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October 2000
Former pro-abortion militant returns to Morgentaler's, this time with
a pro-life plea
By Michael Coren
The Interim
 Merle
Terlesky used to kick people. And push them, scream at them and tread
on their hands. Why? Because was a pro-choice activist and for five years
was at the centre of the Canadian campaign to defend and extend abortion.
His victims were pro-lifers. But after an encounter with cancer and a
radical change of life this young man from B.C. has thrown in his lot
with the pro-life movement, and has quite the story to tell.
A zealous member of the Canadian Communist Party who even spent three
months at a party youth school in Moscow, the diminutive and pale-skinned
Terlesky became heavily involved with the Ontario Coalition for Abortion
Clinics.
"I was an activist, a protestor and a clinic escort. I would take women
through the crowds so that they could have their abortion. I had a dozen
women in my front room once, waiting to go into the clinic. They were
crying, saying they didn't want to go through with it. We encouraged them,
told them to be brave and have it done."
He pauses. "Very hard for me to remember that now, the fact that I put
pressure on them. That we all put pressure on them to do what I now see
was so wrong."
He travelled throughout the country working for the abortion movement
and then went to the United States to help out at demonstrations and protests.
He also disrupted parliamentary debates in Ottawa several times. He became,
in fact, one of the best-known pro-choice militants in Canada.
At one point he joined with a homosexual group to break up a pro-life
and pro-family prayer-service taking place in the middle of Toronto. The
peaceful vigil was nowhere near an abortuary but the gay and lesbian organization
still decided to cause trouble.
"I was charged for that one," he explains. "I received 300 hours of community
service. But I have to say that most of the protests outside the clinics
were just as peaceful as that prayer meeting. In Vancouver there's a woman
now who's going to prison for giving roses to women entering to have an
abortion. The same was the case in Ontario.
"Almost all the violence I saw came from the pro-choice people, including
myself. I know there have been some terrible cases of abortion doctors
being hurt, but I find it very strange that nobody has been caught. It's
not as though the pro-life community isn't known, intimately, by the police
and by the pro-choice people. Goodness me, all the demonstrations are
videotaped."
Is he saying that the shootings, the bombings, are not done in the name
of the pro-life movement? "I don't know who did them, but I do know that
they do the pro-life movement enormous harm and that I, and everyone I
know in the pro-life movement, condemns them and all violence over and
over again. Thank goodness they are rare, but they shouldn't happen at
all."
The conversion occurred when Terlesky was diagnosed with leukemia and
was given a one-in-ten chance of surviving. The experience did, as they
say, focus the mind. "I was forced to consider some issues pretty deeply.
I couldn't escape the fact that this was a life. What kept coming to me
was, please prove to me that an unborn child isn't a life, then I can
carry on. But nobody could do that. Because they knew, they know, I know,
that life was in there and life was being destroyed."
He wrote to almost all of his friends and colleagues in the pro-choice
movement, people with whom he had become very close. Not one person ever
replied to him. "It's as though I am somehow a disappeared person, that
I don't exist, never even existed. I understand. It can be really difficult
to confront something like this, to admit that you're wrong."
On Sept. 21, he visited the Toronto Morgentaler abortuary, where he
once served as a client escort, to deliver a letter to Henry Morgentaler,
his one-time hero. The letter pleaded with Morgentaler to reconsider
the morality of abortion. To date, Terlesky has not received a response.
As for his health, he is now in remission and doing well. Regarding abortion,
he calls for understanding and peaceful dialogue from all sides. But most
of all he wants an end to the destruction of unborn life, and forgiveness
for what he did for so long. "Oh God yes," he says, his voice shaking.
"Because I have so much for which I need to be forgiven."
The following is a transcript of the letter Merle Terlesky delivered
to Henry Morgantaler.
Sept. 21, 2000
Dear Mr. Morgentaler:
It has been a long time since I have spoken to you. My name is Merle Terlesky,
and I worked with OCAC in the early 90s when you were on Harbord St. In
fact my apartment on Harbord was often used as a safe house for woman
to wait at 'til local police cleared pro-life people from the entrance
to the clinic. I can remember the bombing of the Harbord clinic and attending
the wine-and-cheese at the opening of your current location.
During those days you probably would not have met a more dedicated fighter
for "choice" than myself. Knowing you and hearing you speak the few times
I did I know you are sincere in your belief that you are helping women.
I did as well, until now!
Mr. Morgentaler, I can no longer accept abortion as just a "choice" option.
When you applauded the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28 for
its overturn of a ban on partial-birth abortion, you said, "partial-birth
abortion is not really a delivery." Delivery of what, though? A fish,
carrot, or salami, or what? What is it, Henry, that you hold in your hands
during or after an abortion? Please don't coin the phrase fetus!
I know that preborn baby on the front cover of Life magazine May 2000
is alive and can also be aborted at seven months. How can you kill these
voiceless innocents? In the name of all that is just and right and merciful:
please stop what you are doing. It's not to late.
I can no longer ally myself with this slaughter. I pray you will one day
soon find peace and comfort in your soul and end the pain you cause yourself.
God bless you, Henry.
Sincerely,
Merle Terlesky |
