Spend your March Break defending babies

This is a guest post from Perina Baklinski, a participant in the 2025 Pro-Life Week of Action. Applications for the 2026 Pro-Life Week of Action are now open!

“Yeah, I totally think you are right,” a young man named Michael declared. “Abortion is never OK, period. Not even in a hard circumstance, like sexual assault.”

I was astounded. I had just had a quick conversation with Michael about human rights as they relate to
pre-born babies. And now, for the first time in his life, he saw the reality of abortion from the baby’s perspective, and realized that there was something really wrong with the “right to choose” to kill a smaller, more vulnerable human being.

The conversation went like this:

“Hi there! What do you think about abortion?” I asked, smiling at him, while offering him a pamphlet containing abortion victim photography as he walked by with his buddies.

“Um, well, I think it is fine.”

“Do you believe in human rights?”

“Yeah, of course!”

“Who gets human rights?”

“Well, everyone.”

“Yes, I totally agree with you. If two humans reproduce, what will their offspring be?”

“Uhh, human.”

“Right! So don’t you think abortion, the killing of human offspring, is a human rights violation?” I asked softly, showing him the 7-week-old aborted baby on the larger-than-life billboard I was standing beside.

He answered in the affirmative.

“I’m Perina,” I said, introducing myself. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you!”

“Thank you,” Michael said, as he warmly shook my hand. “I never even knew any of this stuff before.”

I was in the middle of my second “Choice” Chain, a pro-life project using abortion victim photography coupled with pro-life apologetics to convince people on the streets, in busy downtown Toronto. This was my third conversation where someone had changed from being in favour of abortion to being attracted to the truth of the pro-life perspective. I watched Michael walk away, glad that another person had become pro-life, but, at the same time, disturbed at how many people uncritically accept abortion ideology.

Every day in Canada, there are some three hundred abortions. Two beating hearts go into the hospital or abortion facility, and only one comes out. People are generally unaware and have no idea what abortion actually is — the intentional killing of an innocent, pre-born baby by violent means such as poisoning, dismemberment, ripping, tearing, and crushing. Ignorance of who abortion targets and its gruesome reality makes most people apathetic to the plight of the pre-born. Not understanding that this is the greatest human rights violation of our times, most don’t care about doing anything to end it — that is, until they see it for the first time.

During the March 2025 Pro-Life Week of Action, over 30 teens and I made a huge impact waking up Toronto to the plight of the pre-born. As part of CCBR’s pro-life strategy, we hand-delivered into mailboxes over 6,000 pro-life postcards that highlighted the human rights of the pre-born and showed the graphic inhumanity of abortion. Approximately 3,000 pamphlets were distributed during six “Choice” Chain events. Our team leaders calculated that there were an estimated 69,000 overall views of the billboards and pamphlets at the end of our four days of pro-life activism. Statistics reveal that an astounding 67 percent of people who see abortion victim photographs feel more negatively about abortion. With the work of CCBR on the streets of Toronto day after day, I think it is only a matter of time before all of the city becomes more negative about killing pre-born babies.

Why are pro-life activists like me willing to go to the streets to make the case for life? The answer is simple: abortion will not end, there will not be laws enacted that recognize and protect the pre-born as full members of the human family, until the public cries out for this to happen. Policy is downstream from public opinion, therefore public opinion needs to shift on abortion. That is why we take the pro-life message to the streets with courage and conviction — to change hearts and minds with compassion. We’re here to make abortion unthinkable. The work CCBR and other pro-life organizations do is crucial to making this happen. Abortion will not end by human strength alone. We can accomplish little on our own in this pivotal task. It is God who gives us the strength and the grace to move hearts to embrace life and to do this without fear, knowing that He is with us and is a God of life.

William Wilberforce, a driving force behind the abolition of the slave-trade in England, once said about images that showed the horrific reality of trading human flesh: “You can choose to look the other way, but never again can you say you do not know.” Like Wilberforce, during the Pro-Life Week of Action we showed Torontonians the horrific reality of abortion. Some people reacted in anger to those of us who held the billboards, choosing to look away, but they will never again be able to say that they did not know what abortion looks like. Yes, I recognize that these pictures of aborted babies are extremely difficult to look at. I do not want to look at them either. However, if we don’t show the truth about abortion, no one will ever be moved to oppose it. These images show the suffering of our fellow brothers and sisters. They should move one to empathy and then one day, to action. The children who are aborted are ignored and often forgotten by their mothers and fathers and their families. However, we must not forget these babies. We honour their lives by remembering them and by showing the terrible suffering they endured.

The pro-life movement will fight for protection from the start of human life for these most vulnerable brothers and sisters. We will be a voice for these smallest ones among us who do not have a voice. We will fight for them until abortion is ended. Through the grace of God, we can — and will — make abortion unthinkable.