In the July 8th issue of Maclean’s Barbara Amiel writes about the abortion she had in 1965. She was 24 years old and four months pregnant. She shares this story in the context of a piece on maternal instinct in our society, or the lack thereof.
Looking at nature, she argues that all other living things, from “the thumbnail-sized strawberry poison-dart frog” to the Pacific octopus to “struggling little shoots in Antarctica” fight for survival. But we Homo sapiens tackle survival differently. She says that we don’t necessarily fight to mate and ensure our offspring survive: “Humans don’t have to do any of these things. We choose to mate but not to breed. Or on breeding, we can choose abortion.” Is this natural? She says that “the choice not to pass on our genes seems against our nature.”
Does she regret her abortion? Did she understand what the abortionist did to her or her child?
And until I looked at fetal development charts for this column, I never understood what was inside me: a tiny being with limbs and fingernails that might have felt discomfort as the doctor’s instruments murdered it. I couldn’t wait another four months and have the child adopted, let alone climb up a tall tree to find a safe home for it. Though I fully support legal abortion (as a dark necessity not as some precious human right) I rue our need for it. […]
Perhaps it is rank sentimentality, that cheapest of thrills, that brings tears to my eyes when I watch the graceful mating ritual of weedy sea dragons mirroring each other’s movements as they dance into the underwater night to mate and transfer eggs onto the male for safekeeping. Perhaps it is the shadow of errors my free will made. Meanwhile, having your daughter view the BBC’s Planet Earth or Life series would be a cool move. Even better, it’s in most public libraries—taxpayer dollars paying for material extolling the propagation of life—even while we pay Dr. Morgentaler’s followers for its extinction.
Amiel calls her abortion a murder. I was surprised to see this language in Maclean‘s. She almost seems regretful that she had her abortion. Perhaps she is. It’s a sad story.
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Andrea adds: “And until I looked at fetal development charts for this column, I never understood what was inside me: a tiny being with limbs and fingernails that might have felt discomfort as the doctor’s instruments murdered it. I couldn’t wait another four months and have the child adopted, let alone climb up a tall tree to find a safe home for it. Though I fully support legal abortion (as a dark necessity not as some precious human right) I rue our need for it.”
There is nothing compelling in the snippet there to suggest there actually is a need for it, quite the contrary. It’s a terribly sad column. I agree with this, wholeheartedly: “we have this burden of free will that allows us to make the most ghastly mistakes as well as great advances.” And in that sense, she fits right in with PWPL, for we should be able to name something as a mistake, whilst simultaneously knowing we cannot hold people back from making major, difficult, awful mistakes. That said, I’d rather not fund their mistakes with my tax dollars…
I too, have recently taken to noting the lack of maternal instinct around me and the manner in which many mothers, even, devalue their own position and work. Crazy upside down world. We claim to value family and relationships above all else, but we do not act in a manner conducive to supporting this apparent belief.
photo credit: Canadian Film Centre via photopin cc
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It’s interesting that she doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Morgentaler or the doctor that did her abortion…
“But I was a tenacious idiot and unearthed an abortionist (who went into practice later on with Henry Morgentaler).” (So…does that mean she thinks it was a bad idea to do so?)
“The abortionist was careful and loaded me up with antibiotics before Emergency claimed me.” (Were there complications? Does she mean the Emergency department? A late term abortion were certainly be more risky…)
“A few months later he was arrested. It would be many decades until the act that jailed him would get an Order of Canada for Dr. Morgentaler. ” (Yet she nowhere applauds his courage….)
Very interesting and profoundly sad…
Yes, I’d be interested in hearing the whole story. Perhaps she’ll share it someday.
She wrote about it in her autobiography back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I remember that she wrote that she didn’t feel “sentimental” about the aborted child, but that her reasons for the abortion were “reprehensible”. She also wrote that abortion was one of many issues where she differed with left-wing feminists.
According to Wikipedia (worth reading, by the way), Barbara Amiel has had 5 husbands, and no children. That is the lie of it all: that there will be other men, and there will be other children. For so many women, it does not work out that way, and their only child ends up being the one they aborted. That in itself is huge grounds for remorse and regret.