THORNHILL, ON—Southern Ontario’s pro-life community came together in early November to celebrate the work of Joanne Dieleman, a tireless advocate for the rights of the unborn.

Retiring after more than 10 years as the director of Aid to Women, Dieleman has overseen the work of Aid to Women, a Toronto-based counselling centre that offers women with unwanted pregnancies an alterative to abortion.

Located virtually next door to a free-standing abortion facility, Aid to Women staff and volunteers take the sanctity of life message to the gritty confines of downtown Toronto. “Sidewalk counsellors” seek to intervene in non-confrontational ways with pregnant women heading to the abortion facility next door.

With offers of support, advice, material aid and sympathy, Aid to Women workers aim to provide abortion-minded women one final opportunity to reconsider their options and to give their unborn child a chance at life.

A reverence for life comes naturally to Dieleman, a retired nurse, mother of eight and foster parent to countless more. A native of Schiedam, near Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Dieleman came to Canada in 1960 with no inkling that front-line right to life work would form a dominant part of her middle years.

Yet the Christian faith of her family, struggling through the violence, hardship and poverty in the waning years of the Second World War, provided some key reminders about compassion, nurturing and care.

“Some of my first memories at the family home were of what should be the Christian response to all of the suffering that was going on around us, especially on the part of the Jewish people,” says Dieleman, who now attends Bethel Canadian Reformed Church in Thornhill. “From there, it doesn’t seem quite so unbelievable that I would eventually become involved in this kind of work.”

Dieleman’s personal experiences, including nursing work in a chronic care hospital, a miscarriage, a son’s debilitating car accident and caring for physically and developmentally handicapped children as a foster parent, also helped convince her that life, for all its frustration and often intangible rewards, is worth defending.

Some accuse Dieleman and her co-workers at Aid to Women of callousness and even deception for approaching desperate women at a vulnerable time in their lives. But Dieleman is not about to apologize if some women wind up inside the Aid to Women building under the mistaken impression that it provides abortion referrals.

“There really is no deception on our part,” Dieleman says. “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how these women end up listening to us, but if we can get them to consider even for a moment the alternatives to abortion, we think we’re doing some good.”

Since its inception in 1989, Aid to Women has “saved” an average of two women per week from keeping their appointment with the abortionist. Over the last 10 years, that intervention translates into about 1,000 unborn babies saved from abortion.

Dieleman doesn’t hesitate to point out that for every client who chooses to accept Aid to Women’s intervention and bears her child, another 14 proceed with their abortions.

Passing on the reigns
Although she is passing on the reigns to a new director, Dieleman plans to remain involved with Aid to Women, while continuing with an otherwise busy schedule of right to life education, Bible study and care for the extended family.

And she needn’t go far in search of ongoing inspiration. Dieleman doesn’t seek solace or affirmation in her work from numbers and success stories.

“I still think we have one of the best jobs in the pro-life movement,” she says with no hint of hyperbole. “It’s difficult for those on the political front to measure their success, but when we’ve been successful in our efforts at Aid to Women, we get to hold a newborn baby.”