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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.

Obligation to refer: Fact or fiction?

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I realize that the democratic state allows citizens to have a hand in the legislative process. But the last time I checked, the course of a legal obligation involved a walk through Parliament and some semblance of a democratic debate. So how did it come to be that:

“Lorraine Weinrib, faculty of law at the University of Toronto, mused about why doctors should be protected from performing or referring for abortions.”

An obligation to refer women seeking abortions to abortion providers presupposes a right to abortion. Let’s turn to Canadian abortion laws… Wait a minute… There aren’t any!

Before 1988, abortions could only be performed in hospitals upon approval by abortion committees. Morgentaler struck down the Criminal Code’s provision that substituted a woman’s judgment for the decision of an abortion committee. It gave women the right to make an autonomous decision and it gave Henry Morgentaler the right to terminate their pregnancies in private clinics. Forgive me for thinking like a lawyer but the right to decide to have an abortion is substantially different from the obligation to provide or facilitate it.

Morgentaler did not close the door on any state-based initiative to regulate abortion and did not give women a positive right to abortion. Granting women a right to abortion – and obliging physicians to provide it – requires taking abortion back to Parliament and engaging in an open, democratic discussion about our national stance on abortion. And opening the legislative process on abortion would cause – Yikes! – a real debate! And that’s not something abortion advocates want.

Failing to see the forest for the trees

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A reader, Brian, thought we needed to read this. So I did–most of it, anyway.

There’s a lot of disagreement on how and when abortion causes psychological damage to women. One area of solid agreement is that when the woman herself harbours grave misgivings over the act, that woman is indeed more likely to experience personal damage.

So what upsets me about the link above is not that there are hypocrites out there, even pro-life ones–surely we all knew that. What upsets me is that the abortion providers document these examples and in only one case that I found, did they decline to do the abortion. One of these stories even documents a 16-year-old who the abortion providers describe as “not quite right.” But she too, got her abortion.

It also upsets me that someone would chronicle these horrible examples with an obvious sense of schadenfreude. Well done: You have exposed some maliciously dishonest pro-lifers.

It’s hard to see the hypocrites for all the other hypocrites. So I’ll ask a question. What is the bigger problem? The 16-year-old who is “not quite right” and pro-life but asks for and gets an abortion, or abortion providers who say they care about women but clearly don’t have a problem putting someone who is mentally incompetent under the knife?

Still, I thank the reader for drawing my attention to that piece.

Why I killed my first child

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A mother explains why she killed her first child here. She refrains from using the standard euphemisms, referring to her baby as a baby throughout. She then explains some of the results of her abortion: a (temporary) split with her husband, guilt, feelings of inadequacy and relief, a lack of desire for more kids.

But above all, the decision was right for her.

The new frontier of the pro-choice movement is to fully acknowledge the unborn child. But then to add that killing that child is a mother’s right.

Aaaah, progress.

____________________________

Patricia adds: Andrea, that’s a horrifying article. Maybe I’m naive but I can’t believe that stories like that are going to reconcile people to these kinds of “choices”. At least not in the long run.

There are about a dozen glaringly obvious and really disturbing aspects to this story.

For example, on learning that her child has Down Syndrome, there is not even the briefest consideration of any other possible alternative to abortion:

“Going ahead with the pregnancy wasn’t even up for discussion. Neil [the husband, oh, of course, the concerned husband] stayed strong [strong???!!!] and made all the necessary arrangements.

I saw a consultant the following day [the very next day??!! That Neil really stayed strong and wasted no time] and talked through the abortion procedure.”

There was a lot of “choice” going on there.

The description of the abortion procedure is stomach churning. Women should realize by instinct (and I believe that some part of each woman does) that anything that involves something so horrendous and unnatural has got to be contrary to their fundamental dignity.

No surprise then that the procedure leaves her with “guilt, I realise now, [that] I will have for ever. I pass Down’s children on the street and think, ‘I killed mine.’

… There is no escaping the reality of what I did, or the way I mentally rejected my baby. …

Abortion can never be described as an easy option. I still cry as though mine were yesterday.”

Naturally, I find it particularly horrifying that the justification for all of this is the fact that the child who was killed had Down Syndrome. But I would ask any woman if they would like their story to be that of the woman in that awful awful article or, in contrast and not to leave you on a completely depressing note, that of any one of these women.

The birth dearth

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I read about the “birth dearth” in last week’s Ottawa Citizen.

As a mother of five, I always get a kick out of suggestions that a baby cash-in can boost the country’s birth rate. Don’t get me wrong: as a stay-at-home mom with a monumental student debt, I could sure use the extra money. But the promise of a $ 1, 000 baby bonus pales in comparison with the $1, 200 I spend monthly on groceries. And that says nothing about the price of keeping my kids clothed, sheltered and happily busy with gymnastics, dance and other activities. My point is that maybe someone should tell left-leaning thinkers that there is only so much money the state can throw at declining birth rates until it must start making family cool again. And pictures of pregnant Britney, Gwyneth and Katie won’t cut it.

What then, is a government to do when it wants to proclaim that children are a personal choice that women must assume and ask them at the same time to have more, many more? It gives them more money and hopes they won’t notice the hypocrisy. Trying to turn childbearing into a money-making endeavor? Good luck…

PWPL welcomes new blogger Véronique Bergeron

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ProWomanProLife welcomes Véronique Bergeron as a permanent blogging contributor.

Véronique Bergeron de Grandpré was born in Ottawa and was raised in the National Capital Region.

She graduated from law school at the University of Ottawa in 1999 with a civil law degree (LL.B.) The focus of her studies was… survival. During the summer following her first year in law school she got pregnant with her first child. And by convocation, four years later, she was pregnant with her third.

Like most young women of her generation, she was not born pro-life. While she always nursed a personal interest in childbirth (she wanted to be a midwife), she also assumed the prevalent choice rhetoric. Then she got pregnant at 21 in law school. “As soon as the little line turned blue, it became clear that what I thought would be a no-brainer was really excruciating,” says Bergeron. “Keeping” the baby was never an issue for her boyfriend, who surprised her with a marriage proposal shortly after (she accepted). Another formative influence was the complete and utter disbelief of her peers that she would do something so stupid as to “keep” the baby and ruin her professional life. “In the end, I pulled the trigger on my professional life by staying home with my children for 10 years,” says Bergeron. “That’s when I realized that women may have been liberated but liberation was achieved by excluding their reproductive abilities. I advocate for a complete liberation of women that includes the fact that they bear and deliver children.”

Bergeron believes that if abortion is indeed an equality issue and if women need to undergo such an invasive and damaging procedure to gain equal footing with men, there’s a word for that: Misogyny.

Bergeron joins ProWomanProLife because she wants to change the system. She is now seeking a Master’s degree in law with a specialization in biomedical ethics from McGill University. Her LL.M. thesis looks into the shared decision-making model in neonatal intensive care and her research interests are neonatal and obstetrical ethics, feminist approaches, informed choice and women’s health policy. She is particularly interested in using feminist scholarship to study forms of sexual exploitation not generally addressed by mainstream feminist approaches such as abortion, sterilization, cesarean sections and cosmetic surgery.

If she had spare time she would hone her musical skills and exercise. “In the meantime, I relax vicariously by driving my five children (aged two to 11) to their various musical and athletic activities,” she says.

PWPL looks forward to an ethicist/mother/lawyer’s contributions to the dialogue. Welcome Véronique!

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