An Overdue Life-and-Waste Discussion

"There's a middle group that, if there was anybody interested in organizing them, could probably mediate some of the stuff at the far ends of both spectrums."
"It wouldn't make everybody happy. But nobody is happy now, anyway."
"People on both sides of the issue are nervous about speaking about things that are ethically complex, because how will those things be used by people on the other side. Those of us who are pro-choice present pro-lifers as adamant -- 'no abortion for any reason, just let the woman die'. [Whereas pro-lifers think of pro-choice people believing abortion not the delivery room is entirely acceptable.] Neither of these things is true."
"There are reasons women have abortions, and if those reasons didn't exist, many of them would continue their pregnancies."
Frances Kissling, president, Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy, Washington

"Outside of a fraction of the country, the abortion issue, on the whole, as a medical transaction, seems done."
"[The issue behind abortion acceptability presents] a quandary that now puts abortion in the realm of the assisted dying debate."
"We are past the stage of whether or not we should have the moral, ethical, legal and legislative right [to a doctor-assisted departure from this world]. On that issue, we're now into the weeds of deciding the final what and when. And that's comparatively where the abortion issue is now."
John Write, pollster, DART & Maru/Blue polling

"[There exists a lack of nuance in public debates on abortion] because of the kinds of questions too often asked in public polls on abortion. Questions that aren't meaningful to the lives of people most directly affected."
"[A minor with an unwanted pregnancy and unsupportive parents in parental consent can be asked an opinion and] one would likely get a very different answer than from a random poll."
"A meaningful question about abortion later in pregnancy would ask about the reasons why people seek and need abortion through pregnancy, and about the hardships endured, the resources required and the stigma suffered by many in accessing this care."
Joanna Erdman, associate professor, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

New technologies are pushing the boundaries of “fetal viability,” and challenging our ideas about confronting us with discomforting questions about abortion.   Getty Images

Hospitals and clinics in Canada performed slightly over 85,000 abortions in 2018, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information; a lower number than was done in 2017, at 94,000 when the abortion drug Mifegymiso was available in Canada, when women could abort in the privacy of their homes. The two-pill regimen can be prescribed within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, where a normal full-term is roughly 40 weeks.

A fetus cannot breathe outside its mother's body at 21 weeks; the tiny sacs called alveoli that fill with oxygen are not yet fully developed; premature lungs lack surfactant to keep the tiny air sacs from collapsing and sticking together when deflated. Yet the near future holds out the possibility that a fetus could be placed within an artificial womb, a translucent, plastic vessel filled with fluid mimicking the uterine environment. An oxygenator powered by fetal heartbeat,

In such a scenario an "extracorporeal" uterine device would nurture a viable human fetus enabling it to grow, bathed in artificial amniotic fluid until such time as the lungs, brain and other organs mature, technicians keeping watch while the sounds of a maternal heartbeat soothe the fetus. The greater majority of Canadians believe abortion should not be legal past the initiation of the third trimester of pregnancy -- 28 weeks onward.

There is a middle group identified by an extensive national survey of Canadians with more nuanced views on abortion than the committed pro-lifers and -choicers. A recently published DART & Maru/Blue poll found seven in ten Canadians think of the current situation on abortion, with no legal restrictions at any stage of pregnancy acceptable. Decades ago an earlier poll indicated that 44 percent of people surveyed believed abortion should be legal in some circumstances, with 32 percent saying when the woman wanted it, and 22 percent that it be prohibited unless the mother's life was in danger.

The current DART poll found one in ten considers abortion unacceptable; the majority -- 71 percent -- feel a woman should have access to an abortion once she decides she wants to have it, irrespective of reason. Yet a deeper issued revealed itself when the survey highlighted areas of ethical and moral debate where, though two-thirds (62 percent) of Canadians led by Quebec and British Columbia, identify primarily as pro-choice, and only one in ten as pro-life (led by Alberta, at 19 percent), one quarter of Canadians felt uncomfortable in either category.

Of those, three-quarters believe an abortion should be legal when evidence exists that the fetus may be mentally or physically impaired, while six in ten believe abortion should be legal if the woman or family is unable to raise the child affordably. Canadians believe almost unanimously (93 percent) that doctors should be lawfully required to inform women of potential risks of surgical abortion prior to the procedure. Over three-quarters favour a law that would require doctors to inform women about abortion alternatives, like adoption.

A law requiring women seeking abortion to wait 24 hours between counselling and committing to the procedure is favoured by two-thirds of respondents, while half believe a law should require women under 18 to have parental consent for an abortion, and seven in ten feel abortion should be illegal in the final three months of pregnancy. And while a dominant majority reject abortion outright for sex selection -- usually favouring males -- only 57 percent believe abortion should be legal in the second trimester.

As to the question whether government should debate the issue of abortion, three-quarters of respondents feel matters would best be left as they are, yet the status quo reflects that Canada is alone in the world with no legal boundaries on abortion even while half of Canadians feel politicians should at the very least be willing to discuss providing some regulatory framework. The extremes on both sides of the issue, points out Ms. Kissling, a pro-choice Catholic herself, control the politics in their entrenched warfare, paying no mind to moral complexities, reducing the debate to absolutist positions.

A team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is developing a “Biobag,” or artificial womb-like device, to help keep babies born severely premature alive. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

On Notice

"One of the things that's a strength of the Liberal Party is that we draw in voices from right across the country and on a range of perspectives. We have Liberals who are economically very far to the right, we have others who are economically more to the left. We have people who have a whole gamut of positions."

"As a party, we're steadfast in our belief and our position and certainly our positions as government, is that it's not for any government to legislate ... what a woman chooses to do with her body."
"[Every candidate will have to] accept and support [that position]."
"[Potential Liberal Party of Canada candidates hoping to represent the party in the next election must be] openly pro-choice in their positions."
"For current members, we will not eject someone from the party for beliefs they have long held. But the Liberal party is a pro-choice party and going forward, all new members and new candidates are pro-choice."
Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

So much for a range of perspectives. In the Liberal party under its leaders new rules of engagement on abortion, one may not support abortion on principle in the belief that to carry a foetus through from conception to delivery is a woman's decision to make, then question whether it should be lawful to seek an abortion after 22 weeks' gestation. It's all or nothing.

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin while not a raving fan of abortion supported a woman's right to choose. As a practising Catholic he was warned he could be excommunicated. Justin Trudeau is another practising Catholic. He is principled and authentically concerned to do the right thing for women, and as a devout Catholic, defying one of the major moral precepts of his religion, snubbing the Pope himself whom he would not admit to the Liberal Party of Canada. Nor a number of faithful Liberals hoping to return to the great game, now locked out for their anti-abortion intransigence.

That could be a bit of a game-changer for Justin Trudeau's aspirations to shoo out the Conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Conservative Party of Canada has many within its ranks who are stoutly anti-abortion. Their leader in all likelihood isn't fond of the idea of abortion. This was one of the purported "secret agendas" that, according to his detractors, lurked around the corner should he ever become prime minister.

Mr. Harper can read public opinion as well as any other politician, and he is more than aware that for the majority of Canadians, access to abortion for a woman unwilling to carry a pregnancy to its natural conclusion has support, even though a question remains about late-term abortions, and more recently gender-selection abortions. It is a controversial issue that rankles many and rancour is the last thing the Conservatives want to deal with on such a potentially explosive societal issue.

Not Mr. Trudeau, though. He has taken to tackling unpopular issues head on. China is condemned for its human rights record, but Mr. Trudeau admires China for the manner in which it charges ahead, regardless, to 'get things done'. Mr. Trudeau is not a fan of violence against women, but he felt less than enthusiastic when the Conservative government included in its renewed immigration guidelines allusions to 'honour killings' seen in Canada as criminal acts; an inclusion that he claimed to be "barbaric".

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, seen in the House of Commons in Ottawa, March 9, apologized Tuesday for his comments on the use of the word 'barbaric' to describe honour killings in a new Canada citizenship guide. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) 

 

And when Peter Mansbridge, hosting his CBC program asked Justin Trudeau how he would respond to the Boston Bombing if he were faced with a similar event as Prime Minister of Canada, this was  his thoughtful response:

"First thing, you offer support and sympathy and condolences and, you know, can we send down, you know, EMTs or, I mean, as we contributed after 9/11? I mean, is there any material immediate support we have we can offer? And then at the same time, you know, over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes. Now we don't know now whether it was, you know, terrorism or a single crazy or, you know, a domestic issue or a foreign issue, I mean, all of those questions. But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocents, at war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from? I mean, yes, we need to make sure that we're promoting security and we're, you know, keeping our borders safe and, you know, monitoring the kinds of, you know, violent subgroups that happen around. But we also have to monitor and encourage people to not point fingers at each other and lay blame for personal ills or societal ills on a specific group, whether it be the West or the government or Bostonians or whatever it is, because it's that idea of dividing humans against ourselves, of pointing out that they're not like us and, you know, in order to achieve our political goals we can kill innocents here. That's something that no society in the world that is healthy, regardless of ideology, will accept."

A man of great depth of compassion and understanding of human emotions, is this man. Fairness and justice rank high on his list of social goods that a responsible government should seek to represent. And in fairness he accepts people for what they are, and what they offer to society. And in respect to those who support the Liberal party at the grassroots level he pledged to be fair and open and receptive to their choices of candidates.

Which explains why it is that he has chosen what he considers to be his "star" candidates, and for any ridings that they choose to represent in the forthcoming 2015 election, none others need apply. And should they apply they will be steam-rollered and slandered for their temerity in questioning the wisdom of their leader. As for the abortion issue where it seems 50% of Canadians feel some legal restrictions should apply on late-abortion access, they needn't vote Liberal.

This one will sting.

Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Rest In Peace

Dead at 90 years of age. Years well lived in a determined battle to confront an ill he saw before him, and unrelentingly unwilling to allow himself to falter, though he paid a considerable price. When Dr. Morgentaler challenged Canada's anti-abortion laws he was derided, slandered, arrested, and incarcerated. But his pursuit of justice for half of the country's residents led him to persevere.

No one else with the authority of an outspoken, resolute medical practitioner bothered to champion the right of women to choose when and under what conditions they would bear a child.

"I decided to break the law to provide a necessary medical service because women were dying at the hands of butchers and incompetent quacks, and there was no one there to help them. The law was barbarous, cruel and unjust. I had been in a concentration camp and I knew what suffering was. If I can ease suffering, I feel perfectly justified in doing so."

"If I should die tomorrow, I could say I have accomplished something with my life. The fact that some people are opposed to abortion on religious grounds doesn't bother me as long as they are not allowed to influence other people by force or by other means. The situation in Canada is much better than in most other countries in the sense that abortion is practised by good physicians under good conditions. I believe as a medical doctor my duty was to help humans, and I did it."

His critics, vociferous with rage against this man, made comparisons to what he was doing, freeing women from the burden and pain of carrying a foetus when they had no wish to bear a child, to the abhorrently ghastly medical experimentation done by Nazi Germany's Josef Mengele. Hysterical condemnation of abortion likened it to a 'holocaust' of the innocent unborn.

These are easy enough charges to toss about; people having no idea what the Holocaust accomplished in beggaring the world of millions of Jews whose numbers have never since recovered. These were living, breathing human beings of all ages. They were not 'unborn children', on the cusp of being.

They existed as full-fledged, thinking, feeling human beings and then those lives vanished in a voluminous cloud of ash darkening the sky in a paroxysm of triumphalist genocide.

If anyone wanted to know what deprivation and horror, fear and carnage really resembled, they could ask Dr. Morgentaler, for he was very familiar with desolation, loss and anguish. And he had no wish to inflict it upon others. His wish was to remove the potential for all of that from the lives of women.

And he succeeded. At least in Canada, he did. For the most part, since there are still pockets of resistance to women's most basic entitlements -- withholding that right of abortion.

When Dr. Morgentaler opened the country's first free-standing abortion clinic at 2990 Honore-Beaugrand Street in east-end Montreal, abortion was illegal; punishable by the law in a most dramatic fashion. Anyone convicted of performing an abortion for any reason other than that the pregnancy endangered the life of the mother -- to which a panel of doctors at an accredited hospital would have to agree -- could be jailed for life.

It was also the time that selling or advertising any kind of contraception was illegal, even within pharmacies, and doing so could lead to a jail term.

"I have a vision, a dream that all people should be treated in a humane, compassionate way", Dr. Morgentaler declared, paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 declaration of human rights entitlements, as he opened that Montreal clinic in 1970. That same year he was arrested, charged with two counts of performing illegal abortions.

He would be arrested and acquitted by juries on a number of occasions. In 1974 his jury acquittal was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal, and he was imprisoned for a ten-month period, until another government came to power and released him bowing to the will of the majority in an unspoken social covenant.

TOBIN GRIMSHAW, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN    Dr. Henry Morgentaler greets the crowd before being awarded with a lifetime achievement award from PPO and the Pro-Choice Canada Coalition, part of the National Day of Action for Choice on Elgin st. Sunday April 25, 2004. 

In 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada's abortion law as unconstitutional. Later, the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney attempted to introduce Bill C-43, permitting abortions in the case of a woman's proven mental, physical or psychological health being affected by carrying a foetus to term. Both patient and doctor could face prison if such conditions were not met under the law.

In an instance where the Chamber of Sober Second Thought performed its duty to the country and its citizens, the Senate of Canada defeated the bill that had been passed in the House of Commons.