WARNING: Graphic imagery. Some readers may find the details in this story disturbing.
A New Westminster woman is outraged after finding a graphic anti-abortion pamphlet stuffed into her daughter’s door.
Rhonda Cadorin said she was visiting with her daughter and three-year-old granddaughter in Queensborough on Thursday, when they found the flyer as they were coming home.
“And I picked it up and my three-year-old grand daughter went, ‘Oh, gross.’ And I grabbed this and I went, ‘oh my goodness,'” she told Global News.
“There’s an embryo on the front and an embryo on the back and when you open up, in the middle, there’s the two… ‘leftovers,’ I guess, of an aborted fetus. One on the womb and one on a surgical table being displayed,” she said.
Cadorin said she accepts that abortion opponents are entitled to their beliefs, but said they don’t have the right to force graphic images on people — especially where children may find them.
“I’m upset about protecting my children. They want to protect the lives of unborn children. But they’re not protecting my child,” she said.
The flyers include a link to a website run by the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
Cameron Cote, a spokesperson for the group, said the goal of the flyers was to raise awareness about abortion, which he described as a “human rights violation.”
“There are people that are upset, and yet, again, this is the reality of what is happening in Canada,” he said.
“It’s certainly not our goal to engage people three-year-olds in this conversation, we’re trying to engage homeowners and we work hard to try our best to engage homeowners in the best way we possibly can. And yet we’re faced with the urgency that because this is happening on such a magnitude in Canada that we need to reach as many people as possible.”
WARNING: Graphic images. Click to see un-blurred photo
New Westminster Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Jeff Scott said police are aware of the flyers, but that “there is nothing on our end by way of an investigation.”
Cadorin said her daughter had been in touch with police, who said there is nothing they can do because it is a free speech issue.
The City of New Westminster said it is also aware of the flyers, and that it did not approve them nor does it condone the type of material being distributed.
Cadorin said her daughter has now been removing the flyers from neighbourhing homes, and one acquaintance even went home during lunch hour to make sure his kids didn’t find it when they came home.
“Pro-choice, not pro-choice I don’t care. You don’t have a right to put these graphic pictures out in the community with families, and on the front porch,” she said.
“Children need to be protected, and this is my choice of when I tell and explain to my children the facts of life, not them putting graphic pictures of body parts and showing a destroyed fetus.”