We are urgently seeking 500 new Life Defenders (monthly supporters) before the end of October to help save babies from abortion 365 days a year. Your first gift as a Life Defender today will be DOUBLED. Click here to make your monthly commitment.
Memorial for abortion victims in Catholic cemetery ignites anger in Ontario
The Knights of Columbus in Belleville, Ontario, recently had a tombstone placed in St. James Roman Catholic Cemetery in memory of babies who have been killed by abortion. After posting photos of the memorial on Facebook, the group experienced angry backlash from Facebook users and a women’s group that may have caused the Knights to remove their original post.
The tombstone reads: “Life is sacred” along with Jeremiah 1-5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I consecrated you.” It also states: “In memory of all victims of abortion.”
The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternity founded in 1882. The photos the group originally posted on Facebook might be gone, but The Post Millennial said that the comments on the images ranged from supportive to offensive. The 18 males in the photo were called misogynists and ‘crusty white boomers,’ among other insults. In all, it received 3,300 reactions, of which about 20 percent were the angry emoji.
“We’re not engaging in any sort of debate about it,” said grand knight David Cameron. “This is our belief and we don’t feel we’ve done anything wrong… it speaks for itself.”
Memorials like this one are popping up around the world as people want to remember the lives lost to abortion and show respect for these victims just as society traditionally does for other people after their deaths. But that’s not how so-called women’s rights groups see it. Elissa Robertson, the coordinator of Warrior Women of Quinte, actually held a demonstration against the memorial, claiming “[i]t was designed to shame people.”
Robertson also claimed the memorial “ties into patriarchal values and this idea that women’s bodies are meant to be controlled by men. It’s a broader issue that ties into violence against women, it ties into health care, it ties into safety.”
Dear Reader,
Every day in America, more than 2,800 preborn babies lose their lives to abortion.
That number should break our hearts and move us to action.
Ending this tragedy requires daily commitment from people like you who refuse to stay silent.
Millions read Live Action News each month — imagine the impact if each of us took a stand for life 365 days a year.
Right now, we’re urgently seeking 500 new Life Defenders (monthly donors) to join us before the end of October. And thanks to a generous $250,000 matching grant, your first monthly gift will be DOUBLED to help save lives and build a culture that protects the preborn.
Will you become one of the 500 today? Click here now to become a Live Action Life Defender and have your first gift doubled.
Together, we can end abortion and create a future where every child is cherished and every mother is supported.
She couldn’t be more wrong. A memorial for someone who has died is not about shaming other people. It’s about the lives lost. If women feel shame about having had an abortion, that’s a normal reaction and one they are feeling not because of a memorial, but because of their own emotions tied to the act of abortion. Women who have abortions are at an increased risk of depression, drug and alcohol use, and suicidal thoughts – whether a memorial is built or not. And in a macabre sort of way, even some abortion facilities offer women remembrances of the babies they choose to abort.
As for the memorial being tied to patriarchal views and violence against women, Robertson is missing the mark. Abortion was legalized by men and tells women that in order to be successful in life they need to kill their children, block their fertility, and be more like men. Abortion tells women that they cannot parent their children and earn degrees or succeed in their careers. Abortion itself is an act of violence against women and children which dismembers one human being and causes both physical and emotional scars for another. Women have been hospitalized for complications of the violent act of abortion, and rape survivors who chose abortion have said their abortions were worse for them than rape, because they were the ones inflicting the violence.
As for health care and safety – abortion is neither health care nor safe. As previously stated, women are hospitalized on a regular basis for injuries sustained during abortion procedures, and they are also dying from legal abortion. Any act that kills a human being or treats pregnancy as a disease is not health care.
Building a memorial to the victims of abortion is the right thing to do to remind people that these were innocent lives stolen through an act of violence and that women and children deserve better. And these memorials don’t just honor the preborn, but the mothers as well. They, too, are victims of abortion.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
International·By Nancy Flanders
