Tomorrow, thousands of Canadians will come to Ottawa to rally on Parliament Hill. They will then march through the city’s streets. Some will be carrying signs. Some will be praying. Some will be chanting slogans.
Why do they rally and march in the public square?
They come to stand in the place of the preborn child who cannot rally and cannot march. And it is not just one preborn child, but more than four million whose lives have been tragically snuffed out since abortion first became permitted [in Canada] in 1969.
When many people hear the word abortion, they think about “women’s rights,” “the right to choose,” and “reproductive freedom.” But what many forget about is the baby behind the abortion.
From the moment of conception, this new life is fully human, just as human as you and me. He or she is an unrepeatable and entirely unique member of the human family who has come into existence to be loved and to love. As a full member of the human family, each is endowed with inalienable rights, first and foremost of which is the right to life.
Abortion strips the preborn of their right to live, and this is why, year after year, thousands of Canadians come to our country’s seat of power, here in Ottawa, to demand justice for preborn children. And we will not stop coming. We will never give up. We will keep on fighting and never surrender until the laws of this country protect the preborn from the first moment of their existence.
The theme for this year’s 27th National March for Life is “I will never forget you.” Indeed, so long as there are good men and women in this great land of ours who cherish that this country, as our Charter states, was founded on the recognition of the “Supremacy of God,” who value every human life because it is created in the image of God, and who walk in the way of justice – these good men and women will honor and remember the preborn killed by abortion as the victims of the greatest of all holocausts.
These victims must never be forgotten. They were our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, [and] our fellow citizens on this earthly journey to the life to come. Their lives mattered. To forget them would mean that we have forgotten ourselves, what it means to live, what it means to be human.
So we rally and march, remembering the victims of abortion as we in the pro-life movement continue to fight for a day when the preborn are loved, valued, and protected from the moment of conception onwards.