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Archives for February 2008

Actions speak louder than words

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Pro-abortion advocates were, so we were told, prepared to spur dialogue about Henry Morgentaler getting an Order of Canada. They were throwing protocol to the side, they wanted a public reaction to the idea. All in the name of an open, frank discussion, to be sure.

You recall the Globe and Mail poll asking whether Henry should be received into the Order of Canada. I voted, and waited to see the results. Which were never posted in the long line of “past polls.” So I found the old link and checked.

Those results were telling, and pretty devastating if you actually want Morgentaler to belong to the Order of Canada. Upwards of 80 per cent said no.

Now the poll is still open and the results remain unposted. The number of yes votes is slowly increasing. It’s at 10543 votes to the 55117 votes of the no side.

I think we all know these polls are not truly representative: Anyone can vote four times if they want. What these polls show is the level of interest in the topic, the passion, and just a gut reaction to the idea. And the gut reaction showed Canadians don’t want Morgentaler to belong to the Order of Canada.

I’m sure that in time, the pro-abortion side can bring the poll up to a 50-50 tie. Point is, they’ve had to work a whole lot harder to do so. One would assume, given the whole thing is their idea, that it would have been no problem. But Canadians are not passionately interested in this topic, they are learning, save for a couple of National Abortion Federation supporters sitting pretty. And those who are interested, say no.

This is not the way the Globe usually does polls. Perhaps they can’t bring themselves to post the result until they get it “right”. Perhaps a call for a frank, open dialogue on the topic only stands when the results are favourable, otherwise, not so much.

Keep checking here for the poll results.

“Allah, Queen, and Country”

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A toast: Not to Allah, Queen and Country, but rather to this most excellent analysis of the Rowan Williams situation in the U.K.

I fear Upper Canada at least, if not the whole country, is governed by this culture of political correctness—it’s that “elite opinion” I’m always on about, which is “at once too generous, and too stingy,” and shows “an eagerness to overlook the staggering problems in Islamic thought with regard to democratic rights, but a reluctance to claim any decisive role for biblical religion in the formation and defense of those rights.”

Information is not a scare tactic

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This study, published in January in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health shows a substantive link between abortion and subsequent preterm births and low birth weights.

The Medical Post reported about this study on February 5. (It’s a registration required site so I’ll just quote from the article here.)

With increasing number of abortions, there was an increasing risk for both premature birth and low birth weight, Dr. Adera told the Medical Post. That is one major indication of a causal connection. […]

We believe this study confirms that both induced and spontaneous abortions are risk factors both for low birth weight and for premature births. And therefore we believe that women need to be informed about these potential risks by their doctors.

This has been known for a while. Researchers have cited the example of Poland, where abortion is illegal.  

Poland dramatically reduced its rates of premature birth, maternal mortality and infant mortality within a few years after its abortion rate declined by 98% between 1989 and 1993 (as a result of the passage of an abortion ban). “If induced abortion significantly elevates pre-term birth risk, one would expect Poland’s pre-term birth rate to slump 5–10 years after the induced-abortion rate plunge,” [researchers] wrote. They say data from UNICEF found that, between 1995 and 1997 (after abortion declined by 98% from 1989 – 1993), Poland’s pre-term birth rate dropped by 41.8% and maternal mortality decreased 41.4%, and infant mortality was down by 25.0%.

This is important because in Canada, 17 per cent of abortions are done on girls age 10-19, 54 per cent on women age 20-29. In short, it’s likely these women are aborting their first child, with the hope of having another one later. Preterm birth is a risk factor for all kinds of complications, as is low birth weight. When babies experience complications, it is personally distressing to young mothers. It’s also a stress on our health care system. (This, in my estimation, falls a very distant second as a reason to make the information public. But dollars and cents matter, especially as our health care system declines.)

No, the information should be public so women can know and learn. And women are not hearing this information. I don’t bring it up as a scare tactic. Take a look at the study and decide for yourself. 

A weird connection

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Funny: I read this story earlier today, about “walk-away homeowners” and I immediately thought about abortion. Here’s why:

Divorce. Single parenthood. Debt. Bankruptcy. These and a long list of other social behaviors were once stigmatized and kept behind closed doors away from polite society, but are now, if perhaps not completely acceptable, at least openly tolerated and in some cases, even lauded as smart lifestyle choices.

Must we now add foreclosure to the list?

The evidence is still anecdotal, but news media have begun to report that some homeowners have decided to walk away from their homes just because they have no equity and, consequently, don’t want to make their mortgage payments even though they could afford to do so.

Two things. One, we seem to be surrounded by irresponsibility, in just about all aspects of our lives. As though fewer and fewer people were willing to make any sacrifices ever. For anything.

Two, once a society accepts something as horrifying as abortion as just another “lifestyle choice,” then no wonder the stigma attached to foreclosure disappears.

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Andrea adds: Stigma. Anyone recall the movie Cinderella Man? It’s the Depression, if my memory serves me correctly, and the father loses his job and his kids are sick and going hungry. He is forced to collect welfare but when he gets back on his feet, he returns the money to the government. There was a stigma in collecting it, and a pride in returning it. I’m not sure there’s a stigma attached to welfare anymore. Or foreclosure. And maybe that has to do with our ability to avoid the most basic of responsibilities: Parenthood. Anyone notice this in the Globe yesterday? Not being able to buy a condo until you are 30 or 35 is not an injustice. Rather, it’s an embarrassment to get aging parents to finance your lifestyle when you are yourself an adult. 

Something’s fishy

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I once read that abortion was the right to kill in order to protect the right to copulate. Since then, I have never ceased to be amazed at the lengths we are willing to go to protect these “rights.”

Case in point: We worry more about the effect of estrogen from contraceptive pills on the smallmouth bass of the Potomac river than on the women who take it daily.

Would that women’s hormonal health was as significant as that of the smallmouth bass of the Potomac watershed.

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Andrea wonders: What happens to women who take The Pill and swim in the Potomac with the smallmouth bass? Now there’s a study.

Anti-semites in, pro-lifers out?

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It’s Israel Apartheid Week at my alma mater right now. Most universities allow an astonishing latitude to bigots, provided they are of the socialist, left-wing variety. I  fondly recall those university moments when students would hand out the The Socialist Worker… but enough reminiscing.  

My thought is this: Let freedom reign. Only where the ideas have merit will they take hold. Where bad ideas take hold, fight them.  

Freedom has not reigned for pro-life groups on campus.

And don’t go equating pro-lifers with anti-semites, either. I just find it odd that the former have trouble expressing themselves on campus when the latter don’t. If the argument against pro-lifers is that their point of view is offensive, surely we ought to apply that same criterion to people who think The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a reliable work of non-fiction.

Update, February 16, 2008: George Jonas eloquently gets at my point in this column. He translates UofT’s attempt to explain the anti-semitic event away:

Political fashion is our middle name. We know which side our fatwa is buttered on. We know racism that’s in demand, racism that’s tolerated and racism that’s anathema. U of T’s approach succeeds because we’re in touch with the times. We know who are likely to riot, and it isn’t the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. You’re listening to the Voice of the U of T. Shalom. Salaam. Peace. Boycott Israel, and have a nice day.

Sounds about right to me.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

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Words can be violent and ugly, as these were:

“Two young girls who froze to death last week on the Yellow Quill First Nation reserve…”

“Froze to death,” I thought, have mercy on the parents: Do we really need to say they froze to death? Could we not write “died of cold-induced cardiac arrest”? I feel better thinking they died of cardiac arrest. Makes it sound quicker. But in the end, it still means they froze to death. And there is no way to wash-off the violence of dying alone in the cold.
It reminded me of a seminar I attended recently entitled “When is it ethical to withdraw nutrition and hydration from critically ill children?” or, in lay-person’s terms “When is it okay not to feed and give water to dying and/or very sick children?”

This time, the discussion involved a case study in neonatal intensive care where a chromosomal anomaly had not been diagnosed by prenatal genetic testing. One of my colleagues observed:

“This is problematic because the parents would have terminated the pregnancy had they known about the genetic anomaly. They had wide latitude to decide not to raise an impaired child while pregnant and lost that choice when the baby was born. One day, they could terminate the pregnancy for any reason. The next day they would be committing infanticide by withholding fluids and nutrition.”

The speaker, a well-known scholar and experienced physician, interrupted: “I don’t like using the word ‘infanticide.’” The conversation continued and I asked: “If food and water were discontinued, would death occur by starvation or would the baby die of its underlying condition?” Nobody seemed to see a material difference between the two but the speaker took issue with “starvation.” Apparently, he didn’t like that word either.

Words create images and form realities. We don’t like what “starvation” and “infanticide” suggest so we try to change their violent reality into something more manageable. In the end, there is no escaping the fact that denied food and water for long enough, genetically- impaired infants starve to death.

We can argue whether or not this is ethical but let’s not hide violence behind euphemisms. Sticks and stones may break my bones–and words can also hurt me. So be it.

That’s not funny

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One of the unfortunate side effects of graduate studies in biomedical ethics is that you find humor in things that are decidedly not funny. Such was the case when I heard Dr. Bill Pope interviewed on CBC’s The Current. The head of Manitoba’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Pope was commenting on the College’s new statement on withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. When asked if the statement addressed some of the cultural and religious issues involved in end of life decision-making, Dr. Pope replied:

“This is why we used strictly clinical criteria.”

I laughed.

I know this is, strictly speaking, not funny.

But one must be exceptionally naive or willfully blind to believe that clinical observations can, in and of themselves, guide a decision to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment. Clinical criteria don’t have opinions, which is why we need physicians to interpret them. Something informs the decision on where the buck stops, things like culture, religion (including atheism), economics and personal preferences. Clinical information needs interpretation and I am more concerned about a physician who believes that she has no biases than about one who comes out clearly as a [fill in the blank].

What worries me most about Dr. Pope’s comment is not that people will be taken off life support. Death is, after all, a part of life. What worries me is that he wraps himself in a flag of moral neutrality. Deciding that a practice – abortion, withdrawal of life support, euthanasia – is morally neutral is not a neutral decision.

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