Linda Gibbons stands with her attorneys Nicolas Rouleau and Daniel Santoro at the Supreme Court of Canada where they are appealing her protests outside of an abortion clinic. Photo by Deborah Gyapong / The B.C. CatholicLinda Gibbons hopes to get conviction overturned in Canada's highest court
By Deborah Gyapong
The Canadian Catholic News

OTTAWA (CCN)--During one of Linda Gibbon’s recent bouts in prison for protesting outside an abortion facility, she shared a cell with an organizer of the G20 riots that trashed a section of downtown and set cars on fire.

“I have done nine years actual time in jail,” the 63-year old grandmother said after her Dec. 14 hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada. “These people who actually burned cars or smashed windows got less than two years.”

Gibbons has repeatedly disobeyed a temporary injunction that went into effect in 1994 designed to keep anti-abortion protesters 500 feet away from abortion facilities. She has served jail time for quietly praying or holding a sign for stretches as long as two years and three months for her non-violent civil disobedience.

“I believe the injunctions do not represent proper law, that they do violence to the law, that they’re a malconstruct, that they’re there for political purposes, they are not there for security, they are not there for protection of life,” Gibbons said. “If they were the, unborn child inside [the facility] would be protected.”

Her lawyers argued criminal courts should not be used to enforce an injunction made by a civil court. Instead violations of civil injunctions, or orders made by family courts or human rights tribunals should go back to the civil courts for enforcement, where there are a wider variety of remedies, including the lifting of the injunction. Attorney Daniel Santoro said using the criminal courts for enforcement was like using a butcher’s knife where a scalpel would be more appropriate.

A lawyer representing Ontario’s Attorney General argued enforcement of these injunctions was necessary to ensure respect for the rule of law.

But Gibbons said she does not believe the Crown has “an absolute right to throw an injunction” against groups it disagrees with. She said the Crown is overreaching and doing “violence in a democracy where people have differing views.”

“A country that does not protect is unborn country is no longer a civilized or a free country,” she said. The injunction “is being used as a political instrument to silence us.”

Gibbons’ lawyers said in an interview the abortion issue was only a backdrop to the case which focused on highly technical arguments about whether the violation of this injunction should have gone to a criminal court. They are arguing to have her conviction quashed, but if Gibbons wins the injunction will still stand unless the original defendants seek to have it quashed themselves.

Aside from Postmedia and CCN, no journalists were present at the hearing. Aside from the nine justices on the bench, a row of clerks at laptops along one wall, the three lawyers and six Gibbons supporters, the courtroom was nearly empty.

Asked if she was disappointed there was such scanty media attention to her case, Gibbons said the media does not want to “muddy the issue with what’s hiding behind the injunction which is three million dead babies.”

She said the abortion debate needed to be reopened.

“I see all these Occupy people. They’re in the park, they’re staying there and whatever and the public is very tolerant of them,” she said. “It’s about money and we all have money grievances.”

She argued abortion is “making Canada suffer,” causing demographic suicide and “destroying a population base that would be boosting our economy, three million missing babies who would be earning money and paying taxes.”

Gibbons, who said that as long as she has her Bible with her and her glasses she is okay, said her passion for the rights of the unborn goes back to the Biblical teaching that God is the author of life and that all of us spent nine months in a mother’s womb.

“Why wouldn’t we speak up for them when they are being killed,” she said. “I would want someone to speak up for me if I was being killed.”

She said it is ironic for her to be considered an outlaw for speaking up for the protection of unborn children, while abortion is within the law.