Dr. Christopher Levan, a minister in the United Church of Canada, serving at Wilmot United Church, holds a lectureship at STU. According to the university's course list, he will be teaching two sections of Introduction to Religious Studies in both the fall and winter semesters.

LifeSiteNews.com learned about Levan's activities with the Morgentaler facility after a woman who regularly stands in vigil at the Morgentaler facility sent around an e-mail claiming that she witnessed Dr. Levan acting as an escort. She said last Tuesday was the first time she had seen him, and that she discovered his identity because the director of the abortion center introduced him to the other escorts.

Dr. Levan told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview today that he has only done escorting once so far, but plans on continuing. He's doing it, he says, because he has a problem with the "harassment of women going into the abortion clinic," referring to activities of the regular pro-life protestors who stand outside.

"Not that they're in any way vindictive or mean," he said, "but their signs are sometimes. And these are women who have a legal right to this particular medical procedure and there is enough distress without having to run the gauntlet of [people] who want to change their mind."

"It's currently a legal medical procedure, is it not?" he asked. "And in a society that is pluralistic, that allows people to make those kind of choices, they're allowed to make that choice, aren't they?"

"So what I'm doing," he said, "is I'm making sure that the women who make that choice, who make it with, I assume, whatever sincerity they are capable of making it, are allowed to make that choice without the recrimination of those who have not been party to the difficulty they have gone through in making that decision."

Dr. Levan insisted that he personally disagrees with abortion. Commenting on the "I Regret My Abortion" pro-life sign carried by a woman outside the abortuary, he said, "I want to say to her 'I regret them too.' Absolutely. I'm not standing there because I agree with abortion, but people having made that choice deserve the dignity of being able to go and get the procedure without having to be guilted or in some way told that they are guilty of a heinous crime. Because they are not."

"Abortion is a regrettable, regrettable procedure that women are legally allowed to choose in this province," he emphasized.