Her Moral Responsibility

In the protest-and-arrest/incarceration saga of anti-abortion protest veteran Linda Gibbon, her supporters refer continually to the fact that she is a grandmother.  This 63-year-old woman has grandchildren, yet makes the decision of her free will to neglect her grandchildren for the greater goal, as she sees it of defending the rights of the unborn.  She deprives her grandchildren of her grandmotherly presence, to represent herself as a determined saviour of three-month foetuses.

To each their own.  So fully invested in her self-appointed crusade, she could be a grandmother to her grandchildren and still engage in her protests on a different level, less confrontational, for example, less offensive to the laws of the land that protect the rights of others, and focus on an educational component of that social battle to further the 'rights of the unborn'.  The fact that she is a grandmother, in actual fact, is completely irrelevant to the issue.

Her age and her status are used as a ploy for sympathy with her plight.  One that is completely self-fulfilling; she is doing what she has seen fit to do.  Age, her grandmotherly status, does not necessarily confer wisdom on the chronological bearer of those years, and this woman is a prime example of age being responsible for solidifying a personality invested in a habit of stubborn resolve.  She appears content with the cost of her resolve to her freedom.

She contends she is not surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against her.  She feels justifiably, despite spurning the laws meant to protect the rights of others, to disobey what she claims to be an 'unjust' law.  The price extracted of her freedom to pose before abortion clinics with her sign and silently and purposefully present as a spokesperson for a child which nature will never mature from the foetus to be aborted, is one she chooses.

She finds value in her crusade; she would not persist if it did not fulfill an inner need that she has imposed upon herself.  She is right, in her insistence that a woman carrying the burden of a pregnancy she does not want that might result in the birth of a child she does not want, must see the pregnancy through to fruition and bring an unwanted child into the world - and the woman who has struggled with her conscience and decided to abort, is wrong.

However, Justice Marie Deschamps did not agree with Linda Gibbon. 

"The question is whether the provisions of Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure governing motions for contempt orders preclude the application of Sect.127 which makes it a criminal offence to disobey a court order.  The courts below ... held that they do not.  I agree.  In my view, the exception in Sect.127 is meant to apply where there is an express alternative statutory response to failures to obey court order.  I would dismiss the appeal."

Twenty times arrested for violating an injunction.  Holding up a sign within 18 metres of the Scott Clinic in Toronto.  A temporary injunction dating from 2008, but a lawful one nonetheless.  A technicality to those who support her, particularly her lawyer.  Her righteous determination to offend the law and offend the sensibilities of those who also have made their own choices of their own free will, speaks of stupidity, less of moral determination.

She awaits a court appearance  on her picketing charges at abortion clinics, refusing to remain 150 metres away from their doors, rather than confronting the women who use the services.  When and if this woman is permitted to leave prison, her intention is to do as she has always done: "When I get back I'm sure you will find me in front of one of the Toronto clinics."