(ZENIT News / Toronto, 06.20.2025).- Linda Gibbons, a 76-year-old grandmother and veteran anti-abortion advocate, was acquitted on June 16 by an Ontario court. The ruling clears her of charges related to her peaceful demonstration outside Toronto’s Morgentaler abortion clinic earlier this year.
Gibbons, whose soft-spoken defiance has made her an enduring symbol for Canada’s pro-life movement, had been arrested on February 12 for silently holding a placard near the clinic’s entrance. The sign, bearing the image of a crying infant with the words, “Why, Mom? I have so much love to give,” has become emblematic of her long-running protest campaign.
What distinguishes Gibbons from most activists is not just her persistence, but the personal cost she has incurred. Over the past three decades, she has been arrested numerous times and spent an estimated 11 years behind bars—not for violent action or disruption, but for quiet, prayerful witness in the vicinity of abortion facilities.
Court ruling found her not guilty of violating a decades-old injunction that restricts pro-life activity near certain clinics. It’s the second such acquittal in recent months; Gibbons had previously been cleared of mischief charges related to similar activity in late 2024.
«After decades of peaceful testimony and numerous imprisonments, Linda once again faced legal repercussions for doing nothing more than silently standing for the unborn,» said Campaign Life Coalition, a Canadian pro-life organization that has supported her efforts. “This time, justice prevailed.”
Gibbons has never denied the charges brought against her—instead, she has used her silence in court as a symbolic gesture on behalf of the voiceless unborn children she seeks to represent. Her decision not to speak during hearings has at times resulted in her being referred to mental health assessments, as happened in July 2024, when she was briefly diverted to a psychiatric tribunal.
Yet in one of her more recent hearings, even witnesses called by the prosecution admitted that her actions did not interfere with clinic operations. That testimony was seen as pivotal in the court’s decision to acquit her.
Her activism is made legally precarious by Ontario’s Safe Access to Abortion Services Act, passed in 2017 and enforced beginning February 2018. The law forbids demonstrations, prayers, or any display of opposition to abortion within 50 meters of abortion clinics in the province. Despite its origins in a previous Liberal administration, the law has not been revisited or challenged by the long-standing Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford.
Gibbons has consistently criticized the legislation, calling it a “manufactured provincial law” that creates what she describes as “justice-free zones” around abortion facilities. Her defiance, however, has remained nonviolent and largely symbolic—a feature that has drawn both admiration and criticism across Canada’s polarized abortion debate.
Her most recent arrest marked the fifth time she had been taken into custody in just one year. Prior to this recent string of arrests, her last recorded incarceration was in 2015, also outside the Morgentaler clinic. That protest led to a conviction and a 141-day prison sentence, based on a 1999 injunction that has since been replaced by Ontario’s more sweeping buffer zone law.
Since Canada legalized abortion in 1969, over four million procedures have been performed—a number pro-life groups often cite as equivalent to the population of Alberta. Yet public discourse around abortion in Canada remains far less charged than in the United States, in part due to the country’s lack of any federal abortion law and its broad support for reproductive autonomy.
In that landscape, Linda Gibbons’ silent protest stands out all the more—a quiet, persistent dissent in a country where abortion is legally unrestricted but socially complex.
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