A group of Catholics from B.C., including pro-life witness Mary Wagner, hopes a trip to the U.S. capital for the March for Life will help stoke the pro-life fires back home.
Heather Thompson is one of about a dozen local people with flights booked to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 24 march. She has never set foot in the city before but knows the flood of people crowding the streets for the pro-life cause is something worth seeing.
“A big thing for me is hopefully bringing some of the pro-life zeal” back home, Thompson said in an interview late last year. “In the United States it is quite strong.”
Thompson is the vice president of the Life Compass Society and has participated in 40 Days for Life in B.C. She has also paraded down the streets of Victoria for B.C.’s March for Life, which draws about 2,000 people compared to the tens of thousands of marchers in Ottawa and even more in Washington.
She said the American pro-life movement seems to have energy Canadians lack.
“All of Canada needs that zeal,” she said. “If we don’t stand up in numbers, if we don’t speak out, that voice is stifled. In Canada it is stifled.”
With Canada’s legalization of assisted suicide in 2016, Thompson said she gained even more reason to march. Regardless of whether it’s abortion, assisted suicide, or human trafficking, “I was drawn and called to support anything that emphasizes the dignity of the human person,” said Thompson.
Father Larry Lynn, the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s chaplain for pro-life efforts, is leading the tour to Washington. He has already been to the U.S. March for Life five times and is struck each time by the joy of its participants.
“It’s in their faces, it’s in what they say, what they sing, how they pray. It’s all there on the street. You can’t be there and not feel like you’re part of something that is special, beautiful, and good,” he said.
He has seen massive crowds of people, many high school or university-aged, with banners, flags, signs, and brightly coloured scarves and sweatshirts. Some play instruments, some sing hymns, and some fly huge banners with messages like “Life is Precious” over the city.
There’s a lot that Vancouver’s pro-life movement can learn from an event like that, he said.
“We could bring back hope. We could bring back joy, the joy of the Gospel of life that is there on the streets in Washington,” said Father Lynn. “There are so many things we can learn.”
The four-day trip to Washington includes participation in the March for Life as well as a conference, youth event, Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and a day of sightseeing.
There is no law against abortion in Canada and it can be performed throughout nine months of pregnancy. The only other countries with no legal protection for the unborn are North Korea and China. Abortion was decriminalized in the U.S. in 1973 but restrictions vary from state to state.
See “It’s time to get uncomfortable” by Father Larry Lynn.
