Pro-life activist ...continued
and arrested again days later. Gibbons could be released from her current sentence on a mere $500 bail, but she refuses to consent to a bail condition that requires her to promise not to go near an abortion facility. In a recent interview, she says that such a promise would be “compromise and complicity with evil.”

The right to pray?
Some people see Gibbons as a zealot or even a fanatic. Celia Posyniak, a director of an abortion facility in Calgary, told The National Post that Gibbons’ prayer vigil is “creepy” and states that she “intimidates” women. “Linda Gibbons has a right to her opinion . . . [Yet] there is a rule of law and she’s thumbing her nose at that.” Gibbons’ lawyer Daniel Santoro, however, argues that she has a right to free speech. “All she does is try to talk to people and if they don’t want to listen, then fine,” he explained.
Besides being a silent advocate for free speech, Ms. Gibbons has been heralded by the pro-life community as a prisoner of conscience. Retired teacher John Bulsza of London, Ontario, believes that if other pro-life activists had protested with Gibbons, the case would be “history. . . . She’s our Gandhi, and we’re letting her take the fall for the rest of us.”
Gibbons is more than willing to sacrifice herself for the pro-life cause. She is a committed Christian who believes she is doing the Lord’s work by accepting imprisonment for the unborn. In fact, she believes she has saved three babies from abortion during her incarceration.
Yet a more personal reason motivates Gibbons: she had an abortion over 40 years ago. She was a single mother on social assistance, already raising a young daughter. She felt incapable of having another child. She experienced immense suffering from the abortion, until she found healing after becoming a Christian. With her conversion came the belief that she had a personal responsibility to save women from making the devastating choice of abortion that she so deeply regrets.

Fighting the law
Now Gibbons’ fight is involved with quashing the injunction itself. Although the injunction was issued from a civil court, Gibbons has repeatedly been tried in a criminal court. Her lawyer claims this is due to the fact that it has yet to be affirmed by the civil courts whether the injunction is necessary. It was originally put in place to protect women seeking abortions, as well as the facility’s staff, from threats and harassment. The Criminal Code, however, already offers protection for anyone from violence and threats. Thus Gibbons and her lawyer are seeking to overturn that injunction so that peaceful protesters are given their right to free speech. If necessary, they will take her case to the Supreme Court.
To those involved with pro-life work, Gibbons is a heroine. She sees things more simply. In an interview with Bruce Ward in the Ottawa Citizen, Gibbons says, “I feel like a very ordinary Christian doing a very ordinary thing.”

Jenna Craine lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her husband and son, Noah.