The Women
Andrea Mrozek | Brigitte Pellerin | Jennifer Derwey | Patricia Egan | Deborah Mullan | Raji Shankar | Rebecca Walberg | Dr. Sheryl Alger | Tanya Zaleski | Teresa Fraser | Véronique Bergeron de Grandpré
Andrea Mrozek
Andrea Mrozek calls Toronto home. She was a student at Havergal College and the University of Toronto, for her high school and undergraduate education respectively. Andrea went on to complete a Masters degree in history at the University of Toronto, with a special focus on Holocaust studies and modern Europe. As a student she lived in Berlin for one year, and after completing her degree she returned to Europe to live in Prague, where she worked as a reporter.
Back in Toronto, Andrea worked for two years in corporate communications. A desire to return to the world of writing and ideas lead her to pursue work at Toronto Life magazine and at the Fraser Institute. She then moved to Calgary to work as associate editor at the Western Standard. Her articles have also appeared in the National Post, the Calgary Herald, the Montreal Gazette, the Toronto Sun and the Ottawa Citizen.
So why ProWomanProLife? Andrea believes that strong, confident women are pro-woman when they are pro-life, and that being pro-life is a compassionate and pro-woman stand. A woman’s presence on this issue is imperative, so that young women can look up to female role models who understand the culture and climate we live in.
Her ultimate, long term goal - no secret agenda here: To create a Canada where demand for abortions dwindles and decreases until there’s none left, not because it was forced upon anyone but because that is what women choose.
Andrea currently works at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada as Manager of Research and Communications.
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Brigitte Pellerin
Brigitte Pellerin was born in Quebec City a few weeks after the October crisis. After an eclectic career path from flipping burgers to selling shoes to waiting tables to running retail stores, she received a 7th degree in music (piano) from Université Laval in 1985 and a law degree (ll.b) from the same institution in 1996. And then became a freelance writer.
Her articles and columns have appeared in Canadian newspapers including the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette and the National Post, magazines such as Western Standard and Reader’s Digest, and webzines like Le Québécois Libre, Mercatornet.com and C2C: Canada’s Journal of Ideas. Her books include Épître aux tartempions: Petit pied de nez aux révolutionnaires de salon, Le National-syndicalisme and Down the Road Never Travelled.
She refuses to be called a feminist but has never let her gender limit her ambitions. Being a woman is not a curse, so why insist on trying to behave like a man?
Brigitte is not so much pro-life as anti-casual-abortion. It always bothered her greatly that many of the girls with whom she grew up seemed to think having an abortion to “erase” a mistake was no big deal, and some went for a second, third or even fourth abortion with less consideration than they devoted to their choice of salad dressing. Her goal is not to make abortion illegal but to challenge the assumption that abortion is just another birth-control method, and while she’s at it, to challenge the assumption that not considering abortion just another birth-control method is somehow retrograde and misogynist.
Brigitte is married to John Robson. She lives in Ottawa where in June 2007 she received her second-degree black belt in karate. She trains with Domenic and Fortunato Aversa at their Douvris Martial Arts dojo.
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Jennifer Derwey
Jennifer Derwey grew up in Kenai, Alaska and later moved to Washington State in 2000 to begin her Bachelor’s Degree in English. During this time, Jennifer would have considered herself pro-choice. “I was pro-choice from a place of love. I loved my fellow woman, and I didn’t want her to suffer. I knew that abortion was not for me, but I felt I could understand why someone would have one.” When a close relative confided in Jennifer about her abortion, she began to think differently. “I saw her as a hurting victim. There was no choice in her story, only pressure and fear. And I thought, ‘maybe choice is a myth’.”
In 2002, Jennifer moved to Ireland and attended The Open University where she completed her degree. She also met her now husband. While abroad she focused on fundraising with Chernobyl Children’s Lifeline, a charity organization that brings children affected by the radioactive fallout of the 1986 nuclear disaster to Ireland for medical care and recuperative breaks.
It wasn’t until immigrating to Nova Scotia in 2007 that she became involved with the pro-life movement. After research about military rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jennifer began to question the validity of so-called therapeutic abortion for victims of rape and incest. “It seemed to me that western funding for abortion in the Congo was only going to further the systemization of abuse that imprisoned these women. The stories and images haunted me until they changed my mind on the last holdings of my pro-choice upbringing,” says Jennifer. She goes on to say, “Mattie Brinkerhoff said it best, ‘When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society—so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.”
After finding ProWomanProLife, she was encouraged to contact her local pro-life organization. “ProWomanProLife was such a breath of fresh air. It gave me a confidence I hope to be part of passing on.” Jennifer is now a board member for the Campaign Life Coalition Nova Scotia and a recent member of Feminists for Life of America. She lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with her husband and their two young daughters.
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Patricia Egan
Patricia Egan was born in Saskatchewan, but has lived for the past 15 years in Toronto’s west end. She completed a bachelor’s degree in history and French at Trent University. She went on to get a bachelor’s degree in both civil and common law from McGill University.
After graduating from law school, she worked on Bay Street, including six years of part-time work in the legal department of a “big five” Canadian bank. During this period she also had five children. “Contrary to what one might expect from the corporate world,” she says, “they were very good to me as a working mother.”
Trish “retired” from the practice of law in 2006. Since then, she has “a life of leisure” with her five kids (ages 3 – 11) and teaches a Canadian history class to the grade seven and eight class at her daughters’ school.
Trish came to be pro-life inadvertently through CBC radio. She recalls her mother listening to the coverage of the first Morgentaler trials on the CBC. When Trish asked what it all meant, she was completely horrified by her mother’s explanation. “And for some reason,” she says, “that reaction survived seven years of post-secondary education and remained an ongoing concern.”
The issue took on a new immediacy for Trish when her youngest daughter was born with Down Syndrome. “My husband and I encountered people who viewed my daughter as someone who had somehow slipped through the cracks of responsible health care and decision making,” she says. “We realized we are facing a world where people like her might not exist and that there is an ethos of human life positing this would be a good thing.”
At the same time, her daughter’s birth opened up a whole new world of kindness and charity and natural virtue, she says. “I discovered seeing those perceived as ‘weaker’ can draw out a kind of charity in the human spirit, a charity that is profoundly moving. In my opinion, each abortion eclipses an opportunity for someone to exercise such charity, and that is a second loss.”
Hanging outside her kitchen door is a poster with the words “Keep calm and carry on” – these posters were printed up by the British government in 1940 and stockpiled in anticipation of a Nazi invasion. “There’s something that I love in that story and having the poster on hand reminds me to, um, keep calm and carry on. Can’t put it much better than that,” she says.
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Deborah Mullan
Deborah was born in Seattle, Washington and lived there through high school until attending Western Washington University in Bellingham, where she received her Bachelor of Music in Music Composition. She then worked for a wireless telecommunications company and railroad testing software for four years. In 2008 she married a Canadian sailor. Seven months after the wedding, she quit her job and moved to Victoria, BC, to live with him. In March she finally secured a very part-time job as the office manager for the Victoria Right to Life Society. Outside of that she spends her time writing music, singing, playing trombone, dancing, and entertaining their west highland terrier, Islay.
Unlike many others on the PWPL team, Deborah has been pro-life since childhood. Throughout elementary school her family worked with the local crisis pregnancy centre. Young pregnant women came into her family home and lived there. Deborah recalls writing a report in high school on the many reasons women have abortions. “I learned just how anti-woman it was and it strengthened my resolve in the pro-life movement,” she recalls.
Having been a friend to many young women who became pregnant and carried their baby to term in high school and university, she knows that anybody can make a choice for life and become a stronger woman for it. Many of these women still inspire her every single day, years later. She believes that respecting and supporting women who make that choice is one of the many things it means to be pro-woman.
Deborah is currently adjusting to her new life in Canada, but thinks it is a great country. (“It’s pretty hard to complain about the weather in Victoria,” she adds.) She and her husband don’t have any children yet, but as soon as she has proven she can keep the dog alive they plan on trying.
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Raji Shankar
Raji Shankar was born in West Bengal, India and moved around the country before finally settling in Chennai (previously known as Madras). She completed her Bachelor of Science at Meenakshi College – Madras University and went on to do a Masters of Science in mathematics.
Married at 21 and a mother at 23, she was a stay-at-home mom until she immigrated to Canada in 1993. She then obtained a degree in actuarial science from the University of Toronto.
Raji has accompanied two friends to the clinic for abortions, once in India, once in Canada. In India, a married friend had an abortion because the child was conceived in what is called an “inauspicious month”— this might bring bad luck to the child, and indirectly to the family.
In Canada her friend, already the mother of two children, became unexpectedly pregnant and did not want to have a third. “I think both women thought abortion was the only answer,” says Raji.
It was the second time around that Raji seriously struggled with the issue. “I remember feeling helpless. I wish I could have made a difference, offered real choices to change her mind,” she says. Her desire to participate in ProWomanProLife stems from a desire to help women. There is no “undo” button when decisions this critical are made, she says. “I personally feel that people are not thinking of the life that they will not be bringing into this world.”
She currently lives and works in Toronto as a business analyst for one of Canada’s largest benefits consulting firms.
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Rebecca Walberg
Rebecca Walberg hails from Ottawa. She did an undergraduate degree in history with a minor in applied math before completing a Masters degree in political history at the University of Manitoba, focusing on the political and military history of the Third Reich.
Back in high school, Rebecca was thoroughly indoctrinated to believe abortion was a woman’s right, and furthermore, that anyone who said otherwise was trying to oppress women. Her views began to change, ironically, when she volunteered at a women’s clinic. “My eyes were opened to the realities of abortion,” she says, “because in spite of the rhetoric, most of the women there who chose to abort an unwanted pregnancy weren’t in extreme distress, hadn’t taken stringent precautions to avoid becoming pregnant, and had always relied on the fact that abortion was available as a backup method of birth control.”
Rebecca thinks the promise that access to abortion would give women more independence and make them less vulnerable to abuse was, decades ago, somewhat plausible. Today, however, Canadians live in a culture in which abortion on demand has made every child not a wanted child, but rather a potentially disposable child.
She believes ProWomanProLife represents a chance to bring a new voice to the issue of abortion in Canada, by raising grassroots awareness and not by forcing legislative change. “Trying to use laws or courts to change people’s minds about this is not only ineffective, but actively harmful, in that it polarizes society and rewards extremism,” she says.
She is currently working on another Masters, this time in public administration. Her thesis examines public funding mechanisms for health care. Rebecca also works as a social policy analyst, and is the mother of three small boys.
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Dr. Sheryl Alger
Dr. Sheryl Alger was born in Edmonton, Alberta where she completed a Bachelor of Science in occupational therapy at the University of Alberta. She worked as an occupational therapist for four years before deciding to become a doctor. In 2003 she got her medical degree from McMaster University.
Sheryl had a personal encounter with a crisis pregnancy when one of her best friends became pregnant. The friend came from a religious family—and getting pregnant outside of marriage was out of line with expectations. “And as much as abortion is also completely out of line with religious expectations,” Sheryl says, “there was an attraction to the idea that one could conceal the mistake through an abortion.” The friend ended up keeping the baby, and Sheryl has seen first hand how important that decision was for her friend as a woman and mother.
Sheryl has experience doing “D and Es”—dilatation and evacuation after miscarriages. This is the same medical process used after an abortion to remove the fetus from the woman. “When doing a D and E, you have to use very big graspers to get the head, and all the parts coming out. It is little feet and little hands that get me,” she says. “These are mini people.”
Sheryl is a big believer in the ProWomanProLife mandate: That being pro-life is a pro-woman stand. “How can we empower women to make the right choice? How can we make it less oppressive, less hard?” she asks. “Women need to know there is room for them to be women. There is space and support.”
Sheryl has also worked as a resident doctor in a rural Salvation Army hospital outside of Harare, Zimbabwe. She is a practicing gynaecologist in British Columbia.
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Tanya Zaleski
Tanya was born and raised on the South Shore of Montreal, where she completed just shy of a full year of CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel or College of General and Vocational Education) in fine arts.
Her life, she says, is a series of good and bad decisions “which have led me to where I am today.” She thinks the journey has allowed her to become less judgmental. “Thank goodness,” she laughs, “because I must have been unbearable until I was at least 20 or so.” Today, 31 and counting, she sums up her philosophy of life this way: “Always believe the best about people, and always try to meet people where they are.”
When did Tanya become pro-life? Her mother says she must have been nine or ten, during the Morgentaler proceedings when she first voiced an opinion. She describes the infamous day that Tanya declared, in the presence of dinner guests, that “They should not be allowed to do [abortion]!” or something to that effect. Tanya says her mother, was “disposed to keeping her views to herself, but always allowed us to speak our minds, even when she did not share our stance on a particular issue.”
It was years later, at the age of 16 that Tanya converted to Christianity and subsequently moved to St. Catharines, Ontario, where she attended two years of Bible college. At 23, Tanya says she “married foolishly,” and got divorced not long after that. Just over five years ago, she moved back to her hometown of Montreal and subsequently became “very unexpectedly pregnant.” In May 2005 her baby girl was born. “My boyfriend and I named her Evangelina,” she says.
“I’ve wept with friends and family who have had or were considering abortion. Women need support; women need options. Abortion is like an option vacuum. It is completely unfair,” says Tanya.
Today, Tanya is a stay-at-home mom of one and a self-taught, self-employed photographer.
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Teresa Fraser
Teresa Fraser was born and raised in Edmonton. She completed her Bachelor of Arts at Concordia University College of Alberta and went on to do a Masters of Education in the applied psychology program at the University of Calgary. She then earned her qualifications to become a registered psychologist.
While Teresa cannot recall a particular moment when she decided she is pro-life, she does remember that she was not always pro-woman. She distinctively remembers struggling with her identification as a woman. “I remember feeling that to be feminine was to be weak,” she says. “I really believed that the differences between the sexes were purely a social construction and that gender differences were something to overcome.” She now sees these differences as something to celebrate and feels it is important to understand what makes women different, particularly in light of the problem of abortion.
Teresa views ProWomanProLife as a way of challenging herself and others to examine the choices they are making. She fervently believes an individual’s actions have ripple effects that impact others.
“If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed,” is a Chinese proverb, which she believes challenges us to think about where it is that we want to go and then ask ourselves whether we are moving toward that goal. It is her hope that ProWomanProLife will be a relevant and realistic voice on abortion in Canada.
She currently works in the Calgary public school system in the area of Educational Psychology and also has a private practice as a therapist to individuals and couples of all ages.
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Véronique Bergeron
Véronique Bergeron was born in Ottawa and was raised in the National Capital Region.
She graduated from law school at the University of Ottawa in 1999 with a civil law degree (LL.B.) She holds a Master’s degree in Law (L.L.M.) with a specialization in bioethics from McGill University. Her LL.M. thesis looked into the shared decision-making model in neonatal intensive care and her research interests are neonatal and obstetrical ethics, feminist approaches, informed choice and women’s health policy. She is particularly interested in using feminist scholarship to study forms of sexual exploitation not generally addressed by mainstream feminist approaches such as abortion, sterilization, cesarean sections and cosmetic surgery. Her work has been published in Bioethics and in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics.
Bergeron got pregnant with her first child at 21 while in law school. “As soon as the little line turned blue, it became clear that what I thought would be a no-brainer – abortion — was really excruciating,” says Bergeron. Another formative influence was the complete and utter disbelief of her peers that she would do something so stupid as to “keep” the baby and ruin her professional life. “That’s when I realized that women may have been liberated but liberation was achieved by excluding their reproductive abilities. I advocate for a complete liberation of women that includes the fact that they bear and deliver children.”
Bergeron believes that equality is not achieved when women need to undergo such an invasive and damaging procedure to gain equal footing with men. She joins ProWomanProLife because she wants to change the system.
Currently employed as an assistant to a federal Member of Parliament, Véronique Bergeron is also teaches biomedical ethics to Masters students at St-Paul University in Ottawa. She loves to write and talk and hopes to do both for a living someday. She lives in the outskirts of Ottawa with her husband of 14 years, 6 children (all from the same father), 2 cats and a German Shepherd.
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