My favourite line:

Is all of [the missing women] due to abortion of girls in utero? No. In 1990, much of it was due to female infanticide. But the arrival of inexpensive ultrasound technology in rural Asia in the 1990s meant that the killing became easier to do before birth rather than after.

On a radio show yesterday I struggled to find the right words, to be less aggressive, more amenable with the general public. How to discuss these “missing women?” I struggled but landed on “killing” too. There just isn’t another word. And while I don’t want to be harsh, I have vowed to not use euphemisms in discussing abortion, either.

An editorial in a major Canadian medical journal Monday urges doctors to conceal the gender of a fetus from all pregnant women until 30 weeks to prevent sex-selective abortion by Asian immigrants. A separate article in the same issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns that Canada has become “a haven for parents who would terminate female fetuses in favor of having sons” due to advanced prenatal testing and easy access to abortion. “Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male to female ratio in some ethnic groups,” said the editorial by interim editor-in-chief Rajendra Kale.

So why would not telling the sex until 30 weeks limit abortion in a country with no abortion laws? Likely because doctors don’t like doing partial birth abortions on completely viable fetuses. Legally, however, if some enterprising doctor believed in the cultural disposition that encourages having boys, and wanted to do these late term abortions, no one could stop him/her.

Dennis Miller once explained that he considered “everyone and everything to be comedic fair game, except for the helpless.” You’d think Down Syndrome kids and dead babies would count as helpless. But no – some people simply have no shame.

I wholeheartedly support MPs bringing up this issue. And MP Stephen Woodworth is not bringing up abortion, but rather,  an examination of what is in the womb, and whether a child in the womb has any rights. You may think I’m splitting hairs here in identifying that there is a difference, but I’m not.

Abortion is one possible outcome of pregnancies, but in Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. DFG back in 1997, a mother, pregnant with her third child, could not be coerced into drug treatment of any kind in spite of the fact that her first two were born with problems because of her glue-sniffing addiction. Here, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the mother could not be put in treatment against her will because the unborn child had no legal status until he or she was born. In this case, the mother had no intention of aborting, but she also had no intention of halting her addiction. Had the child had any rights, perhaps this situation could have been changed.

In any event, while I support MPs bringing this up, I still don’t believe that political change is where the abortion debate is at. Ie. Even if we start to debate a law, it won’t truly protect unborn children, because the best we can hope for at this current time is the absolutely uncivilized situation of countries like the UK, where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, and even after that in rare cases, if I’m not mistaken. 24 weeks.  Here’s a picture of a non-human, non-child, non-entity at 24 weeks:

Or how about we work decades long, struggle really hard, and get that abortion limited pushed down to 22 weeks?

Right. Something’s gotta give and while political debate is a useful tool in igniting the conscience of our nation, I don’t think that’s where it’s at, in total.

WOMEN returning to Ireland after having abortions in the UK put their lives at risk by not seeking adequate aftercare, according to a leading figure at Marie Stopes International.

On Saturday, the General Medical Council struck off Dr Phanuel Dartey after he carried out botched procedures on a number of women, including an Irish patient who became seriously ill after returning home in 2006.

The Ghanaian doctor who worked at the Marie StopesInternational clinic in Ealing, West London, left parts of the foetus inside the Irish patient, which led to her suffering a perforated uterus.

The Marie Stopes clinics, which carry out about 2,700 terminations for Irish women each year, said the case involving Dr Dartey was an “isolated incident” and Tracie McNeill, the group’s international vice president, said one of their main concerns as a healthcare services provider involved Irish patients returning home.

“We are worried that many Irish women are not visiting their GPs to receive any aftercare help.

“Many are too embarrassed and ashamed to tell their own doctors about their termination and it’s not uncommon to hear of some who’ve become ill after going back.

Botched procedures on a number of women are not “isolated incidents”.

A 42-YEAR-OLD woman died days after attending a controversial abortion clinic in Croydon last week. [...]

It is the fourth investigation involving the clinic in six years.

Anaesthetist James Latham Peters allegedly infected more than 50 women with hepatitis C at the same clinic in 2008 and 2009. Peters, who was bailed on a $200,000 surety, will return to court in May for the remainder of the committal hearing.

The surgery’s owner, Dr Mark Schulberg, was in 2009 found guilty of unprofessional conduct for failing to gain legal consent to perform a late-term abortion on an intellectually disabled woman.

And earlier this year it was revealed that a 40-year-old woman was left fighting for her life in the Box Hill Hospital after Dr Schulberg performed a late-term abortion surgery on her.

…if a woman decides that the best thing for her to do is to self-induce an abortion, she should have access to the best information available on how to do this safely (ie with medicines, NOT herbs) and know where to go in case of a complication.  Criminalizing her choices does not protect her health. If we believe that women have the right to control their fertility, then we must also trust women with the right to choose the methods that make the most sense for them.

A few things spring to mind as to why this is a very bad idea. One is the fact that making abortion drugs available for at-home use might cause a higher rate of coerced abortion. Coerced abortion is still legal in Canada, and sometimes the only person who actually asks if you’re being coerced is medical staff. Remove these middlemen/women, and coercion becomes all the easier.

Since coercion isn’t a crime, what about slipping over-the-counter purchased mifepristone into your partner’s drink? Is that a criminal offense?

I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to make self-abortion a regularity, given the possible mental health effects, the possible abuses of these kinds of drugs, and the isolation a woman must experience as she self-aborts her child.

Criminalizing this “choice” may in fact protect her health and save the lives of both mother and child.

________________________

Andrea adds: Same article I linked to for a game of Count the Euphemisms, “Self-Abortion Care” being the first one I spotted, in the title.

She also asks where each one of us is at in this current social climate. Do we turn a blind eye? Have we braced ourselves to struggle through what we believe on this issue? Are we prepared to think things through to the point that we would reject abortion outright, and say so, whatever chance we get?

I often ponder how our children’s children will judge us. They would have every right to say we sanctioned barbarism.

This is not a guilt trip, by the way. Many of my readers are passionately engaged in some struggle, and no one person can be engaged in every struggle. But just because I am not an advocate against, oh let’s just insert a random example, human trafficking, doesn’t mean that when the subject comes up I justify why/how/when/how often it occurs. I don’t cast aspersions on the idea that human trafficking is wrong.

That’s the weird thing about abortion: that otherwise conscious folks, concerned about the world around them, can so easily adopt the propaganda of the pro-choice side.

So rise up, people! Consider the facts of the matter and worry less about the ramifications of your actions! Enjoy the idea that you are taking a stand. Live a little! This means doing what is right, not ensuring you get the appropriate job, at the appropriate time, followed by the appropriate pension. (Yawn…..)

Speaking up for the truth might make us look like fools. And that is just the beginning. Today, it is a sad fact that opposing abortion can cost a person their job and even their career. You might also lose your friends, your standing in a social circle, your invitations to events. One day, your position on abortion could even cost you your freedom.

To me, as a former political refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia, all this sounds eerily familiar. Back then, most people in our country were also silent, and many feared the repercussions that would follow if they openly opposed the regime. But we had a few dissidents, and they made a world of difference. One of them, Vaclav Havel, eventually became the first president of a free Czechoslovakia.

The truth is a powerful thing; over time, throughout history, it has always won the moral battles, and I have no doubt that one day, abortion will be rejected and recognized as an unspeakable evil. Until that day comes the journey continues to require courage and sacrifice on the part of those who carry the responsibility of knowing the truth. It is up to us to awaken the conscience of our society, one person at a time.

As the case was being prepared for trial, Steve Howe, the Johnson County prosecutor who took up the case in 2009 after defeating Kline in a Republican primary, discovered that the records that were to be used as evidence had been destroyed years earlier, the originals by the Department of Health and Environment and the only authenticated set of copies by the attorney general’s office. Howe told a judge this month that there was no longer enough admissible evidence to proceed with 49 charges, including 23 felonies.