Every Child Matters? Well, Not Really!
Yesterday, while I was editing documents at a local coffee chain, I was hit with the number of orange T-shirts entering the establishment, representing the Every Child Matters campaign. What struck me was what I perceived as hypocrisy within that very statement in the Canadian context. If every child mattered, would not the political system, education system, and most certainly the established Christian church aim to fight for, raise awareness for, and protect every child? In order to understand the heart of the matter, let's walk through why Every Child Matters, then move into the ethical reality of such a movement/statement.
In Canada, the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation aims to address the Residential schools that once operated while Canada was coming into maturity. These schools received children removed from their communities and lasted for approximately 165 years. [1] Over the course of these schools’ operation, it is reported that more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential schools.[2] Their attendance was not voluntary; it was compulsory for Treaty-Status children between the ages of seven and fifteen.[3] In other words, it was the law. Read that again with an additional note: It was the legal operation under the country to remove children from their homes and place them into a school system.
During this time, many children died, and the total number is still not fully known, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials places an estimate of 3,201 deaths.[4] Further, there are an additional 1,143 names of children on a student memorial register, while numbers continue to be amended.[5] If we take this number, we have approximately 4,200 resident school deaths. That is 4,200 too many, and no one is arguing otherwise. Sadly, there is no established evidence of how many were actually murdered by the proper definition of the term. [6] In these tragic deaths, there were matters of illness and tuberculosis among the students.[7] Regardless, thousands of children died within the residential school system, put in place by the laws of the land. These children were deemed to be “primitive and savage” and needed to be civilized.[8] Boil it all down, Indigenous children were placed within a social and political system that regarded Indigenous culture as inferior and sought to transform them into members of the dominant culture.
This is why many are wearing the orange shirts. They are making a statement that what was done legally, under the law, was wrong, and expressing their participation in national reconciliation. Yet, where are the voices for the unborn? It has not arrived. Society has yet to recognize that babies in the womb have been placed in a dangerous position within a social and political system that regards unborn children as inferior and seeks to transform their elimination under the same style of unjust laws of the magistrate. Except in this case, they are not being taken out of their homes and communities to a school;
they are being ripped out of their mother’s wombs and either sent to a lab or incinerated in a trash can.
Without getting into too much history on abortion in Canada, it became legal after the January 28, 1988, Supreme Court ruling in R. v. Morgentaler, which addressed fundamental freedom definitions under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[9] Since that time, abortion has been deemed the right of all Canadian women. In 1988, there were 72,693 reported abortions. 1989, there were 79,315 abortions. In 1990, there were a reported 92, 901 abortions, while in 1991, 95,059 abortions. Between 1992 and 2022, there were 1,175, 397 abortions in Canada. Between 2003 and 2024 there were another reported 2, 054, 805 abortions in Canada. This is a total of 3,571, 170 abortions in Canada. Not thousands, but millions of babies- millions of children dead- and approved by the current laws of the land. [10]
Now, like the numbers of the residential school system, stats change often. New data arises from new reports, abortions not conducted at a registered health care facility, and so forth. The fact remains: in Canada, Every Child does not matter. Babies in this country are treated like that of a mole, or another growth that is to be removed. Sadly, like other social justice movements, the hypocrisy remains consistent. For example, if Every Child Matters, why is it that between 2001 and 2011, the therapeutic abortion rate among First Nations women (in Alberta) increased from 37.6% to 44.2% per 1,000 women?[11] Did these children matter? If one were to look at the British Columbia statistics for 2015, abortion rates were higher among other First Nations women than among other residents of the province between the ages of twenty and twenty-four.[12] In one breath, the Canadian government claims reconciliation, and its laws promote termination of life. See the issue? This post is not suggesting the residential-school system and Canada’s abortion regime are the same thing. They are not.
The first was an institution of forced separation and assimilation directed towards Indigenous people, and the second is an end-of-life procedure forced on an infant child in their mother’s womb.
The question is, what happens when a society creates a category of human beings whose legal social status is different from that of other human beings? The law of the land allowed residential schools, the law of the land allows abortion, and yet the law of the land under Hitler allowed genocide and the Holocaust. Just because it is law does not make it right! The fundamental issue here is if Canadian lawmakers want to make an issue of National Reconciliation, in which Every Child Matters, they best clean up their room first. How long will they wait until they learn yet another lesson? The Residential-school system provides a clear historical warning. The warning is that society should not determine the value of a child by placing that child into a category regarded as inferior by the dominant culture! The indigenous child did not become more human, more valuable, more precious, or more deserving of dignity by becoming culturally assimilated; they already possessed all these, as does the unborn baby, regardless of what stage of development they are in.
Sadly, the unborn child is developing within their mother’s womb, but the law does not classify that child as a human being, and therefore permissible homicide can take place. It has taken place to the extent of 3.57 million deaths. If Canadian society has learned anything from Residential schools, it is that the worth of a child cannot properly depend on categories placed by society. Neither the Criminal Code of Canada nor any legislator should be allowed to determine the basis of what a human being is, and what legal status shall be applied to that person in their right to life; once that line is crossed, it is straight out of 1930-1940 Nazi Germany, no matter which way you slice it. It is no different than what took place in Rwanda, and a life being less valuable because of a designation.
I choose to use the word hypocrisy in this issue, though it is more of a personal judgment than statistical fact. Yet, it seems to be pretty cut and dry: there is a tension, there is a disconnect in what Canada deems righteous, acceptable, and what should be condemned. Today, Orange Shirt Day shows this. Canada no longer deems Indigenous children as less worthy. The lessons have been learned. The family separation, forced assimilation, and harm are clear; it was wrong! Yet here we are with a Criminal Code that continues to distinguish legally between an unborn child and a (born) child. Granted, this is not based on race or Indigenous identity; it is worse, it is based on location (inside or outside the womb). Seeing all the educators, politicians, and other Canadians wearing their orange T-shirts brings this matter to the focal point as the principle behind Every Child Matters; why not every child? Every one, regardless of race, culture, and status of a womb dweller, or fortunate enough to survive the Canadian health care system and rest in the arms of his or her mother?
Since Every Child Matters, this value is applied regardless of whether the child has crossed the physical boundary of birth.
If Every Child Matters, when will every child matter?
If every child matters, what permits one child to have legal protection over another child who does not?
In the 165 years of residential school systems, which impacted approximately 150,000 children, 4,200 deaths [and], again, no evidence of murder, though a probability exists in history. Since January 1988, or 38 years, 3.57 million murders have taken place in Canada. The child did nothing wrong. They were developing, just as a child develops here on this side of the womb. Babies, little ones with little fingers, little toes, and little ears. Existing, growing in what should be the safest place for them, ripped apart and treated like nothing more than an enema. This is the issue: Canada rejects the historical principle that the worth of the child is never based on an external category; a child is a child, period! Yet the law continues to assign different legal status to the child before birth and after birth. Again, if every child matters, then every child matters.
Perhaps one day the laws will change, but until the church actually wakes up, repents, and gets back to doing what it has been called to do, here we are. Perhaps if the Christian is willing to wear the orange T-shirt, they could get into the ring with the matter of abolition. Nothing is more troubling than to hear the "Amen!" for this movement, and yet watch professing believers shake their heads in disgust at the abolition movement. That is worse than hypocrisy! Sadly, many believers' attitudes on raising awareness of the unjust abortion laws in Canada smell worse than what a neighbor's dog left on the lawn. It is time to agree, Every Child Matters, and for the church to shout it from the rooftops. Make enough noise; eventually someone will pay attention. Does every child matter? For Jesus, yes! To this society? No, and it should make all of us sick.
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[1] National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, Every Child Matters: Educational Digest, stating that the first residential school opened in 1831 and the last residential schools closed in 1996, representing a period of more than 165 years, National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, accessed October 1, 2026 https://nctr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ECM_Digest_English_Digital_.pdf
[2]National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, “Residential School History,” stating that more than 150,000 children attended Indian Residential Schools, accessed October 1, 2026, https://nctr.ca/education/residential-school-history/?
[3] National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, “Residential School Timeline,” documenting the 1920 amendment that made attendance at residential schools compulsory for Treaty-status children between seven and fifteen years of age, accessed October 1, 2026, https://nctr.ca/exhibits/residential-school-timeline/?
[4]Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1—Origins to 1939, vol. 4 of The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015) https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2015/trc/IR4-9-4-2015-eng.pdf?
[5]National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, 2025 Annual Report, accessed October 1, 2026, https://nctr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2026-NCTR-2025REPORT-LAYOUTS-FIN2-WEB.pdf?
[6] Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, eds., Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). As a noun, the unlawful premeditated killing of one person by another. As a verb, to kill someone unlawfully and with premeditation.
[7] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1—Origins to 1939, discussing statistical analyses of causes of death and identifying tuberculosis as the principal reported illness,https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2015/trc/IR4-9-4-2015-eng.pdf?
[8] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1—Origins to 1939, describing the classification of Aboriginal societies as “primitive and savage” and European societies as “civilized,” https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2012/cvrc-trcc/IR4-4-2012-eng.pdf?
[9]R. v. Morgentaler, [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30, Supreme Court of Canada, https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/288/index.do?iframe=true&q=r+v+morgentaler&utm
[10] These figures were calculated from multiple published sources and should be independently verified against the underlying datasets. Statistics Canada, “Induced Abortion Statistics,” explaining that Statistics Canada conducted the Therapeutic Abortion Survey through 1994 and that the Canadian Institute for Health Information assumed responsibility beginning with the 1995 reference year, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-223-x/82-223-x2004000-eng.htm?utm , Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada, “Induced Abortions in Hospitals and Clinics, by Area of Report and Type of Facility Performing the Abortion,” table 13-10-0170-01 https://www.cihi.ca/en/access-data-and-reports/data-tables?health_care_quality=All&health_conditions_outcomes=All&health_system_overview=All&items_per_page=10&keyword=abortion&place_of_care=All&population_group=All&published_date=All&sort_by=field_published_date_value&type_of_care=All&utm
[11] Health Canada, Induced Abortion in Canada: 2012, accessed October 1, 2026, https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2013/sc-hc/H26-4-2012-eng.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[12]First Nations Health Authority and Provincial Health Services Authority, Sacred and Strong: Adulthood, accessed October 1, 2026,
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