Colleen Roy delivered the following address at the March for Life in Victoria on May 12.

When I was 12 years old I saw about 10 minutes of a graphic documentary called The Silent Scream.

The video was made by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, billed as a founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and documented the violent reality of the murder that is called abortion.

Dr. Nathanson himself performed over 10,000 abortions including the abortion of his own child, and it was essentially his work that paved the way to legalize and normalize abortion in America.

When he eventually realized the horrors of his work he resolved to spend the rest of his life fighting for the rights of the unborn. He admitted to the many lies that he had used in his fight for abortion. The many slogans and mottoes that we still hear today were purposefully designed to manipulate the culture, changing hearts and minds into thinking that aborting a child was a natural, normal thing to do.

Watching that video so many years ago changed my life forever. Not only did I see with my own eyes the concrete reality of what abortion truly was, it confirmed 100 per cent the horror and evil of it.

But it also opened my eyes to the powers at work in the world, powers that are seeking to change us, control us, and to manipulate us in such a way that other people’s sick and perverted ideals, ideals that celebrate something as hideous as abortion, would become the norm. Dr. Nathanson admitted to lying in order to legalize abortion, and people readily believed him. And that is the point, that only a lie could be the basis for allowing the killing of an unborn child.

All the attempts to take away the dignity and value of life, family, and of truth stem from one original lie told to Adam and Eve in the Garden when Satan told them, effectively, that God did not love them. This original lie has led to all the lies that have brought us to this day, when we actually have to stand and fight to say it is wrong to kill a child.

Can you imagine? How bizarre that we would ever have to fight to have our voices heard, that we would be screamed at in the streets, with vile, vicious words for daring to say that killing a baby is wrong, and that abortion hurts women and men.

Canada is a beautiful country, with beautiful people, but our leaders not only celebrate abortion, they also are working to remove our rights to freedom, the right to religion, the right to bodily autonomy. But why does it surprise us? St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, “We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, of killings, of wars, of hatred. If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?” Life, freedom, truth … sacrificing these are just pocket change when the sacrifice of unborn children is celebrated by our leaders.

Why are we surprised when the elderly and the sick are killed? Why be surprised when the killing of an unborn child is already accepted as the norm?

When my son Nicolas was only a few years old, he would dress up in a bathrobe, with a tea towel wrapped around his head. He would go to the backyard, pick up some stones and pretend that he was David gone to battle against the giant Goliath.

Nicolas stood there with his small stones, unafraid, because he knew that the evil he was fighting would be conquered when he spoke in God’s name. “You come at me with a sword and a shield, but I come at you in the name of the Lord God Almighty, who will deliver you into our hands this day!”

He was unafraid because his little heart knew that he was speaking truth. Truth. The Bible tells us that God formed us in our mothers’ wombs. The Lord declares through the prophet Jeremiah, “I know the plans I have for you, … plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer 29:11). If these words are the truth, what do they mean? Do they apply only to some or to all?

Why did God make you? Why did God create and form you in your mother’s womb? He created you to know, love, and serve him here on earth and to be with him for all eternity in heaven. To seek and know truth is to seek and know God. If you seek truth sincerely, then first, trust me, you will be persecuted, because truth scares people who profit from control. Fulton Sheen said, “It is easy to find truth, though it is hard to face it, and still harder to follow it … but here you are, praise God!” But if you are willing to seek truth and be detached from this world, you will find truth, and you will find love, and ultimately the purpose for your own existence.

We here know this is true, and we must hold the line, clinging firmly to truth and love if we want to change the realities of our times. We face the world in the name of the Lord God Almighty, who made the heavens and the earth, and we say: I am pro-life because I am pro-science. I am pro-life because I am pro-compassion. I am pro-life because I am pro-equality, I am pro-woman, pro-man, and pro-truth! I am pro-life because I am pro-love!

When you seek truth, you will find it, and you will also find goodness and beauty, and real, authentic, unconditional love, a love that gives life!