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Linda Gibbons arrested again

August 5, 2011 by Andrea Mrozek 5 Comments

I assume this means she is back in jail. Once again, for all the charges that “pro-lifers want to put women in jail for having abortions” the only people in jail today over this issue are pro-lifers:

Six police officers took part in the arrest, including the sheriff and his deputy who ordered the arrest after Gibbons did not respond to their requests to obey the injunction and leave the area.  Gibbons was read the injunction and led to the squad car peacefully.  While in years past she sat immobile causing officers to carry her to the vehicle, the 69-year-old grandmother walked with them this morning.

Comments on the story are interesting. Julie Culshaw writes:

Perhaps the 20 Show the Truth people should have stepped in beside Linda and got themselves arrested too. Then this would make real news and something might actually happen. Until then…..

Alex Vernon replies:

Julie, at least the STT people were there. I don’t think it was necessary for them to place themselves in the line of arrest for “Things to happen”. Their witness speaks plenty. God be with you Linda.

I tend to think if there is to be any news around this issue of Linda Gibbons constantly being hauled off to jail for freedom of expression and conscience–things our society claims to value–then we are going to need a more media savvy effort around this. 20 or more women silently protesting inside the bubble zone, the whole thing filmed, press releases to major media outlets… would be a story, and bog down the courts, to boot. My concern is that Linda is being martyred here and no one knows about it.

Still, I hold her in great respect because this is something she has to do, and I believe history will show her to be a great hero.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Linda Gibbons

Where will you spend Christmas?

December 2, 2009 by Andrea Mrozek 4 Comments

Because Linda Gibbons will spend it in jail. Lifesite News is asking people to help encourage her by sending a Christmas card. I’m going to do that.

Linda prayerfully and quietly witnesses in front of Ontario abortion clinics, in violation of an unjust “bubble zone” law.

I wasn’t around when the bubble zone laws were created. I believe they are unnecessary today and are an infringement on our freedoms. I have further heard that Linda Gibbons herself is a peaceful lady. (We might be less inclined to sympathize with an angry protestor, shouting women who go for abortions down. That wouldn’t change the facts of the case–that these laws are not just–but in any event, I’ve heard Linda is a sympathetic lady.)

So send her a card if you can. There’s rules (see link) on what she can and cannot receive in jail. What a world we live in.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Linda Gibbons

A story of free speech and perseverance

October 4, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

A beautiful column about Linda Gibbons from Nigel Hannaford of the Calgary Herald. Certainly it is a free speech story, a pro-life story and a story of perseverance, at the same time.  

This could be a free speech story, or a pro-life story, or just a story about plain old perseverance. You decide.

Earlier this year, abortion provider Henry Morgentaler got his Order of Canada.

A lot of people hated the idea, but whether or not one approves of what he was doing — full disclosure, I do not — one has to concede he believed in it strongly enough to go to jail, rather than yield. If you agree with him, he’s a brave man.

If you don’t agree with him, you should still allow he has the courage of his convictions, and this martyr factor is part of what makes him so appealing to his supporters.

What then shall we say of pro-life activist Linda Gibbons, who has spent 75 months of the last 14 years in jail for protesting Morgentaler’s trade? After all, it’s a mirror image. When abortion was against the law, one man challenged it and in the end, was acclaimed for it.

 Courageous, indeed.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Linda Gibbons, nigel hannaford

A woman in jail because she protests abortion

September 30, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

Pro-abortion fear mongering often raises the false notion that pro-lifers want women to go to jail for having abortions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let the record stand: For women in jail because of abortion, there’s only one in this country that I know of, and she’s pro-life.

Linda Gibbons is a soft spoken grandmother whose trial is today. Gibbons has spent years in jail because she protests abortion. From a source who has seen her working:

She has been peacefully standing in front of [an abortion clinic] for the past five years handing out pamphlets and talking to women. Often only allowed an hour at a time before a peace officer warns her three times and then calls the police for her disobedience of the injunction [that does not allow protesting within a 60 foot zone outside of abortion clinics.]

Today is her trial, and the results are due out momentarily. My source further tells me:

This is the first time she has legal representation and her argument is being made. All the other times she simply stays silent, even when questioned by the judge, in order to make a political statement that the unborn are voiceless. …She is always charged with  obstruction of the peace officer’s duties (despite the fact that she fully cooperates and listens to his warnings and goes along with the arrest subsequently when he calls the police). But why is this 14-year-old injunction that was intended to be temporary still enforced and used to prosecute a peaceful pro-lifer?

And that is a very good question.

______________________

Brigitte updates: She has been acquitted.

______________________

Andrea adds: The story Brigitte links to quotes one Maria Corsillo. If I’m not mistaken, we were on the same TV program back when Morgentaler got his Order of Canada. And she wouldn’t stop talking. But bygones, this is what she says on this case:

“No one has a Charter right to interfere in another person’s medical care,” said Maria Corsillo, manager of The Scott Clinic, which opened in 1986. “The question every patient asks is, ‘Why is she allowed to do that?’” People are entitled to their beliefs but they should not impose them on others, she said. She used the example of people opposing blood transfusions for religious reasons. “Do you see those people standing and obstructing entrances to blood donor clinics?”

Short answer, and it’s an easy one. First of all, Gibbons doesn’t block entry. She stands quietly by, as the justice who acquitted her highlights. Secondly, if those opposed to blood transfusions want to stand and offer me information outside my very hospital room, I’m not opposed to that. I’d weigh the evidence and decide they’re crazy. Done. Women can, incidentally, as thinking beings, do the same, Ms. Corsillo.

Finally, abortion is but rarely medical treatment, and taking a life to solve a problem constitutes a very callous sort of world, one where it makes sense to protest. When Corsillo and I discussed Morgentaler’s Order of Canada, I recall she opened by saying it was an appointment that everyone could support. Everyone. Interesting. Guess working in a clinic, with a husband who does the abortions means you are by default out of touch with mainstream women’s concerns, which tend not to revolve around “medical treatment” but rather, “I can’t have this baby.” Cutting freedoms, freedom of speech and freedom of information–that’s her MO. Thing is, she’s curtailed her own world so much, she doesn’t even know when she’s doing it.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Linda Gibbons, prison

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