. That is why it hurts women."
It is very easy to be accused of being judgmental, having “no understanding of the true suffering which post-abortive persons endure and the painful journey toward healing,” according to Dr. Burke. The use of graphic imagery, however, is a very powerful catalyst for change in people’s lives, challenging them to admit that coping mechanisms have reached the end of their useful but limited life; they are not meant to be permanent, otherwise they become part of the problem. Dr. Burke describes coping mechanisms as ways “to avoid or hide anxiety-provoking truth.” If they have brought one’s emotional life to a place of uneasy truce, of having put the abortion behind them, or rationalizing an intended abortion, it is the graphic signs which reveal the temporality of all that.
Admitting the need for healing is the beginning of what one author has called “hope in the face of loss.” Stephanie Gray of CCBR frames this hope in these terms: “We have to be strong and firm in this “battle” for the personhood of preborn children. Yet we need to balance strong minds with tender hearts for those who are hurting from abortion.”
I am from Wishart, Saskatchewan, which is also the same hometown of Joseph Borowski, a powerful individual in defence of the unborn for many decades. He was Morgentaler’s nemesis, both men racing to get their cases to the Supreme Court of Canada: Borowski to establish legal protection for the human being in the stage of pre-natal development, Morgentaler to increase laissez-faire violence against the pre-born.
Joe Borowski also pioneered the use of graphic imagery, having brought two fetal specimens to the Supreme Court of Canada when his case was being heard in 1988. In defence of this action he stated, “It's not a question of indignity… We didn't dig up the grave… I think it is no less grotesque than the people who are killing babies." His intention was to show them to the Supreme Court Justices, the point being that there was an equivalence of humanity and dignity even at those early stages of human life: “If the judges could only have seen them…pass them hand to hand,” it would have been "very convincing evidence."
The current abortion rhetoric has been distorting our perception of reality for far too long, at the expense of over three hundred children per day in Canada, the equivalent of Canada’s D-Day losses on 6 June, 1944, every single day. What Father Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, has said about the United States holds true for Canada as well: “America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.” The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform deserves our support in their work to “make abortion unthinkable.”
Fr. Jeffrey D. Stephaniuk
Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit
Wadena, Saskatchewan
