The “pro-life” March for Life happens every year, and every year it’s met with resistance. This year, I attended the counter-protest, and it was eye-opening (and only affirmed my pro-choice leanings).
One of the first thoughts I had approaching Parliament Hill was the number of high school students carrying pro-life banners. I then learned that Catholic schools across the province brought these children up, marketing it as a “school trip” to Ottawa. Apart from the few older people who cared about the pro-life cause, this is what most of the march’s crowd consisted of – teenagers who wanted to visit Ottawa, not a huge crowd of people passionately marching for life.
Another point there–despite being called the “March for Life,” it was very much a march against abortion. Even the website states that it is a march against abortion. “Pro-life” has implications of being for all lives, but it’s very evidently for one specific life (and it’s debated whether or not a fetus is even alive in early stages of pregnancy). Ironically, I observed that one of the pro-life marchers was carrying a sign that said “All Lives Matter.”
One question we were asked later in the day when we were lounging by Parliament was why we counter-protested. It aggravated the marchers and only made them more aggressive in their shouting. We counter-protested not to convince marchers of rights to bodily autonomy (although we had a few students from the march come over and join our counter-protest), but for the bystanders who stopped to thank us for speaking up.
When numbers as those that flock to the March for Life appear (even if three-fourths of the crowd couldn’t care less) people on the streets start worrying about the support for criminalizing abortion. When we protest against this, we remind those bystanders that they are not alone in their pro-choice views.
There was one moment when a person was yelling at us for being murderers, and someone else stopped to thank us, pointing to her baby and saying that she wouldn’t have been able to have her child if not for having access to an abortion clinic years earlier.
Pro-choice is about respecting each person’s individuality and the connection they may or may not have to a fetus growing inside them, and allows them to make their own choices on whether they want to be pregnant or not. Despite measures taken to prevent pregnancy, it still happens, and it’s important to remember that a child is not a punishment.
While it’s easy for pro-lifers to say that you can just give a child up for adoption, the statement is ignorant on a few levels. Firstly, adoption is already difficult and foster homes are brimming with children. Secondly, it undermines the nine months spent being pregnant, and the process of giving birth, neither of which are particularly pleasant.
Abortion being equivalent to murder is not something everyone agrees on, especially in abortions that occur during the first trimester. Having access to abortion is not the same as people using abortion as an alternative method to birth control, but it does give those who find themselves in sticky situations a safe option. Even if the March for Life succeeded in its goals to criminalize abortion, those who needed abortions would seek out ways to get them, even if they were unsafe.
If the March for Life really supported life, it would support the women whose own livelihoods are at stake with unplanned pregnancies–not condemn them.
