Vancouver Against Abortion: Fighting for the Rights of the Pre-born.

by Ania Kasprzak

As we were getting ready for “Choice” Chain on a very cold January afternoon, for a split-second I hesitated. We were setting up on the corner of Robson and Granville (one of the busiest and most crowded intersections in all of Vancouver), and my over-active imagination immediately started conjuring up all the possible things that could go wrong with hosting such a controversial demonstration.

“Oh my gosh what is that?!”

I turned to my right, and saw a man in his late twenties clutching a pamphlet and darting his eyes from poster to poster.

“What are these pictures of?”

He appeared genuinely confused about what the graphic images were depicting. I approached him and gently explained that we were showing exactly what abortion does to the pre-born child at different stages of development. I pointed out how the majority of abortions happen during the first trimester and this is why we are focusing on bringing this shocking and graphic truth to the public. 

The young man was at a loss for words. He kept shaking his head and repeating the same sentence over and over:

“Oh my gosh, how can this be happening? Is this really what it looks like? That’s terrible! I had no idea!”

Often I am asked by my pro-choice and pro-life friends why we show graphic images. “What’s the point? What’s the reason?” they ask.

He is the reason. Actually, every single person walking by on that frigid January day is the reason why we do what we do. Why we bring the truth to the streets even though it is hated, rejected and sometimes, violently opposed.

We do it so that they can be shown the humanity of the pre-born. We do it so that they can finally see that a child in utero is not just a blob of tissue, and because we strongly believe that once Canadians come face to face with abortion, the word "choice" will never again sound the same. In showing these images and voicing the pro-life message we are not condemning post-abortive women, rather we seek to acknowledge their pain by recognizing that they have indeed lost something.

Twenty-three of us took part in “Choice” Chain on January 14, 2012, and for two and a half hours we discussed and exposed a truth which has been silenced for far too long. We’re not professional debaters, nor have we had any formal training in the field of ethics, but what we are is passionate.

Passionate about fighting for the rights of the most vulnerable.

Passionate about seeing abortion numbers not only go down, but eventually become extinct.