Gabby Skwarko, the 23-year-old student who attacked Katie Somers and Blaise Alleyne of Toronto Against Abortion on the campus of Ryerson University last October, pleaded guilty to assault in court yesterday. Skwarko, who was a member of the abortion rights group the Ryerson Reproductive Justice Collective, contributed to a rash of pro-abortion violence last year, assualting Somers and causing bruising. Somers suffered from PTSD as a result. Skwarko apologized in court, and received a conditional discharge and 18 months’ probation. Somers accepted her apology.
As I noted last year, assaults on pro-life activists in Canada—often female activists—are becoming increasingly common as the pro-life movement grows. Just the day before Skwarko attacked my friends with Toronto Against Abortion, a video showing a young man named Jordan Hunt roundhouse-kicking Mary Claire Bissonnette of Campaign Life Coalition Youth at Life Chain had gone viral. It was later discovered that Hunt had previously assaulted a female intern working for the organization where I serve as communications director, the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. Hunt was charged with nine counts of assault—but he and Skwarko weren’t the only ones:
Recently, I watched a video of a speech given at a conference by a member of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. It was fascinating to see just how resolutely the middle-aged abortion activists (almost universally much older than the pro-life activists they see as their archenemies) managed to misunderstand the movement. To these muddled ideologues, the young men and women who head out onto Canadian campuses and streets each day are not simply people motivated by a love for pre-born children and horror at the gruesome injustice being inflicted on them (and our abortion videos have been verified by Canada’s own late-term abortionist Dr. Fraser Fellows of London.)
Instead, they appear to believe that these activists are the shock troops of the patriarchy, a system conjured up primarily in their own fertile imaginations. The most moderate exercise of common sense would help them realize why this is simply foolish. The young men and women who put up with violence from abortion activists to spread the truth about abortion do it because every time they show Canadians the truth, this happens:
