Re: your recent editorial, headlined Stirring up trouble.
The film Amazing Grace tells the story of how, despite being labelled a royal pain in the neck, British MP William Wilberforce refused to be silent about the slave trade. For 26 years, Wilberforce introduced and re-introduced legislation and petitions calling for an end to the slave trade.
Among other challenges, he was fighting a social and political belief that slaves were not "persons" possessing value and rights equal to those of British subjects.
His first parliamentary motion to abolish the slave trade in April of 1791 went down to defeat 163-88.
Fast forward to 2012, and we watch Canadian MP Stephen Woodworth's Motion 312 requesting the formation of a parliamentary committee to study when human life begins go down to defeat by a similar 201-91 count.
Today, pro-life MPs like Woodworth are battling the social and political belief that unborn babies are not "persons" possessing value and rights equal to born people.
So while Managing Editor Jon Manchester and others lament the presence of "trouble-makers" in Parliament, and how they ought to be permanently silenced, they fail to see the bigger picture.
German philosopher Arthur Shopenhauser famously said, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Pro-lifers are fully aware the truth of abortion is in its initial stages, and we see clearly what that truth is. An unborn baby is a person and abortion is an act of violence that kills that child.
We also see that one day this truth will be self-evident.
Future generations will look back in astonishment and shame at how we could have allowed such an injustice to occur, and how we could have insisted trouble-makers like Woodworth, vis a vis Wilberforce, be silenced.
Marlon Bartram,
Kelowna Right to Life Society