David Krayden: More Absurd News out of Calgary: Pro-Life Protest Now Being Targeted

David Krayden: More Absurd News out of Calgary: Pro-Life Protest Now Being Targeted
A family walks past a pro-life display erected by members of the Campus Pro-Life student group on the University of Calgary campus in Calgary on Sept. 27, 2010. (The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh)
David Krayden
6/7/2023
Updated:
6/12/2023

Commentary

Just what is happening to this country?

The Calgary city council has approved a bylaw amendment that will fine pro-life groups up to $3,000 if they distribute uncensored images of aborted babies to people’s homes.

Now the city wants to hide and censor those pictures and further cancel the pro-life protesters.

Do you remember when Calgary was a conservative city where common sense reigned? It has had a succession of mayors bringing in woke policies, destroying this city and everything it once represented.

Calgary is also the place where it is nearly impossible to protest a drag queen story hour.

The city explained this horrendous abuse of municipal authority and dismissal of a basic democratic right thusly:

“Specifically, the bylaw would prohibit specified protests from taking place within 100 metres of an entrance to a city-operated or other designated recreation facility or library during operational hours and an hour before and after,” Katie Black, general manager of community services, told council.

The city also tried to quietly cancel Canada Day until a spate of protests forced the elected officials to overrule the unelected city bureaucrats at the arts and culture department who decided the annual fireworks were going to run counter to Truth and Reconciliation and offend people—someone, anyone.

Here’s the kicker about Calgary’s latest attempts to snuff out abortion protests: The bylaw amendment stipulates that any pictures of aborted fetuses have to be secreted in an opaque envelope with a warning that the contents may be offensive.

Why isn’t the murder of the unborn offensive to Calgary’s mayor and city council?

What happened to drag queen story hours for children being offensive?

Canada has the most lenient abortion law in the world. It’s more permissive than anything in the most liberal American state. It’s more accommodating than anything extant in Europe. In Canada, ever since our abortion law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1988, we have had unrestricted abortion on demand–from the beginning of a pregnancy to its end. There is no legal protection for the unborn in Canada.

There were 87,485 induced abortions in Canada in 2021, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

And yet, it is virtually impossible to discuss abortion during an election without progressives insisting you are trying to restrict women’s rights. As if women are not opposed to abortion and don’t support the sanctity of life. What of the many female evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics who actively oppose Canada’s lax abortion law?

Abortion is not popular with a lot of Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh women either.

There is not a single party in the House of Commons—the Conservative Party of Canada included—that has the political courage to even make a passing reference to abortion, let alone insist that Canada enact a sane abortion law that at least reflects the opinion of most Canadians that abortion should not be completely unregulated. They are so afraid of the left-wing lobby and the legacy media that insists abortion cannot be discussed because it has somehow become foundational to Canadian democracy.

Of course, this is absolute nonsense. It’s outright political pusillanimity.

There are many backbench MPs that I know who would love to raise the issue of abortion but fear that they would lose their next nomination if they did so.

The Liberal government misleadingly calls the murder of the unborn as “reproductive rights” or even having the gall to suggest abortion is enshrined in the Charter of Rights.

Aren’t you sick of this government’s euphemisms for killing? Abortion does not promote a woman’s health; it is a dangerous procedure for the woman and almost always causes deep psychological scars.

Aren’t we getting our priorities and values backward and our sanity displaced by progressives who have lost all sense of reality?

It shouldn’t require an excess of perspicacity to realize that abortion is a controversial issue and should be open for continued debate. It is not a “settled” issue as the left likes to insist. Any medical procedure that results in death, be it abortion or euthanasia, should be both controversial and debatable.

If we allow the abortion death industry to continue its work with full government consent, the state can continue to encroach upon that most basic freedom: our right to life.

But if you can’t remember a Calgary that didn’t punish abortion protesters and promote drag queen shows for children, can you imagine a Canada where abortion is not celebrated but at the very least is a difficult choice? Can you remember when we didn’t glamorize drag queens and parade them in front of children, sexualizing these tender beings long before they ought to be concerned about such things?

Calgary and much of Canada are apparently not offended by men pretending to be women and exposing themselves to elementary school kids. They are offended by parents who demand this sexualization and abuse of children stop immediately because no one with a working brain can actually justify this sort of approach any more than they could send children to the local strip club on a field trip.

Calgary is offended by abortion protests—it has been limiting these for years, beginning with hospitals.

And the city is really offended by a picture of an aborted fetus because that is the reality of what they are promoting.

When it opposes evil, the truth can be both overwhelming and transformative. These images represent that truth, and Calgary—like many Canadian cities—doesn’t want to see it because evil best operates in the dark.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
David Krayden graduated from Carleton University's School of Journalism and served with the Air Force in public affairs before working on Parliament Hill as a legislative assistant and communications advisor. As a journalist he has been a weekly columnist for the Calgary Herald, Ottawa Sun, and iPolitics.
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