Mary Wagner’s bravery is in not minding her own business

On Dec. 27, 1989, I was arrested outside a Toronto abortion business, thrown into a police van and locked in a cell for hours. So were about 74 other people, including at least one priest. The CBC reported 80.

Twenty-five years have passed, so readers may not remember that in the 1980s Catholics and evangelicals protested the horror of abortion outside Toronto’s hospitals and its four abortion businesses almost weekly. Back in 1989, only one of the “temporary bubble zones” had been created, and that was around Henry Morgentaler’s business on Harbord Street.

My friend Adele was arrested there a number of times as she prayed quietly or asked women going inside to reconsider. She spent months in prison. I believe she was 18.

I belonged to at least four overlapping student pro-life groups — Abbey Alive, which supported Rosalie Hall with bake sale takings, Metropolitan Toronto Students for Life, which protested and handed out leaflets, Ontario Students for Life, which organized conferences, and TRUTH — Teens Rescuing Unborn Tiny Humans. TRUTH included teenagers who walked into abortion businesses and locked themselves to the furniture and teenagers who stood outside with signs, singing “We Shall Overcome” as the police dragged our friends down the stairs and into waiting vans.

You may find that shocking, and I don’t wonder. I am Toronto born and bred, and Toronto’s philosophies echo in my very bones. “Mind your own business” is a loud one. “Who does she think she is?” is another. “Keep your voice down.” “Don’t bother strangers.” “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” In Rome, strangers cheerfully crush against each other on the bus or metro. In Toronto, we are amazingly able to keep at least a centimetre apart from each other, even at rush hour. We worship personal space. And so in Toronto just holding up a sign that says “Abortion stops a beating heart” is an affront to thousands of people. They think it an invasion of their personal space, to say nothing of their right not to know.

It’s hard work bearing the brunt of Toronto’s disapproval. I learned that as a teenager, standing on freezing cold or blazing hot or simply damp streets holding up a pro-life sign. But it wasn’t so hard to get arrested. That was easy, and I wrote about it in detail afterwards:

“I was right up against the chain and watched as young kids, priests and old women were picked up like sacks of potatoes while (pro-choice activists) jeered, ‘Oh, look at the martyrs!’ and sang ‘Every Sperm is Sacred.’ I handed my song sheet to one of the men... ‘Here begins my long criminal career,’ I joked and climbed in front of the stairs. I found myself with Father Tom, who shook my hand, and the old woman (whom pro-choice activists had) beaten up. The cops dragged a man away and returned. ‘Who’s next?’ one asked cheerfully. ‘I hope this doesn’t hurt too much,’ I thought. ‘I guess I am,’ I said and folded my arms. The cops hoisted me in the air, and I was carried to a paddy-wagon.”

I was a teenager, and I was elated. My thoughts revolved around St. Paul and the excitement of being arrested for my faith. That the clinic could not kill babies that morning was a given; perhaps this reprieve would change their mothers’ minds and save their lives. The police van and the holding cell were full of hope, joy and the most amazing love.

I have never met Mary Wagner, the woman who on Dec. 23 was arrested for “interfering with a business.” (That is, she walked into an abortion clinic and asked waiting women not to allow the businesswoman to kill their babies.) But I think Mary must be a very brave woman, not because she got arrested, not because she is in jail, not because she is — thanks to the Internet — the first Canadian pro-lifer to become famous abroad, but because she actually intercedes with pregnant strangers.

I could hold up a sign and take the verbal abuse, and I could even sit where the police said not to sit and get locked in a cell, but I never had the guts or the truly self-sacrificing love to approach abortion-bound women and say, “Please, won’t you reconsider? There is help for women who choose to keep their babies.” It was just too hard — the words choked in my throat.

Breaking the law of “mind your own business” can be harder than breaking the Criminal Code. For breaking that law — for having the courage and love to engage pregnant strangers face to face — I believe Mary Wagner deserves the honour those like her so rarely get.

(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer and author of Ceremony of Innocence.)