“I don’t want to ever see that again,” said Shalini Misir, a Brampton resident who says she still hasn’t gotten over the bloodied tiny bodies shown on the postcard style flyer she received in her mail last week.
The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a Calgary-based anti-abortion group with a Toronto office, has targeted Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Parm Gill (Brampton-Springdale), Bal Gosal (Bramalea-Gore-Malton), Rick Dykstra (St. Catharines), and Michelle Rempel (Calgary Centre-North). All are Conservative MPs.
A spokesperson for CCBR said its campaign picked the five politicians because of their voting records on abortion issues and comments they have made about the subject.
“We started the campaign with these five politicians in May. It started in Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest) riding, then we announced one more politician a week for five weeks,” said Jonathon Van Maren, while he was in Gill’s riding hand delivering postcards to homes.
He says 50,000 will be delivered in each of the five ridings, adding, “There are many more politicians to come.”
The postcards each have pictures of aborted fetuses right next to a photo of the MP representing the riding where the particular flyer is delivered.
Each MP is blamed for the gruesome outcome shown, and the cards encourage residents to contact their MP at the number provided.
“Why would people put that in a mailbox?” Misir asks. “There are so many children in the neighbourhood. I can’t imagine what they would be thinking if they saw that in the mailbox before an adult picked it up.”
It’s exactly the response, says Van Maren, that his group is trying to provoke.
“We’re quite glad that they’re perturbed. The images portray a disturbing reality. That’s an important part of the project; the exposure to what abortion looks like is one of the fundamental objectives of the project.”
Asked about the possibility of children seeing such disturbing imagery, he replied: “We recognize some children will see them ... they’re not the focus of our campaigns. It’s a shame young children have to see what we do to other young children.”
Gosal responded to the campaign against him and his colleagues.
“We have made it very clear that the government does not intend to reopen this debate. I would also like to clarify for my constituents that my image was used without my permission, and I am not distributing these myself, nor am I affiliated with the group.”
Gill did not respond.
Harper has been widely criticized by pro-life groups for refusing to reopen the abortion debate in the House of Commons.
Misir says the group’s campaign did not have the intended effect on her.
“They didn’t win me over. The only reason I called my MP was to complain about how disgusting this group’s flyer is. Their cause has been completely lost on me.”
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