OTTAWA—As thousands of people gathered on Parliament Hill for the 29th annual March for Life rally to push for an end to abortion and euthanasia, Conservative MP Arnold Viersen called for participants to “choose life.”
“We stand here today in proud solidarity with our fellow citizens who are rallying across this country, calling for a renewed commitment to uphold the dignity of human life, from conception to natural death. We roundly reject this culture of death,” Viersen said to the audience alongside two of his children on May 14.
Demonstrators, motivated by this year’s theme of “Follow Me” in reference to the Bible passage Matthew 4:19-20, gathered on Parliament Hill for speeches and prayers. They then marched through downtown Ottawa carrying signs with slogans like, “Life is a gift from God,” “1/3 of my generation lost to abortion genocide,” and “where have all our children gone?”
Expanding Euthanasia a ‘Nightmare for Canada’
CLC Communications Director Pete Baklinski told The Epoch Times that the annual march is held to “demand legal protection for pre-born human life at this place of power,” and that they will continue until pre-born Canadians are protected as they were prior to 1969.Baklinski also said Canada’s MAID regime has led to more than 100,000 deaths since the procedure was legalized in 2016, and that the safeguards preventing euthanasia except for cases where “the person’s death is reasonably foreseen” have been “eroded.” Euthanasia was originally meant only for Canadians whose death was reasonably foreseeable, but has since been expanded to include those with disabilities and chronic illnesses who are not nearing death.
While Canada’s MAID regime was initially scheduled to allow eligibility for Canadians whose sole medical condition is a mental illness beginning on March 17, 2023, the federal government has since postponed the change multiple times, most recently delaying implementation until March 17, 2027. The delays came in response to concerns from medical providers and some provinces that the health care system was not equipped to implement it safely.
The federal government has not clarified whether it will allow MAID to expand to the mentally ill in 2027. Prime Minister Carney said on May 6 that he would wait for the release of a parliamentary report on MAID expansion before deciding.
“We fear a future where euthanasia will become just another right for Canadians,” Baklinski said. “There‘ll be no safeguards. ... It’ll be something that anyone will be able to access for any reason or no reason at all, and that’s a nightmare for Canada.”
Testimonials
Aleš Primc, the co-founder of the Slovenian political party Voice for Children and Families, told the audience that his party recently forced a referendum to overturn Slovenia’s assisted suicide law.“I bring great news from Slovenia. We won the referendum, and we rescued a lot of elderly and sick people from poisoning,” Primc said, adding that Canadians had helped the referendum to succeed.
Rebecca Kiessling, a U.S. lawyer and founder of the organization Save the 1, told the audience that she was conceived because a man sexually assaulted her mother. Kiessling said that while her mother wanted to get an abortion, she was not able to because the law in the state of Michigan protected her.
“I did not deserve the death penalty for the crime of the man who raped my mother,“ Kiessling said. ”Today, my birth mother and I are both thankful for the law which spared us both from the horror of abortion.”
Joanna Myers, a participant at the rally, told The Epoch Times that she came from the state of New York to stand against abortion and euthanasia. “It’s just a horrible decline, away from God and away from morality. It’s an alternate worldview that people en masse are accepting, and it’s unfortunate,” she said.
Myers said she was hopeful that everyone at the rally would be inspired to “continue to stand for life after today, when they’re not surrounded by so many friendly faces.”
