“Disgusting” was one word used at a rally Saturday afternoon in protest of a monument mounted by the Knights of Columbus in a Belleville Catholic cemetery recently.
Engraved on the monument, along with other wording, is “In Memory of Victims of Abortion”.
About 30 people, most of them women, gathered in Belleville’s Market Square to protest the monument saying the wording “victims of abortion” strongly implied that anyone who’s had an abortion has committed a crime.
(Photo: John Spitters/Quinte News)
Kristen Parks, of PSA Quinte and the County, comments on the photo of the monument that’s gone viral on social media.
Sean McNeill of Canada Employment and Immigration Union said the Knights do good work in the community but had no right to make such a political statement branding people as criminals in a public space.
Some believed a men’s group such as the Knights were wrong to impose their views on what women could or could not do with their bodies.
“It’s our choice what we do with ourselves, no one else’s,” said one woman. Another said “what right do they have to make people feel guilty of committing some crime when in fact they haven’t and they make that political statement in a public space like a cemetery. People who’ve had to undergo the trauma of having an abortion will feel awful when they see that monument.”
The photograph went viral on social media. The rally was organized by PSA Quinte and County and Warrior Women of Quinte.
